Blackfoot Forest and the things that i've loved are the things i have lost

phaedra left wapun meadow with a strangely leaden feeling in her stomach, like she was leaving something behind. thade. she'd been so sure it was him, and now all memories of her brother were stirring up a gut-churning porridge of wistfulness and failure. she'd emoted plaintively enough during her walk through the meadow. now, as caintigern guided her home she was in a transport of mental languor. i could have fixed it all, she thought, childishly, i could have made mama and papa happy, and papa he ... 

"oi! stop dragging your paws or i can't promise we will be back before your parents catch on that you left." she heard up ahead, and suddenly realized she'd been dragging her feet for the past mile. quickly, she paced up to the marten and tried to keep up while her mind continued to lip murmurings of failure. "i could've made 'em happy, cain ..." she bemoaned, a little too loudly for the marten's liking.

he spoke from the thorny bushes that lined their path, "tosh. it wasn't thade so why are you worrying about it? focus on something else, like moving faster so we get home and don't make them even more unhappy."

he never was the best at consolation, but caintigern was good at keeping phaedra's self-pitying in check. she had to do that in secret.

phaedra scuffed the dirt and huffed, letting the sounds of cicadas fill her ears to drown out her inner-voice. it didn't work that well. "you keep going and i'll cad-ch up, i godta pee." she said sullenly, parting through some ferns to find an adequate place to make water. 

"don't take too long! i won't go far, and hurry up!" cain shouted, clambering a tree to make use of the interlocking branches instead of the forest floor.

after relieving herself, phaedra sat in the privacy of a moonspilth clearing and gave herself a moment for the clear pearls to fill her eyes and wet her cheeks, "warum haben sie mich nicht midgenommen?" she breathed tearfully.

Aerasha was wandering- there was a thought to take a peek into Easthollow, but for now she would avoid them so. The last time she had seen the Matriarch, she had been casted as a miscreant, so she wouldn't think the leader would particulary want to see her. Of course she would definitely make her way there regardless eventually, but the Princess wanted to have more fun before going into that matter.

Then she heard them. 

With a flowery smile and an air of no care, she strood over to the sound of voices in the forest, and was happily so trailing. Though it seemed one had vanished, she came across another that spoke a language Aerasha did not know, but regardless, she approached without any guard whatsoever. Her head tilted, "Heeeey there, what's wrooong?"

sighing out a quavery breath, phaedra stirred to her feet and half-turned to reconvene with her little pathfinder when she sensed with what felt like a hot blush in her heart that wolven presence in the glade was now plural. a pale ear listed toward the trees where caintigern chastised her for her foolishness, but she only heard his claws scratch against the bark as he juked high in the branches to avoid searching eyes.

the woman crooned, but it didn't initially register as a question to the girl. phaedra plucked her gaze from where she wanted to go and turned to regard aerasha, conscious of an uneasy feeling souring her stomach. "ähm," eyes cast about the trees before she turned fully around and cranked the last of tears from their valve. "had d' pee, es gab eine scary noise, das isd alles," she said clumsily to the woman, bringing her gaze to her milktea features; the scarring of her leg drew her climbing eye. papa had scars all over, so she didn't linger rudely before finding the gentle impression of her finder (hopefully not keeper).

word of her midnight rendezvous could not reach her parent's ears so she was unsure how to compose herself and teethed her lower lip, letting an uncomfortable silence file in.

The small pup continued speaking in a language Aerasha had no idea of, and only blinked at the pup's bumbling. She was cute though, Aerasha thought, but sadly a language barrier. Only a few words were understood, "Ahhh, scary noooise?" Her head tilted to the side as she tried to confirm what the creamy woman thought to hear,

"Waannna... Go find it?" Sounded like a fun proposition.

sucking on her lip, phaedra glanced anxiously between aerasha and the gently susurrant twilit gables. wanna go find it? were it the truth she was telling, finding the source of the scary noise would have been the last thing phaedra would have gone for. scary noises rarely proximated unscary things, she found.

though they sometimes did. like thunderstorms, and the halloo of owls, and the settling of grandfatherly trees.

however, under the aegis of her lie, the fletched child stared down and shifted her paws about before looking up again. "ich lüge sie sehr an," she clad in the secrecy of her father tongue, the urge to smile spasming on her mouth, but she managed a trembling frown instead—as though she lipped some sentence that translated the extent of her fright.

