Bearclaw Valley open up your skull, i'll be there

something in athalia had shifted.
in the days following ashkova's return, she could not stop herself from questioning — why. why. why. he had left. he had left. he had left. he was as good to her as dead, and yet he had the gall to assume she would ever want anything to do with him again. just like mother. mother who came and went, sometimes multiple times a day, and other times she did not see her for weeks. why? why? why? where did she go when she was gone? why did it not feel like she was really — here?
with ancelin and ameline busy, athalia was left now to her own thoughts, and think she did. she spent most of her afternoons pacing in pointless circles to the point there was now a divot in the reeds just beyond the stretch of path leading to the whelping den. when she was not pacing, she was motionless, sprawled on her side or on her belly, watching the birds. the birds. the birds. they had finally, finally, finally come back to her. her birds.
athalia felt like a jumbled puddle of goop, disjointed, discombobulated, disoriented. her thoughts traveled around her brain at lightning speed, going going going going going going until they would sometimes stop completely as if she had not been thinking at all, as if she were lifeless, as if
they were not her own
the thoughts, the thoughts, they had been ripped right from her head, stolen, squeezed from her like pulp from a fruit
but who and why and who and why and who and why and
ashkova ashkova mom ashkova mother mother ash ash ash mother mother it was her wasn't it she was stealing them she had sent ashkova here she knew where she was she was coming coming coming coming coming
she needed — to hide. yes, hide, yes yes, go away away away and so that was what she did, the bruingirl, dragging herself out out out into the hidden reaches of the valley near the rotten remains of what was once an altar for a god she did not know. she did not eat. did not sleep. could not. would not. could not.
here she would have to stay.