Sawtooth Spire I was drunk, said I was sober, and you said yeah right

usually, forays to the denmouth were headed off with a mouthy grab around her rump or the swift rake of a paw sweepin her back like one of those coin pusher arcade games pulling her from the brink of the pocket of some lucky predator. it was a frustrating power struggle, and now that phaedra had roughly (very roughly) mastered the piloting mechanics of her legs, it was within the realm of possibility that wylla mused over more permanent schema of staying her reckless daughter put.

broken legs took time to mend. like, weeks, yeah? 

fortunately for them all, wylla was a merciful-ish deity and the spring morning seemed to have found her more seasonable to the purpose of allowing her terrible cubs infidelity of the densite. all said, a childs mind was a vista of irrational imagination, and there was a collision of desperate yearning and shifty uncertainty when the kindilîn was enjoined to come along with her ma’s wheedling body-speak instead of the warning stay put! averred every other time her daughter intended to accompany her.

a suspicious but longing look was couched in her features. she bargained with her suspicion by taking a timid step out, peering around the outside world with sensations of fright and thrill, and then took another step past the threshold with her tail manacled to her underside. unsure of herself, she scampered alongside wylla and wedged herself between the woman’s narrow forelegs. 

her ears tensed at their lengths and then, like a flipped switch, she became delightfully immersed in all the new smells, sounds, and sights surrounding her. focusing her eyes was a task she was still working on, but she was getting better at it every day, and in her quiet way of regarding things, took observation of the sky above where a skein of geese hronked and winged across the blue.

she wished to canvass her mother for answers to questions she didn’t even know how to form in the nativity of her thoughts, much less pose them on a tongue that only knew the babyish idiolect of blathering.

lost in her wonderment, she did not notice when wylla left her standing there like a hawk's uber eats delivery ready for pickup. she leant into what she expected to the be the pillar of her mother’s leg, but tipped over and into the grass with a startled yelp. suddenly conscious of being alone, the girl hunkered down like a fawn and peeked through tall blades of grass in nervous pursuit of her brother. the earth drank great draughts of the melting snows so that wide swathes of soil were everywhere visible, and she thought she caught sight of his black breeches just ahead. the tapestry of fog made her sight even less accurate, but who else could it possibly be? small, black, near the den. all signs pointed to thade. 

replaced by a measure of mischief, her unease bed down for the time being and she straddled the ground and gingerly stepped closer towards him, ready to spring her attack. someways off was an onlooker, an unfamiliar, white birthmark on the breadth of her vision, but at the moment she was too wrapped up in her high jinks to consider that they might be something worth checking out also.  

when she was nearly upon him, or what she thought was @Thade, she gnarled and mirthfully vaulted towards him—realizing way, way too late that she wasn’t about to drop anchor on her brother, but instead, a foraging black mink who saw her as soon she saw it. with no sound, it scurried away, but left a foul-smelling odor right where phaedra tumbled to a halt.

the cloud of fetor clung to her but she didn’t mind that. she was more curious about the creature that had glamoured as her brother; what tricks! looking between her legs, under her butt and behind her, unexpectantly she spied the snowy woman a few tail-lengths away and felt qualmy sheepishness advance on her. phaedra splayed her ears deferentially and began backing away until her rear bumped against something solid—