Talking With Pictures

Brighteye and Whitecrown continued to bond with Blaze and the other wumpos over the following weeks, despite a degree of opposition from some of the herd, and stayed with her as her herd traveled along their meager territory that he soon learned was hemmed in on almost every side by dense thornbush. Brighteye recognized the intelligence of the wumpos, but Blaze in particular, and she saw it in him. Whitecrown quickly trusted the wumpos because he saw that his brother did, and because he was young and still open to accept new and perhaps unusual situations and come to view them as normal. Soon he flew to and perched upon most of the herd, preening their huge heads, and play-wrestling with the children who were gentle, on Blaze’s coaching, to use only their trunks and not their legs so as not to harm their far smaller friend. He was sweet and gentle, as he was still a child, and to the herd he was not like other harbingers at all. He grew on most of them over time, a sort of shared pet for whom everyone clamored his attention. Whitecrown thrived with his adopted clan, feeling far more accepted than he ever had in the one he was born into.

Brighteye did too, though most of the others beside Blaze and the young children - not yet exposed to the prejudice of the adults toward his species - were still wary of him. He didn’t have the cuter, novel color of his brother and still resembled the wild harbingers, reviled as bad omens. He was not a child, and definitely not a pet, nor did he let himself be babied as Whitecrown did, and his autonomy and ability to independently invent and solve problems unnerved some of the wumpos. But Blaze was the leader, and her views were respected for the most part. She was trusted, and if she trusted Brighteye they didn’t aggressively oppose her will. Blaze assisted in acquiring food for her companions by intimidating the smaller carnivores away from carcasses long enough for Brighteye to cut strips of meat with a knife, a sort of tool he skillfully crafted from certain rocks as well as bones, and if one broke he quickly made another. He was not wholly dependent on her to find food though, having skills of his own. Once she watched him craft a spear, and drop a tiny scrap of meat tied to a feather on the surface of water to lure in small fish which he then skewered as they went for the bait. He was more innovative than any of her kind, including herself, and she watched his work with fascination. Upscaling the tool and the bait, after a lot of trial and error, she eventually succeeded in catching a fish large enough to feed herself - fresh protein of such a large portion was a very rare treat, and she shared it among the others. Brighteye and Whitecrown could both navigate the depths of the cactaiga shrubs to collect their small, sweet fruit, sharing the prized delicacies with the herd which could not access them most of the time on their own. Blaze’s presence protected both he and Whitecrown from others of their species intent on harming them - especially Whitecrown, whose weakness was obvious to all - while Brighteye provided a wide aerial view of the landscape for the herd. He could tell where the horn-heads were heading - the dreaded razers - so that the herd could give them a wide berth and avoid the middle of a stampede. With his acute eyesight, he also provided advance notice of the approach of the slayer, which was only dangerous to the herd close together if surprised while with young.

The two couldn’t speak the other’s language, or in Brighteye’s case even hear most of it, yet they found ways to communicate. At first it was simplistic gestures to convey ideas, and physical touch - a universal language for social animals to lend comfort. One day about a month after the harbingers followed her home after the fight with the slayer, a nearly healed-up Blaze was watching over the herds’ two young children as they used sticks to draw pictures in the damp sand near the shore of a lake. Breeze and Puffseed were drawing a beautiful rendition of Blaze fighting the slayer, with even more fangs on its beak than a real one. “It’s losing.”, Breeze told her, “because you are way stronger and have two big clubs to hit it with, Auntie.” Puffseed made sure to tell his grandmother that it wasn’t real and not to be scared, as he rubbed some red clay all over it “to be the blood… because it died now.”

“Good job children, you are very talented-”, Blaze began, but then noticed that Brighteye and Whitecrown were also drawing. Whitecrown was only imitating the motions of others in his social group, his drawings random and non-symbolic scrapings, but Brighteye’s, made holding a twig in both his left foot and his bill, was a detailed rendition of the wumpo herd and then himself and his brother. Brighteye saw her looking intently at the drawings, which were just simple fun little things to him, and their eyes met with mutual realization over the deeper implications that this shared ability had. This was something they could both do.

Both Brighteye and Blaze understood symbolism! Drawings could be a direct line of communication, through which ideas could be exchanged without spoken word. Over the weeks that followed, the two began to draw often, to convey ideas to each other that could not be represented through gestures alone. The drawings were initially detailed and representative. They were often very creative - Brighteye represented the concept of a night-sight, or a dream, by drawing a scene of himself flying within a much larger outline of his head, drawn with his eyes closed. It took Blaze a long time to understand the picture, drawing many other pictures to try and figure out what it symbolized, but she got it when he pantomimed sleep while gesturing to another drawing of himself wide awake and engaged in different activities, “while asleep, in his head.” Blaze then depicted her own art of her own dreams. She, too, had night-sights. She showed Brighteye a drawing of herself floating high above clouds - she had once dreamed that she could fly like him. Brighteye found the concept of such a huge body becoming airborne highly amusing and chattered enthusiastically - his version of laughter. Blaze’s whole body vibrated - her laughs were infrasonic, but they were there nonetheless.

Their earliest drawings were large and elaborate, done either on sand or on snow, but took too long to repeat, and so those used for communication became simplistic over time - truly symbolic, without an obvious meaning to outsiders. Together over the months to follow, Blaze and Brighteye devised a language of lexigrams - mutually understood representative symbols that were quickly able to be repeated, and represented verbs, adjectives, and nouns. It was an imperfect system, and annoyingly reliant on finding suitable blank terrain to scratch the symbols into, yet it was true communication, and allowed connection deeper than a superficial level. Some of the other wumpos expressed some interest in the symbols, but most were unable to understand them or use them. The children were different however. Their brains were still open and impressionable, and they learned to understand and use the symbols in a matter of a few weeks. Now Brighteye had several friends with whom to talk. The more they all grew familiar with the novel language they designed, the more complex it could become.

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In their innovation to overcome the communication barrier between their kinds, Blaze and Brighteye had invented writing. With a shared language, a new world opened up between them - and big ideas could grow.