"go ... find?" she drew on in common, canting her head towards the lovely dove-like woman. the child blinked naifly, then suddenly her eyes widened and her ears fluttered, head swiveling to their left as if she'd heard the noise again.

caintigern took a spontaneous cue and bounced on the limb of a dry branch, causing it to splinter and snap in two. he scrambled higher before he too fell with the weak bough, causing quite a racket amongst roosting birds who took wing with fretful and inimical shrieks as he hastily trampled over their nests.

"dass! dass!" she whimpered, feigning a frantic mannerisms, "du ... find? chase g-go w-way?" phaedra suggested with a pleading edge.

these days he was quite tired of his borders outside ursus being trampled. traipsing down to the river, merrick filled himself for what would be quite a journey, and then set off along the redrock path, lip curled in determined angst.
in the meadow he sprayed a goodly toast to ursus; carried away by his own diligence, merrick strayed farther and farther toward the distant mountains, hiking leg ever so often along the way.
not blood to shed, but a trail of his own scent followed merrick, proud and rebellious despite the edict of his kind that they keep to their own lands.
the sunspire. he remembered his time here with both a foggy mien, and in living color. was it not in this place that he had met the rook? merrick prowled at once into the haunted welcome of the darkened coppice.
there was a trail here that sparked vague familiarity in the bearwitch. he had little way of knowing who it was his blood-hued daughter had met, only that the fragrance had lingered both close to ursus and here.
thinking it a fluke, merrick wended his way through the shadowland, bitten ears cupping at the sound of a lisping young voice to his right. it was joined by another, the tones of a woman; he bit the inside of his jaw, delighted to think he had come upon mother and child in this charcoal atmosphere.
cunning, silent, merrick crept close and peered toward the pair. a curvaceous milk-cafe she-wolf, a pale, gangly pup, now gripped in the claws of some emotion. he fed upon it readily, a bat lapping sugar from the innards of fruit, then passed himself into eyeshot, a scar-gnarled satyr who glinted teeth in a grin and set his single eye upon the girl. "what's got you all worked up?"

Wow.

She had no idea what this pup said. 

Aerasha bobbed her head to the left, and to the right as gently hummed, trying to figure out exactly what the pup was saying. Something about her chasing? There seemed to be noises causing a disturbance, which only gave the split-eyed girl a curious look beyond the pup. She was curious and wanted to look further, but at the same time had an interest to the one with uncommon tongue.

Then a man came between, a scarred one with a lost eye. There was a familiar smell to him, that she couldn't really put her mind to it. The Princess drew another humming while thinking of it, but simply lost the thought when he spoke, "Aaaahhh," she looked to him, before her gaze droopily dropped toward the child, "she is scared? Buuuutttt, dunnoooo what."

sorry the wait, i lost my first reply and cbf to rewrite it lol

the milktea lady wasn't dithering off to inspect the "scary noises" as phaedra expected, to her frustration. she was in fact more interested in phaedra herself than the possible flying purple puppy eater rustling in the shrubbery, which was a giant miscarriage of intention on the child's part. she shouldn't have used the secret words; phaedra seldom interacted with grown-ups, much less strangers, and forgot they were supposed to be held close to her vest in a moment of alarm and finite options. 

when the woman glanced around, phaedra used the opportunity to quickly scan the treetops for any sign of cain, but he had grown quiet. 

when she turned back, she was being stared at by a man who appeared to have misplaced one of his eyeballs. she startled backwards; aerasha didn't seem to be troubled by his presence, but something about the spectral way he stared at her, how he had managed to approach without disrupting the foliage, prickled her intuition.

when the sleeveen talked, his voice trespassed on her sense of safety in a manner she'd never experienced in her life. his words were like hands reaching into her body through her gaping mouth, into places not allowed, like a black market trafficker palpating her soul for its ineluctable harvest. her eyes fixed on the pitted abysm from which she was sure ophidian creatures and nightmares crawled.

before she could eke any sort of response, aerasha was already in the midst of fielding his question. her former charade was shed like a python squirming from its dead, itchy skin, "no! not scared, never that," she corrected hastily, gulping her heart back into its proper chamber. phaedra emboldened herself and hoisted her breast up, macilent shoulders listing towards merrick. "my father does murder," she fabricated on the spur of the moment, mustering a casual air as best she could while also trying to speak unerringly, "he sends me ..." phaedra glanced at aerasha, then slid her eyes back to ursus' autarch as her heart fluttered like a canary trapped in a crate with a cat,

"he said i need to find eine flucht for somethin ..." she said the secret words like they were common ones, pushing her accent down and daring not allow herself the merest stutter, "either you know where i ... can find eine flucht? think a bush somewhere?" she looked between them, the tip of her plume beginning to switch, "he's expec'ing me back soon, so ..." she fought the urge to bite her lip.

her tongue cramped from the effort of speaking without her congenital impediment, but hidden under the sediment of uneasiness, there was a poppy seed of elation sprouting within her.

