“Welcome back, mams,” she said and grinned. Island women in Cresh often called each other this word, mams.

“Look at this,” she said. She showed Yenni her palm, where she had drawn a passable wind rune. She pulled on it, and blew a slight breeze in Yenni’s face.

“Impressive,” said Yenni. “But Professor Devon hasn’t introduced the wind rune yet. Where did you learn that?”

“Mams, I studyin’ runelore since second school. I had a book I used to hide away, an’ I would sneak and practice runes in the night.”

Yenni frowned. “But why would you have to sneak?”

She shook her head. “If meh folks only knew. They are good, loyal Byenists, Yenni Ajani. They would tear out their hair if they knew I was practicin’ ‘godless’ runelore. An’ probably my hair too.”

“Godless? Runelore is the opposite of godless!” said Yenni. “It’s the ultimate communion with the Sha! What do you think the rune hymns are? They’re the language of the Sha made manifest!”

Diedre put a hand on Yenni’s shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I love rune hymns, they’re beautiful.”

Just then Professor Devon called for their attention. “We’ll continue our work with the water rune today,” he said.

With a brush and teaching paint, he drew the rune on a slate board at the front of the room as he sang the wordless water hymn. In truth, his voice was quite nice.

“Like so,” he said when he was done. “If you have any questions or need another demonstration, come see me.”

Yenni drew a quick water rune on the back of each of her hands to be a good sport. At least she was able to use Professor Devon’s paint instead of her own. It was serviceable, but if she was to describe it in cooking terms, she would have said his paint was somewhat bland. The scent wasn’t quite as robust as it should be, the consistency not quite as thick, the color lacking depth.

She spent the rest of the time helping Diedre until Professor Devon called out to the class. “It seems a good number of you are having trouble infusing the runepaint, so try adding a word here and there to the hymns.”

Yenni froze. Add words to the rune hymns? The hymns were too sacred to be contained by mere human words!

Yenni stood up. “Professor!”

She was suddenly aware of everyone’s eyes on her.

“Yes?”

“The rune hymns should be wordless,” she said firmly. “It is an insult to the Sha to try to contain their magic with our inadequate words.”