Sawtooth Spire the first time that i sought for grace

backdated to before she had spoken her first word, idk dates, yolo

late to bed, early to rise was the phaedra modus vivendi.
after @Mahler had SANK HER HEART into a frozen lake, she slept in fits and starts until daybreak. seldom did the lamb rebel against the commandments of her mother (such as "never, ever, leave the den without me or your father present"), but she felt such torment being the only one sitting awake, bored half to death, feeling secretly with a scald on her soul from yesternight. tears dewed anew in her eyes when the keepsake of it flumped unwanted in her memory, and it was then phaedra decided she wasn't going to sit around and harbour her hurt any longer. she dried her cheeks with a swipe of her wrist.
carefully extracting herself from the corner of the den, phaedra tiptoed over slumbering bodies, freezing when thade restlessly shifted positions, and made extra care not to disturb ... australia, wasn't it? snuggled against wylla's belly. glaaaare.
when the first light of dayglow haloed her crown as she stole from the den, she sighed out the tension she'd been holding in her body.
knowing her brother and australia still slept soundly within, it wasn’t them she was concerned about. casting a scrutinizing glance back into the den; her head was on a swivel as she searched the darkness for the form of her mother. she didn’t need to see her though—a snuffling snore reached her ears, a sound like a congested rhino unique to wylla’s coma-like sleeps. she wouldn't wake for another hour yet, phaedra was sure of it.
with one last wry look cast at her milk-burglar, she perked up with mischief and eagerness and a tummyful of nervousness for good measure. without time to spare she sprang off her haunches and stepped lively towards her garden and fairy circle (with those apparent dEaDlY muchflooms), nose to the ground in search of the frog she’d met the evening before. 
she paused and hummed to herself. thinking back. it came to her; it'd gone through the ferns by the rock just at the base of their peach tree. she loped up to the tree, and hesitated for a brief moment, as if confabbing with the devil on her shoulder, before shouldering through the broadleaf and gorse. don’t go past the cloudberry bushes her mind whispered with guilt. another commandment. well, to her credit, she hadn’t seen any bushes growing clouds, only berries! maybe her mother meant don't go past bushes after it rained? were the cloudberries rain? what a convoluted way of wording that rule. besides, it hadn't rained last night, so all bushes were fair game, then.
it stood up in court. perhaps not wylla’s court, but definitely in the court of technicalities, which was much more official and pardonable when it came to the whims of diablerie (she was sure of this also).  
looking around, her eyes wayfared the new sights around her. usually papa or mama were with her on these excursions, and they’d never taken her down this footpath, which pulsated trepidation hot behind her ears. lots of green stuff. the frog was green. this would be a very difficult pursuit. burying her qualms, she pushed through all-things-vert. 
as noises crinkled and snapped around her, her ears splayed, and another vein of fear opened in her mind, manifesting all sorts of imaginative bogymen. she was about to turn back around and abandon her quest when she heard roo-roo-room. she gasped with a softly mischievous titter and the fear of her surroundings was momentarily staunched by the discovery of a creek sown with moss and boulders and honeyed sunlight. the frog’s call was answered by more melodies of his kind, and crickets, and other insect chirrupings she couldn’t identify.
this puptopia was only one ... two ... three ...about three hundred steps, by her reliable estimate, from her den, and her parents had never brought her here? it was so beautiful, and the water!; she and thade and australia she supposed would have so much fun here! why had they kept it hidden from their bairns’ eyes? she felt almost sour for its secrecy. 
but the mäuschen didn’t have an adult’s awareness of the world, never mind an awareness of the dangers a creek like this posed to a girl in the springtime of life. her mind didn’t parse her actions as reckless, let alone detrimental to her wellbeing—all she knew was that she had a frog gentleman to find.
wading and splashing around the shallow puddles, midst her glee she glanced down and caught the mirror image of herself reflecting back in the slow undulations of the water. she cocked her head, eyes opening wide with surprise when the girl  in the water mimicked her perfectly. she was persuaded to plunge her face into the cold water to enter the new realm she was certain existed, when—
roo-roo-room phaedra jerked her head up, bestrewing water as she spun about, looking to and fro before finally pinning her gaze on an amphibian sitting monk-like on a rock across the wide yawning of creek.
the cub paced back and forth, wanting oh-so-dearly to go meet the frog and his wife and maybe even their children! they would have plenty of sun-upness to play in, papa frog wouldn't be such a sourpuss to her, and most importantly nobody would force her to sleep next to dumb boys who kicked her in their sleep because all of the frog's children were girls like her. she just knew it. she'd yarned a perfect life for herself in her head, spinning it around and around all the hurts inside until life was a fairytale, not a drama.  
still, she didn’t how to get to the frog's home across the water. up to her toes was the deepest she’d ever been in water, now she was wrist deep, and its lick was still more of bite even though wintertime had flown.
phaedra’s eyes sought a workable course of action ... 
the rocks! pleased with her cleverness, she clumsily shinnied up the first rock, its tabletop pleasantly warm and dry. simplicity itself. with a grunt she leapt to the next piece of stonework, then the next, each stone growing smaller under the pads of her feet until cool water streamed over her toes. phaedra looked behind her and thought with uneasiness pretzeling in her guts how much harder it would be to jump high than low to get herself back to the side that took her home. 
determined, she faced her next move, shivering from the cold sluicing over her feet. summoning a resolute breath and sucking it into to the sea of her doubt, she stooped and pounced towards the next plinth.
a grunt barged into her chest. she hadn’t anticipated how slippery this one would be, nor did she consider that the round boulders would be the hardest to negotiate with. bitter dread chilled her bones as she tried to hoist herself up and couldn’t. her hind-legs sculled desperately, claws scrabbling against the schist.  
in the next heartbeat her wan strength surrendered her to the water.
though this stream had chasmic, fast-moving pockets of water that would have drowned her in mere seconds, by the devil's own luck, phaedra had fallen into water that was only elbow depth for any adult.
even so, she was small for her age, and had never swam before, so panic seized her like a sunflash, swift. ”b-bab-aaa! mma—mmffrgl—” she despairingly cried as her throat burbled with water.
her voice, like her, was so minikin she knew the ransom for her life would never reach her pleaded rescuers, so she had to rescue herself. her nose sputtered with water (an uncomfortably familiar sensation; the echo within the echo of an echo of a memory lost forever to her conscious, but humming behind her ears), natheless she forced herself to calm down and extend with her backlegs. she could only just touch the silty bottom with her toes and then, instinct urged her forelegs to
tread tread tread
carrying her with some resistence on the water for what felt like a lifetime until she could raise herself up with trembling legs and schlepp her body upon a sunbaked slab of granite. dripping wet, she shuddered violently with adrenaline and fear, mouth panting from the effort of swimming. the anchor of fatigue pulled her into a heap on the stone.
swimming. she’d swam. all by herself, she realized. she rescued herself (from rather shallow water, but the fact remained ...)! in the rubble of dismay sitting in her stomach, a little jewel, a ruby of dignity, glistered. she’d have grinned to herself were she not so laden with exhaustion.
roo-roo-roo- she heard him somewhere, but instead of following that siren song, the drowned lamb made origami of herself and rested against the rock, surrounded by that treacherous water.
sun warm on her back, she fluttered her lashes sleepily until her eyes closed her to the world.