I'm supposed to be working on Frostbitten Prophet right now, but I had a flash of inspiration for the third book in the series instead, Ember Warrior. Have a bit of Mep accidentally meeting a goddess!

In the middle of the fountain was a statue of a woman, hewn out of celestial quartz. The quartz shimmered in blues, purples, and blacks. Glints of light danced off of it, like tiny stars. While the statue’s carved head was bald, there was a little hole in the top of her skull, and water flowed from it like hair.

The architecture was beautiful but alien to Meparik. He’d never seen anything like it.

Suddenly, the statue moved. She cocked her head at him, water falling over her face. Her eyebrows and mouth furrowed in calm confusion. When he looked into her eyes, Meparik tasted petrichor and cold water, saw stars when he blinked, and felt an otherworldly comfort envelop him. He felt a strange urge to weep. As if he’d lost a close relative, and needed someone to confide in.

A voice issued from the statue, flowing like water. “Why do you pray to me, child?”

Alluari was talking to him.

Crislie meets a god too, but it goes, uhhhh, a little more poorly than this, which is pretty par for the course for her.

There’s three main languages on Rhimn. There’s Gadhian, Ulluic (Ulluik in Ullua), and Gesture (known as Reteirik in Ullua). The first two are just the main spoken languages of Gadhi and Ullua respectively. The third is Ullua’s military handsign, which eventually got adopted by the deaf and hard of hearing. There’s also a variety of smaller languages spoken by more isolated feirie Courts in the deep woods of Gadhi, and different versions of Gesture that’ve been adopted by deaf or hard of hearing folks up north.

(With Vaerin’s help, Mepari develops his own version of Gesture before he later learns Ulluic and standard Gesture.)

You could count the “language of the gods” as a language too, but… well, it’s difficult to quantify how they speak as being language in the same way we experience it. Even when they’re speaking in mortal tongues, gods shatter the senses. When they talk to their Herald, the Herald experiences some decidedly non-auditory sensations, like tastes, smells, and temperature shifts.

How Vaerin experiences her goddess: “The silky feminine [voice], the one which sounded like clawed hands gripping her shoulders, the one that smelled of crushed bones and fermenting fruit.”

What Mepari experiences when his god speaks: “There was a reluctant murmuring in the back of his mind. Mepari listened closely, but he couldn’t make out the words, if it was composed of words at all. His tongue tasted bitter, as if he’d bitten down on an acorn.”

What Elaina hears from Gardhe: “The summons — uttered in a voice deep and commanding, barely human in form, a voice that tasted of smelting iron and heat — dragged Regent Elaina from the soft shadows of her sleep.”

Alluari speaking to her Herald: “Her voice sounded like the faint drum of rain off a rooftop, cold and clean, tinged with petrichor. Myshka always found it reassuring.”