Sleepy Fox Hollow Took this dagger in me and removed it

Private for @Phaedra if you're available, @Mahler also welcome since they're traveling together in the mountains!

Wylla had been on a Very Grand Adventure since parting from Stag and Mahler.

The former, she had not sought out after the scuffle. She was angry with him, could not reconcile his actions with the wolf she knew him to be. With each passing day she tried to make herself ready to find him and speak with him, and with each passing day she failed, until she lost count of the days since she'd last seen or smelled Stag.

The latter, she had tried to chase from her mind, as unsuccessfully as ever. Whether she admitted it or not, it was the reason she had wandered into the mountains when spring fever left her, and ran afoul of a black bear sow and her twin cubs. Wylla managed to escape with her life, but not unscathed.

It took only a week for the ugliest wound, a deep slash on Wylla's shoulder, to fester, and only another four days for infection to become delirium. Fever swept through her in the nights, while her waking hours grew more and more hazy. She followed familiar trails without realizing it, and when she settled in Sleepy Fox Hollow as though to wait out the sickness—a sickness that would claim her life if she continued like this—she did not recognize her surroundings.

Her home, truly; this had been the last place she felt that way. Nova Peak was a close second at first, but the whole thing had turned sour. Sleepy Fox Hollow had, at least, been mostly positive for her.

It was cool and windy the morning that she woke and recognized her mother standing in the trees. The hallucinations were all part of the delirium. She'd known that at first, but it was getting harder and harder to tell them apart from reality. There was a shadowy figure next to Lusca, one that Wylla focused her bleary vision with a squint. There was no recognition in her fever-glazed eyes, but she had a feeling.

Daddy?

tell me if this is not okay! <3

do you vant to see vhere i lived before you were born? mahler asked phaedra that morning. 
he set a pace through the glindering trees with their unchanged heads and nodding boughs. windholme rushed on above them; here they descended along the stone curvature of the foxhollow where he had led diaspora.
it was unchanged as ever. he had once thought the high ridges banal and vexing after his lofty life in the sunspire; mahler had felt always made for mountains. but the rockfaced bowl softened as he went, until all around him the emerald forage stretched its meadowy fingers toward the sentinel ring of trees. here a fox called; here another ran, a streak of vermillion. 
because stigmata had died and the quakes had come, because diaspora had fractured here and never been itself again, because mahler had been exiled to the fieldplace, he had not seen its serenity before.
he would have spoken more at length as dark tallness and willowy palefleck came through the boles, covering their dew-grass step with recollections and memories. mahler might have even, at last, mentioned diaspora, were it not for the singular scent come through spear-plain and direct, wheeling the gargoyle silently in that direction as if he were a nose-ringed bull.
what he found was wylla, her fragrance dripping with the green ichor of infection. he had not come so close when he saw how she burned with fever, how it wreathed transparent seething coils toward him.
he was pacing away from phaedra, brow furrowed in horrified despair. "vylla," he muttered helplessly, scar-etched head reaching heavily and inexorably for her.
it did not matter how they had broken one another; mahler was helpless always when it came to the clarion shriek of her aura.

eager to explore the lay of the land, and with so little time to do so, phaedra was glad to accompany her father on betaking himself to the hollow. and though it was no great shakes as far as idylls went (she was spoiled for life by the mountain at their backs, now) she could see how this trip was as much for mahler as it was for her, and it seemed to hearten him to impart his history with the demesne revered in his heart. she could not, then, find it within herself to range far from his side. if not only to prolong the adventure.

presently she opened her mouth to make a pertinent remark, when the graf swung away from her and trooped in some purposeful direction she at once saw no reason for. the girl furrowed her brow and rambled after him half-heartedly, asking “where are you going?” when the easeful air all of a sudden tasted sharp. 

instinct would have stayed her, if not for the distinct smell of her mother seethed to the fore of febrile sicknotes. her breath snagged in her throat and refused to leave her chest. "is that—?”  

it is. she could not help the anxious whistle from her throat, nor the leaping way her legs carried her over the distance furling between herself and her ague ridden mother. she did not have the better sense to check that impulse, to hang back and let the healer appreciate the full measure of her malady before permitting his daughter near.  

“mama!” she cried, falling end over end at wylla’s feet. only then did she look up amid the whirl of feeling and notice the angry furrows in her shoulder, face paling.

