Bren guided us with some handheld tech. I was conscious of the forest’s darkness, coloured by the bruisey flora. The wood was full of noises. Things of radial and spiral form moved around us. We bewildered the animals—we didn’t read as predators to the prey nor vice versa, and they were neither afraid of nor threatening to us. They watched us quizzically, those with eyes. Once one of the Ariekei said something dangerous was near us. A 
, big as a room, opening and closing its teeth. It would surely have attacked the Ariekei had they been alone, but its confusion at the sight of us aliens, uncoded in its instinct, stilled it, so we saved them.
They’d rescued a clutch of the datchips, but not all. They would have to husband them. One by one, as they had to, the Ariekei took themselves into the privacy of the wood and listened hard to EzCal’s voice, catching us up, a little high but clearer-headed.
We kept on into the evening, and the forest got sparse, until it was tree-flecked grassland under the glimmer of Wreck. We granted ourselves a little sleep: mostly, though, my priority was to teach.
YOU ARE LIKE the girl, you are the girl.
“Sweet Jesus,” I said. “Just fucking say it.” Their urgency, in fact, I’m as certain as I can be, was at least as great as mine.
“YlSib,” I said. “Ask them this. Do they know who I am?” Language. The Ariekei murmured. She’s the girl who was... I interrupted. “Really know, I mean. Do they know what a girl is? They know I’m a simile, but do they know that the girl is me? What do they think you are, YlSib? How many?”
“You know what she’s asking,” Bren said. “Tallying Mystery.” Did the Ariekei think an Ambassador one person or two? Staff had always told us it was a pointless, untranslatable, impolite question.
“I’m sorry but I need them to understand that you’re two people because I need them to understand that I’m one. That these bloody squawks I make are language. That I’m talking to them.” The Ariekei watched one meat-presence emitting noises more quickly and loudly than usual to the others.
After a silence Bren said, “It’s never been something Ambassadors have been exactly keen to make clear.”
“Make it clear,” I said. “Ambassadors don’t get to be the only real people anymore.”
I don’t believe we could have overturned generations of Ariekene thinking, even with so avant-garde a group as this, had they not known somewhere, to some degree, that each of us was a thinking thing. Spanish and its comrades responded at first as if of course, so what; then slowly as YlSib pressed the point many times, with growing fascination, confusion, or what might be anger or fear. At last I saw what I hoped was a fitting sense of revelation.
She is speaking, YlSib said to them. The girl who ate what was given to her. Like I speak to you.
“Yes,” I said, as the Ariekei stared. “Yes.”
Language was the unit of Ariekene thought and truth: asserting my sentience in it YlSib made a powerful claim. They told them that I was speaking, and Language insisted then that there must be other kinds of language than Language.
“Make them say it,” I said. “That what I’m doing is speaking.”
Spanish Dancer said it. The human in blue is speaking. The others listened. They struggled, but one by one managed to repeat it.
“They believe it,” I said. This was where it began to change.
“Translate,” I said to YlSib. “You know me,” I said to the Ariekei. “I’m the girl who ate, etcetera. I’m like you, and you’re like me, and I’m like you. I am you.” One of them shouted. Something was happening. It spread among them. Spanish Dancer stared at me.
“Avice,” said Bren in warning.
“Tell them what I say,” I said. I looked at Spanish. I met its almost-eyes as urgently as if I were talking to a human. “Tell it. I waited for things to be better, Spanish, so I’m like you. I am you. I took what was given to me, so I’m like the others. I am them.” I shone a torch on myself. “I glow in the night, I’m like the moon. I am the moon.” I lay down. “They know how we sleep, yeah? I’m so tired I lie as still as the dead, I’m like the dead. I’m so tired I am dead. See?”
The Ariekei were staggering. Their fanwings flared, folded and opened. They reached for me with their giftwings, making Bren gasp, but they didn’t touch me. They said words and noises.
“What’s happening?” Yl or Sib said.
“Don’t stop translating,” I said. “Don’t you dare.” The Ariekei sounded together, a moment’s horrible choir. They retracted their eyes. “Don’t stop. I’m the girl who ate blah blah. What have you said with me all this time? Everything you said’s like me is me. You’ve already done it. It’s all just things in terms of other things.” I stood before Spanish Dancer. “Tell it its name. Say: There were humans a long time ago who wore clothes that were black and red like your markings. Spanish dancers.” I heard YlSib neologise “
” .“I can’t speak your name in Language, so I gave you a new one. Spanish Dancer. You’re like, you are a Spanish dancer.”
One by quick one the Ariekei shouted then went silent. Their eyes stayed in. They swayed. No one spoke for a long time.
“What’ve you done?” whispered Sib. “You’ve driven them mad.”
“Good,” I said. “We’re insane, to them: we tell the truth with lies.”
Like sped-up film of plants in the sun, Spanish’s eye-coral at last budded. It started to speak and said two trickles of gibberish. It stopped and waited and started again. Yl and Sib and Bren translated but I didn’t need them. Spanish Dancer spoke slowly, as if it was listening hard to everything it said.
You are the girl who ate. I’m . I’m like you and I am you. Someone human gasped. Spanish craned its eye-coral and stared at its own fanwing. Two eyes came back to look at me. I have markings. I’m a Spanish dancer. I didn’t take my eyes off it. I’m like you, waiting for change. The Spanish dancer is the girl who was hurt in darkness.
“Yes,” I whispered, and YlSib said “
,” Yes.
Other Ariekei were speaking. We are the girl who was hurt.
We were like the girl...
We are the girl...
“Tell them their names,” I said. “You move like a Terre bird: you’re Duck. You drip liquid from your Cut-mouth, so you’re Baptist. Explain that, YlSib, can you? Tell them, tell them the city’s a heart...”
I’m like the liquid-dripping man, I am him...
With the boisterous astonishment of revelation they pressed the similes by which I’d named them on until they were lies, telling a truth they’d never been able to before. They spoke metaphors.
“God,” Yl said.
“Jesus Christ Pharotekton,” said Bren.
“God,” said Sib.
The Ariekei spoke to each other. You’re the Spanish dancer. I could have wept.
“Jesus Christ, Avice, you did it.” Bren hugged me for a long time. YlSib hugged me. I held onto them all. “You did it.” We listened to the Ariekene new speakers call each other things in unprecedented formulations.