Sawtooth Spire i'm ephemera, see my 'use by' date

fortunately for both of them, wylla was faking her out and had never been asleep at all. dozing lightly, if that. phaedra carefully withdrew her foot from its suspension above her mutter's face and loomed up to stare intensely into her sleepy-syrupy-lemony eye. "mama, you has beaudifol eyes jusd like da sun, an' da suns says hi an' da'ids dime do play widh phaedwa!" she said in her singsong-whisper, side-eying thade and the brood-parasite and informing herself to mind her inside voice so as not to rouse them from unconsciousness. she wouldn't get any answers amidst all the alarms and excursions their waking would entail. 
she remembered herself then, and her joyfulness waxed counterfeit.
"ehm ... snucked oudside dis mownand ..." she confessed with a sorry sleeking down of ears. "do look fow papa do play wis." phaedra clarified, voice seldom above prim quiet as she picked absently at a pelt underfoot with her claw. "... hasn'd come doh,"
she paused for a moment. mahler's absence the previous night had gone unnoticed by his palest child at least, as wylla had turned them in early with a distraction of some sort until all were asleep. presently she reflected on the night. neither a kiss upon her brow nor some murmured variation of "gute nacht. träum was schönes, mein süßes mädchen" that quantified their usual routine could be summoned to her memory. 
her heart sank when she realized he hadn't been there at all.
it had only been one night, but her routine had already been upset once by the orphan's abrupt presence and now, again, she felt confused and, as children often were, over-reactive. 
"mama, papa fowgod aboud me." all like an icicle it seemed, so tapering and cold. a sudden bursting into tears made excessive demand on her sotto voce, and all bleary-eyed she took a quick worrisome look, but the boys only moved in the dreamy twitches of sleep. she surmised that the sandman had mislabeled his vials and sprinkled them with the sleeping dust meant for elders and new mothers and fathers, instead of the dust for infants and children. she wondered to herself, only briefly, if they were having grown-up dreams because of it. 
her attention turned back to wylla. she siphoned all the snot leaking from her nose and swiped at her tearfulness with her wrist. "is'id ok to cuddles widh you?" she sniffled, desperate for some anodyne for her heartache and a comforting embrace only a mother could provide.
she anchored her gaze to her white toes anyway, as though her request was something she shouldn't have asked; even of her own mother.