He was very still.
“Does anyone on your negotiating team read both?” I asked.
A pause.
“No,” he admitted.
Something settled in me. Not satisfaction exactly, more like relief when a problem becomes solvable.
“Then that’s your opening. You don’t arbitrate between their positions. You translate them to each other. You show both Packs that they’ve been in violent agreement about the core issue and at war about the vocabulary.”
I was already reaching for my notebook.
“I can draft the linguistic framework tonight. Map the key terms, show the dialectical divergences, propose a unified language for the settlement document that both sides can sign without feeling like they’ve conceded anything they haven’t actually conceded.”
I started writing.
Gideon didn’t speak.
I kept writing, foll
