Blackfeather Woods my life and all seemed turned to clay

set for tomorrow morning, wolfskull cave

was she mad?
am i mad?
it was the reverberation within her skull — she pawed through years of yellowed old bones, setting aside the ones she wanted for an effigy.
for him
sithis watched in eagerness, mephala with distaste. 
it is not a good thing you are going to do.
femur, tibia, metacarpal. all belonging to wolves who had mouldered to ruin in this cave.
tailtip, scapula; the bone pile grew alongside her, and still she dug.
what will you do if it does not work?
it will! relmyna snapped, desperate; seafoam eyes wild, she straightened to tilt back her crown and summon @Astara. 
bring me the skull.

she wanted to ignore that call when she heard it, knowing by the creep in her bones something black and befouled was at hand. the nightcub knew better than to ignore the summons of her dam, but it did not stop the worming feeling in her gut.

she dragged the pale skull behind her, a ghastly shadow that thunked thunked thunked in chatterwhite remonstration to each step. she found her mother astride a strangely assembled cairn, a distant frenzy to those turquoise eyes that made even astara shiver.

around astara a thousand shadows shifted into motion. the skull clattered to the ground, the echoes radiating in grim rebounds through the eldritch forest.

And wherever Squeaky was, the white shadow was somewhere nearby. Large ears folded forward when she heard the call, and she beckoned even if it was not for her. It did not take the spirit long to find Squeaky, the dark one, dragging something along that thud-thudded to the ground grimly. A dead smile stared at the pale child as she looked to see what it was. She remained in the darkness of the forest even though her pale fur gave her away easily, and even though without a doubt Squeaky had already picked up her scent or noticed her in some other way; maybe even simply knew that she was there without needing to hear her say it. She followed in silence while the whispers in her ears beckoned her closer to this.. whatever was happening.

feel free to skip me unless they address her :)

her nightcub arrived, and the daycub followed. with astara, the skull; with averna, a look of consternation. her little ghosts. relmyna glanced between them, but said nothing, her voice dead in her throat, her eyes a burning coal-death. 
she did not so much ask the skull from astara as she took it; the listener stepped forward and warned her daughter away from the grim and eyeless thing with an expression that dared the child to do anything else. surrender; in this moment relmyna belonged only to herself. grasping the ivoried thing, the woman dragged it to the head of the pile, and began to sweep a clearing.
she arranged the bones she had found in the rough outline of a wolf, and placed what astara had brought at its head. a long breath; sithis whispered, and her eyes closed as she sought grounding before gesturing her daughters closer.

the dead's talisman was taken from her; astara watched, offering no resistance as her dam plucked the heavy burden from her mouth, and settled it on a strangely arrayed cairn. her ghost of a sister hovered quietly alongside her, and astara spared the daycub the briefest of silent glances.

what was their mother doing? her expression remained vexed, but interested -- and somewhere in her mind a voice whispered to make her mother's pains her prey, to scramble the bones and nick the skull from its sorrowful position -- but astara held fast and still.

The ghostly child remained at a respectful distance while voices whispered in her head. Do it, do it, do it they seemed to chant, but it was hard to make out because they were all whispering at once and so the pale child could not make out most of what they said, truly. She licked her lips and watched. Squeaky looked at her as if trying to figure out if she knew what the caretaker was up to, but no answer came but a sassily quirked eyebrow.

When the caretaker gestured not just Squeaky, but the spirit forward to, she easily obliged. The voices had already told her to do it, after all, and it was in her curious nature to try this out, no matter what. The spirit arched her neck and ears perked forward in silent question as she treat closer as instructed and looked upon the caretaker.

she felt interest and trepidation stirring among her children, but relmyna was beyond coddling them. not for this. her lips moved in a silent chant
blood
and then they stopped, her gaze gathering a cold somberness that reflected in her regard of both astara and averna. in their veins ran cicero's lineage, and the last element for her spellcasting. slowly she extended a paw, nicked a small cut in its pad with her teeth, and placed it upon the wolfskull. gaze fell to her daughters then: would they understand, or must relmyna violate the role of mother, and take from her brood what was necessary?
sithis whispered.

astara remained immobile -- at least until averna stepped forward with an envious ease. the nightcub's gaze flickered -- was it jealously? contempt? -- as her sibling vied for the title of 'most obedient of relmyna's brood'.

in the way that averna straddled the realm between living and arcane, astara held far more fast to the physical realm -- her sister was the ghost, the wraith, the spirit -- and astara the physical embodiment of the daedric will that pulsed through their hounding blood. she may have heard the raspy whisperings same as averna, but her will was her own -- she heeded only what benefited her.

in that moment her dam had sliced open her calloused paw; astara watched as virile crimson rose along the studded black of her dam's pawpad. she tensed, knowing what came next. the sight of blood stroke a sleeping quality in her to life; she felt her heart pump in rowdy motions, adrenaline seizing her in nervous intensity.

she was so reluctant to give her own paw for injury -- but the cold regard in her dam's eyes somehow suggested anything but compliance would be harshly met. resigned, the nightcub mimicked her mother's motion with a decisive nick of her teeth. placing her blooded paw on the skull, astara's thin frame buzzed with an unapproving, deep growl.

