Wheeling Gull Isle My name is Bilius Felcrex

This wasn't normal.
For weeks, Ava had been ignoring Dinah at best and downright malevolent towards her at worst.
Dinah never spoke to Daddy nor Mama about it directly — they wouldn't believe her. Nor did she bring it up to her brothers — they wouldn't understand.
She tried to distract herself, tried to pretend as if everything was fine. She sunk her head down into prayer and the study of the world around her, which, as she grew, she had begun to take more seriously. She sought knowledge about the pretty flowers and rocks she picked, the creatures who lived in the waters and sandbanks and woodlands. She grew smarter as she did taller, as little freckles began to dot her sunkissed face and the last weeks of summer began to set in.
She prayed; oh, how she prayed, and she had still received no answer.
The seedling of doubt had been planted. Doubt in Mama and Daddy and her brothers, doubt in the big wide world Gramma Towhee promised was waiting for her. Doubt in God.
When feral darkling Ana is spotted among the fields, flowers trampled beneath her and a stem lodged between her molars, Dinah thinks very little of it.
You shouldn't eat plants you don't know the name of, she is guarded, short in her greeting. She keeps her distance and her tail low, her big blue eyes narrowed into slits. She doesn't smile, for with all she knew, this one, too, could turn on her. they can hurt you. It's not safe.