Sawtooth Spire how to make a homemade mummy: get a corpse, get gauze, get comfy

set after this or whenever wylla brings him to their den!

there was an infiltrator.
no, worse yet: a milk burglar.
as the much younger skarp nestled into her mama’s belly, in her favorite spot she herself was now too big to cuddle up against, a newfangled emotion rose like a pheonix from the ashes of her confusion of his being there in the first place.
jealousy.
its sensation plying at her heart was different from coveting a plaything thade had found, or the envy she felt when mama or papa busied themselves with thade’s hysterics or some other crisis and she wanted them to be playing with her. 

this felt like an overcast day in her guts. it certainly wasn’t like the butterflies when da tickled her, or the pinch of hunger. this was more like lightning striking her nerves like they were treetops and wind tousling her until she was fit to turn into a typhoon. her discomfort’s dowsing rod crossed directly over the brood parasite.
cowbird child.

phaedra watched him with a face like a wet weekend from the corner of the den. she could only see him dimly (partially from glaring), but she knew this wasn’t @Thade, because her brother was podgy and it didn’t smell like him. maybe mama had another baby inside all this time and he was just now joining them? she still didn’t like it. in fact, she liked it so little, she became very needy. with a rosary of pitiful whimpers round her throat, she scuttled over to @Wylla and levered her body beneath the woman’s chin, overall over-achieving at the medal for world’s biggest attention hog. 

when she got bored of that, or rather, when wylla didn't pluck the orphan from her tit and defenestrate it, the emotional child got a little more emotional and a little less civilized with the way she went about things. toddling over to the milk trough, the kobold incarnate huddled in close to @Astraeus and feigned nursing, though it wasn't long before she began trying to elbow and menace him off her property with shoves of her head and possessive growls.

aye, thank you for the thread!

Many of the old ages breathed of the stars aligning;
their parallel powers influencing the waves of utter change, and so one would wonder, rather he himself. Did the star conjoin, their cause orchestrated by a greater, unidentifiable power? Astraeus had no need to care for a radiant line of divine fires in the sky, the moon and her children satisfied him enough. Albeit young, his chest and veils of eyes were shaken by the masterpiece that was the earth's most startling pinafore, the cascading lights and the petrichor of the raw earth soothing his nostrils. As tied as hew was to his birthing den before, the mountains were simply another emprise to learn about. Eager young scholar; willing to drink the knowledge of the all mother herself.

Though, now he was much more concerend with the girl pestering his lunch. Nearly weaned, but not enough, Astareus was insistent on a quaint dinner at all times. If he had learned curses, he'd be spitting them at this moment. How dare she feign her meal, it was mebrassing to watch. Spoiled brat she was, never met the eves of hunger that nipped at himself when Agana had gone. The den was less than sunlit, so he was unable to identify her even with the gift of night vision, only her bobbing crest of her fluffed head wrinkled his own in disgust. 

A sharp cry of ire cautioned her once.

if nothing else, he did manage to transcend phaedra’s patience a damn good amount.

her slow-motion suplex didn’t turn out as she hoped, as his heft was more than she expected from the self-pitying oliver twist (as if she hadn’t gone hours without milk before pffft, did the drama queen want a coronation ball too?). she had to think of another strategy, but there weren’t many things she could do about their new denmate. @Wylla was, for the time being, down for the count, and her brother was rarely useful in her ploys, and this child’s toffee-nosed regard of her was not getting him anywhere near more amiable climes. 

the essence of toddlerhood was like undistilled rum: it left a bad taste in your mouth and often made you want to throw up. young children were brats. it was their occupation, their profession, and underdeveloped minds such as theirs couldn’t reason like adults in confusing situations. the girl was no different. she woke up one morning with a routine and normal life and went to bed that evening with another seat at their dinner table and her world downside up. naturally, she was acting out.

she wanted things to go back to normal. she didn’t want to keep playing by herself in the garden, while ma wet-nursed this foundling. this baby that was younger than she was and demanded more of her parent’s attention; he drank milk that was hers and supplicated attention from parents that weren’t his! by the time the day was through, both adults were burned out, and the pale bairn was left feeling cast aside.

 she was frustrated. curiously, phaedra did not feel like crying, or running away, or mithering. instead, she felt anger burst open inside her, an overripe fruit. 

astraeus issued a sharp reprimand, and he instantly became a dartboard for her eyeful of daggers. she would have issued one right back if it weren't for her concern about getting herself in trouble by being too loud. rather, she skulked away looking thrawn and and ignored the thunder in her tummy, refusing to have supper alongside the aggressive little cowbird.

