Nova Peak foundling-bird

Mother, he heard in the accent of his father – remembering this voice as surely as he knew them both as ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ – though nearly all the rest of Mahler’s language had long been lost to him. Thade had not been allowed to speak words Mother did not understand. I didn’ want to call her that, but she made me, he sniffed, gathering himself into an emotionally-wrought slump.
 
She took you?
 
She camed through the stream an’ told me that she couldn’ get out ‘cause she was a fish-wolf, and that only a mountain-wolf could help a fish-wolf out the water. He had never forgotten the story that had lured him to the riverbank. Like someone who never forgets Santa Claus. Or the boogeyman. I dunno what happened after that, but Mother said I almost drowned tryin’ t’save her… She said she’d bring me back when I felt better… But she was jus’ tellin’ a story. A lie, he knew now.

Wylla took it upon herself to smartly redirect their joyless conversation to a matter more pressing. Thade lit up like a lightbulb. He had been raised where food was given to him as a reward and nothing else. To be offered a meal now was like being paid to feel happy and safe.
 
He nodded eagerly, clinging alternatively to both parents as they went. Later, about an hour or so into his return, he would remember to tell them about Wintersbane, and what he had done for their family — but for now he was enraptured, and too shell-shocked, to do anything but marvel at his new surroundings, the new Sagtannet mountain, and his parents, new to his juvenile eyes.