Sleepy Fox Hollow Gain the weight of you, then lose it

Set the day after this thread, just to move things along! For @Phaedra and @Mahler no need to match this ridiculous length

Wylla's dreams that night were as horrifying as they were fantastic, fed by blistering fever as they were.

She dreamed that Thade and Phaedra had formed ranks with Tiercel and were hunting her across a red and purple landscape. No matter where she went, they found her. They bayed on her trail and sought to spill her blood, denounced her as the worst thing that ever happened to them, and she believed them. She ran for her worthless life, but more than once, turned back with the desperate wish to give them what they wanted, if only to give them something for once...

She dreamed that Mahler stood before her in the meeting place on Nova Peak with twelve women at his back and bragged of his conquests, of how each had borne him stronger and better children, how he could never love a creature such as her and mean it, while they jeered and laughed from behind his shoulder, while he cast her out and slammed down the axe that at last severed her remaining self worth from her...

She dreamed that he died in the cave on Nova Peak and, howling rage and screaming gale, she had gone to the cliffs with the intent of avenging him, only to throw herself into a cascading white sea filled with finless, eyeless fish with jagged teeth the size of elk antlers...

She dreamed that Lycaon and Ingram were tearing each other apart on the cold beach of Grimnismal, each of them crying out for her support, and she was frozen there and unable to help...

She dreamed that she was in Stag's strong embrace, that she whelped him five children in the spring of the year only for them to all come out looking like Mahler, and it broke her heart to know them, and it broke Stag's heart to know she still loved him...

She dreamed of Stag with his throat torn out while Mahler swallowed his flesh and claimed that he was Stigmata now, while blue-furred imps praised him in the background...

Each dream sent her into fits where she would whimper and kick her legs, likely drawing the attention of the two who stood watch over her. She sometimes mumbled words in her sleep, words of regret and words of resolve alike. Once or twice, she cried out to whatever dread gods must exist in this forsaken world, pleading for death. Her blood pressure dipped on occasion, but always managed to right itself, and by some miracle, and the combined efforts of Phaedra and Mahler, Wylla made it through the night.

Her fever broke in the early morning and she slipped into a much deeper, dreamless sleep after that. It was only a matter of time before it returned—infection still ravaged the wound on her shoulder, threatening to reach into her bloodstream, where it would become fatal—but the berries Phaedra applied seemed to have helped stymie it somewhat. The leaves Mahler had forced into her mouth had taken effect and calmed the raging storm in her body enough that when late morning came and she cracked open her eye, Wylla was greeted with a splitting headache and a mouth that felt like it was full of sand, but she knew where she was.

She was still hot, though, and still breathing quickly. Wylla shifted to slowly stretch herself out as though to expose more of herself to the cool mountain air. It took her a long time to gather her bearings, but when she did, she was surprised to see the sun-brushed figure of her daughter nearby, and the scent of Phaedra and her father all around. Why were they here? How had they found her? How had she got here?

She parted her lips to speak Phaedra's name, but all that came out was a dehydrated croak.

when mahler felt, finally, that phaedra must sleep, he assured her he would keep vigil over wylla. and so they had worked together and in turns, bringing water and more of the feverplant to be used again. 
mahler knew that eventually he must tell praimfaya where he was; he had told the young leader only that he and phaedra were leaving for a time. and while that time had not passed, while they had enjoyed hours upon sagtannet, he felt the press of necessary travelling-back at his shoulders.
when wylla tried to speak, the gargoyle started from where he half-dozed beneath a tree. soaked moss lying on a bed of leaves, and this he plucked up, carrying it to her at once. the man said nothing, only held it gently just above her muzzle, gentle squeezing along with wylla's own efforts descending the drink.
when this had finished, mahler put the moss aside and took up oakleaf stems, pushing them into the curve of his jaw to chew, interminably, a poultice to place over the berry-juice and hopefully leach more of the poison from the wounds.
all done with precision, all done with a formality that stuttered and stopped as he looked down at her, desperation and relief racing nakedly across his greying features. "vylla," own voice hoarse. 
"vylla, i thought that ve might lose you."
this time he did not think of phaedra hearing him — ten hours, ten hours, ten hours — and wylla still not emergent from the proverbial woods.

