Blackfeather Woods i blew a bad man away, today

AW (this is for the DB prompt 'the ghosts they sing to me') - but be prepared for mom comin' in hot and A N G E R Y

how much trouble would astara be in, once @Relmyna discovered the girl had once again purloined her treasured stone? the answer did not concern the black phantom; it had been months since her last abduction attempt, and she had grown cleverer, sharper -- a tiny, precocious, troublesome raptor.

under the eaves of blackfeather's matriarch willow, astara settled. she clasp the stone between her paws and examined its grooved surface -- it was flat, but oddly heavy; it seemed to grow heavier the more she stared at it, as if it knew it was being studied, and was drawing the observer into its strange center.

astara was unaware of the power the object possessed -- she was only aware of her vision which had suddenly clouded, as if smoke was billowing out around her.

suddenly, she was not in the woods anymore -- she was in some dark and unknown realm where trees were thin and shivered and there sounded from unknown depths the bellow of some furious voice; no sooner was she aware of her contact with this otherworld, she was wrenched back into normalcy with confusion writ across her dark face.

im invading i hope thats ok! also sorry its hooge.

if it were true that cats were privy to nine lives, then certainly this specific tom was nearing the end of his allotment. it had been weeks since he had seen any sign of the twolegs and in that span the yearling had crossed quite a distance; he was now surrounded by all forms of flora and fauna which were unrecognizable.

putting aside his unmitigated ignorance when it came to the good, the bad, and the really really bad, he had fared pretty well. it had been difficult to adjust to all the new sounds and smells in the wild; initially he had been a hair-trigger for anything that scurried, chirped, or otherwise caught his attention. while most of that energy remained primed within him, the so-called monkey had been forced to adjust. running after every falling leaf or trembling blade of grass wasn't worth the effort and even he had to adapt to this truth.

but still, sometimes he would forget. such as this moment—he had been basking in a patch of sunlight and rolling in the dirt, much like he used to do in his old life, and had fallen asleep with his body twisted up and limbs reaching for nothing. upon waking, in that in-between moment where the dream is still holding firm and your conciousness is just beginning to surface, he thought he was back there—back with the twolegs, with their funny smelling tins of meat, and the little pouches of mouse-shaped catnip. 

he collected himself with a biiiig stretch of his whole body, then rolled to his belly and was preparing to have a quick bath, but stopped when he heard a bird calling. it wasn't just any bird—it might've been a crow or a raven, the tomcat was hardly intelligent enough to recognize the difference—and so he put aside all thoughts of bathing and began pacing through the dark in search of it. songbirds were easy; they were stupid little things with plush bodies and they were fast on the wing, but he had managed to catch them before and this would be no different.

monkey ducked through a sheet of vines and scurried along, giving occasional glances towards the dark treetops or turning his blunted face towards a new sound in the forest. he did not know the scent of wolf, and truly did not know that such large dogs could exist in a place like this, so it was easy to see how an idiot such as this could get so close to the cub before giving any notice.

he spied a raven in the tree above her first, and began to chatter in that silly way that cats often do, like they're having a conversation with fate and begging for the hunt to go well; but before he could think of what to do next, the bird shrieked a call and took off—and monkey's gaze dropped, catching upon the wolf cub without really recognizing what it was. he felt utterly defeated for all of ten seconds before the bird was gone from his mind.

the stone was gone, and with it the last of relmyna's patience.
yet it was in a stupor of exhaustion that she followed the trail left by the little melonii, muzzle meeting earth only a scant few times, for the nightcub was quite easily found. and it was not without some weary fondness that relmyna regarded her daughter's pointed and, thus far, lifelong obsession with the rock of tongues.
it came to pass that when the aspirant spied her errant spawn with ill-seized bauble, she did not bristle and draw forth to mete out some justice. rather, the turquoise of her eyes were firm, but otherwise relmyna settled some feet away from astara. if the child had such intrigue rooted in the existence of the tool, relmyna saw fit to teach her what she herself had gleaned from its churning surface.
it was not a second before the motherwolf spotted the glint of eyes in the underbrush; instinctively, her hackles bristled, but she did not see fit to rise. while the awareness of the stranger remained, it was unaccompanied by any such urge to rush away.
relmyna returned her attention to the darker cub. "mmm?" she inquired in one of the sounds she had discovered needed no tongue to exist, dark brow arching. what have you found?

