Heron Lake Plateau giblets

Even if Phoebe had wanted to avoid the mess of a boy, the frogs weren't having it. Perhaps it was fate made manifest (in the form of one particularly fat toad), because Tywyll's attempt to find and murder a frog for the hell of it (potentially for a snack or a gag-gift) led to a surprising turn of events. He hadn't found anything of value until a large, bulbous, mud-clad toad came bursting out of the muck about a foot and a half away from him. It was trying to lunge for the safety of the water but instead it went the opposite direction, frightened by the ink-black boy that was sloppily making his way through the water. Tywyll's convulsive splashing brought his presence to the attention of a few different frogs, but they were mostly in a state of hibernation or near enough that their sleepiness prevented movement; but not this toad. It pulled itself free oft he water and went hopping across the mud, landing with a fleshy slap with regular intervals. The sound caught in Tywyll's ears but he wasn't bright enough to know what it was, not until he spotted the frog weaving towards another dark body - Phoebe, who wouldn't have seen the creature because she'd timed her turn a little early.

Tywyll didn't care much for the girl, and to be honest he wasn't thinking about her at all when he finally spotted the frog. She might've been doing her best to avoid the boy and his possible shenanigans but there was no point in trying - he saw that frog, and he went for it. Tywyll moved with as much finesse as a greyhound in socks racing across a freshly washed linoleum floor — which is to say, none at all. His steps squelched and tooted as he bludgeoned his way across the mud towards the toad, his head down and teeth gradually released from behind his black lips, eager to grab it and scoop it up — —

But the toad felt the rumbling of the earth from his steps, and knew to fling itself with hopeless abandon away from danger. It landed at about the same time as Tywyll did. The toad, though, landed in the safety of some tall grass and would be able to continue racing away once the wolf pup was distracted — Tywyll on the other hand, landed in a much worse place. His dropped nose was angling for the toad when it vanished, and he was mid-rise as his body careened across the mud. This meant that when he collided with something, it was a someone, and his nose was precisely angled so that it would jab Phoebe right in the tuchis.