Nova Peak birnen

"dad,"

she had no time for gusts of mirth once her faithfully aimed trajectile painted her father's broad side. her ears found that word like divining rods and her stomach dropped. and who was elke? she'd never been told the story, so the reference went over her head, and mahler's response to the question further wildered phaedra. she looked between the girl and her ... their? ... father, and the call for dad made episodic reruns on every channel of her attention. 

"good vork, fooling my ears," when mahler turned his regard to his eldest, he would find the event horizon of confusion, to realization, and thereafter the inescapable black hole of dismay pass across her expression. for this his momentary vision was sure to curl at its edges like flame-touched bookfell. she stared at elke, feeling pins-and-needles nip her toes until the sensation crawled up her legs and spread like nettle rash down her spine.

when she dragged her gaze to mahler, it took her a moment to register his praise. "sneaking in't hard," she said flatly as he pestered the toad, nothing warm about the words she worked from her gullet or the eyes that watched the amphibian startle into the mud. and good work you, fooling me. she didn't speak a word of her thoughts. 

marble arrived, the youngest of those present and seemingly loth to press in with the rest, taking phaedra's glazed-over stare from the toad. then the grulla girl, ciri, turned up not long after that, mooring her galley to flaxen elke. she was aloof, similar to marble but in a manner more mumpish, perhaps. phaedra did not recognize her from the night in the course of their journey here; she'd been too tired, it was dark, and she took the interaction for a dream besides.

wylla's girl did not notice the lack of astraeus— she never did. the further that boy was from her, the better. saturn wouldn't be far enough. and now she had this to contend with. how many footholds had the gargoyle made in the wombs of sagtannet aside from her mother's? how many that hadn't quickened? mercifully, her youth and intact innocence blinded her to such grown up matters, so all she was left with was a consciousness of some fluttery feeling in her tummy like she'd swallowed bats, along with the sense that it had been very remiss of her to come at all. 

instead of making like 1914 france and beating a great retreat in the face of conflict, phaedra stepped out of the mud and cleared any interpretable look from her face, sitting neatly in the grass as her father began his curriculum. i've learned about frogs. i've learned too much about frogs! she thought, eyes waxing listless as he first began to speak. 

when her ears yielded to the last of mahler's words, phaedra impulsively responded to his question: "how many prince and princesses you got?" then looked her father in the eyes, hard, briefly, before turning to the king frog and twisting her lips, "or will you croak before you ever tell? ... your grace."