Skipping Phaedra with permission for now!

A dry cough soon followed, wracking Wylla's weakened figure while Mahler bustled nearby. Her eyes remained fixed on Phaedra, but her daughter didn't stir. It didn't take much puzzling out to figure out why her daughter might be so exhausted. The realization of it speared her with guilt, for in the depths of it, she had wished for death. Maybe she had wished for it even before this; maybe it wasn't such an accident that she wandered too close to those bear cubs.

How could she be so selfish, with Phaedra and Thade both still out there? Tiercel was a lost cause when it came to winning back forgiveness, despite her hazy hopes from the night before, but her two youngest didn't deserve this.

Broad gunmetal paws filled her field of view moments before a couple drops of water pattered against her hot nose. Another day, Wylla would have turned stubbornly away, remembering keenly their last meeting and desperate not to give him the satisfaction of being near her. But she was parched, and her dreams lingered still in her mind, and he had saved her life, together with their daughter. A life she wasn't sure she wanted, but saved nevertheless. Without complaint, she lapped water from the moss and gulped it appreciatively down.

She peered up through her eyelashes to try to see what he was doing when he moved away. Wylla wished he would rouse Phaedra; she didn't want to be alone with him right now. It seemed he was absorbed in his work, however, focused on that and not on her. She wondered for a moment, while he dressed her wound with whatever he'd chewed up, if he regretted wasting his time to save her ungrateful hide.

All such doubts erased when he turned and she bore witness to the raw emotions chasing across his scarred face and through his twilit eyes, half the hue of the melded sunrise of their daughters'. Her heart thumped in her chest and she wasn't sure if it was because she was a stupid, stupid idiot or because her body was fighting against further illness.

She wanted to say something she might later regret, should Phaedra ever hear it, but instead she rasped out a low, thank you, and found herself at a loss for what else to add.

mahler felt whatever words he had mustered die beneath the raw formality of her thanks. he wanted to tell her that he was such a weak man, so completely relieved that they had found her, here, that she had not wandered to the other side of the sunspire to die feverish and haunted.
that he loved her.
instead mahler swallowed and leaned over wylla, fussing with the dressing until it lay more flush against her skin. "phaedra created a new medicine, just for you." he glanced along the broad line of his charcoal shoulder to where the pale girl lay, surely exhausted.
and then he filled himself with the sight of wylla again, from the goldfire of her gaze to the way that her slight body was still so very weak, to the point where mahler was unable if she would yet be able to stand.
"only you vould take on a bear and live," came his next unsteady words. another day, then, perhaps; he was unwilling to sully this time by insistence that she be brought home, a place she had clearly said she would not return.
for now he only watched her, swallowing the shuddering sigh and in the next turning to check the trajectory of the light left to the three.

Phaedra's player says she'll either hop in when she has writing energy or will just do a separate thread later if not, so we can go a few rounds skipping her!

Despite what Wylla had seen in Mahler's eyes moments prior, when he stood back up from adjusting the dressing, there was a more strained formality between them. It made sense; their last few meetings had not been charitable for either of them. Wylla's expectations clashed with Mahler's willingness in ways that made any relationship between them seem untenable, at least to her eyes, and she could not forget the way he had reduced her to simply a woman who must produce children, and scoured away what her faithfulness meant with the suggestion.

That didn't mean she didn't wish for it back in these quiet moments where her soul was laid bare, whether she liked it or not, if only they could find some way to hear one another's languages beneath the accusations and the hesitation. If only he could prove, in some way, the words he spoke were the truth in a way that Wylla could believe, and if only she could let go of her paranoia and trust him for a moment.

