21·sha

The third bracket pair is for exact words. sha … sho 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:

SceneI

theula miona mua thepalu meilo.wheo nophi shane.nophi luera philo nai.

Everyone is in the garden; the elder tells a story, and the story concerns past days. nophi is a telling shaped from events, whether remembered or imagined. By itself, the word leaves open whether every event happened.

SceneII

wheomia lopia to nai.wheone thinoe mia wheo to nai.wheothepalu 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 and mawha now do memory's work.

SceneIII

wheone thinoe sha no wei muila thinoe loa. no wei muila phialu loa. muila theula howela sho to haolu.lopia sheluo. siora sheluo. theula miona sheluo.

Inside the brackets, thinoe speaks in her own voice: give seeds to the earth; give water to the earth; the earth receives all. The directives remain directives: no survives inside the quotation because sha … sho changes nothing it carries. Around the brackets, the elder's own frame ends in to haolu, said in the past. Everyone listens, sheluo, with the whole person turned towards the sound.

SceneIV

lopiawa ne thinoe welao miona to nai.wheolia. mia sha muila theula howela sho ro haolu.shero shua. lo mia nulae.

Was thinoe good? Yes, and the elder still says her words, habitually, ro haolu: 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.