Sleepy Fox Hollow brimming and broken and somehow

setting: early sunrise, set about 40 mins or whatever after this. for @Mahler whenever u have time

soon, her mother would be well enough to travel. 
soon, they would leave this place. 

perturbed by her anxiety and reluctance, the girl excused herself from breakfast.

in the still solemnity of first light, with the muted hollow stretching away to nothing and the spectral mountains slumbering against the sky, phaedra slippered east, draped in the soft glow of zodiacal light. 

a sigh held in her shoulders, the girl came to a standstill at a treeline that overlooked some meadow limned in daybreak colors, on which a small herd of blacktail deer grazed. she sat and swept her tail about her paws, feeling homesick for a place she wasn’t sure even existed. 

she wondered if that feeling had sat in thade’s stomach too.

conscious of a heaviness in her head, she let it down. clutching hope that her brother had someplace, that he'd found peace -- then moored himself sturdily to it.

her heart recounts the loss. 
twin fawns weave through their mother’s legs.

mahler had reluctantly pulled away from a slumbering wylla to wind through the trees before morning arrived. here he found the serenity he had always loved in the deep wild places of sagtannet; he found a trail of a lone pheasant, and followed it sharp-eyed through the trees before a rush and a quick snap of its neck with his heavy jaws.
after dining on the tender meat and leaving a row of feathers scattered around its gutted body, mahler went on, licking red from his jaws and finding where phaedra had crossed from her mother's-meet into the forest.
he found her aureate and contemplative, watching the long-limbed distant figures of deer.
mahler took up a space near her and set his own eyes upon them, careful not to conflagrate this second with his own need to fill the silence. they had come to visit sagtannet and would return with wylla. such things could only inspire a good need for thinking on the part of their daughter.

she felt his presence come to occupy the space beside her, and she thought to meet it with dignity. yet there was no dignity in grief, and she breathed deeply for the first time in what felt like days. 

phaedra was conscious of dragging in her chest. 

"i'm happy she's coming home..." she said, voice light and unfinished. her stare followed along with the young deer in their game of no tag-backs -- disencumbered from hypervigilance unlike their mother, who continued to graze on sweetgrass while maintaining a wary eye on the predators at the treeline. 

phaedra tried to measure up to all the self-imposed criteria in her role as a put-together daughter. but she did not find it easy. sorrow and guilt plucked pesteringly at her. 

the girl was taken by surprise by the way her vision was suddenly out of focus and blurred. cheek turned so he might not see as she wiped the saltglint from her eyes, laughing at the absurdity of herself. 

"i don't know why i'm crying," 

it was convenient to lie, because how did one put to words what it felt like to be a haunted house?

 

mahler, as he had learned to do, held his tongue. his eyes, too, upon the ungulates who shared this expanse of land with the wolves who controlled it. the vision of deer, of elk, of moose — it had flared with vivid light and color in many recollections shared with his snowflower.
who, now, was weeping silently, a trail of brinewater cutting its way across her ruffled pearlmade face. he could not see it, but knew surely it was there, twined with her admittance. mahler felt his heart quite frazzled, quite unmade; he shifted closer on weighted haunches and set his chin to hovering just lightly over the tip of phaedra's nearest ear —
"so much has happened. so much you — ve — did not expect," mahler caught blindly, stumbling through this true darkness of unknowing, and yet with now's comprehension that he stood upon far more solid ground with the dovewean than before.
"you have had so much change in your life, phaedra. do not blame yourself for the reaction of your eyes."

as was his wont, mahler had the right of it. 

pantsed by grief, that's what this was. phaedra couldn’t make sense of it, but the humiliation made itself keenly felt all the same. 

losing heart with all possible haste of the utterly mortified, phaedra vied to reunite with some sense of self-control. she could bear any pain provided that it had meaning, but this felt unbearable. 

'you have had so much change in your life, phaedra. do not blame yourself for the reaction of your eyes.'