But because there was that strain between them, and because Wylla could only ever nitpick at the manner in which Mahler said his words and failed to back them up with his actions, and because she was a woman of action who placed little faith in words alone, she sank to the same formality. In fact, she sank further, down to a place where Mahler was only here because he had to be, for his daughter's sake, and must want nothing more than to return. This, reinforced by the small talk he made about the bear, which might have made her chuckle if they were on better terms, but only made her grimace.

You can go now, she told him, not in the dismissive manner that suggested she wanted him gone, but in a rare understanding one that suggested he didn't want to be here. She met his eyes with her singular one briefly, then glanced away, freeing him of this obligation. I'll be fine.

It was an absolute lie. Wylla would not be fine without the regular care of a wolf who knew what they were doing, and a waver in her tone acknowledged as much. She was simply convinced that he would prefer to not linger in her presence, knowing that she expected more of him than what he was willing to give her, and likely hating her for it in the ways she behaved as though she hated him (and she did hate the way he was, in some ways, and she wished, in other ways, that it was more absolute, for it would be easier for both of them to walk away and never return, as they always did).

Freeing him of remaining here with her, and freeing Phaedra of watching her parents in all their tension and reluctance; that was her intention.

now she truly did anger him, and this showed in the brief tightening of his jaw. mahler glanced over her small and weakened figure, how her wound still seemed to curdle with heat, her chapped mouth and the very prone nature of her! how could she think!
how could she believe
that he would ever so much as entertain the thought of leaving her here?
"now you listen," the shadowpriest began, looming closely over her and speaking softly, lest phaedra hear. however, little pitchers had big ears; he suspected if their yearling girl was awake, she would catch the roll of his baritone.
listen, wylla, as if she had not already heard him so many times, and he her.
mahler was not angered, now, it had ebbed into something frustrated and open, the quintessential stone wall that had always been his unable to be tugged down, refusing to descend. not when she still walked the sliver of land between this existent world and her own demise.
"i vill not be leaving you. i vill be taking you to rivenvood, vhere," he hastened sharply, lest wylla began her protestations early, "vhere i intend to do this until you are better. yes, i am deciding this for you, now, before you have a moment to say no, or that you vill not go. i am not taking you there to deprive you of any freedom or obligate you to me, i am doing this because it is the correct reflection of my love for you, and also phaedra's love for you."
"you do not need to stay there, vonce you are better. no vone vill forbid you from that, or from even leaving before you are truly vell." his stoneflower eyes explored the one remaining to her, a pleading that had no edge of ice now, no rock, no barrier. only the deeply felt truth of what he was speaking, lashed to the backbone of his firm bedside manner.
he did not add that this was the role of a doktor; he would not give wylla another opportunity to assume the worst of him, again, as she had just done. he meant to nurse her as much from his deeply held adoration as his skill.
an exhale; he veiled the gaze, just for a moment, reopening it to set it toward her cheekbone again. "if i leave you here, you vill be dead in less than a day. you are already dehydrated. you cannot valk. dying alone in this place is your choice, but it is not mine, and not vone i vill let you make. not if i am able to save you. i vill not leave."

Wylla should have known better; it was only her own mind's machinations that made it possible to believe these things of Mahler. There were things she believed about him that came from his own behaviour, but the assumption that he didn't want to be here was not one of those. His voice was quiet, but lashed between them like the strike of a whip and forced her ears and eyes down like she was a scolded pup.

As he expected, she opened her mouth as if to protest—she could not return to Rivenwood where she would be humiliated and mistreated by the remains of Sagtannet—but was cut short by him. Already she was inventing the ways in which he must be scheming to return her to his side and dash all her own hopes and dreams to fulfill his, and that was unfair of her, and he reminded her of it when he mentioned his love and Phaedra's both.

Wylla's eye cut to their sleeping daughter then while her gorge rose in her throat. Not at Phaedra, but at herself. At how quickly and keenly she attempted to thwart every attempt to show love with a reason why it was false; it was easy to do that to Mahler because she felt scorched and shunned in his efforts to show her she mattered to him, but to do it to Phaedra?

