Whitewater Gorge i wish i could rub the grief from you as if it were a smudge on the cheek

Current date, vaguey vague. @Mahler!

—and her quarry proves elusive once more, flitting into the green depths of a gorge that she hopes the blacktail will shorn itself across.

What was the use of praying to gods she’s never held faith for?
Aurëwen lingers at her disturbed post, half-sight soured with a private humiliation. The blasted cervine had swept from her grasp time and again, before both it and she arrived to this place where the riverway settled into the earth’s embrace far, far below. It’s vastly tempting to pursue it...
but, seeing the stone there  (and what track-trails she cannot),  the silver decides against it with nothing more than a chagrined feather of her tail.

She supposes that, as she's here, she could forage about the liminal lines; see what green she could tote back to the bear’s claim; busywork, if her irked, hung figure was anything to scrutinize.
So, turning from her forfeit of a hunt, Aure begins to pick her way about the gushing gorge, red-hewn crown low, studious.

mahler's travels for a small space of time left diaspora in kazimir's paws for the first time, but he had faith she would watch well their borders. flinging up a cry that told his wanderings to both the she-wolf and his kill-brother, the gargoyle drifted into the shared lands and was gone.
for some time he loped in the shadow of a drifting hawk, which found it sporting to challenge the wolf to a race across the narrow knifelike paths that led through the mountains. this mahler obliged with a silent eagerness, tongue lolling with an abandon he did not display before any of his fellows. the spoor of goats gave way to deer-marks as his descent began, and then up again to where only the most sure-footed might go.
the wind caught at his proud ruff, drawing it in a charcoal mane 'round his face as cold lavender eyes lay stonelike upon the moving body of a pale nymph below him. he knew who it was, and all at once mahler had begun to come down toward her, features somber, mouth grim as he came away from his own tasks.
"aurëven," he called when he had come within range of her ears. "vhy did you do it?" why had she attacked stigmata, had herself and her young brood driven from the mountain? she was alone now; yes, she was often alone, was she not, for the motherdove was not one who had ever fully accepted that she must always be present for her little ones. but he was not here to judge her for that; the castigation in his hard lilac stare was for the reckless choice she had made, and that alone.

—and there it was: her name, his verdict, in the voice of reason she’s wished to hear never again, and also not;
but then her own voice was leaving her, carried back to him on the soft midsommar winds, over a frozen shoulder,

“Whether or not your General truly meant to bless those broods with their own peaks, I could not continue to idle at his notion of removing himself from ze lands for a drive — something that should, no, must be managed by subordinates alone.” Her worn chords struck low from a readied breast, and with them poised on her tongue, turned to the musiker to lance them within his own beliefs. 
“And with your numbers dwindling, I would not have ze remainder of ze pack lord over my children and I as if we were owned.”

Here it was she fell silent, solemn, to instead turn her blind eye his way; as if that would somehow deter those lilacs which flushed her with shame, with indignation,
but Aure rose, aquiver with the scorching revolution that’d needed to be smothered and stifled for so long.

Then, in her sorrows, she wanted to greet her once-aide, beg of his professions as she’d once begged of Dragomir’s own healer— but her moon-slim jaw bolted shut, her limbs tightened the way they oft did when preparing to bolt;
yet she held herself there, and after several, heavy hearbeats, began to... creep towards Mahler.
She couldn’t stop trembling from holding a world of others’ anguish; nevermind her own, and trying to keep herself afoot.

Her prints were featherlight, and unsure, and she moved in a wide crescent about him, for it was all her mind, her figure could do  (rather than run from him, from all of this melancholy as she so pined to.)

it would be an untruth to claim that mahler was unmoved by the ferocity of coolness with which aurëwen regarded him, spoke to him of why she had chosen the ragged path out of diaspora. and he was silent, implacable; a stone idol to the gilded fury of her quiet testament.
it was not only for herself that she had done this thing, but for her children, and mahler understood well that this was one arena in which he was not versed.
the gargoyle watched her with the cloak of impassivity heavy upon him, but the dove’s words suggested to his own mind what he had begun to doubt, that the dream he and stigmata had spun one bloodstained night was mere gossamer. 
aurëwen was not the first to question it; had not liri? had not ruenna? it had been many weeks since the honey-eyed woman had come to mind, and mahler was struck with the realization that their dream for diaspora had driven her away.
ruenna; the thought of her name caused the shadowpriest an ache he could scarce afford in the moment. ruenna; he put her aside, but not before his lips tightened, the evidence of a perceptible hurt.
flayed by her travails both physical and tearstained, aurëwen trembled but did not remove herself from his judgement; instead her slim frame circled closer and mahler did not move. here he felt worthless, for to know if one wished to be touched in a painful moment was a wisdom that evaded him. he had no ill will toward the sylph, would gladly have taken her into his embrace if it was of benefit to her, but still he stood.
”vhere are your children?” mahler asked at length, turning ‘round to level his gaze upon her again. there was something here; something weighed upon her already-dulled heart, and he would know it.

