Sawtooth Spire the frog king, or iron heinrich

For the first few weeks of his life, Thade had been completely content to eat and sleep his life away. The little Skarp unmoved by the expounding of his senses. It would have even been possible to mistake him for oblivious. Yet, soft-pedalled into existence, were a new subset of behaviors for the boy: as he was now capable of visually recognizing his denmates, and could readily detect sounds from outside that were quieter than a dull roar. He just didn't seem all that interested...

Except, when it came to feeding. The milk-leech's fledgling indifference did not apply at meal times. Especially now that steaming piles of upchuck had recently been added to fill his diet -- quickly becoming the very first object of his infantile greed.

He waited hungrily for a bowl of returned soup now; forgoing @Wylla's available knockers so that he might peer repetitively out into the moody, overcast day, whimpering anxiously whenever he did not see @Mahler approaching proudly on the horizon. And each time he was faced with this monumental disappointment, he would turn to his Mother -- @Phaedra too -- and plainly yowl his dissatisfaction with the timing of the servers. Assuring his audience only  that he would not rest or retire until he'd gotten the lion's share of that precious stomach brew.

luckily for the upstart little prince of sagtannet, mahler returned to the densite with a belly full of rabbit. he found the weaning portion to be quite new, amusing at times — the gargoyle had forgotten what it was to vomit so often for his plucky children.
he swept proudly to their doorstep, urging the children to him with a low chuff. dark plume beat at his heels as he turned his affectionate gaze toward their mother. yet his lilac eyes cut to thade in the last moment, and mahler feathered light lips overtop the boy's scolding head, chuckling as he nudged phaedra and waited for one or both of them to summon their meal from his gullet.

yes, yes, @Thade did enjoy expressing himself in regards to their father's provisionings. expressing his hardships so very histrionically. so ... loudly. he was surfeited with mother's milk, that much was evident, or at the very least preferred regurgitated fare more. not to get any facts wrong—the moment either caregiver returned from the surreptitious realm of wayward parents, phaedra was right there with her brother, tail awhir and throat awhimper seeking alms with beseeching purls of her tongue.

but when father was truant, the girl was happy to monopolize any milk surplussed to current requirements, and weaning her of this habit wouldn't come easy for wylla. phaebae liked nursing, it was a creature comfort and soporific and maybe just a teeny weeny little addiction, and the growing child was constantly crowding under her mother's waist to drain her teats.  

unlike thade, she didn't lean on their windowledge like a wartime bride awaiting her conscript's return, anxiously toing and froing by candlelight for a miracle. it wasn't a terribly lucrative application of her time. or thade's, for that matter.

no, playing with sisters, said sister thought, is a much better thing to be doing and she was about to remind him of this factuality when The Man, The Myth, The Legend himself arrived home. phaedra clapped her mouth shut, definitely not about to stir up some roughhousing or anything by putting tails in vices. nothing like that.

her whiplash tail a whirlwind, phaedra leapt over the hedge that was thade in a clumsy bascule in the race to greet her papa. she hooked her knobby legs around his stocky one and lofted herself up to supplant the underside of his chin with boisterous licks and root her pale nose against his riffled gums, making tiny urgent noises deep in her throat.

The boy-caesar fixed Wylla with a frustrated look -- for she was not taking his needs very seriously -- and repeatedly tried to provoke her into summoning Mahler, with her little-known magicks, to the portal that was their denmouth. He was unaware of the looming demand for his attention, of the angelsoft stalker in his midst, but Thade would learn to keep a side-eye out for his sister in due time. For now, he was saved only by the darkening of their doorstep; the arrival of the black-hooded doktor turned meat dispensary.

The urchin was right on his sister's heels as they crowded the tall wolf. He was too eager, too chin-chasing, to notice that Phaedra made for a sound obstacle to his father's mouth. He buoyed around her, bobbing up and down and over, in his attempt to meet the fresh spill before her.

phaedra was upon him with a huntress' ease, vaulting across thade as if he was not there. mahler chuckled, snorting at thade's best efforts. a retch, and the meal was delivered: hot half-chewed meat that left its delicious mark a second time within his jaws.
he settled himself some feet away, grinning briefly at wylla before his attention returned to their scuffling brood. they were evenly matched, mahler decided; the difficult event at birth did not seem to have hindered phaedra. she was as boisterous as her brother, and he joked inside the skullpan of his heavy head that perhaps thade ought to look out for his princeling crown to be stolen as well.
content to lay and watch them, his lavender eyes followed their squabbling and scrambling with an affectionate glow.

