Sawtooth Spire i'm bound by the feeling that's so easy to fake

he was getting warmer! she prompted him to keep guessing with a lift of her brows and an encouraging nod of her head, all while her belly dished up giggles from some endless treasure trove of mirth and amusement.
when the bells of her laughter and tittering ferried on the wind and echoed off the mountain walls, she briefly wondered if her papa could hear her from his grotto with nyx, and if he could, was he remorseful? would he feel prickings of conscience? or would he dare feel peace for what he had done, knowing someone else was watching her grow? the man had not descended from his covert post in a number of days—or she had not seen him if he had— so she perished the thought with a shake of her head, returning her attention to the only male constant in her life.
she dared not ever breathe a word of it, but the child'd grown a rather fatherly fondness for stag.
he was different from mahler, though the man had for all practical purposes brought the boy up himself. dearly she loved her papa, even though she was presently very cross with him. she had needed him, and he wasn't there. 
the yearling, on the other foot, was a goofball, without a severe bone in his constitution, and most importantly: he was always game to spend time with her. all phaedra ever wanted was a sense of security and stability, and stag was doing well to accommodate that whilst her mother hunted and wore herself to a shadow trying to helm the pack, alone, while her children's father tried to homogenize his two households that did not wish to yoke together. 
now stag, stag didn't have an authoritarian bone in his body. he made her feel like his equal, and when she woke up in the mornings, it was him she wanted to see second (after mama of course). not just because he brought her bubbleflowers, but because he had instilled in her something mahler had failed to uphold. trust. 

sassy! phaedra nipped at his armpit, knowing it would make him squeal. "assy? mmm nuh-uh." she parried, having not a clue what the word meant, yet epitomizing it all the same. she clenched her own armpits in self-defense, watching him winsomely. 
when he grinned, his black gums revealed themselves to be a scabbard for a row of ivory scythes. phaedra drew back and stared, "yow teefs aw big!" she said, sweeping her tongue over her baby shivs. would hers get that impressive? her attention span briefly relocated to a new zip code as she considered it before she remembered the purpose of his pearly-white reveal.
"smile!" she exulted, satisfied. her chest swelled with a sensation she couldn't put a name to, but would later recognize as pride. "stinkendzehen make phaedra lächeln soviel." the bairn looked at him sidelong to see if he was able to understand her exclamation enough to glean its meaning. had she taught him soviel yet? whaeever—a word for tomorrow, perhaps.

"ow own spetchal?" she chirped, sniffing around in close proximity to stag for any signs of peach trees (in the general run of things, the sign was peaches scattered around a tree; it really took an expert like her to discern). when she was asked to decide on a placement for her new garden in the wide-open garth, she cast hopelessly about. "asdwaeus an' thade couldn' ged pas the biding bushes do ruin da lasd one," phaedra said, referring to the spines of the purple loosestrife. she'd been sticked once, and that's all it took for her to forge her own prinzessin-sized path around the briar. "i don' see any of dhoes here." she scuffed her paw against the earth, eyes clocking their surroundings.
when he informed her that she could transfer good luck to rocks and charms by simply manifesting love and joy into them, she sucked in her cheeks until they were hollow. "whad ifs ... somebodies only had bad thoughds? whad happens den?" she wondered openly with eyes very interested in a pinecone pinned under her foot.
what he spoke of, it sounded so much like magic. but she knew that her insides were a cauldron of hellbroth and hexes, and phaedra didn't want a garden at all if it existed to make her feel sad.