The Uhjayi root gek is an old and oft-used one; its general meaning derives from the sound produced when a prey animal is seized in inlanlu jaws and shaken, with the intent of breaking its bones. There is a strong connotation of helplessness and involuntary victimhood to the word; the very sound evokes the kind of sound a dying creature might emit in the teeth of a predator.

The closest single-word English translation is “mangle.”

Gek has a full range of uses: As a noun, gek-ku, it is the event of the attack or the incident that causes the mangling. As a verb, gekri, its most original use, it is to make the attack: Ungekri, I mangle, is a hunting phrase and can be used with or without a specified object. Indeed, it is so commonplace that its objectless form has become synonymous with I hunt.

Tahori, however, are not invulnerable to the world, and so they have adapted this root to include the feeling of being picked up by the fangs of circumstance and shaken to the point of breaking, or perhaps just past. Ungekra, simply translated, means I feel mangled, with heavy undertones of non-consent and battering. It is almost never used in regards to a physical attack by another person, and only rarely in regards to a physical accident or injury; the implications are emotional and mental. Tahori are pragmatic; it’s redundant to speak of feeling mangled when physical evidence of the mangling is present and perceptible.