Sawtooth Spire i've heard about this frog, it's a very tiny frog, but it's also very special

@Stag ?

”ooo hello bubble flowder,” phaedra rounded on a dandelion, prancing on paws that were growing somehow or other even clumsier in stride. she tenderly reached out to pat their skittish white heads. ”don’d wun away okay pleads. ids phaedwa.” she whispered as quietly as she could.
the first time she saw dandelions she was so intrigued her gales of laughter made all the white tufts scatter to the wind, leaving a headless stem.
now she knew she needed to be respectful and hushed if she desired their presence in her garden. 
the little botanist got comfortable on her round belly and watched the toing and froing of the flowers as the wind billowed around them. she noticed that their heads were not guillotined by the earth’s own huff, only hers.
bemusement worked its knuckles into her brow as she thought about it, eyes (color in smithers, so indecisive on any given day what hue they wanted to be) staring dozily at the dandelion under the flush of the morning sun. 

Morningtide brought the soft giggles of a girl in the glade; Stag had been on his way to look for the rock he'd lost yesterday when he heard Phaedra. Deciding to alter course and skitting past whichever parent it was lurking nearby, Stag watched as the little cherub engaged in hearty talk with a bobbing dandelion head.

Grinning, Stag turned and sped off to a spot where he had seen a bunch of dandelions just on the cusp of dispersing. When he returned, he had a mouthful of the stringy stalks, his face twisted in simultaneous excitement and noted grimacing from their bitterness. Supplanting the bouquet at Phaedra's (evergrowing) feet, Stag was about to speak when suddenly, 

"AAHCHOOO!!"

Spring showers, amirite?

as she was gossiping away to the lonely dandelion, clownfeet’s unmistakable figure suddenly appeared on a ridge and approached phaedra with a bouquet of the very same flowers. she audibly gasped, smiling and aglow with reverence as he entrusted her with the assortment he’d found. she didn’t even have words! thanks would be nice, but she was too distracted by the flowers for courtesy protocol. 
as he’d noticed her feet had grown (rather faster than the rest of her), she took note of his close departure from puberty into young adulthood. not that she could make sense of these things. ”dey-“ just as she was about to make mention of the bouquet's beauty (and talk over him), the klinge blustered a sneeze right in her face and the dandelions he’d endued her with scattered to the wind in a white tide, noping out of the way of this covid-19 liability. 
after a moment, phaedra pinched one eye open, hare-like ears airplaned. ”gesundheid …” she remarked flatly, repeating a phrase her father said to her any time she had the sneezes. 
looking down at her beheaded stems, she sighed a deep breath. spreading her paws, she let the dead spindles fall into the grass and clutched one preserved bloom carefully. ”bubble flowders don dalk back, buhhh …" she turned her head sidelong and closed her mouth around what she meant to say, opting instead for a simpler: "... would be good dey did.” cause i don’t really have anyone else to talk to about my feelings and the flowers are very good at keeping secrets. 
it was a very long winded confession and her impeded tongue was all bruised-knees from tripping over cumbersome words. "come do see me?" 

Stag's mouth clapped shut, but it was too late to stop the pitter-patter of residue that dewdropped about like the world's most unsanitary rainshower. Phaedra didn't seem to mind, babbling a graceful geshundeid, not that Stag had any earthly idea what that meant.

He lowered himself to the dirt as Phaedra clutched one remaining stalk; busying himself with rubbing his snotty nose with one clown-paw (mostly to stifle the second coming of sneezefits). Bubbleflowers. He grinned, liking that nickname way more than the name he had become accustomed to referring to them as. Dandelions sounded so pale in comparison.

