In the beginning there was the thing, and it had a name, and the name was known.
Then the thing was taken. Taken cleanly, in the way that leaves no trace: not even the trace of having been taken. The name remained for a time, loose and purposeless, the way a hook stays in the wall after the coat has gone. People spoke the name to each other. What does it mean? they asked. They looked at their hands. They looked at the sky. They walked to the edges of what they knew.
The name also left. Not all at once. A syllable at a time, like teeth loosening. Until one morning there was no name and no memory of the name and no memory of the thing the name had named.
But the shape remained.
This is what the first people understood and tried to pass down: not the thing, not the name, but the shape of where the thing had been. A vessel that once held water. You cannot see the water. You can feel the vessel is the shape of having held it.
Some of them tried to mourn. They made the first mourning: sitting in a circle with their hands open, looking at what was not there. They did not weep. You cannot weep for what you cannot name. They only sat, with their hands open, in the shape of receiving something that would not come.
Some say the circle has never closed.