Whitefish River some unconscious stream of twisted logic

she pads along the river, the light drizzle having already soaked her pelt. just ahead, a muskrat is frightened from its place in the reeds and slips into the river noisily, pulling her from her reverie. she'd been circling the sizable hole in her gums with her tongue, almost as if she'd lost a tooth. she could taste the blood there, and it was tender to the touch, but the strangeness of it kept her worrying at it. 

her wandering took her to the cave that she knew Aure often frequented, though her doubts held her back a long moment. finally, spurred on by a brief flash of boldness, she strode near the entrance, peering into the darkness before calling, "mama?" 

“Vá caruvalwë!”

The shriek, strident and evoking and rebellion, ricocheted back to the thrashing mother from sending the quartz into quivers all about. Aurëwen clawed towards the glimmering, indifferent canopy, eyes wakeful and open but unseeing — misted by childhood chimera.

A flush of froth dribbled from the corners of her scarred lips, bubbling up and trickling down whet, tear-stained cheeks to fade into the doe-plush fur about her ear. Her breath came in incessant, gagging wails, and she could be found on her back, writhing and stiffening at merciless intervals; clawing at the stone and reaching towards quartz stalactites; pushing at someone who wasn’t there. Someone who she’d thrown from that Plateau. Someone who she’s prayed had rotted at its rocks ever since.

The silver sputtered, scarred face a howling mask of horror and fury, breaths coming fast in her ivory breast; and for a few pattering heartbeats, she... stilled.

But then there was water, there was water in her lungs again; and with another thrash, another whimper, her night-terrors resumed.

All that arced from her in a heaving squall was “Áva mittanya me! L-lá!”

she's greeted only by screams, that echo off the cavern walls and fall, piercing, on her ears. she takes a wary, instinctual step backward while her tongue darts out to pass over her lopsided tooth. she's taken aback, but the self-directed anger that follows this keeps her rooted in place, unwilling to retreat. 

and then, suddenly, she charges blindly into the cave, a scream tearing from her lips as if she is rushing headlong into battle. for all she knows, she might be. Aure is nearer than she'd thought, and in her adrenaline-driven rush, she collides headlong with her writhing mother. aghast, and not immediately recognizing the shape as Aure, she catches a trembling limb in open jaws while simultaneously attempting to untangle herself from the mess, screaming dying down only as her jaws clamp tightly around the limb.

Claws at her eyes, nose, lips; holding her captive by the throat, dove’s breast; water in her lungs, her nose, in every part of her, winding through her, insidious—
And then pain, red and bright and hot, distorts the pale shadow that keeps her beneath the cavern’s currents, and it’s not the hymnal she hears but a scream, just as shrill and bright.

It lances through a forelimb, thin, deep, and the force of the collision and entanglement wrenches her shoulders; pulling Aure upon her side with hinds flickering, kicking at empty dark.
But then, she blinks, seven-several times over, wakefulness almost reluctant to arrive and take her from the tortures of her dreams. Then, breath spent, ragged:

“I-Isilmë—”
Her daughter’s name is uncertain on her tongue, a question, an assumption, as if even she isn’t sure that the miniature moon before her is realer than the one that ticks across the sky each night.
“Isi, Isi,” she whimpers, she warbles, her bottom lip quivering as the mist within her eyes began to clear. Almost.

I-Isilme-

she pulls back, finally untangling herself. "stop! stopstopstop!" her ears are slicked back against her crown, and she's hunkered down against the stone. she swallows and tastes blood. she wants her mother to stand up, now, wants the whimpers to stop and to never have charged into this. 

she is still, trembling a moment before moving to her mother's side, leaning against her spine and attempting to shove her onto her feet. she needs Aure to stand, to be whole and present. her gaze isn't on her mother's face but on the rock as she struggles, biting down on her lip and tasting the blood begin to swell.

There’s a plea in her ear, a shove in her back, and cries out at her legs — weightless, almost phantom — fail to hold her weight, and she collapses against the rough floor once more. But her daughter is persistent; pushing and pushing for her to stand; and her claws scrabble with a helpless whine. Eventually, though...

It’s only when her ivory hide begins to settle, and only when she sways before Isilmë upon uneasy, listing paws  (but upright, at least)  that she noticed the iron taste of blood as if it were upon her own tongue. Quavering, “Did I... was that me?” Gesturing with a scarred snout to the blood in Isi’s lips, “Did I hurt you? Heavens, Isi, I’m so sor—“

She was apologetic for much of what she felt, these days.
...Had she done this, though?

“Please let me see your fangs, Isilmë.”

her mother begins to speak, and Isi squeezes her eyes shut, wanting nothing more than to run the way she'd come. this is not what she wanted, really, it's the exact opposite. she feels the panic rising and with sudden fury - at herself, for feeling this way - she stamps it back down, and opens her eyes. 