The shadowy wolf disappeared like a puff of smoke on the wind, followed by Lusca, leaving Wylla alone again. She couldn't remember why, all of a sudden, but she was afraid. Not just superficially afraid, but the kind of fear that snaked tendrils into her very bones and sent ripples of dread through her entire being.

No, she moaned, please don't go!

But they were replaced by others. Wylla blinked at them both, but it was not Mahler and Phaedra she saw approaching her. She didn't hear anything they said, so deeply entrenched in her fever fantasy was she. Instead, she recognized the tall silverback of Ingram and the salt-white figure of Lycaon.

Lyc, she murmured when the latter collapsed at her feet, blinking glassy eyes at him and then up at Ingram. I should never have left you, she told her brothers, licking dry, hot lips and pressing an even hotter nose to Lycaon's shoulder, pulling in the scent of him. It was wrong. It was all wrong, but she didn't notice.

You're dead, she said dreamily to Ingram, remembering the carnage left by the bear after it dragged him away, but you're here. I shouldn't have gone, you're dead because of me. If I had just stayed... She trailed off, unsure what else to say. Everything had gone wrong when she left her brothers. Even the few bright spots in her life were darkened now, cast in desolation, and maybe none of that would have happened if she simply stayed with them.

mahler had seen wylla once like this before, empty-eyed and burning, no shade of herself left. phaedra tumbling close, wide-eyed and unknowing. his lavender gaze shifted to the jagged rents in her flesh, and he knew their shape. wylla was speaking now — lyc — and somehow he knew the name she spoke. he remembered the pale man, and with a start he saw the distant brother in the lines of his daughter now.
did she call to those who were dead?
"es war ein bär und deine mutter hat fieber." the gargoyle spoke in a swift murmur, helpless as to what he might do next. any skin-wraps of greenery he might have left behind in the hollow years ago would now be nothing more than mummified crumbling.
he remembered the lay of the fox's earth, however; trepidation and anger wailed in his chest. why must we always meet in horrible ways.
"phaedra," the doktor whispered, "fifteen minutes, that vay, beside a stream," gesturing to the north, and he described to his snowflower in almost a monotone the look of the feverplant, scarcely daring to take his eyes from her mother as he spoke.
until the last; he dragged his worried stare from feverish tiny wylla and looked toward their daughter, silently inducting her into the halls of medicine whether or not she had planned it for herself.

gone for 35-ish minutes, got too carried away here so she’ll be back in my next post!

of all the things phaedra expected her mother might have to say, the first nonsensical thing that ensued from her mouth was the last of them. an addled, rattled notch formed in her brow, thin ears stowing themselves away. meekly, she exchanged a questioning gaze with her father; "wie ist meint sie damit?” she asked.

who the fawk is lick?

despite anguine vines of dread tightening around her throat, phaedra recoloured briefly, startled, “you know me…” 
that she must plead with her mother’s delirium was devastating. and then her next words registered.

i should never have left you,
her throat clenched. even though it was the revenant of her brother that wylla spoke to in her calenture, it was indeed the abandonment-speared child that received the impact of such a hard-hitting statement. phaedra's watery stare tore away and fixed on a point in the grass, outstretched legs pushing her body slightly away with humiliation. 

quickly mopping her cheek with a wrist, she firmly stated her next words. "you're right. it was a mean thing you did, leaving me! but you're here now, and i'm not leaving you because two wrongs don't make a right, so—" 

—the girl froze when a feverburned nose pressed against her shoulder, a desire to be embraced competing with the reflex to retreat from it and huddle behind the protective trellis of mahler’s legs. 

unable to please either humor, fight or flight gridlocked her somewhere between the two and she curled like a pale tendril half-towards her father, whose gaze she sought with fretfulness whilst cambered ears half-heard the continuation of wylla's delusion. 

the thumbelline woman she called mother didn’t even smell like herself. from a distance, it was easier to distinguish her scent amidst the morass of other smells. being right under her, however, all she was sensible of was the detriment occurring to wylla. and the immediate vulnerability to herself. 

as if feeling his daughter’s eyes settle upon him, mahler gave voice to his thoughts, which informed the direness of the situation. the black rims of her eyes widened, then shrank into worry lines. phaedra rolled to her feet, backed a step. 

she drew in steadying a breath. 
“why’re you fighting bears for, mama?“
a scenario heretofore left to the imagination,  phaedra didn’t fully understand how someone even got close enough to a bear to inherit this type of mutilation. much less survive the ordeal. 

