it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of -

MABEL

A fascinating trick and turn, to be sure – and the girl would’ve yearned to dive in automatically to the duplicitous measures Wessex had somehow managed to garner and hold (how being the foremost inquiry, but perhaps she simply wasn’t at that stage of life yet). The slightest of smiles rendered along the edge of her mouth, a reminder of her youth, permanent or not.

But then it receded, gone, in the essence of the following question, her hands nervously going to the crocheting needles, unwinding the yarn she’d already managed to tangle while everything had fallen from her lap. “The Queen went outside.” A shrug to her shoulders, the uncertainty of why lingering in the hushed footfalls, in the somber essence pervading through the halls. The girl wasn’t entirely heartless, but cold, nonchalant, unforgiving when errors reigned so supreme. “Tried to bring back another Ascended boy?” Because she hadn’t known who, too fresh, too new, to all the outsiders in their wake. “She must've touched the door.” A solemn shake to her head followed, ensued, and then her knitting began again, a breath taken when it didn’t have to be. Maybe Mabel was simply giving herself a moment. “They both died.”

I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out