Sawtooth Spire We were talking for a minute, then some guy tried to cut in

"ve doing do windwooooooe!!" mini-ass dracula cheered, already plowing towards the frostbound river in goosestep (and heading in the completely wrong direction), feeling appreciably encouraged by her mama's praise enough to repeat the sentence as she marched to the beat of her own drum.
"yes, thade stayed up too late playing with the ghosts," hol' up. phaedra nearly tripped hearing that her brother had been holding secret meets with ... huh. her ears tuned into the rest of mama's remark about her naughty brother (old news), but she wasn't really listening. the first part alone made her gasp under her breath. 
"widh ghosds?" she whispered to herself. already the girl had printed a mental receipt of the tea wylla had spilled to her, for the later purposes of thuggishly approaching thade to terrorize him until he agreed to introduce her to his new playmates. they were in a social famine, people! and he was carousing with, what were they called again? goats? she'd have to remember that.  
while phaedra coped with the quagmire of jealousy turning her stomach, she suddenly heard her mother sing her name with that wheedling inflexion that always worked to stir up her curiosity. "WHA ISD???" she blurted, whipping her head around to seek her mother out, just about pretzeling her entire body in the rush to see what treasure mama had unearthed. 
scroungy paws skidded her to a clumsy crash against the hindquarters of her mother, but that didn't stop the child; she squeezed underneath wylla's backleg and fit herself between the woman's forelegs. peering down, she spotted first the whorling shell. "mama. ids jusda wock." she relayed, po-faced; this didn't look much different from the pebbles in their forest brooks. 
she kept her eyes on this rock, natheless, and drew a sharp intake of breath when the "rock" inched forward. "holy shid idsa movin' wock!" she said, the mangled expletive slipping without any twinges of conscience—she'd heard wylla say that four-letter-word so many times, it was soldered to her brainpan and was unfortunately bound to depart from her mouth sometime. better here and now in the presence of the coarser wylla than her family-friendly mouthed father, even though she had no idea what it meant or that saying the word around her father would entail implications, probably.
phaedra sank to her belly, shimmying closer to the puddle. she extended her nose to sniff the creature, but only gleaned earthy notes. nothing that correlated with any creepy-crawlies she'd been acquainted with (it was a very short list).
"mama! wook! whadisd DAT?" she pressed, eyes wide as the snail retracted and wobbled its protruding tentacles, to say nothing of the oooey-gooey body or the silvery trail it left behind. "so gwos ... cooooooool! wi'id bide?" moppelchen looked to her mother for feedback, looking between the snail and wylla's face with barely-containable patience.