To humans, all Goldens look alike. Massive tawny beasts with lion’s ruffs and foxes heads, they shimmer like hot stone in the Summer God’s gaze. If they have names, they do not share them, but instead allow their Bound to call them what they will. Goldens’ worlds are made of I and not-I, and have no internal compass to hang naming words upon. It is the one failing of telepathy, the instinctive drive to simply define a thing in its entirety, bypassing the need for names.

Binders, on the other hand, look like nothing at all. Mists of darkness that coalesce into whatever form pleases them at the moment. They are the stuff of nightmares, and need no names. … Which is wrong, of course, but humans are simple things with simple minds and the Binders don’t hold it against them. Binders long ago lost the war for hearts and minds, and there is no need to fight those battles again.