Aud learned by example: eat with your hands; let it melt on your tongue; know what it means.
It’s about sincerity, apparently; stomaching the clump of dirt for the sake of whatever craft you’re working. Aud thinks it’s about manners. Your work in the ground, the ground in you.
It seemed sacred; dirtflesh, realflesh, wordflesh, joined and cleaved in any number of tiny, stubborn rituals. Seemed. If it can be destroyed by repetition, it deserves to be destroyed by repetition. Aud falls in a crowd, and pitches face first into the dirty street.
She pushes herself off the ground; plucks her tongue out of the mud and gravel; knows what it means.