She knows, whispered the voices in her ears. Do it, for she knows what must be done. They had never spoken to clearly to the pale child before -- usually all she heard were whispers in foreign languages she did not understand, or a hundred voices speaking at once -- and she headed their call for they were spirits too. They knew what was good for the spirit child, she believed that, and so she stepped forward.

The caretaker went first to donate her blood. Squeaky followed soon after. Then it was the spirit's turn, who used her teeth to bite a wound a bit higher up on her leg. A place with less nerves and less lasting pain and inconvenience when walking, from where the blood trickled down to her paw pads so that it would drip onto the skull and merge there with the blood of her relatives.

astara seemed as if she would hesitate, averna did not. nightcub, daycub, each with their own purpose, and now their blood mingled with that of their mother to drip in dark rivulets down into the eyesockets of the grinning wolfskull. 
cicero.
relmyna fixed within her mind the last memory she had of the patchwork poisoner alive, and was chagrined to find that his face had begun to grow hazy 'round the edges. the telltale throb of a migraine began to beat in the back of her skull, but the woman was determined to push beyond it, to gain the sentience of her former lover's spirit and bring it to the fore.
mother
let him come let him come let him be present
an eldritch chill, not from winter's breath, began to steal through the cave, and she paused only briefly to consider what it could be before refocusing her efforts upon conjuring the dead man's spirit.
attend your daughters, cicero — they have need of you

there on the plain white of the wolf's skull their blood converged, red trickling against stark white like some obscene talisman. astara was first to withdraw her paw, her gaze mistrusting as she watched her mother's eyes flicker. a tendril of a voice, barely audible between the shiver of the trees, caused astara's ears to stir -- but as she listened harder, the words disappeared.

a chill had settled around them, and it seeped through her skin like icy water. her feral gaze fixated on the two of them - relmyna and averna both - for she sensed rather than saw a new presence coldly sitting among them.

The moment the blood was added, everything changed. The air grew colder, a chill in the air that blew through the spirit's fur. A shiver ran down her spine and she stared at the blood, though her pale eyes did not truly seem to focus upon anything mortal or physical in this realm. She breathed steadily as she fell into a sort of trance.

There before her she saw a blur, a ghost, perhaps. One eye one colour, the other another. She stared into the air where she saw his visage and he whispered the words to her, like Sithis would. She could not make out his face or the colours of his fur or his eyes but he was there, she was sure of it -- proven by his whispered words...

The outer world is a reflection of the inner world, the vague visage of a man murmured to her, and her glossed over eyes stared at it, not understanding the words -- their meaning, anyway -- but taking them with her, anyway.

cicero arrived, or perhaps his shade. or maybe — maybe she had only fooled herself, and had brought a new horror to reside in blackfeather. yet when the listener looked upon the faces of her daughters, they too had responded to the chill that settled between them. 
if their father was present, relmyna could not see him. but that had not been one of her gifts; it belonged to averna. and the mingling of flesh with spirit was astara's own. how could she doubt them, these melonii children who had been born of the ancient line?
salt upon her lips; she shut her eyes again and continued to murmur him into existence, finding it harder to hold him between the planes.

astara felt her lip quiver, an old fear settling in her bones as she sensed, rather than saw, a dark shade overcome them. she could hear between the chill the chattering of teeth, of indecipherable whispers -- and the rush of spirits moving between planes unseen.

moreover, she saw a change overcome averna -- her eyes trained on the spot where the daycub looked, transfixed -- astara felt a primal snarl loosen in her throat, and she sprung towards the daemon with teeth bared --stay the fuck away from my sister!

yet her teeth clinched around nothing; the girl fell to the ground, feeling a constrictive cold descend in her throat that cowed her temper, and forced her downwards.

distrustfully, the girl stared at the simmering shade that distorted their field of vision, a resentful growl still reverberating in her throat.

More, she wished to hear more from this fellow spirit, this real spirit. Where she stood one paw in the spirit world and one paw in this, he was fully in the spirit world, far far away from her, from them.

Transfixed she was upon the spirit, wishing for it to tell her all of its wisdom. But its presence to her mind was only short-lived. Squeaky jumped at it and as it vanished the pale youth fell to the ground, the trance she had been in lost. For but a moment she lost consciousness, and when she came to the world was shifting all around her, her head dizzy, but she could no lo longer see nor feel the spirit that had shared its wisdom with her.

astara, such a reactive child. relmyna gave a low croon, sighing as the shade of cicero left the three of them, and glanced ruefully between her daughters as the cold began to lift. your father, she explained, not expecting to be understood. she doubted either of them could grasp the concept of such. they were intelligent, yes, but theirs was a spiritual intuition, not one of mortal flesh. 
suddenly exhausted, energy leeched by the efforts here, relmyna lay down near the bones, placing her chin atop the bloodied skull and giving a single thump of her plume in invitation for astara and averna to join her, if they so wished.