<3

the crooning woman too was familiar, but merrick's attention was beckoned by the child. "your father and i have that in common," he teased, though the flat edge to his voice was anything but humorous. yet he regained himself in the next moment, approached the girl with a low sweep of his battered snout. "i'm not sure what ainaflockt is," the snake-throat man purred, "but we can't let you leave so soon."
where had she come from? who had allowed this child to fall so decadently into his domain? merrick cast his mismatched stare around, alighting it again upon the beautiful shade and her siren-tones. "not her mother then, hm," he imped against, hiking the corners of his mouth into the contorted grin of a jester.
"what's your daddy's name?" merrick inquired, ventriloquist-dummy worry projected toward the lying little sprite. lying, surely; she was a child and he was ruler here. and even if she was not —
"tell me, and we'll go and find him."
the woman forgotten.
the dilating pupil that swam the pup before his mind's eye, reminding him of another that night upon the clifftop.

"Woooowww, you can understand her?" Aerasha was awed as he understood the young one. Aerasha still had trouble piecing together whenever she spoke, as the two languages clashed she couldn't put the puzzle together and only continued looking with a dazed smile. But he did! That's all that mattered.

"Ohhhh, I wanna visit the pack tooo.~"

the hands, his hands, ashblack hands groping her throat. the kartika bit between his teeth, the scale already weighing her heart—

fear was trying to overmaster her, but she was loath to allow it to deglove her artifice. the more frightened she became, the more affectless her expression grew and her chin tipped upwards. 

 

"me as well, i help the murdering," she said, pounding down a particularly acrid and thick rise of bile. she glanced over to aerasha, who seemed a little bit away with the fairies at the moment. they were plainly speaking of homicide and she was just watching the precursor to foul play unfold with a bemused smile. phaedra's head began to swim, butterfly strokes and backstrokes and sidestrokes.

she looked back to the man and he was now abreast of her; she froze. insinuating himself into her headroom, he was tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in speech, knuckles brushing her clammy cheek. she held her breath until he moved away, then sighed it out with a watery rictus grin once he admitted to his ignorance of the "ainaflockt". 

"oh tha's fine, i'll go-" "but we can't let you leave so soon." her nostrils flared, her smile wobbly in its tested grasp on charm, "... soon though, prollably," she said, losing her confidence as the pit in her stomach widened. she tried not to stare at the vacant socket in his skull, or at the shorn, moth-eaten condition of his ear. these things did embolden her some with the realization that he was not the invincible kind of grotesquerie she'd heard about in den-tales from mother (because gothic literature was so much better than fairytales). he could be hurt.

murdered even, she thought.

merrick lost interest in her for a brief moment in favor of aerasha, which gave phaedra a small margin to glance through the trees again. cain, drop on his head and rip out his other eye, do it now! she begged in her head, but if the marten was still in the area, he wasn't giving her any indications.

phaedra shifted a step away from the duo, gazing away from his reptant smile with a clenched mouth. her chin fell when he asked after her father's name. she wasn't very good at coming up with names. mama had thought tulip was a stupid name for a snake  giant pink worm, when she thought it perfectly suited him.

"h-his name?" she looked at merrick unsurely, dull, eyebrows furrowing. she knew papa was mahler ... "father? some of the d-time, daddy. mosly only father." phaedra blinked, eyes drifting in the direction straight past him before snapping back to attention. "are you a daddy?" she suddenly asked in turn, wondering how much sand was left in the hourglass before would she lose all nerve and begin to cry out for help. intuition told her not to go to a second location with him.

"ohhhh, i wanna visit the pack tooo," she swept her glance at the woman, brows twitching. "we like to be lef' alone, only me and him always,"

i wish it wasn't a lie, she considered dejectedly in her mind.

he ignored the woman, simpering down into the child's face as he searched for any sign of nerves fraying. he would pounce upon the ends, bind them together like ribbons thrown over a maypole. they would dance, would dance; her eyes reminded him of flowered centers. she was altogether intriguing, though if merrick was quite honest, it was this talk of a father that fired the basilisk glint.
tongue slipped along the edge of his wartorn lips. he turned his gaze toward stone edges in the distance.
"you know, i never had one of those myself," the battlebit prince murmured, sated by the way her confidence had shaken, if even her footing had been found again. "a father, i mean. and you have one." nonsense words, repetition, but by now merrick had pulled his eyes from the distant range and back to the girl, to her insistence that she and papa dear be left alone.
firstly, "i am a daddy," came the woodsmoke of a voice laden with want for the blood pulsing in her delicate little veins. "and i know where they are."
he stepped forward, reached out his muzzle slowly in a gesture that seemed created to placate, but from this angle the she-wolf would not seen the sudden leap of a glissading rage that contorted all his features, bunching them beneath scars with the tectonic shift of his abrupt fury.
"did he leave you here?"
tadec tadec tadec — hadn't his father run across this very meadow when he slithered from the life of indra?
"WELL!?" he shouted at the child a moment later, malevolence thundering in his tones.

