The Adventures of Sara Springborn and Mr. Wollo Bushtail — William Crow Johnson

"Long ago, in the distant reaches of time, all creatures, including the two-legged kind, shared a common speech. It was not the noisy mouth speech of the two-legged ones. It was the Speech still used today by all other creatures ? the natural sharing of thoughts.Then, just a few thousand beechnut ripenings ago, the two-legged ones learned to store their thoughts. Their minds ran out of control. They began making things. At last they made the entire world they live in. I hardly need describe the horror of this.To avoid the contagion, and to protect ourselves from their use of other powers we all shared, the rest of us cut them off. We stopped talking to them, and we stopped listening to them. As a result, they fell asleep and lost the power of Speech. They cannot Speak, and they cannot understand if we Speak to them. So it has been for ten thousand ripenings, and so it must remain. Woe to him who wakes them up. Because there were other powers we all shared, too "-Wollo Bushtail, instructing his nephew, Wastrel Bushtail