They drifted through the swirling silt, and to the ordinary observer, they would appear to be doing nothing but drawing dust trails with their comblike arms. But if Ohan looked with their mind, mapped it all out with the right numbers and notions, the space outside became a majestic, violent place.

The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?…

Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t. The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other than that it rocks?…Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? Do you have a soul?

Only the uncool have the requisite alone time to advance their species.

“I wish I were someone else. Someone you could rely on to turn it out no matter what. I’m afraid that whatever I had is lost by now. I haven’t had a song out in years. I haven’t had a good day in years. What if I get up there and just completely blow it? Or worse, what if I get up there and give the performance of my sorry life, the best show in the history of me, if the light of the world comes beaming out of me like a bloody Care Bear Stare for the ages, and it’s not good enough? If you lot somehow hear in my voice all the worst of us?”