Sawtooth Spire dear god: thanks, if you loved me the vegetables would be extinct

she was sleeping sound against thade when their mother slipped from the den. after ten-or-so days, the queen of thorns was likely going stir-crazy, and ever-doting @Mahler was seldom far from the densite even when she wasn’t taking midday interludes to scream into the void or cool her chafed assets in the brumal waters of windholme.
surely this meant there was no need for dramatics. object impermanence whomst?
when sleeping sound turned into restless stirring and eventual wakefulness, phaedra unshaded herself from the darkside of her brother, exploiting the proximity of his face to push off against it and roll herself away into an inquisitive shamble across the landscape of pelts. 
curse her species and its inability to echolocate. relying on the illterate efforts of her nose wasn’t good enough, for although @Wylla wasn’t there, she’d left an olfactive footprint that phaedra followed to scandal.

gravy train abandonment!

upon discovery of such devious ploys (which was no ploy at all, but a most definite slight against her), the child blatted noisily with a new dislike of being tricked. bloated with self-pity she brushed her face against the scent-laden peltries where their repasts were usually held, whimpering as she gummed on the coyote hide ensnaring dewdrops of hour old milk like she was never again going to be able to indulge in its creamy, lucullan goodness.
she snuffled until every last drop was found. sorry bro, success is for firstcomers, survival of the fattest, fool at forty [seconds late] is a fool forever, etc. 
her stomach was still wealthy from the last feeding, opulent and round, and there was no hunger gnawing at her … but she was bored and being bored meant time to eat, goddamn it.
her whimpering blues turned into an outright, broken-hearted dirge of cries.

There was new life in Sagtannet, though Stag had not yet caught wind of it.

He had noticed, however, that Wylla's scent was conspicuously absent where it usually frequented. Not that Stag would admit to stalking, but he often found himself tracing Wylla's steps around the border. Sometimes, he would even match her step-for-step, placing his paws in awestruck idolatry against the neat imprint her feet had left in the ground.

Of course, his feet were larger than hers -- but metaphorically, they were big pawprints to fill and Stag always took the time to retrace her steps, pretending he was a fearsome fighter too, just out for a quick jaunt around the property.

Today he found her scent, but being an inexpert tracksman, traced it backwards -- all the way to a den where, to his incredulous ears, it sounded like a bunch of cries within. All around him was evidence of Wylla and Mahler's presence -- but a quick glance in either direction, and he didn't see them.

Something about being this close to Wylla's home seemed taboo, but Stag found himself curiously following his long ears towards whatever squeaky voice that was within. "Hello?" He queried timidly, just outside the den's entrace with his limbs folded and body hunched in tense but anticipatory pose.

with only a nose to smell things with, the curious boy’s approach was the sidereal falling-star backdrop to her woeful symphony, and she was lucky for it. he could have just as easily been a thrifty fox or worse, a bear. fresh out of hibernation, although the adults of sagtannet knew their tract by their toe tips and would have decoyed any troublesome ursine away from this address … were it not the case they'd been hibernating all winter long. 
no response met his mouse-hearted greet, for when he stepped up to the den’s threshold, a bit of dirt tumbled in from the disturbance of his giant boy feet and tapped against her shoulder. instinctively she froze. wylla never lingered outside for long before coming in, and her father’s presence was a modest temblor besides. 
until this moment she'd never been confronted with the concept of a stranger. phaedra mewled a questioning bid for mother? and shuffled into the shifting mast of afternoon sun, nose trying to make sense of the new yet somehow also familiar whiff of the guest at her door.

Stag was about the worst audience a starving child like Phaedra could have; her artfully mastered dirge about child-abuse and six counts of willful neglect tickled his ears, but did not rouse sympathy. His brow wrinkled as he looked at her bumbling towards him; she was like a little fuzzy pinecone.

Only really, really loud.

Up until one of his clown feet sent a cartridge of dirt splattering towards her. Stag held in his breath, fearing the mini-avalanche and what new pipes it might open in Phaedra's chilling symphony -- but this time, all that she managed to summon was a kitten's gentle mewl?

Adorable.

Stag's ears airplaned. Never had he ever dealt with anything like this. For each step she took towards him, the more upset and full of overwhelming anxiety he became. He didn't know squat about pup-rearing, but he somehow sensed she was dangerously close to a hidden threshold that must not be passed, at all costs.. He shifted uncomfortably, looking to his left and his right like a very unsure pedestrian about to cross the world's busiest intersection. Surely at any moment, Wylla or Mahler would reappear, right? He scanned the sky just in case, as if one of them would come drop in by plane, drone... or canadian-goose/harpy in Wylla's case.

