21 · shola
The third bracket pair is for exact words. shola … sholo holds a quotation: not your report of what someone said, but the words themselves, preserved with their original pronouns and tenses, the way a careful hand carries a full bowl. After the feast, the elder tells a story:
I
theula miona mua thepalu meilo.
wheo nophi shane.
nophi luera philo nai.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| nophi | no · phi | story |
Everyone in the garden; the elder tells a story, and the story is of past days. (You met nophi once before without knowing it: a dream, in this language, is a sleep-story.)
II
wheo: mia to lopia nai.
wheo: ne thinoe mia wheo to nai.
wheo: thepalu thiku to nai. mawha shiro. mawha peloru. muila sonu.
When I was a child (and every head settles in; this will not be brief), my elder was thinoe, and this garden was small: no trees, no flowers, the earth alone. Past-marked being, mawha, and grammar you have owned for weeks, doing memory's work.
III
wheo: ne thinoe shola no wei muila thinoe loa. no wei muila phialu loa. muila theula howela sholo to haolu.
lopia sheluo. siora sheluo. theula miona sheluo.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| shola | sho · la | (opens exact quoted words) |
| sholo | sho · lo | (closes them) |
| sheluo | she · lu · o | listen |
Inside the brackets, thinoe speaks in her own voice: give seeds to the earth; give water to the earth; the earth receives all. The commands are still commands: no survives inside the quotation, because shola … sholo changes nothing it carries. Around the brackets, the elder's own frame: to haolu, said, long ago. And everyone listens, sheluo, hearing with the whole person turned toward the sound.
IV
lopia: wa ne thinoe welao miona to nai.
wheo: lia. mia shola muila theula howela sholo ro remo.
shero shua. lo mia nulae.
Was thinoe good? Yes, and the elder still thinks her words over, habitually, ro remo: the quotation carried forward like a seed, planted in a new season every time it is spoken. That is what quotation is for, in the end. It is how a household outlives its members. This garden, with its trees and its flowers, is thinoe's sentence, still being said.
Three bracket pairs now: statements, questions, exact words. Notice which one Phi built for keeping the dead alive.
The machinery, when you want it: quotation is the manual's Part V, chapter 19; the quotative preserves original tense and pronouns by design.