To both of them, truly. She knew it, no matter how compulsive it was. Mahler explained that she would not need to stay once she recovered and her first erratic and unfair thought was, don't you want me to? She swallowed thickly, but was unable to stop the tears that welled up in her eye, nor the shame she suddenly felt, that forced her to press her face into her legs with a shuddering sob.

wylla said nothing, only descended into tears.
mahler felt himself corrode beneath them. he curved like a helpless shadow, feeling her grief tug at his own, until he was forced to turn his eyes away lest they grow dreary with salt as well.
but he could not for long ignore the look and sight of her; against all remembered recollection of her anger and teeth turned against him many times, mahler lay near, silently willing his body closer until he drifted like charcoal around all her edges, cupping her feeble frame in the larger arc of his own.
ready to be driven off by a word or a snarl;
mahler drew her close, and lay his head down alongside her own. unwilling to let her grieve alone — some logical part of him subdued for now insistent that he not allow her to weep long, for the aforementioned lack of water. 
but that was only the unempathetic tic of a doktor's mind. 
nothing more to be said, only mahler cautious and watchful and wondering and desperate, perhaps, for the smallest connection between them not rife with hatred or anger or his own glut of unsaid and bitter things.
existence beside wylla for as long as she might allow.

The last time Wylla felt Mahler's embrace in such a fashion was... Well, she supposed it was when they first laid claim to Nova Peak. Anything that transpired between then and now was charged with tension or occurred out of some necessity, like when both of them were injured by fights at the cliffside. Since then, they had only grown more and more distant and reticent in one another's company until the only promise of contact was in the threat of Wylla's teeth.

While she hiccuped into her arms and suffered both the wretched clutch of shame and sorrow and the dizzying sensations of continued sickness, she heard Mahler move, but until his body contacted hers, she assumed he was walking away. That was what they did, right? They walked away from one another and never resolved any of the things between them, only constructed more barbed words as weapons for the next time. Instead, he curled around her and the warmth of him suffused her thin spine and passed a calm soothing through her that contrasted sharply against the fever from last night.

Why could he not see that this was what Wylla had always needed? Support and comfort and reassurance; the pacifying touch of someone dear, the confidence that it was reserved for her. Well, she couldn't be sure of that now, but rather than lashing out with her teeth like she so often did these days, Wylla shuffled around and pressed into his side, burying her face in the thick fur of his neck and weeping out her shame, agony, inadequacy, longing, loneliness, and every other terrible thing that had come to root in her soul.

time's eternal interminable subhorror ticking and tocking;
paused for a time, a clock held in a near-apocalyptic stasis.
she had warded him away so many times that he had not come back; she had said leave and he had not heard ask me to come home. the sound of her sobbing was too familiar.
her tears trickled brackish and hot through the pelt of his shoulders; he lifted his muzzle only long enough to descend along her cheek, between her ears; tension fading from his musculature until he was only a plane of softstone made for her grief, allowing his own soul to pull scar tissue until black endings leaked back into red, somewhere in the arteries that still powered mahler through the heaviness of himself.
he smoothed the remembered down behind her ear with his lips, lifted his face to hers and featherlight laved the rivulets of seawater from the curves of her face,
so desperately afraid that anything he said now would be wrong, 
and yet having no words rise, for she did not need to hear his variances, only to be here —
mahler tamped down the cough boiling in his throat.

Wylla felt as though she was melting into him, absorbing Mahler's warmth and melding with his cool grey fur until no inch of her felt separate. She drew in his scent between heaving breaths and allowed herself to believe, for just an instant, that she was the only one. In that instant, she let herself believe that if she asked him to stay here with her for good, he would agree.

