Swiftcurrent Creek your heart [m]

How often she heard her friends now. So fondly listened to, so raptly; a lovers words whispered on their last breath. She listened to them, rapt, hungry. (Tell me more tell me more tell me more...) But she was patient, always patient; it was they who had earned that, no others. Clarice respected them as she could no other being. She was theirs, always. They knew it now in the leanness of her figure. How, so much like her father, her bones jut from her skin. Puss oozed from old, self-inflicted wounds—WE SPEAK TO YOU, CLARICE, THROUGH YOU! SHOW US YOU CAN HEAR—but they were healing, brown clung to the edges of them. She knew how to heal; she had learned much. Her absence this time was for her father, her promise to not leave him thus far kept. The voices did not demand she stray, so she lingered. Only he could see Sos and the spirits as she could; she, his protege, successor, followed him to see for herself. And o, he could; she never doubted it.
xxxxxxxClaaaariiiicceeeee.... A whisper in her mind, a beckoning. She does not pause in her movements, she need not stop to hear them any longer; they speak to her as they please. But her ears shift, a hint that she is listening, a hint that something is heard, shifting slightly, falling backward in reverence, then leaning slightly forward in attention. The madwoman does not falter in her step any longer. She is confident in her otherworldly abilities, her God given gift, and it shows even despite her frailty.
xxxxxxThe devout woman breathes in the air. Enough. Consume. We stay. Clarice moves quicker now, moving beside her father. Clarice is wolf even despite her wild beliefs, but she postures for a brief moment, tests, allowing her ears to remain erect and her strut to remain confident, proud. They say to end the fast, she rasps, To consume. It was no test. She had seen their tests in deranged visions, and had passed them by making them real. The truth was in their voice, mighty, strong. They had taken much from themselves, and their sacrifice, realized. They say that they stay! The girl is thrilled, overjoyed; they had never left her, but behaved as the tide would, receding sometimes only to return. But to hear them say it—
xxxxxxIt was cause to celebrate.