Sleepy Fox Hollow shadows that lift off the bloom and the velvet

A slow, warm rumbling took up residence in Wylla's throat, unfurling into a rasping chuckle. She hadn't meant for it to be backhanded, but in hindsight, she hadn't worded it very well, had she? Two grouse and a muskrat was definitely better than Wylla could do in a morning. Maybe when she was younger and had two eyes instead of one, she could be so accomplished, but those were the glamour days where she spent more time lazily scavenging than actually hunting.

Ah, the good ol' days, back when she was beholden to no one and weighed down by nothing.

Wylla loved her children, but privately, she wished to return to the time before them. To a time before Caiaphas and even Grimnismal, back when she and Ingram were lanky adolescents tagging along behind their mother on hunts. She would change some things, of course. Lycaon would be there, too. Perhaps their father, whom none of them had ever met. All the misfortune of her life, whisked away, just like that.

But Phaedra and Thade and, yes, even Tiercel, who surely hated Wylla, they were worth it. It didn't feel that way sometimes, but slowly, she was moving past the notion that she was owed anything in life. What she wanted, she would have to take for herself by her own merits, and if she could not have something, then it simply meant there was something better waiting for her. She had to believe that, or everything was for nothing.

Like hell, she answered honestly, lifting a bony ankle and scooping the muskrat's heart toward her. She hardly hesitated before scarfing it with the hope that she would be able to hold it down in her stomach. Wylla even primly picked at the white toes where she'd touched the thing, eager to demonstrate to Phaedra that she was well, even if she wasn't. Better now with you here, she added with a smile.

Tell me about your adventure with your papa, bid Wylla while she reached, a little less eagerly, for a liver. She hoped to escape the weight of reality with her daughter for just a little while.