Altar of Twilight andächtig

set for 12/10

"sagtannet has fallen," mahler said softly. ciri and elke had gone off, presumably to run with the bevy of counterparts the gargoyle believed moonspear kept. he moved in the valley with @Nyx some hours after his arrival, leaning against a slice of granite as snow began to fall softly over the pines.
"rivenvood stands in its place." unless she asked for the details, mahler held them close to his breast, painful baubles;
wylla — her name lodged in his throat, burned his tongue.
"in the spring, i vant die mädchen to come and visit me for a time." lavender eyes tipping to nyx, to the pallor of her winterpelt and the shine of gold against the hueless nature of the world nowadays. "i see them thriving here," in the next, disjointed, relief and bitterness mingling into a harsh cup. "so this is their home. rivenvood can be their second, if you think it is a doable thing."

"Sagtannet has fallen."

Nyx' ears sprung forward, surprise in the vibrant yellow of her irises as they jerked from their path to seek the gargoyle's stony features. She blinked up at him, quiet for a while as she reached frantically to gather her wild thoughts: how, why, when? 

Did you fall because I wanted to?

Her heart skipped a beat, an uncomfortable flutter in her breast, before she became so aware of the dense weight of it. No, that could not be possible. How could one she-wolf be responsible for the shattering of a pack, when most of her time there was spent living in its shadow?

Tongue snaked between lips, the tawny Ostrega swept a stray snowflake that's settled on a whisker. She maintained her silence while Mahler carried on, as he announced the birth of Rivenwood and shared that he wished for their daughters to visit him there - perhaps look upon it as a second home. Of this Nyx had her concerns, of course, the very same ones that brought about her decision to relocate herself and her offspring off to Moonspear.

"Would they be welcome in Rivenwood, Mahler?" Nyx sought his lavender gaze, knowing he would understand.

he knew what nyx asked, and despite himself and his want to remain stoic in regards to the untangling of himself and wylla 
i deserve better
i need you
her voice feathering please and his own heart lurching down to his gut; he had thought of her voiced desire for a new life in the travel to moonspear.
mahler thought of it now.
a blink; lilac stare clearing from the pall that had settled over his stare for a small moment. 
"yes."

Her brow furrowed above her eyes as something uncertain lingered between them, Nyx and Mahler. It was as though he was there but not there, in body but not in mind, and something bitter reared to life within the gilded Ostrega. Her inner demon poked at her: he knows what you did and it's easy to see you're unstable and you will lose your babies to him because of it.

Nostrils flared, Nyx felt her breath waver as she drew it in. Mahler seemed to click back into the real world after a pause, only to answer her simply. The lioness' frown deepened, thoughtful.

"What happened to Sagtannet?" Nyx asked pointedly, voice firm, because she deserved to know what it was that her daughters might face should she let them go willingly.

mahler was fraught for a tense moment with irritation. why did nyx press when he knew her mind was capable of gathering what had gone on? he stopped, leant his broad shoulder against a snow-covered breadth of stone extending from the ground. back to her; he breathed, turned until his profile was once more visible.
"three left us in vone night. only those loyal to me and the children remained. i led them all elsevhere for the vinter." rote, clipped, informative. she need not ask more, only tell him whether or not she found his suggestion acceptable.
vaguely mahler knew his thoughts were unfair, but exhaustion and pain had knotted along each vertebrae.
he did not look at her again, only returned to his track through the snow, pausing if nyx did not follow.

He was wrong; the possibility of Wylla removing herself from Sagtannet's helm had not once crossed Nyx' mind.

Confused, she scrutinised the gargoyle's announcement in her mind. Three had left them, but who? His coastal paramour, apparently, as the comment of "me and the children" suggested, unless he wished simply to avoid any sort of discussion with her about his fellow Eisen. The lioness supposed that was only fair, for she herself had been unwilling to explore the true depth of how Wylla made her feel.

