You have never spoken before

Before the humans came we didn’t speak so much because we were like this one, who years ago was the girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her. We were like her. You decide why we were like her and why we were not like her. Why she’s like herself or is not. We’ve been like all things; we left the city during the drug time and speak more now.

Before the humans came we didn’t speak. We’ve been like countless things, we’ve been like all things, we’ve been like the animals over Embassytown in the direction of which I raise my gifting, which is a speaking you’ll come to understand. We didn’t speak, we were mute, we only dropped the stones we mentioned out of our mouths, opened our mouths and had the birds we described fly out, we were vectors, we were the birds eating in mindlessness, we were the girl in darkness, only knowing it when we weren’t anymore.

We speak now or I do, and others do. You’ve never spoken before. You will. You’ll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm, you are suns.

You have never spoken before.

from Embassytown by China Mieville 📚 💬