Blacktail Deer Plateau i told you i didn't want to go to this dinner

There it was — the truth, sitting before Phox and his daughter. There was no way to anticipate their reactions but the ever-churning mind of Mou thought of many in the days between Niamh's death and this precise moment. Mostly he remembered the feeling of his own flesh giving way to teeth from his last run-in with one of his siblings. The scar across his throat flared with ghost pain and Mou curled slightly inward.

So too did Vesper, before she made a curious sound towards her mother; Mou had not considered how deeply this would affect the three shadows, although... Now he supposed, it was only the one. Having grown up with a pair of ghosts, protecting and loving her younger not-a-sister, and now faced with such adult knowledge — Mou supposed that the only way to handle all of that at her current age, was to stop trying. The girl crumpled in to a heap but she did not seem sad, she tried to console Mou, as though that were her job.

Poor sweet thing.

She visited, she stayed. The stress of travel was too hard. Mou tried to be as delicate as he could be, with his blunt and rasping voice.

But then there was Meerkat. The smell of poppies on her breath, which came as some surprise to Mou. He could not meet her gaze as she processed the information alongside her father, so he could not see if her pupils were dilated; her voice was a jumble of sounds as she struggled, inevitably reaching the conclusion that the little family had dreaded from the start ---

You LIED.

To protect our family— Mou's head snapped up, his eye trained on Phox.

Sympathy hung about his face but not apology. He had only done what he needed, to keep the family safe. But he knew that they had also failed in that regard — with Prevost and Peregrine having vanished, their lie was now so much more damaging. He knew there was nothing they could say to redeem the situation. It was up to Phox now, and Mou could only hope his judgement wasn't as visceral or violent as Towhee's had been.