"Bubbleflowers can listen, though." Stag tried to console her cheerily, getting wind that something might be amiss even if he wasn't the most astute observer. "Do you wanna see more? I can bring you bubbleflowers every day." WELL - as long as the season lasted anyway. Come winter, Phaedra would have to settle for a bundle of sticks, or something.

the moonpoured child considered this revelation that her bubbleflowers could hear her talking to them with a blank face. then, she proferred a small smile. she rathered they speak back, to intrust her with their (surely wise!) input  as she intrusted them with her secrets.
she’d never been instilled with the belief that if you deliberately blew on a dandelion and made a wish, it would perhaps come true—mostly because there was nobody to regale these things to her recently. be that as in may, if you could achieve your aims simply by wishing for them, life would be very easy. 
so far, the sum of her wishes totaled up to bupkis. 
”wen dhey awen'd wunning away!” she said of the dandelion’s pappus hairs and their skittish nature, the emptiness on her face refilling with the ambrosia of her giggles that belled sweetly into the air. clownfeet, to her, was as grownup as mama and papa, but in his presence the maze of her mind and the tarpit in her stomach didn’t so much as foment a single intrusive bitter thought. therefore, he was officially the best kind of grown-up there was. 
”even mowe?” her mouth gaped as she bellied closer to him with mesmerism. ”wad di’do wid dhem aw … ” said in a whispery breath to herself—and he would visit her every day?! the loneliness in her heart kvelled, conjuring in her mind images of days in the company of the chummy yearling. she nodded at his overture with earnest longing.  
suddenly remembering the surviving bubbleflower, she cast her eyes about the grass, but couldn’t find it anywhere—mostly because it’d been squished beneath her tummy when she crawled towards clownfeet. 
she twisted her lips in thought, then decided it’d flown off as well. 
she stood to her knobby little knees, the flower stuck to her undercarriage unbeknownst to her, and booped stag on the nose with a tittering laugh. ”kiss chase! yaw'id!” she declared, darting off and then wheeling around, waiting once she had put several feet of distance between them before play-bowing enticingly. ”if you can cadch me dat ids! i’m fasd!” she warned with a whimsical look before whisking away into a thin copse of trees.

Stag nodded austerely, his long ears flat as he inferred: "That's a clownfoot promise." He'd bring her dandelions every day -- as long as they were around. Like before, sticks would have to suffice when things got lean, and summer faded to winter - but he could deal with that then, not now.

Being almost-adult, Stag had a bit of that older-than-thou-shrewdness lingering as he watched Phaedra wriggle forward on her belly, crushing the last surviving bubbleflower; ah well -- it had plenty of kith to spread its legacy. He mirrored her worm-crawl, resigning to his belly when she suddenly reared off like a colt in frolic; blinking as her paws rapped his nose, Stag delayed his chase just long enough to give the little scallywag a headstart. "Kiss chase?" He parroted back, grasping the concept of the game immediately by its tell-tale name. Oh, if that's the game she wanted to play.

Surging after the fleetfooted bubble-stomper, Stag made every effort to appear as if he were running as fast as he was able without allowing the distance between them to dwindle. As Phaedra's form bobbled and weaved between the sapling studded copse, Stag gave a playful growl and a fierce "Immagetchu!!" as he gave chase.

with pealing giggles she scuttlebutted her way across the tree-clad terrain, in her mind really pulling down the clutch as she lolloped over roots like an overzealous filly and shimmied under logs that were too high for to jump without effectively clothes-lining herself. "noyounooooooodt!" she hallooed back, casting an arch grin over her shoulder, and while not watching where she was going fell into a boobytrap and was skewered on punji sticks. 
her features plied elfin as she modified the rules of the game and found an old wolverine holt (incidentally, abandoned and smelling nothing of its former tenant which would have drove her out in double quick time). going at his leisurely pace, phaedra slipped into the earth and laid on her belly before stag might see her, ears pinned flat against her skull as she waited for his white, praying mantis legs to voyage past her.
tricksy little hobbitses.

No impalements, no "You Died", no Punji sticks plz.

Stag loped after the cherub, grinning wildly. He took special care to avoid any sort of replay of what had happened to him during the whole Katya-Noir/Wylla tree debacle; his head still sported a permanent dent from that nonsense, and he was not keen on revisiting bashing his skull in.

Stag's long legs pulled him past the hole Phaedra had scampered down and expertly hid herself in; truth be told, he had smelled her path diverged under this untread holt, but rather than spoil the game, Stag opted to play clueless -- and he played stupid and clueless quite well.

