Her hands nearly jerked to her braid again, but she stopped herself this time. Raleigh truly meant her no harm. She was so sure of it.

"Maybe," she said, with a faint gleam of mischief in her eyes, "I should give you just a small taste of what you're in for. In case you scare easily."

It wasn't that the Alastrian language was overly complicated. It was simply that it was so different from any other language that Ariadne knew. But then again, she was a native speaker. Perhaps there was a slight bias there.

"Try this," she said. And then Ariadne broke into a string of sounds. Sort of like water washing against stones on a riverbed. Very soothing and flowing. Perhaps flowing a little bit too much into each other.