the world in which astara had been pulled from was unlike the world she had tread upon her entire existence; as she fumbled, disoriented by whatever shade had overcome her, she pushed the rock of tongues away fearfully. even as young as she was, she did not miss the correlation: she had stolen the trinket from her mother, and the trinket had stolen her into another world.

yet as she propped her thin limbs and pushed the thieved stone as far from her body as she could manage, she could not help but feel it turned to face her, and insisted it be pulled back into contact with her frame. down and dispirited was her expression as she studied the token, and when her mother swept upon her she met her with a fearful whine, pushing the stone from her body and thrusting her head into the ruff of her mother's nape.

in doing so, she caught the illuminated gleam of two eyes in the thicket: seized by worry, the girl growled as she bobbed her head, trying to better adjust her sight so that she might scry from the darkness the holder of those unblinking orbs.

Monkey was pretty close to turning tail and finding something else to entertain himself with, but that was when a larger creature emerged from the dark of the wood and swept closer to the cub. The cat was awed by the appearance of this newcomer; his tail shot straight up, the tip curling like the handle of a cane. He watched as the smaller of the two creatures grew distraught, and when they pressed in to the white fur of the larger, they cast aside something that seemed important.

Maybe it was just the movement that piqued the cat's interest — or the shaft of light that happened to beam across it's surface for a flicker of a moment — but it was enough to make Monkey go from stalking mode to playing mode. He shot out from the brush and took a swipe at the stone, rolling it across the ground and towards a patch of shadow.

One swipe, two, and then a third which narrowly missed its mark; but that meant his run was poorly timed and as his rear paws descended on the stone, his back end dropped. In the next few moments the tawny cat was sprawled on his side while his large feet kicked and pawed at the stone as if it were a most entertaining toy.

the whisper of eerie beings here; relmyna swept astara closer and closed her eyes momentarily. it was a hard task set before them, but the mother could not turn away the cup meant for either of her daughters. bitter wine, but she had drunk of it once, long ago. now her daycub and her nightcub must do the same. meloniis belonged to blackfeather, and they to it. if either of cicero's last litter were to take the reins of the wood one day, relmyna knew she must grant them an early birthright.
an arc of feline movement caused the woman's thin throat to vibrate with a snarl; in the next moment, relmyna had curved herself past astara, thrusting the girl behind her as she stood with forelegs akimbo to confront whatever had come in the night. her rock of tongues, set upon by some small iteration of the cats who lurked in stony coves, must not be lost, but relmyna tempered her reaction, exchanging a swift hunt for more observation.
a growl; she advanced upon the little beast, seeking to drive it away; not vermin, not a killer of small things, but a nuisance all the same. a single warning was all the woman would give, however, and if the feline did not see fit to take it, its hide would become a plaything for the child at her back.

the nightcub withdrew along the snowy buttress of relmyna's flank, her gaze resting on the small thing that was neither squirrel nor weasel nor wolf; she looked to her mother expectantly, heavily -- a blade of outrage snaring her snubbed muzzle as the cat nicked off her mother's stone and played with it as if it were some idle, throw-away toy.

she growled instinctively, protective of the rock of tongues for reasons beyond her own fragile comprehension. her mother strode forward in the manner of a firm predator, astara complemented her advancement with her own shuffling approach. lowering her muzzle she felt a growl fuse in her throat, and her quilled tail lifted behind her.

PPing monkey away; wrap this up?

that her stone had been taken was secondary to the potential of the animal being a threat. and yet she found herself frantic for it also. but between astara's flanking and her own menacing gait, the beast saw fit to soon quit them with a demonic yowl and flash of reflective eyes. relmyna gathered up the rock of tongues and returned to her daughter, hackles still abristle upon her thin shoulders.
a chuff to say come; the woman turned away and led astara deeper into the woodland. she should have killed the thing, and tipped a doeful gaze toward her child to say as much. but senseless bloodspill had been done enough this year, and she did not wish to add to it.

in silence the girl watched, parroting her mother's body language. as the snowy female advanced, astara followed after - until at last the cat flung up his toy and stalked off with tail curved in affront.

astara nosed her mother quietly as she collected the stone; many lessons had been learned, and not a single word needed to be uttered for either to understand what had transpired.
meanwhile astara caught a flicker of sinister light that beckoned her attention; the rock of tongues carried wordlessly in her mother's mouth.