Sawtooth Spire unzureichend

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.

obv going to assume this takes place before this <3

she was in her intended premises of the forested glade, playing amidst the flowerbeds of gardenias and batting at butterflies that wreathed her frame like a proper cherub (where was a glowing halation of sunshine when you needed one?), when he chuffed for her.
rolling to her feet, phaedra twisted on her shoulder to see her father coming through the copsewood. she immediately collected herself into a genteel sit. her eyes sought his own, found warmth instilled in the lavender that unbidden drew forth a reciprocated affection in her own gaze. a hearth kindled by guilt, truly, because she still felt a briskness run her through. the reveal of his susceptibility to imperfection had left its treacly residue.  
"hallo papa." she said quietly, politely, suddenly shying away from his regard of her and unsure of what to do with her ears which had, seemingly overnight! grown in disproportion to her head. they settled on a lopped position as she tried to look surreptitiously between his legs for his quiverfull of afterbears, then glanced edgeways again when the ferns folded behind him. 

<3

phaedra had grown larger. longer. taller. the beginning inches of a sapling sprung up overnight. and while briefly her gaze filled with an answering glow, it was dispelled by the way her little face had barricaded itself. too late, perhaps, he was, but mahler saw little reason to address it.
his failing; she would see the shade of an apology in her father's cragborne face before he cleared his throat, plume flicking at his heels. "i have found a place vhere all kinds of little spiders sit in purple flowers. vould you like to see it?" and here he paused, not wishing to cause her more angst if she did not wish to go. 
for mahler, though he knew not the sum of all things her mind held, understood he had fallen in her favour. and so in this wisdom he sought it again, swallowing the pit of shame that he had missed so much.

she sat with sangfroid, anticipating some imperative message that was to be delivered to her mother post-haste. her gaze vacationed in the trees where a tiding of magpies had alighted on the branches of low pines, raspily chattering 'mongst themselves.
waiting, waiting, waiting.
he cleared his throat,
she slipped her eyes back towards her vater, vaguely perceived something take up his lithic features suchlike the mantle of conscience. phaedra's heart quopped achingly; she could not hide the flinch in her expression. only at night, in her infrequently pleasant dreams, were they tenderly united. embraced serenely and one, she could forget the chasm (the chasm of daylight) that divided them.
her freewheeling ears found their full height again when he expressed an interest in showing her something he had found. his voice seemed, to her, laden with languor—the omphalos of grief that smazed their mountain. 
her ears pressed flush against her head. not a message? an invitation? she swallowed the lump in her throat. a sigh unburdened itself from her lungs. "sdag and me was goin'a work on ow garden ..." the blumenfee trailed off, batting halfheartedly at one of the ivory blooms.
she remembered that evening laying in the glade after the foxes had snubbed her arrival, watching a spider engarlanding her web with fine, silvery silk, and how she could have sworn the arachnid had tutted her. maybe it was the same spider ... "well, s'pose i'lls come looksee." she decided, and, smelling of fragrant gardenias, tread tensely to mahler's side. 
"is'id far d'go?" she asked, glimpsing up at the scar-littered armature of his profile before redirecting her eyes to measure with awe the difference in the size of their paws. whereas normally phaedra would have remarked upon it in her typical flamboyantly idiosyncratic way, now the bantam lass remained quiet and featherweight.  

mahler had come to find a certain muted joy in how frequently stag had come to phaedra's life. as the girl moved to his step, the gargoyle considered the brotherly nature of the young boy, devoid of his own wandering or lost siblings. thade; his own throat closed, and for a moment mahler flailed silently beneath the drowning edge of his own despondence.
"not far," he assured his growing blütenblatt, gazing down too at the disparity in their toes before he set off.
"welche art von blumen werden sie in ihren garten legen?" mahler ventured softly, eyes turned ahead to the faint edges of the path by which he had come. desperate for her favor, desperate for her love, clasping at the frayed edges of pinafore ribbons he had dropped during this time of chaos that had sprung from his failure alone.

not far, he vowed as they put the glade behind them, breaking through the ferns to walk the grass depressed from his path there.
alongside him she felt apparitional, considered herself among those who had gone, remembered yet forgotten. phaedra's mouth set in an unbidden, nerveless twist until she emerged from a wistful revery to realize that her papa had asked her a question. she blinked restlessly at the ground and glanced at the forward churning of his ashlar legs, chasing away bothersome thoughts lingering in her head. 
"alle sor-t-den," she murmured, unsure of herself. that was the sad sum of her imagination. a mind like a drain and her pneuma circled it. any word that coursed her tongue felt stilted and made her mouth feel like a gin trap, jaws catching each one before it could spring forward. 
a flustered tear leaked from her eye. she tried again. 'and you smell like blossoms'—"blossoms, ich auch denke," she blurted. chewing her cheek, she thrummed with seeking and then breathed a little sigh before continueing, "blumen, die gude ... uhh ... memries ... bringen?" she was painfully lacking confidence in translating what stag had told her about putting love and good energy into the things they planted in her garden. so much had happened since that day, and myriad intrusive thoughts imposed upon her attempt. phaedra stared fatuously at her feet. 
hadn't she once been so self-assured? bright? she'd repressed all of herself to please others. suppressed every ounce so no one would leave. but in doing so it seemed she had completely fled from herself.

