The First Thought

Somewhere in the long history of nerves and teeth, a brain does a new thing: it imagines. Not merely sees the world, but pictures one that is not there — tomorrow, the hunt, the dead. We do not know which creature first dreamed, or first dreaded. But once a mind could hold a thing that was not in front of it, everything followed: a tool, then a word, then a god. You are doing it this very moment, holding a whole story in a place that has no walls. And no one can tell you how the lights of a mind first came on.