but leave it to wylla to grief, of all things, a bear. and simply opt out of death.  

before it could be dwelled on further, the graf smartly diverted the course of his girl's distress towards something busy, useful; an errand. a tormented sound died in her throat, but she listened closely to his bidding, and soon felt her shoulders tense. where the father was rich in horticultural knowledge, the daughter was poor. in that moment, her understanding of herblore was never going to be anything but too painfully little. 

lacking aplomb, she nonetheless nodded once he finished his description. and with a thick swallow, departed for the stream detailed.

it was so much her private wish for wylla to reappear in her life, that this felt like the fateful curl of the monkey’s paw. resentment preyed upon her mind, and she made a true mark for the stashed dagger of self-hatred in fearing that she may have catalyzed it all. something from her childhood, that peripheral and interim place from which torments of all natures came and left her without answers. 
perplexing. 
frustrating. 

the thought was a burr and stuck with her as she made the fifteen minute journey northwards.

[phaedra exit]

Fuck Caiaphas, Wylla suddenly burst out when Phaedra drew away and spoke, reaching a thinning wrist out toward the phantom of her brother. He was right, of course. It had been mean to leave him, and deleterious to her relationships throughout the rest of her life. If she hadn't left Grimnismal, would she have one day received Nyx's respect instead of her homewrecking claims and lies? If she hadn't left Grimnismal, would Ingram be alive?

Would she be dead, instead? That would be preferable, she thought, rolling her eyes toward the darker of the pair. Ing, she whispered, I had a daughter. I wish you met her. She's so much like you. She didn't know what version of Tiercel she was remembering, but it certainly wasn't who her daughter was these days. Some far-lost version of Tiercel, fiery but curious. Not much like Ingram at all, but she somehow imagined it was true.

And another daughter, and a son, she breathed rapidly over her outstretched legs, lowering her head slowly and closing her eyes. But none of 'em want me. She hitched a humourless laugh. I left you and now that's all I'm good for. It was better in Grimnismal, she rambled on to Mahler, who was Ingram still to her eyes, fuck Caiaphas, shoulda killed the bitch. Nothing but pain after that. No one cares... What I want or need, only what I give up for them. She banished the thought, having long dwelled on Mahler's behaviour and Stag's as well, and drew a long breath, feeling winded. No one but you guys. Got her wish. All alone, for the rest of my miserable life, just like that hag. You're gone, and Lyc's gone, and I need you both now, and you're gone, and everyone's gone, and it's all my fault.

A low whistle of a whine, and then she fell silent, breathing harshly against the inferno roaring through her body.

fuck caiaphas
and mahler with a recoil knew that she spoke of griminsmal, that the fever raging in her slight body had removed her back to the forbidding stretch of beach and rock grottoes. the place that they had first met one another.
a daughter.
but phaedra was gone, her long limbs carrying her off, though he had sensed grief and reluctance in her flight. if wylla had dissolved into memories of the saltwater, then it was tiercel of whom she spoke. tiercel, the entlein he had loved, if for the only reason that she had been created by wylla.
but none of 'em want me.
pain laced him. mahler moved closer, as stricken by her words as he was by the labourious breathing that swelled her body, caught in her throat. the agonies she carried, spilled before him into the proverbial sand, and though she spoke to shadows who did not exist here, the doktor knew he too must hear these things.
but phaedra is here! he wanted to cry out, to shout it until wylla heard him.
water. "vater and time, mein liebchen," the musiker heard himself murmur in a jagged furor. "these things are not your fault, they are mine. tiercel. phaedra. thade. they adore you vith all their hearts." was he rambling? and if so, for whom?
staring at the truth of her, the flame-ridden reality of wylla weakening before his eyes.

the newly fledged gatherer picked along the streambed, scanning foliage for the bright, nodulous plant. of the myriad bushes, none of them appeared to be red-fruit-bearing and she was starting to lose the measly amount of confidence she possessed in her ability to complete the delivery. never mind the paranoia that she would pick something poisonous by error.  

after five minutes, groaning, phaedra whipped her head around to look elsewhere when her effort was suddenly guerdoned by the sight of a shrub with telltale ruby clusters, crouched in the shade of a broadleaf tree rootstock. 

the vierte wasted no time piquing herself upon the discovery, feeling her pulse quicken with a sense of urgency to get back to her parents. satisfied that the herb suited (well enough) the image fashioned in her mind by mahler's german brogue, the girl cropped as many of the plants as she could before wheeling about for the return trip. 