there was a wound in phaedra; she seemed at once both terribly aged and terribly young. mahler wished to gather her up, to baby her, but the inner suggestion that he was no longer welcome crushed the dust of it into silence. her father did not miss the nettled glint upon her cheek; were she to allow it, he would tentatively reach to brush the tip of one ear with his muzzle.
she was looking at her feet again, and now the gargoyle paused in his own step, tormented by what his own pride had done to such a gallant and glowing girl. would she return to herself? was he selfish for wishing it to be so? a swallow; mahler searched for her eyes, for their shifting color from something limpid and babyish to a more knowing hue, sharper.
"als du geboren wurdest, lag wunderschöner schnee auf dem boden," he breathed, having first intended to match their talk with a discussion of pale flowers.
and he had come from that snow into the pain of wylla's teeth and the shock of phaedra's half-dead tiny form.
her breath had been the greatest happiness in that moment, and he would not forget the rush of it.
"ich möchte, dass du weißt, dass ich dich liebe und es tut mir leid," the words tumbling in a stumbled rush; a quick, encouraging quirk of his lips, for he was not sure what else to say, nor to do, and the scent of violets soon brushed into his senses, pulling his attention to the thousand tiny weavers tying silk to the purpled flowers.

she felt the doting brush of his muzzle against her ear and shut her eyes, allowing the upwelling of warm solace for only a moment, nearly leaning into the touch—a completely involuntary spasm of unconditional love—before she remembered herself and listed out of reach, wearing a troubled look. 
how easy was it to find the ostensibly lost? to be found, like religion, like a second wind, like a long-lost soulmate gone missing. thade was physically at a loose end, but she was inwardly disappeared, and she didn't even know how to begin repairing the rupture between her soul and herself.
it was a job only she could do, and she was so young. so young. perhaps she would grow old having never stitched the disconnect; a tapestry of erstwhile effervescence and self-assurance forevermore useful as a dustcloth. 
would his other daughters be well-adjusted? lovely and seamless and complete? ... children to be proud of? 
some words he spoke, she didn't understand. ever unable to "suffer" the loss of her infomania, mahler's moonmade child sought to pick the lock to his brain and its vault of knowledge. "was bedeudedt 'schnee'?" she quietly volunteered.

the proclamation of love, his sequent apology; it stirred up a dervish of confused feelings. her head was moored to the pier of her mother's divulgences and her heart couldn't even fathom quantifying the measure of love she felt for her papa, but she didn't know what the feeling meant. it had become so writhen inside her. was love an action or an emotion? could the action and the emotion coexist, or was it simply one or the other?
he was good at expressing his love, but he'd not been very good at demonstrating it in a long while. maybe that's what he was sorry for, but she couldn't consider it presently—nor find the exit to this endless maze. 
after some time she responded with a meek "okay," and walked with him in silence, until the tangy scent of flowers lipped at her nostrils as well. she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, a smile seldom shown but for few fidgetting on her lips. it winged away with a deep-chested sigh.
casting an excited gaze over the grass for the swath of violets, she seemed to require some guidance in her wild-eyed search for their conquest.

"schnee ist wie weiße wasserstücke aus der luft," mahler murmured, but phaedra soon came alight. he would revisit the notion of the pale flakes at another time; for now he was only caressed with relief to see her exuberant reaction to the little circle of fiercely-working spinnerets.
that she had pulled away from him pained mahler; but he would not press affections upon her. she knew the word of his love; the gargoyle only need ensure he worked toward the provision of it in his actions.
the spiders scurried to and fro as he led the bairn into their midst, from time to time lifting mandibles with inaudible clicking toward the giant child in their world, and the greater beast alongside her. mahler motioned to where one of them had climbed a tall stalk of clover, and released a thread into the air, which dazzled in expert glow as it caught tight to another violet.
"sie baut einen weiteren palast," the man remarked, gazing down toward phaedra. if he could evoke a single smile from her small, overwrought face, he would be relieved and pleased until the end of this coming era.

her gaze floated about the copse, focusing on the particles that spangled where sunlight scythed through the bower of trees. her mind considered mahler's wording carefully; pieces of water in the air were called rain, this she knew. rain did not frighten her like water frightened her, so she reassured herself with a quiet sigh. "nur weisser regen," 
phaedra followed her father's motions towards the minikin artisans midst the purple flowers; her lips made a silent o when her eyes found them. a younger phaedra would seldom have been able to contain her wonderment towards the panoply without some silly and charming ado, but the phaedra of this time was anchored by what truths she had come to know of the world and that which had made her manner humble.
she tip-toed around mahler, softly-softly, confiding an ambivalent glance up to meet his eyes upon his remark before settling on her belly to observe the daedal filigree. dewy filaments made by the gilt spinners (who were not unlike acrobats themselves, how they swung from their white silks like trapezists) hung from the rafters of violets, while sunlight made the sum of their task glister and wink when the leaves stirred out of the way.
phaedra watched the weavers for a while before caving under desperate thirst for knowledge and bade her father's omniscience in a lamblike voice, "warum machen sie die ... paläsde? haben die blumen edwas dagegen?" 