“there's no one else to blame,” she said distantly, ears flush against silvered kiss-curls. 

dark lashes dewed with tears fluttered rapidly, raining on the sill of her cheek. she felt her father's tender, doting linger, and it made her inner child want only to crouch under his aegis like parchment curling away from flame. 

absurd! she again laughed at herself, wringing tears. she felt unstable, disturbed, and stared misty-eyed at the ground not knowing where to put herself. 

"i'm afraid—" but the words ebbed from her lips in a feeble little quaver.  to be hopeful, her thoughts continued privately.

"there is no vone who is at fault for it," pressed mahler after her. he would not allow his platter of guilt to become her burden. but he could not keep the tears from phaedra, nor the fear that she expressed beneath saltwater glistening.
"of vhat are you afraid?" but surely he knew! somehow he knew! it was only that they had not yet been formed into globular words, this malaise so long enrapturing them both. 
his pearlflower here now with her parents, and her parents at last without an acrid bite between them;
and all the world seeming as if it was not poised upon a knife's edge.
but he wanted to hear it, mahler did, so that he could speak aloud his reassurances, his honesty, and create for phaedra a more sound and tangible world.
one in which, with hope, she did not have to be afraid.
rivenwood had meant to be a last stand and final beginning for mahler alone, but now it would be those he loved, forging far ahead — forging a stronger hope for the unseen months ahead, and the shadowpriest filled with a new resolution.

straight away she was glowing with shame: how roundly she dreaded her arrival to grief, not the least of all right in front of someone whose approval she coveted the most.

every line in her body screamed 'i shouldn't have opened my mouth!' -- an unforthcoming shift of her eyes, cutting away, seeking distraction; a cursory look noting that the hind and her fawns had retired to the shade.

"truthfully...?" her soft voice languished. how best to paint in words the dreich landscape of her anxieties? 

and was it the gut-lurch of foreboding she meant to describe, or something entirely different? 

the silence felt like purgatory, and to that end, phaedra groomed her expression till something more resolved took shape. "i'm afraid that things will be the same as before. and before sucked. i don't want to get my hopes up about things being better," she admitted, her face feeling hot. she stole a glance at her father to gauge his reaction to her preamble, blinking away the sheen of her gaze. 

voice lowered to a murmur for the next. she scuffed the dirt. "grownups shouldn't make decisions that force their kid to choose between her parents..."

phaedra, of course, was correct, her words vividly striking. he thought of her, of sagtannet, of wylla, of thade, of nova. of the bracken forest, and finally the bypass. so many choices made that had not assured herself or her brother, or any of his children. until at last one had stopped coming home, one was lost, one was wounded, and now phaedra, crying.
the snowflower kept her grief private, mahler suspected; her sentiments were soft but damning, and the gargoyle sat in silence with them for a long moment. he did not know how best to respond, eschewing a sunny lie for a more grown view of examining their current situation.
"i do not know vhat vill happen this time, phaedra," mahler began quietly, carefully. "vhat i do know is that it is indeed different now. between all of us. better, even if — even if your mother and i — ve love vone another, but ve love you more."

she felt cocooned in sheepish silks for having revealed some vulnerable part of herself, head bowed and face buried in the pale flounce of her ruff. 

her father was so very elevated in her eyes, held enskied and apotheosized. to be open was to reduce herself in his eyes -- or so the girl mused; and in that way, she saw herself undignified by her lack. self-hatred seethed to the fore of her, her breast and throat wicked away by the heat of humiliation. her mouth went dry as he spoke honestly of what may or may not come to pass.

the quiet part being, she supposed, 'you are not wrong in your uncertainty.'

lifting her head, phaedra took courage and fixed him with a listless smile that struggled to meet her eyes. nonetheless, she scooted nearer to him, and allowed the comfort of his closeness to thaw her.

"i love you more more," she elbowed him in good nature -- as best as she could conjure it -- and sniffed away the remnants of tears in her nose. 

resting her cheek against his shoulder while her eyes gazed out at the daisied meadow, phaedra twisted her lips in curious thought. a nosy thought. 

