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

Something ugly and heated wormed its way through Wylla's heart; thankfully, she had Phaedra to distract her momentarily with a flood of kind words. What had she ever done in her life to deserve such a cherub for a daughter? Sure, it was a little creepy that Phaedra claimed to have chosen her as her mother—what kind of voodoo nonsense was that?—but the creep factor was diminished by how much it warmed Wylla's heart that someone valued her, even if it was her daughter, who kind of had to.

Mention of Mahler speared her heart, but she swallowed that down. Well, she murmured, I love you because your nose is the cutest nose I've ever seen, and your eyes are the most beautiful eyes in all the world, and your fur is super-duper soft. She wasn't very good at this, but she tried. To punctuate that last point, she bent her neck to nose fervently along Phaedra's ruff, snorting exaggeratedly as she did so. And you smell like blossoms and you bring your mama so much joy.

Until all the regression stuff that made Wylla want to throw herself into raging rapids and be washed away, of course.

It soothed her little when Phaedra explained that Siegew was a deer. Wylla was about as well-versed in deer as she was in getting along with others, which was to say she had minimal knowledge. Deer ate grass and tasted good. That was the gist of it. That male deer rutted in the winter was known to her, but not for the purpose of wives, and so she would go on believing that Mahler simply thought he could have as many wives as he wanted and had told his daughter the same thing about Siegew the deer because... well, that was simply his belief. The ugly, heated thing slithering in her heart bucked, causing her face to contort with pain, but she smoothed her expression out by focusing on what her daughter had to say and asking, What does his name mean?

Only then did she realize Phaedra was nibbling on her leg, and lifted a paw to gently bat her muzzle away with a murmured, stoppit, you're hurting your fur.