“Quien es ten sera?”
Her heart sank as she recognized Ancient Atherian and realized she must still be unconscious in the ravine, having a crazy dream in which a woman who looked like her mother offered her water and babbled to her in a long dead language, and not, as she’d previously thought, dead.
She’d prefer the latter. Though if she was still in the ravine she probably would be soon. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” she said to the woman in Atheē, deciding that if she was having a crazy dream in her last moments she wanted to see where it would lead.
The woman sat back on her heels and stared at the ground, a contemplative look on her face. When she raised her head again she spoke in Atheē sans grammar and syntax, using body language to extrapolate her meaning.
“Who?” she asked, pointing at Yarrow.
It took a moment for Yarrow to understand the question, so thick was the woman’s accent. “Oh. Who am I?” the woman nodded happily, and Yarrow was glad her dream-lady understood Atheē better than she spoke it.
— from Bellica, book 1 in The Bellica Trilogy
. Descended from Middle and Ancient Atherian, Modern Atheē has borrowed and stolen many words from neighbouring languages
. It is the most widespread language on the continent of
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