Fox's Glade be cunning, and full of tricks

he gazed so keenly upon her that mona knew something must be amiss, that she did not quail beneath his gaze nor feel shame creeping to light her cheeks with that baleful fire. the girl gazed back at the odd, gentle man, realizing how he was both nightfall and early sunlight, and casmir's tales began to creep into her mind. stories from blue willow, fantasies from his travels, monsters and heroes coming alive in her father's voice, limned with his audible zeal and punctuated by gasps and laughter from his children on warm nights.
mona realized then that she had thought of casmir as her father for the first time in months, and the grief thickened in her throat until she dropped her eyes from the soft worrying gaze of tadec and drew a shuddering breath. all she had been doing was chasing an old ghost through the teekon, abandoning her mother and father, the man who had raised her long after lasher's bones had begun to molder in his fairy-ringed grave.
"i ran away from my family. and then i ran from my home, and m—" the mayfair closed her lips tightly to keep from any mention of the stark-eyed soldier she had left behind in tindome, who no doubt would range far, searching for his firebird who did not want to return to the vale. not truly. a pregnant silence followed then, broken only by a single sniffle from the woebegone mayfair.