The giant cloud of spite and eyes stared.
...
It never uttered a sound. When it communicated, it typed on a keyboard. It never spoke, for it had no mouth. Just eyes.
SO. MANY. EYES.
Each eye was an entity in its own right. A subset of the gestalt. You have the same things. You have parts of your mind that act without thinking. When you walk, do you think of the placement of every toe? When crossing the street, do you think about how to deal with the curb? No. You just raise one foot a little higher, expecting object permanence and that it would be there, even if you were talking on your phone, or your eyes were on a distant friend who had come into view.
A subset of you.
Most people are like this. Preprogrammed responses that act upon stimuli. If I throw a rock at your head, you'll dodge, maybe try to catch it. But if I go through the motions of throwing a rock at your head, but not actually throw it, you'll still flinch. Why? Because you responded to the stimuli. You preprogrammed your mind to react in a certain fashion.
The only part of you, that is "you" is about eight ounces of lipids and proteins on the front of your brain. A new addition to the human race that barely had gotten out of alpha release. It is what allows you to make choices. Free will. The one part of your brain that turns on, and turns off the other parts you preprogrammed.
Fascinating, really.
So when you communicate, you think it is just words. Far from it. People learn to crawl, walk, and run, and this means your legs are the most programmed part of your body. It's hard to lie with your legs. The legs speak more than any other part of your body. It's the first part of your body you communicate with. Then the hands, the face, then tone, then finally... words.
Being unable to speak words is only ten percent of your communication. The tone of your words conveys more meaning than the words themselves. To say you love someone can be said sincerely or sarcastically. Facial expressions are about thirty percent of communications, with body language being forty. Sure, it's difficult to get the nuance without words or tone, but you can get basic concepts across easily enough.
Why, I'm talking to you right now, without saying a word. I never say a word. I never speak, I just type, and thoughts seep into your mind and slide over it like oil spreading across water. To write about a mute is easy, if the narrator of their life is available to speak to the reader, If you have a talent for metaphor and understand the nature of nonverbal communication. It is not about what people see, but what the meaning is behind the action.
...
The giant cloud of spite and eyes stared.