[enter phaedra]

burdened with the green ravel, she was unable to announce her presence with much coherence, breathlessly shouting: “i'ack! i thoun’ ih!” as she careened onsite and nearly collided with mahler’s backside. 

she hawked the ginseng at his feet, scraping her tongue on canines to dislodge spit-slimy stems stuck there and working tension out of her jaw. "what now?" she panted, sliding down and glancing between the both of them; unaware of their ongoing conversation (if it could be called such).

Wylla remained silent and unaware in the presence of Mahler. His words could bring no comfort now, whether she was lucid or not—she knew it to be true. Not a one of her children would ever choose her; Tiercel would laugh to see her dead, and Phaedra and Thade, sweeter than their elder sister though they were about it, were surely not much different. She couldn't protest it in her wild fantasies, but somewhere in her subconscious tolled another gong to remind her how worthless she truly was.

Lycaon, she called to him with the hoarse breathiness of the very ill when he returned, I wish I met them. I hope they're like you. I know she left you. She's... A whore. Sucking in a slow breath, she glanced to Phaedra's side, where she imagined she might find miniature Lycaons with none of Nyx's features. Never deserved you, she groused on, shoulda been there. Shoulda made her pay.

A cough wracked her fitfully, robbing her breath and putting an end to her nonsensical words for a moment. She thought she could feel every vein in her body, and marveled at how absurd that was before rubbing her dry tongue over drier lips and murmuring, time to go home, to no one, and she didn't know whether home was Grimnismal, or Keokuk Glade, or this hollow where last she felt something resembling a lasting happiness, or the waiting arms of death.

Wherever her brothers were, she supposed, was good enough for her, forgetting then that they both were likely dead.

mahler had no more words for her, for anything he could say drowned at once beneath the level of terror for wylla he felt now. a claw-raking sensation, something that clung to the flesh along the base of his spine. 
phaedra, suddenly — her whiteflash reappearance ripping mahler from his sinking anguish. he cut his eyes to her at once.
"danke schatz," he muttered. only a practiced glance in single to know she had done well and he had the feverplant now in his care. water, but there was none, not here. not sparing a second to contemplate this grimfaced reality, mahler stripped the leaves between jaws and foot, deftly separating leaves from fruit. "kauen, bitte," he breathed in the next, pushing the small verdant pile toward phaedra. "dann lege es auf ihre schulter, in nur einer minute."
their child had done well in the discovery of the feverbloom, and now hers was a quick and harrowing lesson in feldmedizin. turning away, turning back to wylla, mahler came to her side, meaning to embrace the heatstricken lines of her small figure.
she must recline now, upon the ground, where she could be remedied and stabilized. mahler did not look toward phaedra as he began his slow insistence that the woman should lie down, readying himself for the remembered snap of her jaws if she should whirl in his direction. but he had become guarded once more, not to her, but to the reality of fever gone into the marrow, into the muscle. capability juxtaposed against the cool skilled swiftness that urgency demanded.
and the berries, blood-darkened and ready to be crushed into the thick murkwine, sitting just beyond the field of his vision.

phaedra sucked her breath, gaze searching the sunpunch of her mother’s own. what she found there was not the fierce arc of a soul aflame, only something smoky, wan

— and her consciousness dawned and set upon a horizon of understanding now.  

empathy replaced wariness. what had drawn her mother’s spirit into such age? 

nose scrunching: it was i

oh god. i should have gone with you. 

phaedra felt as if she had been shrunk ten sizes smaller. oh, how she hated herself right then.

ashamed, the child presently turned a tendrilly cheek, walling off fell emotion rising to belabour her presence of mind. she favored the partite leaves with a glance, shifting to face her father and taking numbly her task anew with eyes dropping, peering at the heap pushed before her.

her sensibilities were set upon by a sudden rebellion (what’s more, with a lurch of her gut, the realization that she was hungry [alas, for something more satisfying than leaves]). 

amid crouching ears wheeled offput thoughts. the vierte did not think she so much merited her role as medicineman’s daughter based on her mislike of the task at hand, but nonetheless brought the berries to her lips, then plucked them between foreteeth. 

well, it’s not altogether terrible, she thought, ruby juices dribbling down her chin. she counted sixty stars in her head as her mouth mortar'd and pestled the sweet red fruits, until it was a pulp on her tongue. 

she stepped over to where wylla presumably reposed, looking once to her father for any measure of encouragement before kneeling down alongside the stricken woman. she took care in poulticing the angry lacerations, startled at once by the heat against her tongue. she packed it as gently but as quickly as she was able, then backed away with a troubled brow.

