Swiftcurrent Creek kindertotenlieder

maybe a @Tiercel? :D

mahler had gone into a kind of seclusion; he had disallowed himself from visiting the duckling, instead devoting his time to patrolling and hunting various game in and outside the borders. yet it was one of these fellings that provided the musiker with an excuse; the torn-off tail of a buck deer flickered featherlight in his heavy jaws. 
he bore it with a quiet sort of solemn aplomb to wylla's doorstep. here mahler crouched mournfully in the undergrowth, searching for any sign of the silver-limned warrior. and when he did not spy her, the eta gave a low chuff that carried across the clearing. he hoped to stir the duckling from whatever play she currently pursued; the man lay his broad form against the ground, pinning the deer-tail beneath one massive paw as his stoic lavender gaze searched for the brief bit of dark movement that was the child.

:D!

to catch a Tiercel, you have to think like a Tiercel; rarely was she ever where she should be. if memory serves, the saying goes: when Wyllas are away, junebugs will play in areas verboten for access in their pursuit of nuisance-making. 

he didn't spy her, oh, but she spied Mahler—from a short distance away, while she was pouncing on the porch of some vole or ground squirrel’s burrow. mother had warned against answering the door for those paying visit when she wasn’t home, but… technically she wasn’t answering the door, because she was nowhere near it, and this was her friend! friends couldn't be snubbed! Tiercel visibly lit up with a thrifty sort of excitement as he dropped unidentified loot, summoning her to attend him with a whuff. the girl dropped her shoulders and hunkered down in the grass, "sneaking" towards him with a junglecat’s supple stalk (...if junglecats ploughed through the grass in a more on-the-nose sense of flushing out prey). 

”rrrrrrrr!” she lunged at his prone figure from the grass, sticking the landing this time with her best imitation of Wylla’s menacing stance (or whatever Tiercel got when she was acting in a manner most uncivilized) as she revealed herself a tail-length away, in relativity to his prodigiousness.

that being said, of course, she didn’t want him to be too terribly frightened by her convincing demonstration. she relaxed the tortile lines of her face to mantle the childish geniality that was much more approachable, tail whirring like a belt tied to an industrial fan as she awaited his dictum. though she tried her very best to be polite and self-possessed, she couldn’t help her eyes from gravitating anxiously to the downy object secured under his paw.

dark auds raised sharply; mahler had heard the soft tread of her little paws but reacted late. a curve tugged at the dour corners of his mouth; in response to the duckling's edict, the gargoyle gave a wry thump of his heavier plume against the ground. her countenance softened, and mahler was able to observe the growth that had overtaken the child in his brief absence.
presently, when he had filed away the data into the tireless archival system that was the inside of his ponderous skull, mahler gave a low grunt and raised up his wide paw, revealing the downy gift. "tail," mahler told her, lilac eyes flicking over her features for a sign of recognition, or perhaps curiosity that could become hunting interest later. "hirsch," the brute rumbled a moment later.
it had not yet occurred to mahler that the child's age might present an obstacle to the learning of another language in addition to that of her mother. for the charcoal musiker, ignorance was vast, but deliberate: he was not certain of her age, but children must learn, and those grown must teach. a rather intractable thought that inhabited no space in his current consciousness as he lowered his nose to the tail, snuffling at it loudly.
"hirsch." having never before carried a conversation along with a child before, the man found it was easiest to stop his shifts and adopt the tongue with which he was most familiar. "es ist für dich, mäuslein." he murmured, a flood of words for the otherwise implacable mahler; he crossed his forelegs and waited to see what the duckling would make of it all.

sorry about the length x_x

perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Mahler (apart from the chromatic intrigue his eyes held) was the clement nature he possessed, even in the presence of a bustling child. it was unlike the vexation she often received from mother, although the volatility of Wylla did little to trouble her daughter, and being that they so obviously shared genetic material, Tiercel was shaping up to be a blowhard of her own right. it was the distinction that made interacting with those less mercurial far more relevant to her interests. the calmness fulfilled a subconscious need.

it did not occur to her that the man with floweret eyes was speaking in any language foreign to her. all language was, on the whole, foreign to her. she could recently grasp consonants, but her command over dialect was troglodyte-esque at best. she expressed herself chiefly through throat static and declamatory visual presentation, but ever and again she solicited her underdeveloped vocal chords. her blue eyes widened eagerly when he flashed the scut under his paw, the spirit of curiosity winnowing through her like a bracing breath of wind through the sward beneath them. 

