The Dolphin

It is as I think; Maggie tells me it is a human that hurts Kitik.

Maggie says that one’s mind is in shadow when it hurts Kitik. I think of Acou when she says this, how shadow-pain makes him strike at others, and what she says seems to me right. Many humans come to see us here, and only this one does a hurt.

I ask will this one come back and again try to hurt. Maggie says no. I ask do the humans drive him out. She says that is not the way that humans do with such as this one.

From what she says I understand that a human who does ill is taken to a place and kept in that place. She says there are barriers at this place and other humans who do not let the ones leave who are sent there. I think it must be wasteful to do things this way because some must always keep the ones who are sent there inside, but perhaps the land is not so big that the humans may be driven away instead.

It is not easy to think of Maggie as female. She tells me her name is other, Margaret, three sounds which is right, but then I do not understand why she uses another name with only two sounds like a male. She says many humans do this, use other names, but she does not say why that is so. She also says some humans use names with only one sound, or with many sounds. I think that names are not so important with humans as they are with us, and that humans do not understand the way of names.

I spend much time with Maggie to learn the human way of speaking. In one way it is very simple, they only use small noises—they say “words,” which are small parts of speaking—and then put them into a string which makes the sense. But they have very many of these words that I must learn, and many ways in which to put the words together, and I go slow.

It is even more confusing when I find that the same word may mean different things depending on how it is put together with other words. I do not understand why humans make speaking so difficult, and I do not know how human calves may learn this.

I think the humans have too many words, words for things that do not need words. They seem to make much of counting. In the now it is needed to know one, or two, or three, or perhaps a little more, but the humans name numbers that are beyond counting. Maggie shows ten fingers, ten toes, so perhaps that is why humans name this number if it is the same for all of them, but what is the meaning of more? Many is many, what need is there to know further than that?

When I ask Maggie of this she speaks a big word and says it allows them to build things and do things that seem to me impossible. I do not wish to do such things. I do not understand why humans wish to do them.