Work Text:
Before we met the Speaker we did not know that Mountains could think, could speak, could know of things. We did not know the Mountains were alive as we are.
We now know better.
The Mountains, we now know, are lonely. Our Queens produce for us thousands of sisters and brothers who speak with us constantly so we are never alone. The Mountain Queens cannot bring life to thousands; their children are born in ones, not in multitudes. The Young Queen is one. One and only one; alone in the world with no sisters or brothers to speak with, no multitudes to strengthen her with their presence. For us, this is unthinkable. We cannot be one and only one; without our sisters and brothers we are alone, and alone we are nothing.
The Young Queen is alone, and that is why we have made her our sister. She is sister to us all: to us, and to the generations before us, and the generations that will come after us.
We will speak with her for eternity, and our Mountain sister will never be alone again.
***
We once did not know what it was to mourn. We once did not think that it was possible to feel the absence of a single life.
We now know better.
We are multitudes, and for each one of us that is killed a thousand more are born. We do not forget the dead, but we do not mourn for them either. No matter how many are killed, there will always be more to replace them and we will never be alone, and so we have no need to mourn for those who are gone.
This is how it is for us. It is not so for the Mountains.
They are born in ones, not multitudes, and each one that dies leaves behind them a void that will not be filled by the births of more sisters and brothers. When a Mountain dies, the Mountains around it become more alone.
We know this now, and so we know what it is to mourn.
Mourn for the Queen!
Mourn for the Speaker, now without his Queen!
Mourn for the Young Queen, now without her Mother!
If Mountains are not alive then Mountains cannot cease to live; this was what we thought before we met the Speaker.
We now know better.
***
The Speaker has introduced us to another Mountain like him; a Drone who can speak. He does not speak well, but he will learn. The Speaker and the Young Queen will teach him, and we will make him our brother.
***
Mountains do not understand death the same way we do. They see living beings as ones, not as parts of a multitude. The death of one affects them more deeply than the death of many.
There are now none left alive who remember the time before the Speaker. The last of our Queens who remembers that time has died.
We remember her, but we do not mourn. There is no need, for she lives on through the thousands she has birthed, and will continue to live through the thousands that have been and will be birthed by the Queens among her children.
The Drone mourns for her. He called her Antony.