All Gwyn had ever known was a world where your fate was determined at the age of eleven. 

It would be more precise to say it was determined at the moment of birth.

Everything hung on what the mother said when her newborn took its first breath. Once recorded, the maternal birth word was carefully consigned to the archives until the child’s eleventh birthday. At this point it was passed to the Panel of Determiners, who examined it, rectified any ambiguities and assigned it a word class that would establish the child’s destiny.

Some pregnant women could afford the costly antenatal classes that trained them to call out an auspicious word at just the right moment. Verbs held the most prestige, but their subcategories varied greatly even so. Finite verbs ranked first, with the more complex tense/aspect combinations coming out at the very top. Nouns came second, with adverbs and adjectives sharing third place. New mothers rarely uttered pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions, but the Determiners were prepared for all eventualities.

Interrogatives came low in the rankings. Expletives came last, which was unfortunate for families who could not afford pre-birth linguistic training. Poorer women were the ones most likely to utter a contented ‘Ah!’ or a blissful ‘Oh’ at the sight of their healthy baby. Woe betide the child whose enchanted mother whispered a ‘wow’ at her child’s first breath.

Gwyn was well acquainted with her own birth word. Her mother’s capacity to produce six different expletives for her elder siblings had been a source of much mirth among the extended family. But the seventh took the prize.

Still, Gwyn indulged a hope in a future full of possibilities.

Her mother’s call need not, after all, be interpreted as an expletive.

‘Jesus!’ was also a proper noun.

Prophet noun, she murmurs gently to herself as she stands before the Determiners. Messiah. Saviour of words, saviour of worlds.

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Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 80 of Structured Visions. Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.