"Where did she go?!" Stag stage-muttered, his clow-footin' praying-mantising feet traipsing up and down past the hole's entrance. "Slippery little weasel!" He called, feigning total loss.

never imagined him as michael cera til now

she hunkered lower as his pasty legs milled round outside the holt, muffling a giggle behind her paw as he made a production of her sudden disappearance. oh man, she was good. she could hole up here for hours and let him stravaig, keeping his kiss to himself!
of course, this wasn't fairness in concerns to the nature of the game, but life wasn't fair and then you died. or that's what she was told, anyways. 
alas, her tail was thumping against the dirt hard enough to stir a cloud of dirt around her and she started coughing and sneezing involuntarily. ok, enough of this.
phaedra, none-the-wiser that she had been found out by her own scent trail long before now, flushed forth from her hiding place with a wheeze and a "BOO!" 
"am nod an weadsel! a phaedra!" she informed him, secondly. whatever the heck a weasel was, she knew she was not one. it was okay, though, some people needed reminding of these things more often than others. 
"you di'nd kiss meeeeee!" she reminded him in sing-song challenge, plucking gamely about him and slipping into a playbow with her tail switching the air. 

Michael Clownfeet continued his clueless traipsing around the holt, ignoring the thumping of Phaedra's willywagging tail, and the tiny giggles, sneezes, and dirt-cloud that all but put a target mark on exactly where Phaedra was hiding.

BOO! Stag jumped like a startled deer, bounding ahead on long and gangly limbs as he gasped and issued a girlish scream, which he would tell you was purely for theatrical dramatics, but his author would tell you he came by that effemminate squeal honestly. Overcoming his startlement, Stag tripped as he turned around, collecting his balance with a grin. "You scared me, mauschen!" he said breathlessly, looming close like Donkey does when he expects a donut but doesn't want to go near the fence: "You didn't get a kiss?" Not a weasel, eh? Let's see her slip out of this one. His mouth was an open o, as if he had just been reminded of his goal and had forgotten because all his brains were in his clowny feet: "oh! well, let me fix that --" and then he swooped in, pucky kissy lips and all, aiming a wet smooch right on the cherub's angelic little head.

she burst into a shrieking fit of giggles when her friend pronked like a newborn springbok at her very effective jump-scare, struck briefly cataplectic by the intensity of her laughter. her eyes teared up, one nostril blowing a snot bubble that grew and shrank with her breathing before popping against her nose. yum.
then, he called her a name she knew to be smithed from her father's tongue, and her heart felt like icecream sliding off its cone. she gasped, a smile unscrolling across her face.
before she had a chance to ask the question moored to her tongue, he advanced towards her with his mouth all prepped for kissin'. "sday back! ams adually a dragon!" she backed, trying to feign seriousness but unable to suppress the giggle that came out like a hiccup, muffled it behind the crook of her wrist. 
she screeched when he swooped in for the kill. afraid of phaedras, but nae afraid of dragons, eh clownfeet? giggles again erupted from her, so hard her belly hurt, when he caught her and left his kiss upon her crown. the pale bairn batted him away with the soft petals of her feet, pinching one eye shut. "you makin' ma head all gooey! greadt!! now ims gon' wake up an snell!" she said, casting her mind back to the snail mama showed her and shuddering upon the memory of its snotty trail and wobbly eye stalks. 
phaedra's mind was in equal parts annoying and brilliant in that it always somehow, be it a few minutes or a few days or weeks, circled back to even the smallest things that intrigued or confused her. "you know—" she looked conspiratorally around, like someone might be eavesdropping on their convo, then dropped her voice below a whisper. "—secred words? mama like id beddar when i says things ... well like you n me doin now, stinkendzehen!" she scrubbed her head to get whatever slime his lips may have left there and gave him a look expectantly, sussing him out for any offense, before quirking a grin. "don' worry. ids mean 'stongesd deer'!" she fibbed as smoothly as if she were telling him his legs were like white poplar saplings. 
damn papa if he'd taught the boy enough german to call her bluff.