Nyx wondered if his loyalty remark was a dig at her own, and how her devotion to herself and their children far outweighed what she'd come to hold for him. Sorrow was quick to replace the budding frustration in her and, sagging visibly, she followed quietly for a time as he turned his face from her and carried along the track just ahead of her.

"Mahler" she said, softer this time, in attempt to gather his attention to her once again. "I brought our daughters to Moonspear so that we could all be able to breathe again," for she'd spent too long suffocating beneath her crippling anxiety, her inability to find connections, her fear, "and I will let them return to you if that is what they want, but..." she paused, pursed her lips - hesitated.

"whatever has happened, I seems like you resent me for it."

Maybe you always did.

now nyx was delivered the full force of mahler's stare, not quite cold but without the usual thaw of warmth. but he did not speak in the moment, only tied a rein to his own internal warrings and turned back toward nyx. "it is not you i resent," the man admitted in a bitter spate. "there is only pain in the telling."
with the gilded woman had mahler always been true, the places of his heart visible for her to see. but the events of the past weeks had changed the shadowpriest, his growing distance somehow preferable.
"vylla left. stag accompanied her avay. her departure vas followed by that of takiyok, who — she gave up her place for a stranger." what else was taikon save for an opportunistic vulture? anger, rippling. "now i seek to put pieces back together." and he looked at nyx again, noting the expression on her face and feeling the heaviness that he had put it there.

Nyx paused, lifted her gaze to meet the frosted lilac of the gargoyle as she regained his focus. There was an emptiness in his stare that startled her, a hollowness that she'd long felt within herself. 

Familiar for her to feel, but a discomfort to see it in him.

The lioness had thought when she were to reunite with Mahler, he would be glowing. For all those weeks, she'd been so certain he was content and thriving. She'd imagined him living his best life, unweighted by the strain of his secondary family, while their daughters yearned for their father and Nyx mourned the tiny flicker of love she thought she felt for him. Ears splayed backward, she turned her face away - ashamed of her assumptions.

Wylla, gone.
Stag, gone.
Takiyok, gone.

To know that it was turmoil that delayed his visit to Elke and Ciri was devastating.

"I thought..." I thought you'd be happy, "I just wanted... I wanted you to be kind to yourself, "I..." I missed you every day.

Emotion swelled thickly in her throat, like tar, and words failed her.

tension plied the corner of his mouth. "some time before she left, takiyok and i spoke. there are things beyond my control. and few things last forever," he quoted of the winterwhite, though the hollow ache that his meeting with wylla left behind reverberated through his bones.
roots slithering around his ankles, binding him to the cold earth and the things it offered over words of love and 
a future — 
the future being something that mahler had surrendered.
"i have a small land now," the gargoyle brushed on, unsure if he could bear any words of support from nyx. "it is not a grand claim but it is manageable. safe." rambling, grief choking off the last of his words.

Few things last forever. Despite Mahler's tone, those words resonated in the lioness' mind. Nyx knew all too well how cruel fate could be, and recalled briefly all the times that each sliver of joy to enter her life had been ripped away from her. Teeth gritted, she steadied herself once more.

Yellow eyes lingered on the gargoyle's smoked cheek, felt a need within to reach for it in a quiet gesture of comfort as she had so many times before. She resisted, however, for the emotion surrounding her own removal from his side still weighed on her - a pain as raw as the moment she knew it had to be.

Her heart was a fickle thing. Nyx had never thought herself equipped to devote herself entirely to another nor did she feel any drive to rear another litter, yet she craved companionship. To have her siblings close was a comfort, but there always seemed to be something missing.

His effort to turn their sensitive discussion toward a different path fell on deaf ears, as Nyx remained caught up in the surprise that Wylla had truly left Sagtannet. She wished to know why, why had she chosen to depart after all the sacrifices that'd been made? Was there a possibility in her return, that prevented Mahler from extending an invitation for her to accompany their daughters to Rivenwood's new claim?

