Bearclaw Valley and when we burst, start over, oh darling

her brow furrowed; mona sat with indra's inquiry for a moment, her gaze gathering a faraway look that soon gave way to a hardening around the edges of her lips; some firm tremble that lit her eyes with the barest tint of anger. "i ran away from my parents. they told me that my father was not my father, he was my older brother. and that my father was dead. my mother said he was a great witch, a true soul. i ran away and joined tindome."
her words, up until now rote with a stilted melancholy, erupted into a bevy of sniffling. "i met nathaniel there. the, the uh man who i — he was older. i still don't know how i feel about that but i was happy to be ... uh, to be his."
clearing the cobwebbing of tears from her voice, mona paused to dab at the wretched wet beneath her eyes with a crooked ankle. "and then i got this ... i was ... there was a big silver bird in the sky. and it ... i don't know how, but it bit me." her eyes beseeched indra to understand, to not immediately set aside the lunacy of what was being said. "when i woke up, i had a thing around my neck. it was there for a month; i saw the bird again, fell asleep, and the damn circle or whatever was gone." 
a sigh eluded the grasping of mona's mannerly compunction. "tindome moved, nathaniel and i grew apart. i wanted to wander. i wanted always to travel. and then one day i did not go home. i came to you; i'd already left tindome long before i arrived in bearclaw." her features overlay briefly with a crone's harrowed expression; the girl dropped her gaze. "my brother, constantine, is here, the twin of the man who raised me, casmir. my mother's name is rowan mayfair. my fath — lasher. three older sisters; eilidh, and then the younger two, emaleth and deirdre." down she had fallen again into monochrome tonality; presently she blinked and worried her lip between the tips of her teeth. "i have a littlemate, cortland. i ... i don't know where he's gone. he's here, i mean, i just —"
mona let out her breath in a long exhale. "well that's about ... it. i — i guess i'm just sort of pathetic, indra."