Old Walker found themself at the door of the hall of writings. Pebbles-In-A-Dry-Stream's-Bed, matriarch of the Cliffside Mesa herd, was watching them. She signed amicably.

[i]'Daydreams again?'[/i]

[i]Mnooon,[/i] said Old Walker.

A very low grinding rumble that was a laugh. [i]'Come, Prophet. Walk with me.'[/i]

Old Walker made an acknowledging [i]grmf[/i] and fell into step beside the sizeable urt. She was old, her back adorned with a heavy patterned blanket that was not purely decoration, ground quartz lenses at her eyes. Colourful minerals glittered in her shoulders, beauty that few other than her own kind would realise were a sign of senescence. Not even rock is immortal; radioactive decay and electron entrapment were taking their toll.

Her hands, though stiff, were still quick enough to keep a conversation. Loosely translated, Streambed's words could, perhaps, have sounded like this.

[i]'I have read your latest transcription of God's word. I find your script curious. An adaptation of what is used in Rulanah, is it not? I regret to say it is rather dull.'[/i] A sharp wave. [i]'Bah! No, I do not regret saying that. It is a decisively boring piece of work. Even the hain could figure it out if they tried hard enough. What is the point of a language that doesn't challenge the reader?'[/i]

[i]Mrrr,[/i] said Old Walker.

[i]'Oh, I jest.'[/i] It wasn't entirely clear that she had. [i]'It will be useful if we earthy folk don't have to stand around and translate all the time. I don't trust the meat folk with numbers, though. And I'm not sure how many of them will have the time to learn.'[/i] Streambed's fingers twiddled off to the horizon. [i]'Ah well. That is not what I'd talk to you about. It has more to do with the words themselves.'[/i] 

She looked up, took in the scenery. The hall of writing was situated near the primary road into Metera, and now they stood at its gate, fertile valley on one side, a grit-strewn road sandwiched between vast mountains in the other.

[i]'I take it you've noticed, yes?'[/i] The hand darted from Streambed to Old Walker's eyes before flicking off an affirmation without a pause. [i]'I've never seen nor heard of such a thing in all my life, not even from the Makers. It is subtle, for sure. But I know.'[/i] Streambed's eyes rolled and her palms went up before going together. [i]'God's sake, of course I know, I'm worse than most of them. But maybe that's senility, eh?'[/i]

Old Walker was respectfully silent.

[i]'I'm talking about the Distant Dance, of course. Not just the triangulation.'[/i] The Urtelem sign for 'triangulation' was remarkably simple. [i]'Everything that comes with it. The migrations, the message stones, the-'[/i] A sign that meant 'made into sludge', as of rock reduced to organic mud, but would probably be better translated as a much gentler Urtelem version of the word 'motherfucking'. [i]'-faery monks. God, they're probably the reason I feel so old. Not you, of course. You are fine. No, I'm talking about the[/i] culture. [i]Specifically, the way we Urtelem are losing it.'[/i]

Streambed looked thoughtful. [i]'No, no, not losing. We're gaining a culture, too. But it's new. Very new. Used to be that we solved problems because they interested us, and sometimes because they made others happy. Well, some of them are still interesting and most of them make people happy. But we do them for others now, whether or not they're interesting, or make anyone happy. We don't crunch numbers for the taste anymore. We do it to be...'[/i] A series of signs that cannot be fully translated. [i]'Part of the whole. Integrated into the blood of the nation.'[/i]

[i]'Same goes for travelling. We don't wander our old routes; We go trading. We did that before, of course, but now we travel for business, not do business as we travel. And... It's fulfilling. It's not easy to get an urt to do something they don't like, you know. But we actually enjoy this! It's not so much about beauty in nature anymore, so much as it is beauty in... Function. Efficiency. We've gone from stargazers to booklords.'[/i] 

The sign for 'booklords' was a sarcastic play on the signs for a graven tablet and a mountain ruled by a Stonelord, bringing to mind a single Urtelem sitting atop a huge pile of stone writings. Little did Streambed know that she had just invented the Urtelem word for 'bureaucrat'.

[i]'It's in the way we speak, too.'[/i] The sign was literally [i]speak,[/i] as if with the mouth. [i]'I've felt emotions from every mortal race under the sun, from Shalanoir to the ice shelf. We Urtelem, we are unique. Imagine trying to explain in words what I'm signing now!'[/i] Another laugh. [i]'But I feel that... It's[/i] possible. [i]The emotions are different, but we're copying relationships from the meaty folk. We compete more, we say more. Wait less,[/i] do [i]more. We're worse at poetry and much, much better at speeches. And sarcasm. Where the devil did we even learn sarcasm? Eh, faery monk?'[/i]

[i]Mnnn?[/i]

Streambed laughed and patted Old Walker's side. [i]'Oh, Prophet. I do enjoy our little chats. I feel that if only I had the faintest idea what you were saying I would know so much.'[/i]

[i]Nurrrr,[/i] grumbled Old Walker, escorting the elderly urt back to the hall of writings.

The next memory came in the autumn.