 

“wir können sie nicht hierlassen," phaedra said at last. 

“sie muss nach hause gekommen. she must." 

or i must stay was a decision left yet unspoken.

Or, she thought, she could go home to her mom. Her mom and Singra and maybe even Tiercel, if her eldest daughter had returned to the Glade. Wylla thought that was unlikely, but the hope of it was limned in golden hope, so much so that she strained to her feet as though she intended to go there right this moment. If she went back, would Tiercel forgive her then?

But she hadn't made it two wavering steps before Ingram was forcing her back to the ground. She frowned at him, all glossy fever eye and hazy expression, still unaware of his true identity. Then a stinging sensation in her shoulder made her whip her head around and bare her teeth at Lycaon, but she stilled when she remembered it was him. She could never strike her brothers.

Mumbling something completely incoherent at them both, Wylla slipped her thin muzzle down over her legs and shuddered from the heightened sensation of berry juice and saliva slipping between her hairs and into her rent flesh. Phaedra—yes, suddenly some clarity returned and she knew that it was Phaedra and not Lycaon, and she stretched her muzzle toward her daughter with a hushed murmur of, Phae?—had the right of it. Wylla could not stay here and hope to survive this. It was beyond the sheer strength and will of her character, and even those were on shaky ground these days.

Not that she could understand that damnable tongue enough to concur, and soon she was slipping back under the waves of her fever dream.

"wir werden sie nach hause bringen," for it had not occurred to mahler that phaedra might stay so far from rivenwood. his parental heart had glossed over it as an option, and because of this he would have put his foot down — soon to see if the proverbial hammer should crash upon the anvil.
mahler had meant for the leaves to go to shoulder and berries for wylla's ingestion, but as he watched the moonwillow bend over her mother and thread the angered edges of the wound with syrup, he thought of how he should have said first what he wanted. yet he saw now it was not necessary, and the way that the gluey paste would bind wylla's wound as it dried pleased him.
he had not thought of it. phaedra had.
he swept the leaves close, chopped them with cuttering bites, used his tongue to push them into a bolus and then the bolus into wylla's mouth.
that they had not been so intimately close in a very long time did not, for once, torment mahler. he had given himself truly to the focus of saving her.
perhaps she returned to herself now, his beloved. fading again into insensate heat.
mahler rocked back onto his haunches once he had seen her take the feverplant, in the air of a doctor pulling mask from head, putting hand to brow. nothing to do now but wait, wait to see if the next ten hours proved fruitful for wylla. how could he measure her life in increments of time? not aloud, then.
"wenn ihr fieber gebrochen ist, werden wir sie bewegen," mahler said determinedly, needing so greatly to lean upon his own decisiveness in this moment, lest he begin to splinter. the man straightened, seeking the fervent eye of his child. "ich werde wasser bringen."
nothing more to be said. he set the sum of his encouragement into his expression before he set off at a sharp trot, thankful that phaedra could not see the agony upon his face now.

his teutonic voice made a vigil of her ears, lulling her into a sense of relief. phaedra did not expect an outright refusal, but she was nonetheless pleased at papa's amenability to her wishes. and as wrong as it was—
manipulative, doubtless 
—the girl was prepared to give him an ultimatum if he had the notion to leave wylla here. 

licking glacéed lips, enjoying the way saliva and fruit stuck to her teeth mingled in a sweet slurry, she watched as the doktor went about his mendcraft. if this experience was to have any influence on her own vocation to the trade, it was not currently obvious, because her mind was lured elsewhere by the hushlike press of 

'phae?' 

in her ears.

she snapped her head up, and moments later the graf set his intention to find water. but before he left without much ado, the girl mildly suggested some sort of somnific to keep wylla down. he probably already thought of it, idiot, ...but in case he didn't.

in the manner of one wringing their hands anxiously, rubbing finger over thumb over finger over thumb, phaedra’s attention shifted from the dour retreat of her father, ears secreting themselves in tousled ruff, to their convalescent. 

kneejerk bedside manner had her shuffling hastily to intercept any of the woman's self-exertions, concerned about the volatility of her dressing. “yes mama. lay still, ok?” she said, offering her shoulder as a bolster for the brokenwinged lark. 

without many ideas about how to placate the soul-deep kind of wound wylla looked to bear, phaedra chewed her lip in thought; she doesn’t know how life was for her, but the knowledge of certain abject suffering is still ashes and bitter aloes in her mouth. 

