Nova Peak birnen

optional pup activity <3 @Phaedra @Elke @Ciri @Astraeus @Calcifer @Marble

wylla must recover. he could only hope for it; he attended her when she had need of him, but did not often know what to think of her grievous injury. it would be possible for her to attain more than a semblance of the life before, but mahler was not skilled in these particular matters. only cleaning, binding, packing, the endless chewing of soothing and astringent things.
the rain had long stopped, but the month of it had left a marshland place that leveled before dipping into the grotto called larksong. he did not know if this would be a forever event, or turn to ice when winter came, but for now the last warm stones held small brown frogs. it was here he called for the children of sagtannet, watching as the slimed puddlefish punctuated the air with daring leaps. mahler knew for their sake he must tear himself away; he could not neglect any more the responsibilities of his rank.

skip me at your leisure, my activity is touch and go. if i stop responding at all just assume she left <3  

she heard her father's call and contemplated ignoring it. it was only fair. she'd been denied access to him for long enough that she couldn't even enumerate the sleeps anymore, and her mother was now similarly confined like they were swapping childcare shifts for the eldest of sagtannet's tax deductions brood. 

she figured she'd do the both of them a favor and eliminate herself from the equation altogether and made herself so seldom seen she was well on her way to becoming nova peak's local cryptid.

whatever the reason, her conscience wouldn't let her be so petty today. bugrudgingly, she and caintigern went separate ways for the afternoon and her longer legs (plus no siblings to trip over) gave her the advantage of arriving first to reconnoiter the situation before the others came to frivol away mahler's attention.

babysitting duty flew above her station besides, even as the oldermost child, so she had the option to bug out if they came bleeding out of the scores of trees.

the moonturn of rain had made many places quaggy and others flooded, so she preferred to stay toward summit. much as phaedra liked getting muddy, frogs now reeled back the flotsam and jetsam of a memory that made her gut turn sour, so she tried not to focus on the little brown aeronauts as they ribbited and pogoed from rock to rock.

instead, the rims of her eyes twinged at the damage to the gargoyle's masonry when he came into view, but she was loath to prove him and mother right about their decision to keep her ignorant during his bedfast and sidled where she could around the morass on mousing legs. if the girl was quiet enough to catch him unawares (a difficult task, seeing as how the mud squelched each time her feet bit into the mire), she could be quiet enough to volley a faceful of mud at him.

Whatever sneak attack Phaedra may have thought to do towards her war-torn father may have been otherwise crushed by the steady trot of Elke as she came near towards the call of her father. Like Phaedra, Elke and her sister had been kept from her father for some time though she had slipped away in order to see him when Nyx' watchful gaze wasnt upon her. Now she came to him again, Ciri surely in tow not far behind she would think. 

To the flatlands here she came, off the rocky slopes of their forested mountains. The rains. There had been so much rain and Elke had watched it with quiet awe and wonder all the while. Dad, She calls out, a happy wave of snowed tail. The rains, do you think it was Elke? The other Elke, of course. She didnt think herself capable of such a thing, even if she were named after what she assumed now to be a sorceress or goddess of some sort. 

Then she suddenly noticed as she came even nearer, the other much smaller wolf hidden behind the bulk of his frame. She stopped quick, falling shyly quiet. Usually when she saw others outside her family, she scampered off and away. Be it unknowingly to her, she was family to her yet still.

Marble had become somewhat of an outsider because of her own decisions. There were plenty of wolves within Sagtannet to spend the hours of the day with; the old woman, the garden boy, and Mother and Calcifer of course. All these options, and she chose to spend most of her time alone.

The summons for her was shocking. No one but Star had ever called to her. Marble went to the source only out of curiosity.

When she arrived, she saw three other wolves. Mahler (Marble would dub him Leader), and two other girls. One stalked up behind the adult, while the other shared words with him. She was too far to hear exactly what was being said. She refused to come any closer. Too muddy.

Ciri, eager to keep to her own bubble after the enormous failure in her attempt to befriend another then the traumatic sight of her gravely wounded father, did not feel much like answering the Eisen's summons for all of Sagtannet's cubs. She'd been lounging at the rendezvous with her mother when the call went up from beyond their claim and initially chose to ignore it. Nyx' yellow eyes lingered with concern on her stubborn daughter, she who remained even after her pallid sister departed, and the lioness frowned deeply.

"I don't wanna," she huffed following the agouti Ostrega's soft encouragement, dark ears falling back as she turned her sharp gaze upward to seek that of her dam. "I'll stay with you."

