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

the lick sent a shock of fur up her cheek and she smushed his face away with a paw, taking up arms against this doting blitzkrieg. the threat of more kisses was enough to send her scuttering a few paces away with a shrill noise that flushed all the birds from the trees above and spooked a nearby squirrel up a tree to the safety of her drey. 
phaedra pranced back when it was clear the threat was set to rights, made her comments, and they promptly knuckled down and got to work on the garden, colloguing meanwhile.
phaedra was instructed to find a place, and she delved into the task, although all this talk of bad luck was a bur stuck on her mind. she swallowed thickly. stag assured her of her goodness, but something within her mind cater-cornered from that belief. her father had said something similar on that terrible day in the backwater, she remembered. still, she struggled to regard it with certainty.
just in case, as she went, she was careful not to impress any bad thoughts on a thing she touched. even the soil. "ich bin nichd schlechd. ich bin nichd schlechd. ich bin nicht schlechd. ​ich bin nicht schlechd." she chanted underbreath, trying to convince herself just as much as the things around her, gazing sedulously at the ground as she fared forth.
when she finally looked up, she stopped in front of a tree with branches that pooled across the earth like a drapery of curtains. she peered up at it, then glanced around, gaze landing where an ivory-bloomed dogwood stood.
there was no peach tree, or fairy circles, or bushes of fox-plums, but there was this. 
"here, i think." she called to stag, closing her eyes and forcing whatever flyspeck of goodness she possessed within her into this spot. phaedra flexed her claws into the topsoil, whispering, "only good," to herself.