She was sure he wouldn't, but it was nice to think it. As he washed the tears from her face, she closed her eye and tried to capture it in her memory so that the next time she felt like she was alone and unwanted in the world, she could reminisce on what it felt like to be someone's focus, even if it would offer only a few seconds of respite. It couldn't possibly last; it would shatter the next time she asked for something, like always.

Wylla became aware of the heat and the throbbing in her shoulder then and felt compelled to pull away, but she made herself remain. Mahler, she said faintly, turning her head so she could look at Phaedra again

If not for him, because this was temporary and she feared that it would be the same as Sagtannet, and if not for herself, because she could not bear to return and admit her shame, then she would do it for Phaedra and Thade. She could stay for them, with or without the rest. She could find a way to turn a blind eye to the rest, she thought. That she had valued her selfish indignation over her own children... It was no wonder Tiercel despised her.

I don't want to die.

a sharp inhale from his own muzzle buried in her fur; he pulled back to look down at her, resolution flickering to life, the sharp determined edges of the captain he had once been. and it grew, as it had always been so; it had not left him in these years. "you vill not die."
it left his sense of logic tattered, such a hubristic statement uttered aloud; it flew in the face of all the doktor had ever practiced inside and out of medicine. to know the sum of a diagnosis and to say it with no hesitation. but to hope? he had been given no reason to think such things, not until wylla became his patient and he saw, finally, curled in this moment, that he could apply no harsh rigidity to it now.
not them.
"every hour that you are alive you leave death behind. but you need vater, more than i can bring here." mahler's ears flicked back in apology. "you must stand now, mausebär." he could not fight this battle for her, but mahler meant to be her vanguard.
"fifteen minutes, that vay. a stream. you remember." quick flick of his lips as he tensed, ready to straighten and stand them both.
not yet; he waited for her to be prepared, taking the following second to press lips to her forehead.

The spark of certainty in Mahler's voice did much to bolster Wylla, even though she, too, knew there was no guarantee. A sickly throbbing in her shoulder and waves of vertigo made it impossible to forget that she was still walking a fine line. The infection could reach her blood and drive her to madness and certain death, or the fever could return and fry her brain in the night, or any manner of other misfortunes. Wylla knew this, but she was beyond grateful that Mahler made an effort to sound sure of himself instead of his typical cold logic.

But to live, she had to stand and walk. Between the fever and sickness sapping her strength and the days since she'd last had a proper meal, Wylla wasn't sure she could manage that. Somewhere deep beneath the layers of depression and grief that shrouded her, she still boasted the fierce determination that deserved the name he'd given her, but she didn't know if that was enough this time.

She must make of it a matter of pride, then. Showing vulnerability was one thing, but outright weakness? Wylla could not stand to be weak in front of Mahler. She allowed him to brush her forehead with his mouth, sending a secret shiver down her spine that caught fire as it reached her shoulders and reminded her, again, of the pain there. Seizing upon the desire to seem stronger than she was, she tensed her paws and then began to haul herself up.

It took a far greater effort than she expected it to. Her thin face was lined with frustration and determination alike and she really did struggle to do it alone, but if not for Mahler's steadying figure to keep her from collapsing, she would never have made it to her feet. Even when she finally gained them, it felt like every muscle in her body was paralyzed and she weighed ten times her normal amount. She was breathing hard just from the effort. The wound in her shoulder screamed in protest and angry, putrid pus leaked into her fur from the edges.

Okay, she panted, casting another glance in Phaedra's direction. How she wished she could simply clutch her daughter and remain here. But brushing shoulders with death only to witness her daughter's exhaustion in the wake of creating a medication specifically for her once and for all solidified Wylla's desire to live; she clenched her teeth and hissed through the first step with her injured shoulder, leaning heavily on Mahler to ensure she didn't fall.