"die blumen, sehen, wie sie sich ausdehnen und helfen dem weber," mahler murmured, lowering his muzzle toward a pair of spinnermaids drafting a thicker thread of silk. he admired their industry for a moment, wishing that all creatures could be such in their work, and then moved to the next. 
"das essen wird in den palästen aufbewahrt," he explained, motioning to the shine of a tiny, hollowed carapace glinting beneath the smudged cluster of webbings along another flower. a beetle once; now only a decoration for the endless expansion of spires and turrets and tunnels in this miniature world dwarfed even by phaedra's growing paws.
would thade have enjoyed such a sight? mahler's throat clenched; he hid it with a gruff harumph and a nosing of one pale daughter's eartip.

"oh," she said once he'd explained the symbiotic relationship between the violets and the acrobats. she knew juncos liked their seeds, she'd seen them pecking at their orange stamen before. still, she was unsure how the flowers profited from being used as truss beams, but simply rimpled her lips in a question mark and kept the uncertainty private as her sunset eyes were motioned towards the iridescent carapace. 
another question framed her mouth, but before the lilt formed in her throat, she heard a throaty noise and felt her father's nose brushing her eartip. again, she the frisson of warmth tingled her spine. phaedra reluctantly listed away, and the guilt was too much like a cinderblock to look at him. "thanks for showing me, papa," she said taciturnly, taking one last look at the violets before moving aside. "vielleichd ... werde ich meinem garden solche blumen hinzufügen," 

again she pulled away, and mahler felt the severing of their once-beautied bond. it was his own fault, he knew; he held no ill will for phaedra nor her retiring attitude toward him. for a long moment his gaze remained enveloped by the satin-clad violets; he breathed in their scent, allowed for a single solitary moment to be transfixed.
"sollen wir jetzt nach hause gehen, schatzi?" he suggested, straightening up. this time, mahler did not make a move to touch her, only stepped lightly aside, looking down to see if she would gather some blooms or simply return to the rendezvous with him, soon thereafter to find wylla.

once he too withdrew, she bit on her cheeks and flinched as if the guillotine that had cleaved their bond was a fleshly decollation just as well.
in manifold ways, it was. if she could only bear his touch, they could work towards the repair of their rupture, but she felt pins and needles on her heart like she was betraying her mother by accepting his touch when such intimate dotings had been strewn amidst myriad others.
within her, it ached so.
briefly, a sorrowing look arched over her brow. she wanted to whirl around and nuzzle into the darkley of his chest like she had so many times before.
before she'd been obliged to share his focus and love,
before she'd felt cast aside. the offscourings of his loins. if only wylla had held her tongue, told her a lie about why her father had so little time for her. would it had been enough? phaedra hesitated a moment, considering her urge ... 
"schatzi?" papa's voice broke the spell and she remembered herself with a flitter of her lashes. she turned her gaze to the purple florets and their chateaux as he stepped aside with a wordless invitation to take some of the violets home for her garden. "diese gehören den webern," she brought her eyes to meet mahler's, lips atremble as she offered a small, mannered smile. it did not reach her eyes.
how many had he regarded as schatzi today ... ? 
to his question, she fiddled with the grass against the pads of her paw. "ich kenne den rückweg. sdag, garden, 'member?" phaedra said, already putting some distance between them as she spoke.  

mahler did not know what wylla had told phaedra, only that there had been some scathing explanation of his 'other duties.' but he did not blame his beloved for how she had sought to protect their daughter. there was still some hope in mahler that by bringing elke and ciri and his first little snowflower together, that they might find some camaraderie even if their mothers were at odds.
but it was not one he would press, and mahler by now recognized the true futility of the unrealistic dream. 
phaedra had become reticent, a tear-worn stone settled on some far bank that mahler could not reach, attempt as he might to bridge the chasm between them. perhaps, perhaps, perhaps; his mind suggested many dozens of outcomes and yet none of them mattered as she turned away again, his guarded erbe and her coolness cultivated no doubt by solitude and the impassivity that marked both of her progenitors.
"alles klar, phaedra," mahler murmured in a word that hid his hurt, for he did not deserve to feel such. "ich werde dich dort suchen."
if she did not turn to him again, mahler removed himself some distance, and then longer, letting her alone with the spinners and their silk-robed violets, moving off toward whatever vague event on the horizon beckoned; endless, endless, and all ruined.