clouded skies greeted mahler. he rose, shook off the dew beaded across his guard hairs. a night spent outside a den was the least of his worries, mind shifting at once to thade and the routes he had not yet taken across sagtannet. 
logically, the populace had pored over the vast rocky valleys; they had gone down to the sharply guarded foothills; he had journeyed into the flatlands and canyon, searching.
perhaps it was time to enlist the help of the empire, though mahler was loathe to be seen as weak, and unwilling to leave wylla alone with so much that had gone on. and so he only glanced toward the vale, wandered to a cache, and took a less-traveled footpath into the core verdancy of their wilderness.
here he discovered a profusions of little violets, made more intriguing by the latticework of delicate spiderwebbing that overlay each one. a commune of silkweavers; he felt something click in his breast, relieving pressure as one might crack through an ailing ribcage. mahler sat amid the arachnids as they carried out their duties, and then stepped lightly over them, pace quickening as he set off to find @Phaedra. 
a new set of struggles had come to her, forcing her wearied father to consider that thade's disappearance had hurt the little mushroom within her own mind. he was but a wolf, one that felt his age more in the last fornight, but something wicked had wormed its way into the poor girl, and caused her no end to indignity.
mahler chuffed for her now, pressing through a patch of tall ferns at the edge of their meeting-place, something like warmth lifting the pall of his gaze for the first time in many days.