wylla stood; mahler helped to gather her up, nudging the woman here and there, steadying her with a muttered word of his tongue. he watched in sympathy as her wound tore; he promised her that the waters would be bracing.
the pace he set for the two of them was slow. each time wylla could go no further, they paused, but mahler did not let his determination leave him. she had found the strength to stand. he would find the skill to mend her.
phaedra he gave a low chuff as they passed; she would find their trail and know where he had taken her mother.
the scent of infection coiled hauntingly against his nostrils.
mahler coughed, once, unrelated to the ichorous tang, and smothered it with a hum.
they came to the stream; he helped her to its edge. "take your time, vylla."
the short journey had lengthened; it had unraveled whatever energies she had left.
mahler stepped into the stream and began to sluice water over her shoulder, loosing the pus and the syrup that clung in a horrid patch to her tangled fur. slow work; he rushed neither of them, and helped her to recline near the bank.
touching muzzle to cheek, watching her for a moment. "i must find more of the medicine."
resistant. mahler did not want to leave her.

What was a fifteen minute walk turned easily into twenty-five at the snail's pace Wylla kept, and for her, it felt like hours. Most of her steps were slowed by the toll the fever and hunger took on her, but every one with her injured shoulder scorched her and made the next one harder. When they reached the water, she outright collapsed into it and gasped at the relief of cool water washing over her legs and flanks. Wylla wasted no time in gulping it down, heedless of the churning in her stomach at the temperature shock.

Mahler went to work then, causing Wylla to grit her teeth and moan through the sear of water entering a raw and bleeding wound. Thanks to the infection, it had hardly healed at all despite the days since sustaining it. She gnashed her teeth through the pain, but for once, didn't turn to threaten or strike Mahler at all.

Maybe, for once, it was getting through her thick skull that he did care.

When he was finished and had helped her to a dry spot near the edge of the water, Wylla sank weakly onto her elbows and shivered in the mountain breeze. Better than the fever, though. Better than being in sweltering heat, too, which would only have made things worse. She clamped her jaws shut to still the urge to chatter her teeth, but when he indicated that he had to go and find more herbs, she blurted, no! before she could catch herself.

Well, too late to take that back now. Don't go, she mumbled, more than halfway embarrassed with herself. She had spent all these months since Sagtannet wishing he would just disappear, because maybe then she could forget him, maybe then she could find true hate in the spiteful words she said to and about him, but while she meant a lot of what she said about how he seemed to care only about his wants, and said a lot of things he never showed with the expectation that she would just believe it, and seemed to diminish all her grievances, and dared to imply she would just lay with any man for pups while her heart was torn apart with grief...

She didn't want to be alone anymore, she was starting to realize, even moment to moment, here, now. Thirty minutes ago she had told him to leave, now she asked him to stay. Sagtannet had not felt like home, but neither did any place he wasn't, not even when it had been her and Stag. Now Stag was who-knew-where, and she was getting too old and too tired to keep inventing reasons why Mahler was horrible just to fuel some self-righteous belief that she was any better than him.

She was just as selfish, parting herself from their children, making them choose. Just as selfish, wishing death on herself despite how it would shatter them. Just as selfish, selfish, selfish as he was, and after all, hadn't she done most of this to herself in pushing him away out of fear of losing him?

wylla, begging him to stay.
to remain.
mahler was still. perhaps he had once thought her utterance would bring him joy, but it only worried the man. he had only ever known her fierce, even in times less than hale. her voice now reminded him of the cough trapped indefinitely in his chest; a glimpse of something unknowable.
and he could not slip again into a doktor's mien with her. not now, and not ever.
"i vill be back. it is a promise." the feverplant grew along the edge of the stream; his frame might only fade from view for a handful of moments. and yet it would feel as an eternity; once he had tasted again something like warmth from wylla, mahler was silently wretched to have it again.
would it end, once she was well?
"you need the plant again," he urged, softly, stoneflower eyes suffused with apology as he moved away in a slow clip.
but true to his word he was returned within minutes, jaws filled with a bouquet of the verdant stalks dripping with red berries. he tested her pulse with a brush of his lips to her wrist, then stripped the fruit from the stems and chewed them as phaedra had, leaning over wylla to reapply the thick liquid.
this time, the shudder of her skin beneath his touch did not feel so dire — he worked in stoic quiet, heart thudding beneath his ribcage.

