wren had begun to learn the strength of a mother's intuition.
she had been asleep, dead asleep, and yet the very millisecond her child's scream shook the earth, her ears were cupped forward and her eyes popped open. her legs were still jelly as she scrambled to her feet, huffing and puffing and thundering down the rockside like a bat out of hell.
phoebe! she shouts, her daughter's name leaving her mouth before her brain could catch up to it, and so it came out more as a jumble of scattered syllables. wh-- wha'th'fuck habben? huh?
panting, blinking one eye at a time as if she were a lizard; staring down at the river's edge where her fierce, stupid, wonderful girl made a mad dash for a now panicking goose, splattered with scarlet of unknown origin. she whoops as she stumbles down the rocks, steadying herself before she reaches her girl lest her groggy brain fail her and send her falling into the snowmelt.
and then, once she's confident she won't tumble to her death, she strikes.
she swings for the feathered beast, lips curled back in a vicious display of her yellowed teeth. she and her daughter would bring this fat-tailed, bug-eyed, long-necked bitch down together.