midst shoving and bullying her shoulders against her darksome sibling, phaedra mithered insistent and relentless against the jowls of her father, licking his muzzle and ebon flews.
their father gurned, blew his grits as requested, and walked off, likely to avoid the raptor-like vying, like as not to ensue over his spewed stomach contents. 
phaedra was on the regurgitated bits ricky-frickin-tick, posturing bodily over the mahlmagundi with a puppy-sized growl dredged up from her throat. she was going to eat first, and thade could have whatever she didn't want. if he had a problem with that, he was more than welcome to seek counsel from the tiny parrying daggers cutting her gums. 

Untrained and unwise, among a litany of other age related short-comings, the boy was an easy opponent for the equally greedy Phaedra to usurp. In all his eager lunging, the only thing Thade earned himself was a harsh meeting with the ground, as he glanced off the back of his firmly rooted competitor and landed, briefly, in the dirt.

He was up again before the fall could even register, and the sootcub scrambled to be second at the trough. He shoved his nose forth without regard for his sister's protectiveness, and pressed himself flat to slither resiliently through her armored protests. He made to slop up what she could not defend at the same time as doling out his punishment.

she held herself stiffly, tail struck out like a lightning rod with a current of mini-pulses of electricity bristling all of her babyfine fur to its ends. thade, unconsciously to either child, abated her reaction immediately by slinking to his belly and brooking the sudden paroxysm of food possessiveness. ears pricked forward, she stood over him and indulged on the bigger chunks of mahler's chef kiss gruel, snarling when her brother made for any high value tidbits.
later on the tables would likely turn, and she would be the one slinking and scraping for offscourings of their next spread. it was a recent developmental waypost oft pendulating between inferiority and dominance. 
after tummies were full and the table was cleared, it was generally back to playing with no hard feelings. presently, phaedra, gruntled, left thade to scour his tongue on the dirt as she pranced in a leisurely sway to mahler with an appeasing grimace and her ears joined back atop her head. gladness to see him was still bright in her squint and she met her father with a bump of the nose and a nudging under his chin, wriggling body trying to hew to the niche of his chest. 

"goodness, phaedra," mahler chuckled as his mouse came to clamber affectionately into his embrace. "you vould starve your brother? but he is cunning," the gargoyle clucked to thade, inviting him into the fold. he himself went over, lying flat against the ground with a flail or two of his plume.
phaedra might find a better use for her teeth here, and perhaps his wily son might discover a greater vantage point for the playfight their father always encouraged.

im rly sorry i skipped you eb and replied to thade without realizing it lmao ;;

"cunning, papa?” phaedra remarked absent-mindedly as her eyes predaciously tracked the swishes of his bushy tail. she crept ‘round the back of him and slunk to her belly, then leapt at her prey, pawing and nipping at the plume.
she bounced away and came back to straddle it beneath her before flopping to her side and kicking at his rudder like a cat trying to disembowel its quarry. 

no worries OFCCCC u can fade or archive <3

"he is smart. and vitty," the gargoyle drawled, jerking against the ground with a sudden searing discomfort as first phaedra's teethtips and then her blunted little claws sank into his tail. brushlike as it may have been, he was caught offguard by how precise her tiny bite could be.
at length he curled over to pat at her with his large paws, bowling her over at least once before thade joined them, and he rolled in a frenzy to his back, snapping gently at the pair in playful challenge.

"i'm cunning and vitty den!" she giggled as papa used the gentled heft of his scarred paw to unbalance her, causing her to tumble against her side. "and smard!" she growled, attempting to leap over mahler's broad haunch to get at thade but her bantam stomach caught her in a sprawl across her papa's breadth.
she struggled over, seeking purchase against his fur with her rear legs and somersaulting into the soft grass on the other side of mahler's ashlar rampart.
phaedra was back to her feet with a soft, devious snicker, and promptly laid siege upon thade as playful growls rumbled up her chest. the trio carried on with their play for a while longer into the evening before both pups began their yawning, and by the time the moon was high in the sky, both were thoroughly exhausted; ying-yanged dozily against the soft fortress of their father, who after a time woke them with a soft rumble.
they sleepily piled into the den, and barely made it past the threshold before falling into a slumbering heap.