"Yeah, the language thing is pretty useful."

"I can't claim to be as fast a learner but if you teach me your language too at some point you can tell me what it's like when an Athra talks!"

"I've never taught a language before, but I can try!"

"Neither have I! Granted that I don't have a magic thing, but I'm sure we can still work something out."

"Sure."

"Pronouns? I we you y'all (he/she)/it they(animate)/they(inanimate)?"

...He grins. "Actually, which language do you want to learn? I speak two."

"Probably ultimately both but it'd be less confusing to start with just one--what're the major practical and aesthetic differences?"

"Haelahar is the language of my country. Sanash is my father's native language. Um, let's see, how about a line of poetry in each... Soth an hazire senn' ith verai, that's Haelahar, and min ada peret min firris telaynit, that's Sanash."

"Those are both nice. Have you heard an Athra talk in both of them?"

"More frequently in Haelahar, growing up in Haela and all."

"Haelahar to start with," she decides.

"Okay! So, pronouns? 'I' and 'we' are fe and feya... after that it gets complicated."

"Complicated like how?"

"Well, you've got 'you' and 'you(plural)', but in Haelahar it's ka and kai for friends, de and deya for strangers or other people you want to be especially polite to."

"Oh, a formal/informal divide, I've heard about languages having those."

"And then there's a gender divide in the next set."

"That I have also heard of, a lot. My language--Kaelque--doesn't have one because it started out as an elven language and elves aren't sexually dimorphic."

"Oh, huh. Yeah, I guess languages would develop differently depending on the species that spoke them..."

"It's sort of interesting that we're all psychologically female instead of being all psychologically agender."

"...Are you? I mean - what would the difference be?"

"There is a difference between someone who's a girl and someone who's a boy, and sometimes you get someone who's biologically one and psychologically the other, and that's usually not fun, and sometimes you get someone who's psychologically both or neither, and I guess I don't know about all but when oracles have had anything to say on the subject it's that elves are by default women in the brain."

"I guess they'd know..."

"If it was just one they could be lying and if they disagreed it would be ambiguous which side was lying but it would be really weird if they all independently decided to lie."

"Yeah."