"I... " she struggled. "I could have loved you, Mahler." Gaze glassy, she inhaled slowly as she lifted it in effort to seek his own; it felt like the truest thing she'd ever said. Perhaps, in a less complicated world, she could've lived blissfully as she had for a time on Sawtooth where Mahler could come and go, stay for a while, have whatever freedom he desired.

Could have.

But she was never enough. Not for the world in which she could never seem to find a place to belong, and certainly not for him.

"I'm sorry."

i could have loved you
pain chased its way up his jawline, until it trembled into nothing along the bulb of his ear.
mahler looked away over the landscape, over the stretch of snow, away from nyx and the way her eyes filled with a thousand things he could not answer.
he had not kept her from coming here to moonspear, or begged that she leave their daughters behind.
and thought mahler felt always that he had been true to his word, and nyx to her own in their understanding of what a contract was, it had ceased to be that. 
he dragged the lilac of his stare back to woman who had laid bare her heart — again — and remembered what he had told wylla the night she had said that she would leave sagtannet.
he had not stopped her either.
"it is not something i deserve," he cautioned in a hoarse whisper. mahler wanted to lie, to throw all things aside and tell the goldmade shadow of his own love. for it would be a lie. not that he loved nyx in his own way, only that it was not the feverish chaos of the sensations wylla engendered in him.
unpolished and unabated; it would not have been fair to nyx, he believed, wielding a sense of justice as one would might a weapon,
to promise her that she could do the same for him;
only hurt in the end for those who loved mahler. and death.
"you have nothing for which to be sorry, nyx," mahler breathed, "only i." lavender gaze seeking for her own as she had done for his, a step shifting him closer though he helplessly did not dare to reach out after what had been spoken.

Undeserving.

Nyx had heard him say this of her affections before, on more than one occasion. She saw it only as rejection, time and time again; a gentle way of telling her that she could never be good enough for him. Truthfully, she wasn't even sure why she continued allowing these soft confessions to spill from her lips, for she had accepted long ago that fate had only darkness in store for what remained of her future. Perhaps, however, if she dared to wish long enough, there could be some small glimmer of light.

She closed her eyes, let him step closer and flared her nostrils to drink deep the scent of him that wafted in her direction with such movement. After a long moment of holding her breath, it was released in a shaky, smoky plume as she blinked up to seek Mahler's dark features.

Frosted amethyst. She recalled so vividly how she'd hoped her children would favour their father's pallet while she carried them, particularly the unusual shade of his wise eyes. While Ciri had inherited a pelt that greater resembled her sire, it was Elke who'd gained the real prize. Nyx thought of each similarity their daughters shared with him and, as she tried to tug each corner of her mouth upward in a solemn smile, she couldn't quite shake the sinking feeling that this might be the last time she would look upon Mahler's face.

At least she would have Ciri and Elke to remind her of him, she thought. She would turn to them to see not only the greater parts of herself, but of this man she'd so longed to love.

"I never asked for you to be sorry," she told him hoarsely, "and I don't want you to be."

Nyx wanted to close the distance, to fit herself snug beneath his throat and against his chest where once she wondered if she might belong, but she could not. It was all too raw - for him, for her. So the gilded Ostrega simply stood there, useless, awkward, ashamed to have made herself so vulnerable in the presence of another that she knew could never be hers.

mahler did not know what to say. 
the grey shadows of space passed between them; he felt the cold of winter bite and heard the emotion in the groundswell of her voice. not an apology she wanted, but his love, something tangible to return for how long she had been in an affectionate mind.
he damned himself; he damned the clasp of shame in his chest and this time he answered both silences, and if nyx allowed it, gathered her into his embrace.
mahler would wait for so long as she allowed; awareness skating upon a knife's-breadth of space between he and the knowledge that when he could not love, he compensated with affection, and when he loved, he was only his cool and resolute self. 
winterveil folding around them in silence.