Sawtooth Spire the first time that i sought for grace

bestill my beating heart

she was content to nuzzle her tear-streaked face against his calm and soft chest, the glower marionetting her brow clipping its strings until her face relaxed into a consoled, misty-eyed smile when he laid a kiss upon her pale diadem. mahler would just have to fib to wylla and tell her phaedra's first word had been "mama", instead of the poignant truth—bad—smithed into a language wrought more easily by her tongue.
"ängsdlich ..." she informed him just above a whisper, burrowing her muzzle further into his chest as her mind cast back to the troubled waters, the cold glaciating her bones as she was overcome with water ... she cried out suddenly, and tried to estrange herself from the memory and focus on her blaze of glory. by hap and circumstance she'd survived; a favorable outcome this time, but she should have drowned that day. by all accounts mahler should have found his daughter's debouched corpse lain by the streamside.  
it could be that there was another soul looking out for her. and she didn't know what awakend such imaginings within her, but it would do her good to perish such silly thoughts. she had mastered her fear, phaedra had won back her life fair and square without the intervention of anything except her own inchoate instincts growing in with her adult teeth. 
cloven to one another, her papa's leg swept around her hindquarters to draw her closer to his heart. she pressed her ear against it and was soothed by its verse. time without end passed. then, the rumble of his voice insinuated it was time to go home. without demand, but its softer manner of implication. phaedra looked through the canopy of the trees; it was late morning, she could tell by the sun. mother, thade, and ... the other one would all be up and about by now.
reluctantly she pulled away from mahler's embrace and felt the warm granite on the pads of her feet. her eyes cut to the water and fear thrust its shiv into her chest. she looked anxiously back to her father; too old to be comfortably scruffed and carried, she would need to ford the calmer side of the creek alongside mahler in order to reach the boulder-strewn port that led back home. 
a proper lesson in swimming, then.
wading, in sooth, but it was all the same to her. 
phaedra bumped her crown against mahler's chest once again, eyes squeezed shut. please don't let me go, her heart pounded in her ears.