What can I say? What can I possibly say when understanding is not only impossible, but undesired?
I loved her. I became her constant companion, but was too shy to approach her. And then she left me, left all of us to go to Earth, somewhere we couldn’t follow. I thought I had failed. We might have lost her forever.
And then, years later, I learned that she had been trying to protect me.
It is the central truth of my life, but none of it means anything to you. You lack the references to understand. You hold everything we value in contempt.
And yet, without understanding, is anything accomplished? For isn’t understanding simply a deeper, more personal form of knowledge?
Our people would never have made the leap from plant to animal if we hadn’t been trying to understand. For millions of years, the squirrels ran through our branches. We didn’t think anything of it. We didn’t think anything at all. But then some lost ancestor made the leap. Not through reasoning, but through instinct. It wanted to know, to understand. It was curious.
When I and I was a sapling, He couldn’t understand anything of human life. But Tara came, and He could feel her warmth. He could hear her singing.
That’s one of our oldest memories – the song of a little girl. And yet, we had no ears! How could the song mean anything to us if we couldn’t hear it? But we could feel it. We could feel the vibrations in our leaves. We knew by instinct that it was something beautiful.
But it wasn’t until we had made the leap – the grand jeté – that we truly understood.
All of this is but a preamble to my real testimony. I will take up the fasharp and sing to you now, sing the ancient songs of my people, both Nau’gsh and human. They are songs of longing and of loss. They are songs wherein death is not a mere erasure, but a personal tragedy, and as such, my songs are warriors against entropy.
Of course, you can’t possibly understand. But perhaps you will know by instinct that they are something beautiful.