"no. I did it." her mother's next words sound like an accusation, but steely resolution to stick this through is all that's holding the panic down, and so she curls back her lips to reveal vaguely pink fangs - a snarl without the menace. "you scared me." 

Pink fangs greeted her; had it been a true snarl, the druid wouldn’t have halted her. In her tattered, graying mind, she suppose she deserved the flamekept stares and bitten words of her daughter all the same, just as with—  “Forgive me,”  she muttered in return to Isi, crown canting to study the mouth.  “Someone hurt me, a long time ago. I’ve been dreaming of him ... again,”  words almost monotonous with absent care, because it wasn’t her in pain, here. No, no: her daughter’s hurts that needed to be tended to were more real than any figment of her waking haunts or that of her traitorous heart.

Their staying in the riverlands was for him and her and him. And, again, things which Aurëwen might’ve believed to have become true or to have occurred — she hadn’t told either three in detail of what had occurred. Whether or not her misgiving of leaving her rampant  (and rightfully-so)  children with no less than a stranger, the druid hadn’t exactly told them why she’d gone from them that day. Where Trikova had sworn he was versed to kill, Bounkola could only hope to kill.

Blinks came in a flurry, then, and the silver resumed a study of the gouge which Isilmë had claimed to be her own doing.  “You pierced your gums, by biting something. What in heavens did you bite, my shrike?”  As she queried she rose, turning — a twinge in her foreleg, ignored — to look through her dried stores, slung across crumbled quartz beds.

oh. she hadn't considered it, despite the old and obvious scars that littered her mother's face. there was someone, out there, who had hurt her mother like Drago had been hurt, and she dreamt of him as he did. for a moment, she felt that rage again, the one that came from her helplessness in the face of it all, but quashed it as she focused on the concept that had been painted clear in her mind from an early age. "did you - did you hurt him back?" he deserved it. like Saarthal had said, he deserved hell, too. 

and then with her mother's words, she realized she could feel the source of the blood with her tongue, that hole in her gums. "bracken. it had thorns." 

Bracken? That wouldn’t do. After a pale shake had rattled it's way through her skull, Aurëwen turned back to her shrike with moss and yarrow — and at the words, gave a shameful pause. Instead of informing them of what she planned and tucking them away safely, she’d ran off to meet her desecrator in battle. Like a fool.

It didn’t matter if she knew that mishap was mostly forgiven  (suspected it was not),  it was still one of the many actions which the silver blamed herself for how so many things had turned out as they now were. Her boy was immobile; her girl was furious; and she had come to feel that she could not speak in the way she’d like to.

But Aure only canted her head for the pale girl to follow, further into the quartz recesses of the caverns; and it was only when she’d sat them down by the still sources of cold-clear water that her answer came:

“He bit my face up, again, moons ago. Bit my eye.” She paused, daubing a wad of moss, then spoke around it, “Ze day that I left you was ze day we’re I threw him from ze Plataeu’s edge. ...I had help.” Tugging the natural stopper back up, she chirruped for her shrike to Open, and then went about cleaning and pressing against bloodflow, quiet, pensive.

"he's dead, then?" she confirmed, though she knew that being thrown off mountains wasn't always a death sentence (she was glad for it, or else her best and only friend would be lost) she hoped that this time, it had been. the idea of the wolf that had caused her mother's frightful screams and lurches alive unnerved her, and she felt the anger trickling back.

her mother motioned for her to tilt her head back, and the girl obeyed after a moment. she'd have liked to refuse, but she was far too interested, now, and unsettled, by her mother's words.

sorry for the wait ;a;
meta phone post oop

The pale mother said nothing for several moments, partly because she took her time to clean up the letting that had come of her daughter’s sore — which, when uncovered, earned the young shrike a knitting of brows that was likewise wince and concern. She drew away after lingering some, and finally set the sullied moss down with a quiet  “I should hope so, miriel.”

Against such a beast, though, hope seemed quite the fickle thing. 

After glancing to Isilmë once more, aloof features tinged with a faint uneasiness, airgetlám went about gathering said yarrow from before; kneading and scuffing the green material it between her paws as if worrying at uncomfortable bedding  (for lack of motar, pestal, and sapien hands.)  “This,”  she huffed, a bit winded, to both inform and distract from pain and thought,  “is yarrow. I am crushing it, to put it onto your gums. Ze taste is strong, but, I wish I had something better, more bitter for you, so that you will not lick it off.”

she's not quite sure what to make of all she knows, now. that time she'd felt truly alone, when Aure had left them to fight a stranger without a word, Dragomir had fled, and she left alone with a stranger. just thinking back on the situation brought with it all the hollow panic she'd felt, and she withdrew slightly, unconsciously, from her mother. 

but her words brought her back to the moment, and she had no further desire to think on what was the past. there was no changing it, nor the lessons of distrust and fear it had taught her. "what does it do?" she asked, squinting down at the smashed green on the cave floor. it seemed to her that chewing it up would be significantly faster than grinding it into the rock, but her herb knowledge was dismal.