Chapter 5.
It had been almost a year now. His son had grown quickly, though he was still totally reliant on his parents. They had to keep constant watch on him. As soon as he learned how to crawl, he was constantly trying to escape from their arms. In the evenings when they stopped, he scurried about, exploring everything about his surroundings. Then as he tired he always climbed back into his mother’s embrace where, while suckling contentedly, he soon fell asleep.
It was on this night that the infant uttered his first intelligible sounds. Wrapped close in his mother’s arms, he snuggled, murmuring contentedly. “M-m-m, M-m, M-m-m, M-m.”
Releasing her nipple from his lips, he looked up into his mothers eyes. “A-h-h, A-h, A-h-h, A-h.” A soft, high pitched squeal issued from his lips. She drew him even closer. He felt her warm breath on his brow. He felt the steady thump, thump, thump of her heart. His small, delicate fingers tangled themselves in her hair. His bliss was complete.
He saw that small pools of tears had formed in the corners of her eyes. He watched as a tear began slowly moving down her cheek. Releasing his grip, he caught the tear on the tip of his finger, then drew it to his mouth. The taste was new, somehow pleasing and soothing at the same time.
Emotion began welling up within him. Tears began rolling slowly down his cheeks too. His lips parted as his little tongue tasted the warm liquid.
“M-m, M-m-m.” he said. “M-m, M-m-m, Mah-h-h. . . . M-m-mah, m-mah!”
At that moment the two young simians recognized that a threshold had been crossed. This was a new form of communication; one they knew they would never possess. Here, in their son, would reside the ability to communicate in a completely new way.
The young mother’s thoughts flashed back to that night seemingly not so long ago, when they were still living with the old “family,” when she and also her eventual mate had been visited by that strange object in the night sky.
What had happened to them that night had wrought a change within each of them which they both recognized. But not until this very moment had it occurred to her that more had happened then than she knew.