Just a cameo! :)

Astraeus' arrival brought on  the dawn of new era for young prince Thade, the entitled leech that he was. Ever since he laid eyes on the dingy Outsider at his mother's breast, and first made to extract him, he suddenly felt as if the only words being said to him were "no!" and "stop doing that!"

He simply could not understand the place of this stranger in their midst, frustrating as it was, and would overextend himself trying to correct the wrongness of his swiftly dwindling authority. Yet, the Sagtannet prince was foiled at every turn; put down each time he aimed to use his teeth. His attempts to manhandle the interloper were firmly intercepted, and from Thade there was a strong sense of "what do you mean I can't destroy what bothers me?" with each rebuttal made...

At the end of things, he had been dramatically cowed -- both by his own ineffectuality, and by his new, bare-boned acquaintanceship with the concept of consequence. He would become a more discerning wolf for it, but for now he was just exhausted; lying in the corner, sides heaving, and facing the corroded earth wall with a blank stare. Thwarted and thrashed thoroughly enough to lie there for a fortnight.

No amount of whining, growling, huffing, or puffing had gotten him his way. It was a maddening ordeal, and it drove him into a fitful, exhausted sort of sleep that would (fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the perspective) persist through Phaedra's ordeal with their new "littermate".

i think this is a good ending point!

In blatant truth, the imps and the starry foundling were one in the same;

greedy and in the common struggle for power over attention, warmth . .  . milk most of all. Astraeus couldn't find a thread of sympathy in the strewn muscles of his heart. This den wasn't his homestead anyways — the mutual resentment from his litter mates wasn't hard to discern. As if Wylla and Mahler hadn't already concluded he wasn't a threat to their newborn progeny, as if his existence was just a fold in their matting they could stamp out later. He had held no loyalties, but only unto the queen's breast. 

Phaedra was only beginning to learn hunger as he had (even if it was only for a few nights) and Thade had surrender to a fitful repose. Brows furrowing, frustration at this show of blatant cowardice. Twas' only two other foes bested, he'd shown his strength and they were left to whining as they should. Their pampered lives had never licked what suffering entails, try tummy rumbles for three eves.

May passion give them vitality and suffering whet their persons, for dealing with Astraeus' jealous and desirous needs for dominance were tribulations for everyone who crossed him.

Cuddling the den mother's frame, he suckled in newfound comfort without disturbances. 

since @Thade was just a cameo, archiving!

phaedra watched her brother with a diehard football lover's empassioned intensity on superbowl sunday, hoping he would have better luck than she at dislodging their nest parasite. 
unfortunately for the bo, thade and phaedra were about a week or so away from acquiring that crucial emotional milepost called empathy. even then, the imprint had been made, and empathy for the written-in-the-stars malevolvent presence currently enjoying their hearthside crumbled like soda crackers between a tiny clenched fist.
at present, the extent she could say for his intergalactic spiritual yokes was that he had a great resemblance to the gas giant uranus. 
to her unamusement, thade was, as ever, too enamoured with sleep to complete the job. phaedra tracked her gaze wwith him, an unimpressed look glazed over her eyes that said really? as he flopped into a heap and shook hands with the sandman. a hush fell over the den and a yawn split phaedra's maw. she tried to shake the sleepies off her eyes, but her lids drooped like anvils on a rope. no amount of willpower could pull that weight back up once it'd started to fall. 
drowsily, grumpily, the child ambled over to thade's side and curled around him like an ending parenthesis and slumped her neck over his own, falling asleep toot sweet.