"That's laaaaame." She wanted to explore where the little puppy was going to go, as Aerasha had literally all the time in the world. She momentarily had thoughts to go back to Easthollow, but then again, she enjoyed this freedom without the nagging mothers. There was also the fact they may not allow her back, but she didn't even consider that thought.

"Heeeeey, don't yellll," the soft Princess tried to move in a way to go in front of the large on-eyed man, "that's not niiiice."

his mouth was cruel and crocodylinae and all spectral contempt; it was in some measure worse than the tenantless socket that was the womb of grotesqueries living within his skull. not the less, the moonsilk color of her fur hid the paling of her brow and despite herself she found his pupil, staring defiantly into it. within a hairsbreadth of the sleveen she stood firm, unflinching, lifting her chin as he searched her for some fraught nuance in this hairline intimacy. she burned the ends of her nerves, melting the fibers, twisting and sealing, so they could no longer be frayed to unspool for his midsommar bacchanal. he would not bind her in gyves, nor pluck the petaled tears from her bittersweet nightshade gaze with his hue and cry or iguanid glance. 

of course of course of course he’d remark the tiniest tremble of her chin and root out the hesitancy in her heart like a fox availing itself of the earths magnetic fields, using them as rangefinders to dispatch the trembling, snow-interred field mice belowground.

phaedra dare not take her eyes away to follow where he looked; dare not put her hand in the unlidded cookie jar, for that she knew inside there were only scorpions poised to sting. instead, as merrick's attention was elsewhere, the girl staked an "are you stupid?" look of desperation at aerasha before losing all heart that the woman had the mother wit to pick up on the creosote man's wrongness.

as for phaedra, the profound sense that something or someone was about to break bad stirred in her bowels. 

but she was no field mouse, and her flesh would not ensanguine his fangs tonight. she would fight and fight and fight and fight and

a father, i mean.
and you have one.
you have one 
you have oneyou have one
"i do. don't i?" she thought. a communal parent to be shared by many, and the lions took more than their fair share. what was left for the lamb but a whit of his affections?

“you did so, else you wouldn' be here,” she challenged precociously in regards to his alleged fatherlessness. “liar,” squinting her eyes at him. her brain flung a chancla at her head for possessing such a petulant tongue and her throat contracted as she worked to swallow a tiny gulp that felt stuck, shifting gradatim as merrick’s eye reeled back from the ashlar edges that was doubtless her charnel vault. phaedra withheld the curious skirt of her eyes. if i do not look i am safe
 
shifting, shifting, shifting steps, rounding away from him … 

the girl paused her fiddlefooting, ears feathering to merrick as he shared his success at siring some loinlizards. the man’s voice was coarsened like fragmented rock in hessian sack, knocking and grinding against each other. rank breath stirred with the air around them; lychmouth. phaedra yanked her snout away and clicked her teeth, unspeaking, watching him with a surly look knuckled into her brow, the rugose skin along her whiskers and snout spasming as he stepped in close, stooping so that only phaedra may see the refashioning of mannered placation on his face to seismic rage. 

if fear was the currency of his depraved gratification, she would boldly upturn her purse for his discovery that neither silver nor copper would fall from its contents. 

her die had already been cast so phaedra parted her lips to further defy him, but his patience ran thin in a matter of heartbeats. in the next moment, a terrible noise was flushed from his black putrid throat like hundredfold black pheasants from the weeds of his teeth. she balked, the fur around her shoulders lifting, her slim haunches straddling the earth. she met his eye with a resentful stare, mouth clapped shut when the sylph made to move between charles merrinson and the child, her frilly voice threading a pretty ribbon around the tension rather than cutting it as like to be intended.

