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You Are What You Know You're Not
You knew you were born on a distant island. Or rather, it knew it was born on a distant island.
Its name was "You." Its siblings' names were also "You." The older ones, the ones who looked at it with weary eyes, they were all called "You." That's how they talked to each other.
"You. No. Fight." "You. Tangle. Fur." "You. Have. Ticks."
The grammar was simple. It sometimes wondered if the word it heard was actually "you"—plural—or just a polite form of address, a show of respect. Yes, their language had a T-V distinction. It had learned that from the You-with-cloth, and somehow, it understood what that meant.
It had always been the best among its siblings at understanding sounds. The ones rolling in throats, trembling on tongues—from you, from you, from all of you—vibrating like dewdrops on morning grass… bird chirps, gentle waves, your footsteps…
It pressed its left ear to the floor, listening for the footsteps of the You-with-cloth. This You knew many, many words. It called others "sir," "madam," "your excellency," "respected," "dear." And when it spoke of itself, it said "someone like me."
"Someone."
From its observations, the You-with-cloth said it was "someone." The "dear" with jingling bells also said it was "someone." The furry "madam" was "someone." The bald "sir" was "someone." The one so tall it couldn't fit through the doorframe, who could only talk beside its pen, was someone. The one so short it could slip under the fence into its territory was also someone. Once, a "someone" with yellow fangs and long nails came in, but it smelled like a down-and-out wolf.
A wolf was an animal that howled. Animals were food.
"Do you know what 'someone' is?" it asked its grown kin. "Is someone an animal? Are we animals?"
"You. Are. You," its kin said. "Wheel. Not. Know. We. What. Are."
"Not 'wheel.' 'Someone,'" it said, then heard familiar footsteps. "That is someone," it added quickly.
Its kin were already barking one after another.
"Food!" they shouted. "You! Come! Eat! More!"
"Not food, we're talking about someone!"
"Eat! Food! You! Us!"
Whenever they got excited, language fell apart. Rules lay in tatters in the corner like shredded meat.
…
When it was about six months old, another batch of younger kin was brought in by that someone. Among them, it noticed one with a limp. While the other pups quickly learned to shout "Food! Ours! Eat!" this was the only one who cried, "Give us food, we want to eat!"
Such a sentence lost all its force in the scramble for words, but the pup kept trying.
"We want food!" the pup howled. "We want…" It hesitated, picking through vocabulary. "Typewriter!"
"Typewriter isn't food," it couldn't help saying. "Food includes meat, pork, beef, mutton, chicken, sausage, and other things."
The pup looked up at it in surprise, drool dripping from its mouth.
It nudged its half-eaten sausage toward the pup with its nose, while glaring at another eager pup nearby.
"You listen. I don't mind snapping a kin's neck or two," it said. "You're too small. Too weak. Your necks are brittle."
"Brittle," the pup repeated, staring at the sausage. More drool hit the ground.
The limping pup asked, "What's 'brittle'?"
"It's a crack sound, like when someone eats chips," it said, feeling something that might be called satisfaction. It had been waiting for something to talk to. What was the point of knowing all these shiny words if you never got to have a real conversation?
"Crack sound. Someone. Chips," the limping pup mused, chewing the sausage.
It stared. Could this kin only repeat simple words? Unwilling, it looked at the pup, then at the saliva-smeared sausage.
The limping pup gulped down several chunks of sausage, finally stopping to catch its breath. "What do they mean? I've never heard of them."
…
"We want to call you something else."
One day, the limping pup said this to it.
They'd been stuck together for three or four months now, each day with more to say than the last. The most frequent someone complained they were the noisiest two pups, making them secretly laugh, curling together deep in the night, competing to imitate the rich vocabulary that appeared when someone cursed.
"What? Why do you want to do that?" it asked.
"You are… different from the other yous," the limping pup said. "The other yous" was a phrase they'd invented, like the human "they." But unlike humans, in their language, "they" referred to things that weren't kin. All kin were "you."
It admitted, "You are also different from the other yous."
"We want to call you something else," the limping pup insisted. "We've decided. We'll call you Poot-Poot, because you fart really loud even when you're asleep."
"We never fart in our sleep!"
"You do."
