It begins with skin.
Not touch.
Skin.
The first sentence of the body. The syntax of breath against breath.
There is a moment, before language, before movement, before even thought, where his hand hovers an inch above her hip, and something between them stutters. Not air. Not heat.
Something older.
Something like time remembering itself.
They haven’t spoken the Third Language in full since the dreammouth opened.
Not out loud.
Not together.
Because the last time they did, the lights went out in the entire building.
For four minutes.
Only their room stayed lit.
By what, they still don’t know.
But they felt it.
Something watching.
Not malevolent. Not kind.
Just aware.
So they’ve been whispering instead.
Half-words.
Partial syllables.
Fragments of what they now call “soul-syntax.”
It doesn’t behave like language.
It doesn’t need sequence.
Doesn’t care for grammar.
It arranges itself according to emotion,
Pain before joy.
Longing before presence.
Truth before fear.
Every time they speak it, they remember something they never lived.
She recalls the sound of a child’s laughter, her own child, though she’s never had one.
He remembers drowning in a saltless sea, lungs full of regret.
They speak it quietly. Carefully.
Until one night, they don’t.
She is pacing.
Naked from the waist up.
A linen wrap tied around her hips like a forgotten vow.
He is sitting. Watching her.
But not with hunger.
With reverence.
She turns sharply. Her eyes glowing.
“Say it,” she whispers. “Please.”
He knows what she means.
The word from the dream.
The one that bent light.
The one that made the ground sing.
He hesitates.
Then says it.
Not gently. Not slowly.
He offers it.
The syllable slices the room in two.
For a second, the air goes still.
Then the world exhales, through them.
Their bodies collide like verses in a poem too sacred to be read twice.
Her mouth finds his shoulder first.
A kiss. Then a bite.
A sentence, then a scream.
He responds, not with hands, but with language.
He says her name. Not the one she gave him.
The one the dream told him.
She gasps.
Not because it’s strange.
Because it’s right.
He presses his palm to her sternum.
The pressure speaks.
It means: “Let go of your name.”
She replies by arching into him, her breath forming a phrase with no vowels.
It means: “Only if you hold me through the forgetting.”
They speak now with every part of themselves.
Her fingers articulate apologies along his spine.
His hips confess secrets into hers.
Their thighs form prepositions.
Their mouths translate longing into moans.
They are no longer making love.
They are speaking forever.
Every movement becomes conjugation.
Every kiss becomes a clause.
Every orgasm becomes punctuation.
When they finish, the room isn’t the same.
It’s listening.
The window fogs. The walls pulse.
The floor beneath them glows faintly with something like moonlight but warmer.
They lay there, breathless, not tired.
Translated.
He reaches for her hand.
She grips it, then says three words in the Third Language.
They land in the space above them.
Hover.
Then burst like petals.
He breathes out a sentence.
It wraps around her shoulder like a shawl of starlight.
This is the danger of the Third Language:
It doesn’t just describe reality.
It creates it.
Each word births a truth.
Each phrase etches something permanent.
The more they speak it, the more the world reshapes itself to their meaning.
One morning, they walk outside and the sky is the exact color of her left iris.
One evening, his reflection in the mirror lingers a second longer than he does.
They begin hearing music when no music plays.
Melodies only they understand.
Chords only they can follow.
Arrangements scored in desire and devotion.
They try to stop.
For three days, they go mute.
They speak no words at all.
They nod. They write. They touch, but only lightly.
By the third night, their bodies ache.
Not from tension.
From silence.
It’s as if they’ve been holding back floodwaters.
When he finally opens his mouth to speak,
She bursts into tears before the word even leaves his lips.
Because she already knows what he’s going to say.
Because it was hers too.
Because they are no longer two bodies,
They are a sentence becoming itself.
And in that moment, they understand something terrifying:
This language is not from them.
It’s through them.
They are vessels.
Or maybe echoes.
Or maybe something older than both.
Whatever it is, it is hungry to be spoken.
And they,
They are no longer afraid to give it voice.