Mahler left anyway, and Wylla thought for just a second, and unfairly, how he only ever seemed to do the opposite of whatever she asked of him. But unlike her usual tendency to grow indignant and fester in it, she smoothed out her ruffled feathers and forced the feeling away. She had no right to it, not with how many times she had driven him away. Mahler was right. She needed the remedies, or the fever would come back before long. He left only because he must; to stay would do her more harm.

So she watched him go, breathing quickly through her nose and feeling the weight of exhaustion pressing on her thin shoulders. She watched him retreat and she thought, and while she thought, she grew drowsy.

He wasn't gone long, but her eyelids drooped by the time he returned. Wylla's ears twitched upright at the sound of his heavy tread, familiar despite months apart with only heated words between them. No whispering steps to announce Phaedra, however. Perhaps she would have to catch up with her daughter another time, if she didn't ultimately succumb to sickness. If she was going back to Rivenwood to recover, there would be time.

Time that she needed to use to sort out her wants, as well. Wylla listened rather than watched as Mahler worked, letting her eyes rest and letting the methodical sounds calm her quick breathing, trying to ignore the ripples of nausea and sickly warmth that skittered across the back of her throat now and again. She winced when he dribbled something hot and sticky over her shoulder, causing the air around her to burst with the ripe, fruity sweetness of Phaedra's remedy.

I'll come, Wylla said after some time, turning her head to glance up at him. She didn't like it much, mostly due to the possibility of Sagtannet's remaining number treating her with scorn and disgust and the imagined likelihood that Mahler would allow them to, but time with Phaedra was worth it. Maybe she could make something of it, if she could keep her mind from its dark thoughts for a time. To Rivenwood.

mahler sat back upon his haunches. she had chosen to come to the hollow, had chosen to go to sawtooth, and lastly, had chosen nova. but she had not chosen the things that accompanied such choices, namely his own. he had mistreated her for realizing her own limitations, and they had spun a bitter path between them, reinforcing with hatred and with walking-away, with stubbornness, with doubt. with fear.
the cough, tickling the inside of his jawline.
now wylla chose to come to noctisardor. he thought of the place he had taken himself at the beginning of the past illness, where few could find him without seeking. mahler considered the size of the land he had taken from legion, the burgeoning forests, the game-trails and shafts of golden light shimmering down upon hidden clearings.
there were many places to live as part of rivenwood, and yet as one's own self. in his mind, the cloven place he had found in a reflection of the broken boulder: a cracked triangular stone with a wider archway. it was for now choked with unrelentant ferns and filled with the crumbling debris of the animals that had long ago made it their home. but the cave behind the foliage was cool and wide. 
he could bring her there, he could —
no — he stopped his mind from whirling wild. varte, mann. she has not said all is well. she has not said she will live some new life with you there. mahler, horrified at the prospect of a misstep on the crackling of ice. 
"and i vill take care of you in rivenvood."

They had an accord, then. Wylla inwardly grimaced at the thought of calling it that. There was still a lot unspoken between her and Mahler, a lot of forgiveness that needed to be extended, and a lot of soul-searching on her behalf. Her intent in returning to Rivenwood was to get better, and then she hoped to find it in her to stay for her daughter, who deserved better than an absent mother with a death wish. Mahler didn't really factor into it at all, she thought.

Except he did, in ways she wouldn't acknowledge yet; despite all the tension that existed between them, all the injustices Wylla built up in her head and pinned upon him, she missed him fiercely. Despite the implication she would lay with Stag, or with any man who was not him, for the sole purpose of having children—that was his notion of success, not hers!—she longed for his company more often than she cared to admit, and wished for who he was before the ugliness began between them. It was only that every attempt she made to coax that man out ended in pride and frustration.