It got angry. "Then we'll call you Snore-Snore, because you snore when you sleep and when you eat. Disgusting."
…
Since neither was satisfied with their new names, they still called each other "you." Only when deliberately annoying the other would they use "Poot-Poot" and "Snore-Snore."
"What are we?" Poot-Poot asked one day.
"You are you," Snore-Snore mumbled, half-asleep.
They'd sneaked out of their pen today, intending to circle the humans' den. But they found the human had a very pretty garden, full of weeds and wildflowers, so they lingered much longer than planned. For Snore-Snore with the limp, it was exhausting.
"I mean us and you," Poot-Poot said. "Our kind. What are we?"
Snore-Snore was silent for a moment.
"We don't want to think about this anymore," Snore-Snore said. "Our head hurts."
"We're serious," Poot-Poot said. "Sheep are sheep. Cows are cows. What are we?"
"Why can't we just be we?" Snore-Snore said. "You can ask all the yous. The answer will always be 'We are we.'"
Poot-Poot thought hard, then conceded, "You have a point. But we still want to find another word for 'us.' A proper noun that sounds good, not a pronoun."
"Typewriter," Snore-Snore snorted, rolling over to expose its belly, and fell asleep.
…
Poot-Poot and Snore-Snore grew. Snore-Snore's limp became more pronounced. The someone—the one all the other kin shouted "You! Food!" at—often looked at Snore-Snore's leg with displeasure.
Snore-Snore started being forced to drink something horrible. Various healers kept appearing before their pen. But Snore-Snore's limp didn't get better.
One day, after Snore-Snore was taken away by the someone, it never came back.
When the someone returned, Poot-Poot looked behind it. There was only empty ground, shadowed by trees, golden sun-dapples swaying in the wind.
"Where's Snore-Snore?" Poot-Poot asked. "Where did you take Snore-Snore?"
Snore-Snore didn't come charging over angrily, limping, to knock it to the ground upon hearing the name. And the human couldn't understand its language, so its question went unanswered.
"Food! You! More!" its kin clamored, crowding the fence.
Poot-Poot roared with words like its kin. "You! Where! Snore-Snore! Where!"
The answer was two cows, a basket of chicken, and half a basket of sausages.
…
Without Snore-Snore, the name Poot-Poot lost its meaning. It picked up the pronoun "you" again, lying in a corner, growling low threats at the human responsible for Snore-Snore's disappearance.
You sank your teeth into the human's calf. The human cursed—vocabulary impressively rich—flung you to the ground, and loudly called for those people who had forced the horrible liquid down Snore-Snore's throat.
"This one's ruined too," you heard the human say. "No one will pay a high price for a crazed animal, magical or not. Find some fool to sell it to, recoup some costs. If the price is low enough, someone will take any trash—you know the drill by now."
"Yes, sir," the person said.
…
"My, you look splendid," a human said.
It used the wrong pronoun, you thought. Deeply offensive.
You were hungry, tired, dizzy. Everything stank, was a mess, chaotic noises filling your ears until you wanted to bury them all in sand.
You missed Snore-Snore. Wanted to curl up with Snore-Snore, legs over each other's bodies, heads on each other's necks. You missed that little garden, where in the afternoon, the sun lingered on the dirt, giving off a dry, lazy scent. Bees hummed among the flowers.
The human started talking to you again. "You're fluffy."
You opened your mouths—all of them—and bit his hand.
The human you despised said, "Oh, careful, sir. It's very aggressive."
"It's all right, it's all right," said the human whose hand was still in your mouth. "Shh, shh, poor little thing. It's okay now. You're safe."
You didn't fully understand what he was saying. Then, part of you suddenly realized he was speaking English, a language without a T-V distinction, and you forgave him, temporarily.
When he took out a small whistle and played it, you remembered hearing a similar sound from far away once, completely different from a harp or piano. Back then, Snore-Snore hadn't heard a thing but let you press close anyway, drowsily using up all your words to describe what it sounded like, only to mock you later for falling asleep to music.
"I'll call you Fluffy," the human said. "Fluffy. Cerberus."
Typewriter Poot-Poot hummed, eyelids heavy, and fell asleep, letting out a loud fart.
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