By the time she was six, Susannah had discovered the aetiology of her developmental language disorder, but being completely nonverbal, she was unable to communicate it.

Her parents and her speech-language pathologist thought it had something to do with her brain or her genetic makeup. Susannah knew the problem was deeper. A cord that should have been cut at birth remained intact, so her consciousness was never severed from the mysteries of Earth and its language.

The cord tapped her into metalinguistic secrets. It revealed how the syntax of carbon polymer chains spoke life. Life begot human beings who translated it into the phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases and clauses of human thought. These sprouted from mouths, fingers and keyboards. They grew invasively. They were choking the planet.

Susannah knew that the uncontrolled proliferation of human language was a disease more dire than a case of individual nonverbalism. But her chronic connection to the Earth kept her own thoughts from sprouting into therapeutic words. So the disorder remained undiagnosed, the prognosis poor, her taproot to the source of all language blessedly undisturbed.

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