Clearing his throat, Stag tried as gently as possible to push Phaedra back under the den's eaves. He did so the way one might tentatively push back a bucolic piranha, or COVID-19 patient -- his pawpads serving as buffer between her noise-factory and his body (slightly more important). She was round, so she'd roll back into place, right?

adorable? ADORABLE? sir i will have you know i am about 16 oz of whoop ass. i am not adorable.
were it not for the fact that she was such a mite, and a near-senseless one at that, she would take mighty offense to his false reckoning of her. ronald mcdonald headass. 
with such micro-aggressions quelled under the lid of a teacup, she waited on the stranger with mussed expectations holding her in further abeyance from the depths of bedlam—clearly this wasn’t the milkmaid or her bondservant. she longed for the kettle warmth of the one with the sirupy milk, but to phaedra’s agitation, that individual was gone forever, and she was amidst a bloody famine. she’d contemplate eating thade if she must. 
stag approached in the manner you would expect from a nerd trying to access area 51 right before being tackled and tased by the feds (and he wasn’t wrong to fear suchlike things), but his intrepidity gave her an opening to get a better whiff of this semi-familiar scent that had ladled into her well of curiousity. instinct shortly informed her that this clown was unlikely to be a threat—she was smelling the familial emblem of sagtannet. safety, that's what her intuition noted.
inheriting some of his intrepidity, she began to squirm towards her potential wet-nurse to bargain for milk, but didn’t get very far before the baton of his foot extended a bodily push back towards the bowels of the den.
rude, and it wasn’t as effortless as he wanted to be—the tentativeness of his touch only accomplished staying her put, and the same response one gets from wagging a finger at a turtle's head. her gouard withdrew into the fat-rolls of her neck and she freed a screech of frustration (muffled by his stupid foot), regarding his audacity with an inclement frown.

whoopi-goldberg can of whoop-ass or not, stag's sticking to his guns.

adorable.

this teacup tempest had stag all sorts of befuddled. what was he supposed to do with her now? he had tentatively tried to deny her advancement by obstructing her with a paw. from his view, he couldn't really see her. (he had his mega-donkers to thank for that.) he could hear her though - she sounded like a cockatoo rudely denied bathroom access, which hastily made stag retract his paw.

pulling back his paw to inspect the little bundle of joy resistance, stag was horrified to see that in the process of pushing her, he had somehow permanently maladjusted her spine. her little head was pushed so far into her neck that rolls grotesquely appeared around her crown like obscene wreaths. holy shit!! were babies that fragile?!

even her head sat at a weird angle -- FRICK!! WYLLA WAS GOING TO KILL HIM.

stag had barely touched her! it had been a light tap, honest!

his eyes darted around in a panic; no one had seen he had just permanently blemished the baby, right? like a grocery-goer hastily picking up the apple they most definitely bruised by dropping it on the hard, cold, dirty ass concrete floor, stag yelped and withdrew in horror.

wylla was going to be here any minute - or mahler -- and how was he going to explain that his fat manhandling of their precious child had resulted in disfiguring her? was she made of aluminum or something? stag began heavy breathing, panic setting in. maybe she had looked like that before, and he hadn't noticed. he was inobservant, right??

she definitely had always looked like a maimed piece of squash..

right???

once he peeled his clown shoe off her face, and was thoroughly horrified by the bullfrog-looking monstrosity that he’d created, she held herself still for the few moments it took for him to panic before springing back out from her pleated ruff like a jack-in-the-box, sounding her barbaric yawp over the treetops. it was more reproachful of his unmannerliness than a summons, but it wouldn’t hurt if reinforcements came parachuting down. remember the alamo?
fortunately for stag, the maimed squash returned to her standard, and don't go forgetting ferocious, form. no produce department employees would be hurling javelins at his back in vengeance of their valuable fruit. unfortunately for stag, once he took away her barrier, his new pet spider-monkey started in on him again, wriggling on her belly up to the gallery.
she paused at the ingress of the den, feeling a chill steal across her withers. it was either the sensation of stepping into an icebox that stopped her short, or instinct. either way and even so ...
she was not going to him, so he needed to come to her. what usually worked with the previous mom? oh, right. phaedra began huffing and puffing and the teacup rattled, until a piteous yarn of whimpers began seeping through the shifted lid. 
and oh, how that sound would amplify and travel until she had a nipple placed in her mouth.

Enter Wylla, returning from the river with her chin still dripping, to see not the peaceful scene she'd left, but Stag hyperventilating in front of the den and the sound of Phaedra's bawling from within.

The charge that followed this sight was purely instinctual. For once, she held no particular ill will toward the wolf she was galloping toward with jaws unhinged, though if Stag knew what was good for him, he'd stay the fuck away for a little while after this. She liked the kid but god damn was he ever an idiot if he thought this was a good idea. For a split second she had to wonder if his brain damage was more deeply rooted than she'd originally thought. What would've been nice and courteous was if the Eisen stopped and realized she had nothing to fear from her packmates, but thinking first wasn't really her forte. Oops.