Nyx would have none of it, it seemed. She gathered to her paws and strode toward the sable-pelted juvenile, reaching to roughly nudge her rear with the brow of her head. At first Ciri refused, but after another shove she pulled herself upright and stormed from the scene to follow along Elke's trail with a dramatic groan.

She did not move to greet her father with enthusiasm like she normally would, choosing instead keep her bright stare focused on her littermate's gilded hide. It was to Elke she went, to her flank she positioned herself, and did not bother to acknowledge the others nearby as she willed time to quicken. The sooner this was over with, the better.

a million apologies smh

elke's voice tugged upon him first, and mahler lifted his head up with a slow blink. a cascade of bogmud, and only narrowly did he see first his snowbloom and then her — sister, no, for his promise hovered to tongue — elke.
and so it was only a short trajectory he made it, phaedra's molotov sluicing to wet brown clumps of muck that clung to the high curve of his shoulder and the edge of his jaw. a loud laugh, and then a nod to the question, delayed as he paused to shake out his ruff. "who else could it be?" and his eyes shone to see them all so close. he turned to phaedra with a warm mumur of "good vork, fooling my ears." and for a moment mahler saw her bounding and puppish and full of the round syllables that had once created more work for her words. was it so now? another blink, and he nosed toward a nearby toad, sending it flailing indignantly into the mud.
but where was ciri?
marble now, no sign of her pudged brother. mahler had seen star's reticence, wondered if it had to do with the boy. astraeus too, did not arrive. "hello, stone-gatherer," he chuffed loudly to the littlest among them, amused at her reluctance to come too close. nyx next, goldenpawed and with ciri in tow, ciri, wearing the same shadow upon her face that phaedra had worn before —
"there are so many of these frogs," the gargoyle chose to say, addressing the small group of kinder. "but see that big vone there?" he gestured with a lift of his muddied limb toward a great fat thing sat amid all the others, still where they hopped, its calculating black gaze fixed upon each wolf in turn. "he is their king."
"vhat should ve say to a frog king?"

"dad,"

she had no time for gusts of mirth once her faithfully aimed trajectile painted her father's broad side. her ears found that word like divining rods and her stomach dropped. and who was elke? she'd never been told the story, so the reference went over her head, and mahler's response to the question further wildered phaedra. she looked between the girl and her ... their? ... father, and the call for dad made episodic reruns on every channel of her attention. 

"good vork, fooling my ears," when mahler turned his regard to his eldest, he would find the event horizon of confusion, to realization, and thereafter the inescapable black hole of dismay pass across her expression. for this his momentary vision was sure to curl at its edges like flame-touched bookfell. she stared at elke, feeling pins-and-needles nip her toes until the sensation crawled up her legs and spread like nettle rash down her spine.

when she dragged her gaze to mahler, it took her a moment to register his praise. "sneaking in't hard," she said flatly as he pestered the toad, nothing warm about the words she worked from her gullet or the eyes that watched the amphibian startle into the mud. and good work you, fooling me. she didn't speak a word of her thoughts. 

marble arrived, the youngest of those present and seemingly loth to press in with the rest, taking phaedra's glazed-over stare from the toad. then the grulla girl, ciri, turned up not long after that, mooring her galley to flaxen elke. she was aloof, similar to marble but in a manner more mumpish, perhaps. phaedra did not recognize her from the night in the course of their journey here; she'd been too tired, it was dark, and she took the interaction for a dream besides.

wylla's girl did not notice the lack of astraeus— she never did. the further that boy was from her, the better. saturn wouldn't be far enough. and now she had this to contend with. how many footholds had the gargoyle made in the wombs of sagtannet aside from her mother's? how many that hadn't quickened? mercifully, her youth and intact innocence blinded her to such grown up matters, so all she was left with was a consciousness of some fluttery feeling in her tummy like she'd swallowed bats, along with the sense that it had been very remiss of her to come at all. 

instead of making like 1914 france and beating a great retreat in the face of conflict, phaedra stepped out of the mud and cleared any interpretable look from her face, sitting neatly in the grass as her father began his curriculum. i've learned about frogs. i've learned too much about frogs! she thought, eyes waxing listless as he first began to speak. 

when her ears yielded to the last of mahler's words, phaedra impulsively responded to his question: "how many prince and princesses you got?" then looked her father in the eyes, hard, briefly, before turning to the king frog and twisting her lips, "or will you croak before you ever tell? ... your grace." 

One of the littler ones, the one molted in soft grays and white, came then to join them. She was the one who carried pretty stones, the pale girl remembered from their travels from the southern mountains. It was finally so then that her sister was to join her, pressured by her mother's will unknowingly so and she came to settle close to her flank. After her father's words, agreeing with her, she beams a smile and nudges into her dark sister affectionately. 

