There was once a house at the edge of a city where every new arrival was given a room.

The house was famous for its generosity.

Its doors were always open.

Its windows glowed through winter.

Its kitchen smelled of bread from countries nobody could find on the same map.

But the house had one rule.

Above the entrance hung a wooden sign:

CHOOSE ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE ENTERING.

People assumed this was practical.

Too many languages, the keeper explained, made a house difficult to organise.

So each resident chose.

Some chose the language they had spoken since childhood.

Others chose the language of their new country because they wanted to belong quickly.

Some chose the language that helped them find work.

A few chose the language of the person they loved.

Then they surrendered all the others at the door.

The keeper stored them in glass jars beneath the stairs.

At first, life became easier.

Everyone understood which words belonged where.

Nobody switched languages halfway through a sentence.

Nobody searched for a word that existed perfectly somewhere else.

Nobody laughed because an expression sounded ridiculous when translated.

But strange things began happening.

A woman discovered she could describe her job but no longer knew how to call her grandmother by the name she had used as a child.

A man could argue fluently with his landlord but could not remember the words of the song his father sang while cooking.

A boy who had chosen the language of school began visiting the jars at night.

His mother had chosen another language.

They still understood each other.

Mostly.

Years passed.

The house became famous for how well everyone had integrated.

Visitors admired its order.

Then one winter evening, a pipe burst beneath the stairs.

Water rushed through the cupboard.

The shelves collapsed.

Hundreds of glass jars rolled across the floor.

Lids opened.

Languages escaped.

They moved through the house like warm air.

Words entered bedrooms.

Old jokes climbed staircases.

Prayers returned to mouths that had forgotten them.

Arguments became louder because people suddenly possessed more precise ways to be angry.

Someone began singing.

Someone else understood.

The keeper ran from room to room shouting that everything had become confusing.

He was right.

It had.

The house became slower.

People asked what words meant.

They repeated themselves.

They translated.

They misunderstood.

They tried again.

At breakfast the next morning, the boy spoke to his mother in the language she had surrendered years before.

She did not answer immediately.

She was crying.

The sign remained above the entrance for another week.

Then someone took it down.

Nobody knew who.

In its place appeared another:

BRING WHAT YOU SPEAK.

Underneath, in smaller letters, someone had added:

YOU MAY NEED MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE TO REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.

And because the house had finally become difficult to organise, it also became possible to live there whole.

Fiction note

This is an original Arise Stories fable. The house, keeper and events are fictional.