I listened silently to Sallan's story, an act of great restraint if I do say so myself.
"It's now been some 15 years since we've seen each other, and ten since I've seen Hallon."
"This Hallon, pray tell me what he looked like?"
"Lora, are you alright?" asked Sallan, evidently my voice sounded less casual than I'd hoped.
"I'm fine, please answer my question."
"Let me recollect: he was taller than you, a human of about 35 years when I met him, always wore robes - said trousers made him feel confined."
As Sallan continued his description, I felt slightly faint, save for the fact he was human the man could have been Galeorhin!
"What was the message?"
"Pure nonsense as far as I can tell, a few words of centaur and human, but the rest made no sense at all."
"Nonetheless, I believe I may have known the man you spoke of."
"In that case..."
Sallan reeled off a garbled set of words.
"See, nonsense...Lora?"
"Apologies, I was...thinking."
"So," said Karlina, "what's your story?"
"Yes, you were going to tell us," Sallan reminded me.
"So I was," I agreed. "Very well, the gist of the matter is that I was exiled by my people, for worshipping false Gods - the humans' Gods as a matter of fact...and for loving the wrong man."
"Now that I can relate to," said Karlina, she obviously knew there was much more to the story, neither of them pressed me for details at least.
"It's a puzzle!" I exclaimed suddenly. "The message, it's in different languages!"
"What?"
"Human, Centaur, Elven, Dwarven, and Ogre. We learn all of them, and this message is specifically designed for someone who knows them all."
"wait, Ogres have a language?...and you speak it?" exclaimed Sallan.
"Ah, yes I do."
"And you couldn't have mentioned that when the Ogres wanted to eat us?"
"Actually they thought they were saving me, from you."
Sallan looked positively stunned, Karlina looked at his face and laughed.
"Not funny," he growled.
"It was," she disagreed cheerfully, the pair of them very politely excused themselves from the camp, leaving me alone to decipher the message.