A dragon, huh? Stag slowed his advancement for only a beat, as if considering his mortality in the face of such mystic greatness. Was a kiss worth it?

Hell yes.

He swooped in amid Phaedra's shrieks and giggles of protest. "If you're a dragon THEN I'm a unicorn." He struck a brief pose; one that he imagined was evocative, powerful, and graceful just like the fabled horse -- but really just made him look like he was mid grand mal seizure. He grinned and loped after Phaedra, waggling his tongue out after her. "You smell already." He taunted, but the grin still remained: "like bubbleflowers and your stinky brother." Stag might have had a moment to insert any other not-so-witty retort, but Phaedra had advanced the conversation to something else: his pitiful mastery of sekrit words.

Mahler hadn't taught Stag much directly; most of what he knew was through hearing the man talk or comment on something absentmindedly. His brow pulled in concentration -- that didnt' sound like the word Mahler had used once for deer, but he was sure Phaedra was too sweet to lie (ya rite). "Oh, is that what it means?" His voice was similarly hushed, as if they were two thieves in a vault divvying up the goods: "What other sekrit words do you know, o great Dragonaedra?"

their threads make me smile

she puffed up with indignation at his comment. "I SAID SNELL NOT SMELL!" her inner-dragon yawned in the bright blue of her eyes, breathing fire into his own as he asserted she smelled! how dare.
damn speech impediment, causing her tongue to do gymnastics that would make olympians look like amateurs. she smoothed down the skirts of her offense, and smiled treacly at him in the moment that followed. "bubbleflowders don'd have a smell, yow nose is jus' all sduffed up from smellin yow own feedts alls day!!" she asserted, pinning his gaze with a sidelong cant of her head and an uptick of her brow. 
when he questioned her sincerity, innocence adorned her expression in toto and never once quoke under the pressure of her own pity for taking the fool. if there was any one thing phaedra naturally eclipsed her peers at, it was telling lies. just little white ones. she did, after all, put the kid in kidology.
"ja!" she dithered on the soles of her feet in a little bunny hop. "dadt means 'yes'!" she informed him a little louder than she intended to. he probably knew that one already, but she had no way of knowing!
she did like her new sobriquets. mauschen made her feel as though the sun was inside her chest, but dragonaedra? well, there was just no topping it, really. "uuummm ... mosly whad papa helps me wid." she shrugged, albeit unhelpfully. "i knows hows do say, 'guden dag, sdinkendzehen!' dadt mean 'good day, sdin—rongesd deer'! buh hallo means like hello, an ids easier fow me do say." she admitted shyly, before rounding on him with a sudden proposition.
"hows boud dis. you bring me bubbleflowders, and i deach you a new secred word! dodays secred word ids geheimnis." she shot him a challenging look. "now you guess whad ids mean an' i dell you one. lasd. secred." phaedra whispered.

SAMESIESAME

Ooops. Snail. Stag's ears airplaned as he realized his error, hoping she would gloss over it. Phaedragon's eyes flashed with umbrage -- the very nerve of him to insinuate!! Well, he deserved whatever sass she delivered.

Stag gasped and looked at his feet, then back up to Phaedra. "They're nice feet." He replied quietly, as if greviously wounded. Only, he couldn't hide that rogue grin that started creeping its way around his snout like mountain ivy -- "Wanna smell?" He thrust them playfully after Phaedra, retracting quickly before any teeth found their way into his clownshoes.

"Ja," Stag repeated after Phaedra, squinching ever so slightly as she fumbled over the real meaning of stinkendzehen. Hmm, suspicious. Strongest deer? Sure Jan.

Never-the-less, Stag was roped in hook line and sinker by Phaedra's willful look and subsequent promise to reveal more words in Mahler's tongue. Maybe one day he could impress the general by speaking his native tongue fluently -- if that day ever came, Stag would indeed be the proudest, strongest deer. "Okay, deal. Is gemenenehinis..." He looked around as if concentrating before bringing hs gaze back to Phaedra: "does it mean you're a stinky weasel?"

