Sleepy Fox Hollow Took this dagger in me and removed it

gone for 35-ish minutes, got too carried away here so she’ll be back in my next post!

of all the things phaedra expected her mother might have to say, the first nonsensical thing that ensued from her mouth was the last of them. an addled, rattled notch formed in her brow, thin ears stowing themselves away. meekly, she exchanged a questioning gaze with her father; "wie ist meint sie damit?” she asked.

who the fawk is lick?

despite anguine vines of dread tightening around her throat, phaedra recoloured briefly, startled, “you know me…” 
that she must plead with her mother’s delirium was devastating. and then her next words registered.

i should never have left you,
her throat clenched. even though it was the revenant of her brother that wylla spoke to in her calenture, it was indeed the abandonment-speared child that received the impact of such a hard-hitting statement. phaedra's watery stare tore away and fixed on a point in the grass, outstretched legs pushing her body slightly away with humiliation. 

quickly mopping her cheek with a wrist, she firmly stated her next words. "you're right. it was a mean thing you did, leaving me! but you're here now, and i'm not leaving you because two wrongs don't make a right, so—" 

—the girl froze when a feverburned nose pressed against her shoulder, a desire to be embraced competing with the reflex to retreat from it and huddle behind the protective trellis of mahler’s legs. 

unable to please either humor, fight or flight gridlocked her somewhere between the two and she curled like a pale tendril half-towards her father, whose gaze she sought with fretfulness whilst cambered ears half-heard the continuation of wylla's delusion. 

the thumbelline woman she called mother didn’t even smell like herself. from a distance, it was easier to distinguish her scent amidst the morass of other smells. being right under her, however, all she was sensible of was the detriment occurring to wylla. and the immediate vulnerability to herself. 

as if feeling his daughter’s eyes settle upon him, mahler gave voice to his thoughts, which informed the direness of the situation. the black rims of her eyes widened, then shrank into worry lines. phaedra rolled to her feet, backed a step. 

she drew in steadying a breath. 
“why’re you fighting bears for, mama?“
a scenario heretofore left to the imagination,  phaedra didn’t fully understand how someone even got close enough to a bear to inherit this type of mutilation. much less survive the ordeal. 

but leave it to wylla to grief, of all things, a bear. and simply opt out of death.  

before it could be dwelled on further, the graf smartly diverted the course of his girl's distress towards something busy, useful; an errand. a tormented sound died in her throat, but she listened closely to his bidding, and soon felt her shoulders tense. where the father was rich in horticultural knowledge, the daughter was poor. in that moment, her understanding of herblore was never going to be anything but too painfully little. 

lacking aplomb, she nonetheless nodded once he finished his description. and with a thick swallow, departed for the stream detailed.

it was so much her private wish for wylla to reappear in her life, that this felt like the fateful curl of the monkey’s paw. resentment preyed upon her mind, and she made a true mark for the stashed dagger of self-hatred in fearing that she may have catalyzed it all. something from her childhood, that peripheral and interim place from which torments of all natures came and left her without answers. 
perplexing. 
frustrating. 

the thought was a burr and stuck with her as she made the fifteen minute journey northwards.

[phaedra exit]