the man let off a ramble of syllables velen recognized, but he tipped the dark fellow one of ford's winningly impassive looks. it was an expression he had practiced in clearwater shallows,  and now he extended it to the stranger, adding to its end a slow and unimpressed blink.
"αυτές είναι οι άμμοι μου." called your fuckin' bluff, he thought smugly, if only to himself. deirdre had known the tongue from her time with the nereides, after all; of course she would have shared it with her children. velen swept his ears forward toward the sound of nightwaves lapping onto the cairn-intended beach. whatever this idiot wanted with his refusal to speak english, the boy no longer cared. he turned to ice upon the shoreline, and turned all his attention from the unknown to what he did understand: the ocean.