# This week in Google alerts: story with Gaiman. *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 19 Feb 2011* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Andrew Mason *19 Feb 2011, 22:12* > :Gerry Quinn wrote: > I read that too. ?My first thought was that it was not English, because > English is clearly referenced by Thea in her speech about "when the damn men > went to Verthandi". ?In the ancient language of the dawn men, "Present" > means both "Now" and "The Gift". ?She is baffled as to how anyone could use > a language so confusing. Actually it's not really surprising; the meanings are linked. A gift is something that is presented to you; and 'now' is the present moment, the moment that is presented to me as I speak. ---