"what made you fall in love with my mother?"

mahler relaxed against phaedra as well. her question surprised and desperate-lined the man for a moment [mdash[ but he would not be dragged back into such a morass again. he meant to set his sights forward. "the first time ve met, she laughed at me." 
how arrogant and bombastic he had been at her borders, offering himself like a gigolo —! but that was definitively not for the ears of his snowflower. perhaps not even for his sake, more for that of wylla. how would she feel about his memories now?
"i deserved her laughter. i vas very arrogant. she put in my place and there i feel i have alvays been, and villingly so." dishonesty? misrembering? the mien of a man who feels so much more aged than his years? one and all, maybe, and mahler allowing himself the pollen-yellow dancing of something lighter in his spirit.
mahler felt fiercely and again that they should not have left sagtannet. and yet — thade.
"love does not alvays need to be as hard as i have made it look," he said softly.

something as simple as laughter. 

this visibly surprised the girl, who then leaned away to fix her father with an unconvinced look. 

he continued to speak before she could interject with that’s it? she laughed? and the assumption of some romantic idyll fell away from her such as a silk negligee. 

it wasn’t to her disappointment, but something more adjacent to … charm? a thrill went through her and phaedra started to giggle—a candelabra shining on her youth before dimming just as quickly into smiling coughs.

she didn’t mind the idea that love could be contrived from an absence of embellishment. she didn’t mind that at all. 

restyling herself with a calmed demeanor, swallowing a few hics of laughter, the girl let a breadth of silence linger between them for a time once his tale was at its end — with a seemingly self-deprecating word of advice no less. 

phaedra’s expression softened at that. little did she know of it, with her heart yet unfledged to utter fullness, she was sure enough in her own love for her parents to know that it didn’t insist on its own way; that instead it was a choice you made every day in defiance of all repelling forces. 

perhaps not so simple as laughter, but it wasn’t complicated — people were complicated. 

“but…, you fight for it — even if its hard,” she said, searching his gaze before turning them to the trees. “you both do.” 

that confused her. her brain worked to reconcile the lack of reassurance with her persisting fear of everything falling apart.

“that means its worth it, doesn’t it?” she muttered, looking towards him with a look hinging on hopeful.

mahler did not understand what had so amused phaedra, but an answering smile danced on his lips all the while. when his palebloom curled in on herself, petal-soft and introspective, mahler waited.
and when she spoke, full of the florid rush of anticipation, of honey-purple eyes riveted upon his face; waiting, waiting. mahler did not have the heart to force his pragmatism. "it is more than vorth it," he assured phaedra as straightly as he was able, seeking to hold the sun-shimmer of her own eyes.
your mother is more than worth it.
he did not want to send phaedra off into the world with some resentment toward love. it would make her always wary around the subject. mahler meant for her to be as joyous and ready for love as he could allow. he could not allow his fatherly sins to be visited upon her future.
he thought suddenly, and painfully, of stag.

she, too, thought of stag.
and as always, thade. 

rarely were they far from her mind, but as father and daughter talked of love, it was only certain that their faces should appear in her mind. after all, it was the most potent form of love her imagination could conjure -- the lorn affection she had for her brothers. 

phaedra held her father's stare for a long moment, trusting him and his word with every fiber of her being -- if not only because it was what she wanted to hear. 

"even though it sometimes... hurts," she broke his gaze, pinning her focus to a point in the distance. "a lot," she exhaled, shakiness corresponding to her grief. her eyes no longer cried, but her heart did.

her foray into love had hurt her terribly. 

to say nothing of romantic notions or futuritial nonsuch.

phaedra looked at him and he felt the weight of her eyes: the questioning, the want for truth. the realities he had given in words that were both plain and not so at all.
"yes," mahler sighed out, affected greatly by the way she fought against her grief and the long wounds of pain that his snowflower had carried within her for far too long. "it is that vulnerability vich makes love vorth it."
it occurred to him that after the winter, phaedra would be a grown wolf. this idea unsettled and ungrounded mahler. he felt she was little more than a tall and sensitive child. he did not like the concept at all.
mahler shook out his ruff and carefully collected phaedra closer, if she allowed.
and this time he did not say anything, only allowed himself this static moment in time otherwise hurtling too fast.