Kildeer Rest betrübt

there was little reason to continue. and more reason all the same to do just that.
each morning mahler reached past the stricken memory of wylla's anguished face, begging him, to the way that elke and ciri had made their greeting in moonspear.
he could live for them, he knew, for phaedra. for thade, though the boy had faded yet again.
mahler's gut clenched, and he began to search through killdeer, searching as much for his wayward sons as for new land into which he might extend the strained reach of rivenwood.

She stopped looking.

It was perhaps the stupidest thing she could do. Her mate was gone. Maeve felt abandoned. She moped and swore to herself, but it didn't bring the woman back. If the other wolf wanted to find her, she would have already. This Maeve knew. This is why she fell back to depression.

All the process she had made... meant nothing. The spring and summer they spent together, the autumn they grew their love. The winter with promises. She softly groaned, not noticing the other wolf. But she knew once she did what he was doing. He was searching for something.

"Hey" she calls to him. If she couldn't find her mate, maybe she could help him.

there was nothing here. mahler looked toward the distant stone teeth and thought wildly of what she had said. and the fact that he had not come along.
but mahler was not alone with his thoughts for long. it seemed he was not allowed to be, the gargoyle thought with a tinge of frustration that he hid well as he faced the stranger.
registering her beauty in a rote way, the cursory look of a man who sees but has no desire, mahler closed the distance between them with long steps. "hello."

He closed distance and she felt herself back away slowly, only to halt when she stepped back only once. "Sorry for botherin' you" Maeve felt herself say, feeling it was unfair to distract herself with his own worries "you... I thought you were looking for someone. I wanted to help."

Maybe he'd be suspicious about that, so she took in a ragged breath. "My mate, I uh... we got separated coming here" perhaps Ana was just her ex-mate now "and I haven't found her" perhaps she had really been abandoned "so I know... what it looks like. To be looking."

Maeve frowns, not knowing what else to say to him. She waits his judgement upon her words.

the stranger turned out to be more perceptive than mahler expected. she was rewarded, or perhaps cursed, by a naked glint of grief crossing over the empty galaxy of his stare before he blinked it away, became stone once again. she had spoken of a wife, and he did not react outwardly, only to consider his vast ignorance upon that subject.
and so, with more wisdom than he had shown as of late, he thought to himself bitterly, mahler said none of it. "i am sorry to hear that," he intoned gruffly. "today i am searching for my sons. they are almost grown to a year and have been avay for far too long." 
and perhaps tomorrow he would search for someone else.
"maybe ve should join our searches?"

"Today?" she echoes, raising a brow at the man "are more than your sons lost?" Did wolves get pulled into this bermuda triangle like wilds, never to be seen again? Maeve starts when she realizes he asked her a question. Combine their searches... she knew she'd never see Ana again. But the man could see his sons.

"Okay" she says now, moving a bit closer. He had done nothing to her, and she was the one to start talking anyway. "what do your boys look like?" Maeve asked him "and their names...?" She tried not to focus on getting hope for seeing her mate again. That had already been dashed long before the Teekons.

"they are the only vones missing." he gave a wave of his plume, stepped sidelong so that they might walk together, he and this as of yet nameless woman. mahler wished to ask after the wife she had mentioned, but felt quite guarded upon the subject of wylla. 
hoping that the traveller would not ask after the vagueness of his answer, the gargoyle shifted himself to descriptions. "they are both tall, born in the same month. thade has the markings of a badger vith green eyes, and astraeus bears a grey mask vith scarring upon his left eye, forehead, and shoulder." he tried to pull them into memory now, as the outlines had grown fuzzed as his recollection of thade's predominant expressions.
"vhat about the vone you yourself seek?"