They speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because it's like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never exactly the same ones; something that serves as a link. More than the midpoint between homegrown and anglo their tongue is a nebulous territory between what is dying out and what is not yet born. 
 Short, intense, psychologically rich, drenched in religious allegory, toying with language, a story of crossing over. The ending surprised me even though I almost expected it- few stories do that anymore.