But maybe time in Rivenwood would find a different path for them. In the meantime, Wylla would allow herself to be brought where she said she would never go for her own wellbeing and that of her daughter, and if time shed further light on her lonesome heart and granted her the trust and the means to forgive Mahler and bury her fears... She would embrace that as it came. For now, she still did not fully trust that he had not fathered every litter in the pack and was obligated to every woman in its ranks, but she would soon learn that, as well, and decide for herself.

I lost Stag, she said abruptly, knowing full well that mentioning the Sandraudiga could put strain between them, but it was the truth. I haven't seen him since... No, she stilled her tongue before she mentioned that day, smacked its dry length against her gums, pivoted. I didn't... We didn't. I would never. She sought his grizzled face with her eye, letting some fierceness find its way back to her, if only for a second. Not with anyone else. It hurt that you thought I would.

Perhaps that was the closest Wylla would come to an apology for her harsh words that day, for the actual apology stuck in her throat. Clearing it, she settled her muzzle down between her legs and said, we can go. Tomorrow, maybe? I'm so— here she yawned, a dry and creaking sound, —tired.

Still her shoulder throbbed, insistent on proper care, but something about the berry juice was soothing. Whether they truly helped or not, they did take the edge off the symptoms. By tomorrow, she hoped she could walk half-decently without tearing it open, although it was probably impossible to descend from the mountains without doing so somewhere along the way. But she had Phaedra and Mahler; they would help her, and she would have to find some way to repay them both, in time.

stag.
mahler had not truly thought of him for many months, assuming that the boy had followed dutifully wherever wylla led. it was not impetus toward anger that moved him now, only regret, for his own behavior as well as the things that had sent stag after her in the first place. he had not made a good home for the boy who was eldest son in his heart. 
they had not — the gargoyle grasped the understanding, and faced the returned insistence of her sungold eye. he did not speak, did not move to argue or complain — it had been months ago, and he had said proud, cruel things to the woman who had not chosen him.
even now, she had not, but this time it did not matter if she ever slept near him or shared more with mahler. he was enraptured by the very conception that he might share a land with her once more.
"i did not either," he said quietly, laying his voice against her own with a single statement. temptation, yes; but he had fixed the vow forefront in his head.
"no travel until you are able to valk," the doktor assured. a cast of his lilac stare at the canopy above him, the gentle lap of the waters nearby. it would be a good place to rest, and while she slept, he would look for the comfrey and cobwebs the wound needed to bind itself.
stooping closer to chastely feather kiss between her ears if wylla allowed, and then he was settling himself nearby, the warmth of him present and solid along the small reaches of her own body once more, ready to keep sentinel as she slumbered.
not yet. he could not leave yet.

I did not either, said Mahler, and Wylla decided then and there to give him the benefit of the doubt. The truth would come out in Rivenwood, if it was a lie he told here. Multiple times had Mahler told her that he would not be happy to do as he had done the year prior. Multiple times she had thought him a liar.

Now she took it for truth, at least until proven otherwise. She didn't have the energy or desire to pick any more fights, in any case, and certainly not in earshot of Phaedra. She yearned to ask what he would do if she was mistreated by his Rivenwood, but did not.

That would come out in time, too. She owed him time to show her that it wouldn't be a repeat of the past. The least she owed him for saving her sorry life, after the way she'd treated him for the entirety of their time together.

Another yawn cracked Wylla's jaws while Mahler settled himself nearby, and despite not truly deserving it—how many times had she cut him down, accused him of things he had not done, and threatened him on top of it?—she scooted close. She needed the comfort now to drive away the persistent fear that lingered in the quick pace of her heart and the sharp smell of her wound. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, easing quietly in his company until she fell asleep, greeted by run-of-the-mill dreams rather than the wild ones of last night.

Somewhere deeper down, past her insecurity and her worry and her fierce indignation, Wylla was not right without him. Had never been. Maybe his nearness would help to mend the unrest in her soul enough that she would be better in the morning, and better overall, and would never do something so stupid and reckless again.