Elke, unlike the eldest of the sisters, did not know at all the possibility of having other sisters, brothers, who might have shared the same blood which ran through her and Ciri's veins. Then Phaedra stared, her fur bristling, Elke's brow crinkled and a single silken pale ear turned back in wonder. Her pale eyes, that of her father's, turning to Ciri with question. Maybe she knew what her problem was? 

Alas, her natural quiet and shy nature takes the best of her and despite her father's question, she speaks not. Only listens to the other pale girl and the daggers in her eyes shot to her father. Not all strangers were bad... She remembered her father saying, though all strangers should be cautioned. This one, was for certain.

weeoow sorry for letting this get out of date D: can be archived in a bit or we can continue <3

barbed by phaedra's words, mahler's countenance stuttered for a stickling moment. and for all of it he gazed into the balewrit expression of his eldest. he wished at once to thrust away the frog, to declare their game over; he wished for wylla to be here, so that he might explain through bitterness who it had been that kept the three from being reared as openly as he would have wanted.
but he recognized it in the next as his own selfish and foolhardy nature, snapping its jaws where the greatest ruin might happen. "not so many," mahler dared in the voice of the frog. "and each dear to me. but," and here he paused, wondering how he might bring some semblance of humour back to the intentions he had devised, "perhaps i shall also croak."
the gargoyle pawed at the slickslime hide suddenly, provoking a loud bray of sound from the amphibian. mahler stared at it a moment, then looked to phaedra and elke and ciri, settling upon little marble. "maybe the king has more to say."

phaedra out <3

their gazes locked like a fly in amber, phaedra's own corresponding the dismantlement of trust, the complement of mercy. 

"not so many. and each dear to me. but, perhaps i shall also croak." he said in the king's aristocratic voice, though the subliminal messaging meant for her ears was not without regard. she set her jaw and scoffed softly into the fur of her chest, standing to all fourst. "each so dear t' you— your grace—  croaking without tellin' would not be very nice. or kingly." 

she lingered a few moments longer, glaring at the frog, when she suddenly felt her gorge start to rise. gulping the acrid taste of bile assurgent in her throat, as her father began speaking again, his eldest turned and pressed quickly on into the copse.

She did not care for this gathering, not one bit. Even as Elke shifted to bump affectionately against her, Ciri could not deny the discomfort that brought about the flip-flop feeling in her gut. She feared the pale youth might turn a sharp stare on her hide and kept her own lowered, fixed to the ground beneath her dark paws even as her father spoke.

A frog king, he shared. And what should they say to him?

Fuck this shit, the blackbird thought bitterly to herself, then her brow creased a little at the sound of the eldest cub's response. Ciri sucked in a breath and held it, a raven lobe twitching nervously in the speaker's direction as she dared to glance toward the amphibian that her sire had attempted to draw their attention toward.

Phaedra's glowering look toward Mahler went unnoticed, as did the sharpness of her words against him. Ciri barely registered the Eisen's own response until he prodded at the frog, which provoked a loud croak the spill from an inflated throat. The blackbird bit back a sudden, unexpected bubble of laughter at the gesture, though any suggestion of amusement was swiftly replaced by her prior sullenness as the ivory girl quickly removed herself from the scene.

She'd expected relief to slacken the tension in her shoulders, but it never came. Like a coiled spring, Ciri lingered uncomfortably at her sister's side and urged time to quicken, so that she might return to the quiet safety of her family's solitude. 

An end sounds good to me.

Another quip from the pale girl, paler than she herself, who's white was cloaked in the gold of her mother and streaked with the coal of her father. Elke was silent all the while and yet, all the while did the pale babe's eyes that matched, watched her as she scoffed and then left the scene. 

Rude. A single mutter from her lips in response to that. Rude and mean. Elke and Ciri rarely ever interacted with others within the pack savor the four of them which made up their little family. Now she understood ever more as to why. 

I suppose the King frog will have to speak with his other frogs. She spoke, eyes turning to her sister and then, back to her dad. I dont think Ciri feels well. Of course, she didnt want to put her sister on the spot but it was obvious her sister wasnt 'feeling it' today and after the way that white pup had acted, neither was Elke.

their little interlude dashed, mahler straightened, nodding toward elke as phaedra made her stiff exit. "ciri," he chuffed, stooping somewhat to brush her forehead, "go back vith your sister, and i shall come later to bring you both a sweet flower." reaching to kiss elke as well, mahler would watch them depart before turning upon his heel, trudging after his sullen eldest until he found where she had spirited herself away, and ask after the true undertone of the frog king's damnation.