 ❤__❤ 

she snickered when he made a pretense of indignation, "ewwwww giddem aways froms me!" he need not be concerned about her teeth. she recoiled when he thrust his tootsies at her, her face contorting into reluct like a vampire being offered garlic breadsticks in an olive garden. who willingly put smelly feet in their mouths?! well, ahem, there was a demographic. she was still too innocent to learn about that monster hiding under her bed.
"ja!" she praised him on the easiest word in the german language. "gute arbeid." she added. 

phaedra was delighted when he agreed to the transaction. of course, the girl would be a more effective teacher if her tongue would stop doing somersaults in her mouth whenever she spoke, but then again, he was accepting duolingo lessons from a toddler, so that was on him. 
giggles spontaneously ensued when stag tripped over the pronunciation of geheimnis. she brought a paw to her lips, quelling her fun-making so as not to embarrass michael cera clownfeet, first of his name. maybe she should have gone with an easier word. besides, she had no room to talk. german came more easily to her, yet common was difficult to grasp despite it being her primary mother-tongue. 

she gaped with affront at his presumption, wrinkling her blush nose at him while also sticking her tongue out. "nein, 'sdinky weadsol' ids sdag in secred language." she passed the puck back to him, bumping her shoulder against his legs playfully. "geheimnis means 'secred'. ims deachin' you das geheimnis words." the bairn informed him.
she abruptly jumped in front of his path and locked her sunrise eyes with his own. "mm ok, lasd geheimnis for doday. wwweadyy?" she oriented her head towards him as if this was going to be the biggest challenge of them all. 

Stag's feet definitely weren't as appetizing as Olive Garden's bread sticks -- or Red Lobster's biscuits for that matter. He retracted his toesie offer, smirking silently to himself as he was praised for saying something that phonetically seemed identical to ya.

No matter, he would take praise where he got it; in that respect he was no less picky than a scavenger. Praise was rare to come by in these parts and he gobbled whatever tidbit that was offered, regardless of its originator.

Moving on, Stag was very much interested in sdag -- but that sounded suspiciously like his own name. "Hey.." His ears airplaned. "Wait a minute.." Two could play that game, sdinkveesel! "What's Phaedra then? I bet it's snail, or mushroom -- or even--" His eyes lit up and he gasped. "I bet it means stinkbug." He absorbed the playful bump and bounced the ball back into her court with a grin. "Sdag for stinky weasel, Phaedra for stinky bug. That's two se-- gememehiemenis words for today."  Or three or four if Stag had learned to count.

Prompted into halting by the conspiratory look in Phaedra's eyes, Stag gave her the full benefit of his anchored attention. "I'm ready." He confirmed -- but then he pecked her little forehead and bolted off with a cackle. "KISS CHASE, SDINKEN-PHAE-BUG!!"

it went without saying that his pretense of suspicion made phaedra giggle with delight. she brought her toepetals to her mouth to hide it and the smile creasing her eyes, which grew visibly wide when he questioned her own name! stomping her foot back down when he inferred it could be snail. those snotty things?! "nuh-uh!" she refuted. mushroom! what a silly notion! that would make her deadly! she was nae but a wee, sweet lamb! "NUH-UUUUUH!" she said even louder, though the giggles were trickling back into her mouth. 
and then, oh, how the turntables. stinkbug! she stopped jostling her shoulder to gawk at him, a withering glare pointed directly towards his face like it was a dartboard and she was mentally bullseying every throw. "am nod sdinky bug!" she refuted with a moue, nipping at his elbow playfully before rebounding as her happy self and snickering again at the cluttermouthing of geheimnis.  
after they'd stopped and she was about to pull a fast one on him, he took her unawares and got to it before she could, pecking her forehead and declaring kiss chase! dumbstruck, the pale child stood there for a moment to register that she'd just been reverse-uno'd on her own hornswoggle play.
"IMMA KICK YOW ASK!" she bellowed. whoever she'd gleaned that one from, to mahler's luck, she'd misheard them. 
sdinken-phae-bug took after stinkendzehen and they played kiss chase and hide-and-go-seek until mother called her home for the evening.