A guttural snarl was the only warning Stag had before Wylla lunged for his hindquarters. She hoped he had the good sense to run off like a good lad, but if he wasn't snappy about it (or if he'd harmed her baby in some way), he'd be on the receiving end of more than just a warning tap.

Stag's eyes were the size of dinnerplates as the maimed squash did the inconceivable and transferred from run-over bullfrog back to hunky-dory Sagtannet citizen, her head popping back into place like an amorphous blob regaining shape. Yeesh. Stag's lip pulled back in a horrified quiver - she looked fine physically, but was there any lasting damage.. like maybe to her brain?

As she crawled and then stopped (thank god) on the threshold, Stag felt a similar shiver climb down his spine.. As if something, or someone, was warning him...

He shook off the strange feeling, peering at the spider-monkey that now insisted he come to her. Nope, not doing. Stag might have had his own brain damage (thanks, tree) but he wasn't dumb enough to come any closer. Some inviolable instinct told him to stay put, and not set another foot closer to what seemed an impentrable sanctuary.. But if Phaedra could just stay in that invisible aegis, that would be great.

Then came the wailing -- Stag's ears flattened and he hunched his shoulders in a cower, his teeth set on edge. "Psst! Quiet!" He pleaded, glancing around him guiltily as again, a weird and foreboding feeling raked its unpleasant fingers down his back.. Okay, the first time it had been weird, but now it was just plain annoying.

Stag shook his ruff, ignoring the grumbling of his pesky omniscient gut. It could stay in his belly and shut up. He straighted himself up as the teacup kept up her caterwaulin', deciding now would be a good time to pick her up and just like.. chuck her into the den or something? IDK. Anything but keep her out here where she'd make a nice chicken nugget for a hungry hawk.

Stag was about to take his first step when he heard a noise -- was it a noise? His ear flipped back and he froze, craning his neck and ears to listen.. sounded like, footsteps maybe ...?

Unfortunately for dolt-brained Stag, the time it took him to freeze, scrunch up his attention and really focus on the noise he was hearing, was all the time Wylla needed to come crashing upon the scene and drive her teeth right into his frozen hindquarters. Stag had zero time to react - partially because he was slow (mentally, physically? your choice) and partially because by the time he realized what was happening he was gripped with paralyzing terror that kept him rooted to the spot until he was flung aside, like that aforementioned mangled produce hucked to the 'unsaleable' bin after hours.

even if not for the indisputable fact that phaedra didn’t take commands, the desperate whisper of stag’s plea for her to put a sock in it fell on literally deaf ears. her chirruping trebled, as the condition of its ceasing had yet to be met. 
the stormcloud eased back towards the belly of the den, regardless, sensing tension in the air—if anything could command her it would be instinct insisting itself into her actions, and only with disaffection did she defer to what it bade of her. 
while the weedy scaramouch paced outside and tried to find a way to reconcile and cope with his conflicted boyclown feelings or whatever, going so far as to contemplate with audacity the idea of placing his grody mouth upon her and slinging her hearthside, phaedra had battened down her crying and drew her nose to the airspace to forecast the breeze that swept down the den with a milk connoisseur’s—ahem, or cultist’s—aplomb, observing succulence on the palate that hadn’t been there before.
hurry up would you! i’m famished! she mewed, none the wiser to the blitzkrieg unfolding on her doorstep.

For exactly one second, Wylla sawed into Stag's hindquarters with a whirlwind force, then relinquished him and spun quickly away. Henceforth the yearling was ignored unless he saw fit to stupidly try his luck with her, but she hoped he took the hint and made himself scarce. Thorny nature aside, it gave the Eisen no pleasure to harm her pack mates, but sometimes it was the best and quickest way to teach a hard lesson. Approaching cubs as young as Phaedra and Thade was a big no-no. Better Stag learn it from her than someone else.

She ushered Phaedra back into the cave with a sound somewhere between a hiss and a growl, settling for her begging daughter to partake of her sore teats only when she had sequestered her and her well-behaved brother in the corner furthest from the den entrance. Attempts to interact beyond feeding were met with a wrinkled snout and warning growl to communicate that she wasn't at all pleased with her cubs (even poor Thade, who had done nothing wrong—it could just as easily have been him, after all) and didn't think they deserved any attention right now.

it was always a good day when you got your way.
when wylla slunk through the threshold and nudged phaedra further in, after having properly tore the asscheek out of stag's zen, the bairn sought her out with solicitious whimpers. she impatiently waited for her lifegiver to settle so she could glut herself.
squirming into the black tousled hair of wylla's stomach, she latched onto an engorged teat and indulged her insatiable appetite.
her little encounter with stag was long forgotten already, though the memory of his scent was now a safety pin in the quilt of her growing consciousness.