Hushed Willows the morning will come soon.

Happy Halloween!

It wasn't so bad here, but Ibis wouldn't admit to anything. She wouldn't tell anyone about the whispering she heard as she investigated the willows, nor how charming she found them. But she was adjusting to their new home. Thoughts of her father still made her sad, but they were less frequent than before and if she felt particularly sad, she could always seek out Mommy or Okee.

Even the oft-disgruntled and unfriendly @Mali had earned themselves some attention from her. Ibis had begun exploring the territory and when she couldn't find her brother, she had started asking for the rogue child to come with her — but it rarely worked out. Typically the St. Claire wouldn't even speak, just flat out ignore her. Ibis was adamant that this new place would also mean a fresh start, so she refused to be bogged down. Her moodiness remained a constant but on the whole, Ibis had gotten pretty good at distracting herself with all the pretty trees.

Today as she wandered the territory, she made sure to avoid the flowers that had caught her paw. She deviated along an old path that led through a crux of trees, until she was in a sequestered section of the willows where one bent tree sat alone, surrounded by crab grass and plants she had never seen before. If this was a garden it had been abandoned — but there was something small and root-like, bleached and white like an old stone, poking out of the dirt. Ibis didn't notice it at first but when she went to settle beneath the tree, she couldn't get comfortable - and soon found the strange stone to be the reason.

She was annoyed at first, frustrated by so many things and so very tired of raging against the changes in her life, so Ibis turned upon that stone and she glared. She huffed and puffed, looking at it intently as if it had caused all those problems. Her frown deepend when she came to some unknown conclusion; then, in a fit of unhindered and childish violence, she began to dig. Her little paws scrambled against that exposed stone, claws dragging at the soil, uprooting the offending shard. Except the more she dug the more stone there was. Her claws caught upon it and scored the surface; it was porous.

When a good amount of it was unearthed, she sat back and sighed with her eyes glued to her work. Ibis was a mess. She looked like she had been through a trench, and certainly had been constructing one. The prize at the bottom of the child-sized pit was by all accounts, wolf-shaped itself. It was smaller than her too, which was curious. The smooth white dome of what she'd thought to be stone gave way to a sickly green-gray color, and as she lifted the shape free of the soil Ibis saw it had two black holes set within it. Something wrattled when she tossed the object against the grass—a whisper pulled its way through the willows hanging tresses, like a little voice maybe. There were smaller segments attached together, sprouting out of the smooth round thing.

Ibis had no idea she what she had found; it was appropriate though, that on this evening the cherubim unearthed herself a playmate. A lonely little boy, forgotten, broken, and unloved She was immediately charmed by the skull's tiny grin. The way it sat among the grass reminded her of the way Okeanos sometimes sprawled out in his sleep—