tail, he demonstrated. her ear flicked to register the word, but her brain cataloged the artifact under the same name as everything else: ”iss,” she whispered assuredly, certain of its placement in her inventory of mementos. she drew up to the tail. hirsch. gunpowder black ears wrenched towards him, eyes following with a strange look—close, but no cigar! ”issssss.” she repeated, firmly as a young child could—elongating the 'sss' sound as if to clarify her locution. 

she went back to investigating his tribute, following Mahler's notion to sniff it with inquisitively quivering nostrils. tactually, it was reminiscent of the rabbit’s pelt from weeks before, but for her that memory was long departed, weeks too long for her present reflection. hirsch, he rehashed, and this time Tiercel gave the suggestion some thoughtful meditation. the adults repeated things to her a lot, and the only way she could appease them seemingly was to try and wrap her mouth around their iterations. she turned his word over in the palm of her mind like a well preserved fossil, lingering in her study of the mauve gaze leveled to her height. ”iw... ssh.” she attempted, mutilating his mother tongue with the incompetence of callow youth.

she repeated the word, but quietly and to herself, ”irwshh,” then pivoted on her heel to strut around the tuffet, glorying in its novelty with a heft of her chest and a bellow. "IRWSHHH!" Mahler’s ensuing input, in light of this, went in one ear and out the other. es ist für dich, mäuslein; the linguistic avalanche spotlighted a lack of comprehension in Tiercel, but it bore no meaning to her amateur ear and without a second thought she gathered the plumose object into her mouth.

she explored her world exclusively by placing her teeth on and around it, so her initial impression was that this offering was meant to be consumed—though that impression was quickly realized to be false, and replaced with the belief that it may be more readily appreciated as a plaything instead. the fuzz stuck unpleasantly to the roof her mouth and tickled her gums, and attempts to expectorate resulted in sputtering and rearing her head as the floss clung steadfast to her tongue.  

when she was at last able to successfully eject the not-candy, Tiercel gave her head another definitive shake, one ear folding itself inside out as she did so. ”oop!” she declared, dancing away lightly on her toes. the tail, now damp with slobber, was lowered at, and the taciturn man was looked to for guidance. so what do i do with it? her features appeared to construe. she had no brothers or sisters to teach her tug-of-war or keep-away, and her mother's patience was modest when it came to accustoming herself to the role as playmate as well as disciplinary ground zero.

she sidled up to the prone zeta's side with reservedness, opting instead to try and tug at his ear as the toy's potential went yet untapped.

not at all! <3

to both her dogged pursuit of the proper sound, and her fearless testing of the tail, he felt ragged smiles break across lips that trembled only slightly from the weight.  she had allowed him to teach her; she had done well and perhaps by proxy he could find commendation within himself for his own part in that.
mahler did not shy as puppy-sharp teeth grasped his ear; the gargoyle grunted, jaw tensing, but gave a light incline of his head toward the duckling, that she might find a steadier grip. through his observation of her and the deer-tail, mahler had gathered to himself some of the steps the little one might take toward discovering an answer to her piping inquries. 
thus children, the musiker had decided, were rather perfect in their very inability to apply any logic not yet learned; each glissade, each texturing, each fragrance upon the wind — all new, and all individually experienced in the heart of tiny wolves. here was music —! mahler felt the awareness ecstasiate the cadence of his heartbeat. "hirsch," the man murmured again.
seeking to gentle tug his ear from the tenacity of her grasp, mahler nosed the damp playing-thing and nipped it between front teeth. a flick of his heavy muzzle into the air — the object flopped awkwardly in suspended space before descending. a neat snap and he had recaptured the cervine flag. lowering his ash-stippled crown, the man sought to return it to the child's interest.
quite beyond his control, mahler was immersed briefly into a memory of how without trepidation his own children had been. and while their names he had locked away into vaults to which not even he had the key, mahler emerged shaken. the warmth to his visage had drained; he stared down unseeing at the earth between his forelegs, seeking only to understand his breathing.
only a handful of seconds ticked by, iconic in the feeling of eon — the man came to and sought the reaction of his charge — she was that, was she not? while wylla was away? — hoping he had not frightened her.