phaedra took such an unthinking window of opportunity that she jumped into thorny shrub, unfeeling of their biting nicks as adrenaline welled into her bloodstream. she hunkered down and drew her teeth defensively at merrick, pinpricks of red beginning to smear her white coat as she ensnared herself deeper into the tangle with backward strides. "no, you stupid" she finally answered his shout,  "n' your dad prolly replaced you," like mine replaced me, she thought sullenly before going on to give him the business and the company car, "with girls! ones with both eyes! an' breath that an't smell like skunk! du bist das hässlichste ding, das ich je gesehen habe!"

the efforts of the woman went ignored. merrick stared at the child, watching as finally the smuggish glut of child-sneer slipped from her face and she found herself welling with blood to avoid him.
he did not register the woman longer; her lacewing tones dissolved beneath the simmer of his piqued intrigue and merrick stared toward the babe huddled in the briar-thorns, who still cut upward at him with the quivering of a tremulous saber.
aware he could step toward her at any time, knock aside the blade with a bat of his hard paw and a clip of his teeth beneath small round skull, where the tree's root began, merrick remained as he was. simply being possessed of the option to end the chafing little brat, and seeing that she too held such knowledge was enough to coax his quelling.
at the rattlebone language in her throat, merrick laughed, a gay sound that beckoned spring rain, a one-eyed cernunnos standing acackle in a meadow bordered by herds of elk and flush now not only with flowers, but new crimson buddings spreading slowly against her pristine pelt.
temper, temper; "he's dead," merrick chuckled back. "he died and had no girls." who knew what had become of tadec? not he, and not a muzzle-twisted simpering child of the same gender with which she tried to bait him. temper; the last time merrick had placed his jaws about a child, he had lost an eye. 
eye for an eye for an eye; well, he could not pay that price again, and while he refused to look up on the slim chance this aforementioned, invisible father would sweep down from on high to rescue her, merrick stepped back. "go back," he urged in a low, humorless mockery. "someone will be missing their pet."
he whirled to snap toward the woman, a controlled gesture of threat rather than promise; if neither of them moved to stop him, merrick would fade proudly back along the meadowline toward ursus.

They forgotten about her! Even when she heroically threw herself in front of the mans path to protect the child, the two carried on a conversation that she didn't bother catching anymore, because it was far too difficult to try and understand. Definitely was easier now, probably, but Aerasha made no attempt.

And then the man snapped at her! "Wowow, scary.~" So she said, stepping back and still carried a carefree smile.

really sorry for the delay. you can archive after your last post or w/o, i'm fine with either! thanks for the thread you-uns :)

she straddled the earth and glared openly, defiantly, at merrick and his stupid widowed eye, flinching despite herself when his corpse throat croaked out its mirthless, bilious laugh. laughter like a drain that she was circling. she schooled her expression to present the most threatening display possible, but she was no threat to him and he knew it and she knew that he knew it. 

"i-i'd go die if i had a st-stupid mean ugly boy like you also!" she blurted out, folding herself away from him like origami in case he tried to extract her from the briar spinney. if the sunken socket in his face was any indication, the lich was not like to be deterred by some prickly plant if he really wanted to get at her. this gave her confidence an analeptic; was his intent to kill her, he would have probably already dragged her from her mickey mouse playhouse of ouchies. 

and if she was about to get murked, she'd go out saber rattling, mouthing off right up until said mouth was ripped clean off. 

"go back, someone will be missing their pet." she didn't really have a response ready for this when he bid it, but she wasn't about to leave the protection of the spinules with him standing there so she stuck it out, puzzling over his remark in the meanwhile. he clicked his teeth around the air of aerasha's face, then left as wordlessly as he had come. relief she didn't even know was in her reservoir washed over phaedra and with a whiny grunt, she struggled to beat back the shin-tangle she'd entangled herself within. 

glancing at the aerasha, she squinted. putting herself between phaedra and merrick had given the child an opportunity to impulsively jump into a sharp bush, but she'd hardly call that a feat of valor. especially since all the woman had to contribute to the situation was airy comments and presently, an easy smile. he could have chewed through her in order to reach his quarry, and it wasn't unreasonable to imagine this woman would still bear the demeanor of malibu barbie during the process. "yeah wooow. my mama would have'd his other eye ..." she muttered darkly, watching until merrick had fully disappeared before battling her way out of the skewerbush. 

red dapples covered her bow to stern, and she could feel the consequences of her decision now. burning stings covered her, but she braved it and masked her pain, limping into the lingering miasma of merrick's former post opposite aerasha. phaedra overtly searched the treetops now, frowning deeply. "hey budderfly, you seen a fuzzy snake lookin thing?  i needa beat him up," she huffed, wandering off without waiting for an answer in a direction that far removed her from whatever unearthly underbelly abaddon's groom had stalked off into.