Sleepy Fox Hollow Get my pretty name out of your mouth

Will archive as RO in 3 days if no response by then!

Wylla flicked her tongue against the cedar strip held still between her teeth, the end softened by her saliva. The taste of it was becoming a constant in her recent day-to-day life. Like a little girl's dolly, she kept it with her often, abandoning it only when she needed to hunt or drive an insolent scavenger away from her meal. She fell asleep with it tucked against her narrow wrist and woke up with it beneath her chin or chest. She thought she would kill any wolf who sought to take it from him.

She carried it with her even when some horrible nostalgia gripped her and dragged her up into the Sunspires, to a cave in a quiet hollow where once she had played twenty-one questions. Back then, she had wondered if she could ever feel the depth of affection that was felt for her, and worried that she would not measure up. How ironic that she returned now, feeling as though she had given too much of herself to someone who could never return the same to her.

She didn't know why she'd come here. She glared into the cave, allowing her sadness and frustration to well over into anger. Mahler had not come after her. She wasn't surprised. It wasn't like she'd been trying to play that game with him when she announced that she was leaving Sagtannet, but to have her worthlessness confirmed by the absence of him cut her to the core.

She placed her prized bark in the cave, intending to leave it there with the memory of him, but she made it only ten steps before she had to turn back and snatch it up once more.