[SE] forgotten in a day

MABEL

She found she didn’t mind the man’s teasing; it was jocular, rather than scalding or searing, as her parent’s scoldings or rebukes might’ve been. Mabel relaxed a bit more, flexing her fingers in the cold, out of habit, incapable of feeling the chill, reaching for more snow as it slid between her grasp, constructing and compelling a little princess along one of the buttresses of the castle. Her voice was quiet and steady, despite the uncertainty around it, the way life maneuvered at a frenetic pace when they were left without supervision, when they were allowed to be free. “That’s all I’ve known.”

The girl wanted to reach out and embrace that liberation, that deliverance – she just wasn’t certain how yet. A shrug followed suit, as if it were nothing when it was quite possibly everything, swallowing down what might’ve been bile or a choking noose.

But then Amun surprised her with an encouraging grin and the slightest of lectures – only in the face of her apprehension. Being allowed to dream of these makeshift things had been an impossibility before – and she was still getting used to the wake of it all. “Oh? What are some things you asked for then?” Because she had an inkling, in the back of her mind, the next time she came to kneel before brightened wares and illustrious fates.

I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out