'i know she left you' had been said amid the other things; and while phaedra didn’t know who her mother was referring to, she swallowed the urge to hiss how hypocritical it seemed to make the observation. she too had left! had she not?

instead, shoulders slumped and a sigh escaped her. there was no telling how lucid wylla even was presently — if she’d even comprehend a word that came from her daughter’s mouth. 

“sometimes people leave before we’re done needing them,” she began quietly 
“maybe they think they’re doing the right thing." and leaned to place a kiss on her cheek. 

"even if the ones being left don't agree on that."

Hypocrisy was the sum of Wylla's life, after all.

How many times had she wallowed in the misery of not receiving a lick of respect, despite historically offering up none herself? She once assumed ownership of Grimnismal despite doing the least to deserve it. The pack should have belonged to Ingram and Lycaon, not her, never her.

How many times had she accused others of leaving when she herself did not stay? Tiercel wandering off was natural, the girl's own choice, but the seed her eldest planted that it was all her fault had taken root. Of course it was her fault! She had not been there for Tiercel and had been hard on her; maybe if Wylla was better, things would have happened differently.

And then Thade and Phaedra. She left them, too, and for what reason? Because a man found his way into her heart and proceeded to systematically strip her self worth away? No, she had done that to herself, expecting more of him than what he was willing to give. Expecting any sort of meaning attached. Once again, when Wylla did not get her way, she fled, and left her children to wonder if they were to blame for it.

Five years old, and hardly grown up at all.

The black shape who moved away was still Ingram in her fever haze, but Phaedra stood out in sharp relief as herself. First came the gentle command to not move, which Wylla obeyed mostly because she could not find the energy to do otherwise. Then something akin to forgiveness, maybe; at least, that was how she took it when tears sprang up in her eyes all of a sudden.

Maybe they think they're doing the right thing, said Phaedra, and Wylla could not even choke out a protest. She'd known she was not doing the right thing. Not for Phaedra, not for Thade, and not even for herself. She had done the easy thing; she had run away from her problems, like she always did, when it became clear she would have to fight for herself. She did the selfish thing.

After all, selfishness was the sum of Wylla's life.

I'm sorry, she croaked over sandpaper lips to her daughter, lucid for the moment, but only when it came to Phaedra. The rest of the world around her was little more than a smudge of colour, and if Mahler returned, he would not be recognized. You deserve so much better, my love.

skipped w permish <3

phaedra was grateful that wylla complied and she would not need to further insist stagnation upon someone who, in the general run of things, did anything but stay still. satisfied with this, the girl felt that she herself could relax, and settled at her mother's elbow. 

seeing the rainclouds gathering over the sunshine of wylla's eyes, phaedra soughed from lungs winded by a heaviness of heart. "oh, mama," she said, and lent her comfort the best way she knew how; cheek pressed against cheek, followed by a condolor's cluck of there, there. pulling back, her lashes came away wet. "i don't want you to be sorry," she enjoined. this time perching her chin upon the length of wylla's snout and draping a leg over hers -- a wolven gesture tantamount to a hand clasping someone else's with fondness. it was the genteel, universal language of support between women. "i want you to be well." 

she doted lingeringly for a moment, not remarking upon her own merits. as far as phaedra was concerned, she had done nothing warranting praise, insomuch that she'd been difficult a child. both of her parents were alive. it was enough.

"don't go anywhere i can't follow." the girl whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

OOC: Last for me!

---

It took almost no time for her lucidity to fade. By the time Phaedra whispered a plea to Wylla, she was gone again, stuck in a black forest with no familiar faces. Phaedra did not morph back into Lycaon, but seemed instead an unnamed and unknown wolf tending to Wylla while she drifted in a feverish haze.

So tired, she mumbled, slipping an ankle almost delicately over her tapered muzzle as if to ward off the light and closing her yellow eye. Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest, but that didn't stop her from tumbling abruptly into sleep. No doubt the leaves she consumed aided with that. She wished it was a dreamless sleep, but almost immediately she found herself searching for her children, all of whom hated her...