Nova Peak jämmerlich

he was not inclined to address her, as she had not made the courtesy of doing such herself, and so they wended their way in dignified silence down a path that had larches standing in rows like regimented troops. phaedra glanced above at the raptor, ripping into the rabbit it'd caught with gory zeal. she quickly looked away again. that could have been caintigern, and she couldn't very well climb a tree to save him. he was cunning and streetwise, she needn't worry over him like his mother, but he was her staunchest friend, and the vision had made her stomach into a fist. she bristled her ruff and shook off the tension, catching up to her father's longer-legged lope heading down.
the forest he'd led her through was laden with moisture, squelchy underfoot where water pooled and sank into the soil. when mahler found the spoor, she was tempted to ask what had made such appreciable impressions, but the inscrutable look on his face made her tongue-shy and she hung back while he made a mental inventory of the imprint. she continued to follow him where he wandered. the wet silence of the forest felt very chimerical to phaedra; sunspire's forests were dry and crunchy. this forest was muddy and the leaves were moldering, broken branches speared through mire. 
sighing, boredom was quickly embowering her, and then sadness skewered her heart for it. it wasn't so very long ago that she delighted in joining her father on his roamings, but this didn't feel like home yet, and papa ... well, he was prodigal with his time with children he kept in confidentiality. doubtless, they had similar adventures, but in her childlike self-seeking heart, she could only think of them stealing those adventures from her. did they know she existed? did they know the anguish, or did they bear unassailable hearts? stop stop stop stop stop she chanted inwardly, focusing instead on the hillock they climbed and the juniper crowning it. 
when mahler looked down at her she returned with a quizzical look, an unspoken what?, until her eyes travelled with his own to the massive ungulate gorging on the abundance of blueberries. "oh hey, a moose!" she said baldly, without any exposition whatsoever about how she knew what they were eavesdropping on. she and caintigern had come across one once, but she couldn't tell him that. phaedra bit her cheek and chided herself innermostly.
her tongue welled silver forth, "mama said: the kings of the fores'. guess kings like bueberries, huh?" phaedra blethered before clapping her trap shut and staring forward.