She might have thawed for Mahler, if he hadn’t made an enquiry that halted her frigid step; thawed for him in the way she hadn’t known how to the moment she’d heard her love’s roar and seen their son’s—
“In Kaisteloki,” came the wintry rasp of her answer, “with their father. With my comrades.” The silver couldn’t help but balk, oh-so faintly it might’ve gone unnoticed, at the words that she knew may pain the musiker in one way or another; but it was gone from her in the same breath that she continued to circle, incrementally advance.

The ash-fallen Aure hesitantly made for had nursed numerous hurts during her stay in his brother’s claim; from sniveling over Dragomir’s bout with dirt, to his father’s twice-over departure, and then, ultimately, to tending to what that blasphemy had made her into today.
She doesn’t know if that unassuming gentleness would ever return to her. She doesn’t know if... how others might take to her, anymore.

Aurëwen doesn’t know what she is — not a mother, as it’d undoubtedly been her own actions that’d led to Dragomir’s current state. Her fault. My fault. 
“For what it is worth,” she breathed, words ragged, faint, “perhaps I should have stayed. Stayed, and let ze General churn my childrens’ minds. Perhaps that is a kinder fate to my son, on his deathbed.”
“I...” A shivery gulp. “I have come to terms with my faults of that day. My foolishness. All of those, and before, and... there is nothing more I can do.”

Quivering incomprehensibly, Aure blindly shivered her way down down down; coming to an entire rest before the cheerless gargoyle, too weakened, too spent of tears to have the decorum she had only moments ago. What more can I do?

aurëwen said many things, but the kapitän’s ears cut only a fragment from the emotional flow of her words. son; deathbed. and in the next breath the motherdove seemed to overflow with regret, breath juddering in her throat.
a demand to know what had befallen dragomir leapt to mahler’s lips, but he turned it aside viciously, for like a broken fledgling she had come to him downcast, and he looked upon her with affection warming the cold purple appraisal of his features.
gingerly mahler reached to aurëwen then, seeking first the small satin hairs between her auds, and then her torn ivory cheek.
”diaspora is your home,” the gargoyle gave forth gently, genuinely. it was where she had borne her children; the blood of birth bound her inexorably to the earth of that mountain place. he wished that she would return with him, but mahler knew she could not. 
all wildhearted and flighty, a swan which must be alone; the doktor, if she would allow, slowly gathered aurëwen to his chest and let her exist there for as long as she would, a silence curling around them both while he tried to think what demon must have courted her son, a boy he had come to love.

Much like their last solemn discussion  (moons ago),  Aurëwen expected for the basilisk’s apostle to turn from her in favor for that mountain lake where he came. She didn’t comprehend that he’d gather her up and to his ashen, scarred breast; that he’d cradle her there with  a patience more suited for eternities.
Then, like a heavy-tongued, dumb chant, her words came:

“Broken ribs and legs;
torn neck and claws;
a fractured cheek.
He fell from Silvertip.”
Yes, fell—for how else could those injuries have come to him? Her mind wasn’t as open to the imaginative scenarios as it’d once been, and so Aurëwen refused it to entertain otherwise.
For now... until her son spoke himself. If he spoke.

With a torn cheek and thin neck fitted into the column of the Kapitën’s, Aure let herself linger in that stone-warmth for as long as she dared; a place where, she was certain, few and fewer have been invited to. 
And, after listening to his heartbeat and considering her own consideration, well... she may as well tell one of the waning few she trusts, anymore, with all that’s happened. So she began with Dennan.

Letting her dove-boned figure situate itself further into the stolid rigidness of the musiker, she murmured to him of the Dreadful and what he’d done to her—as a whelp, as who she has become—and of their horrid encounters both recent and in the misted past.
Then, she told him more presently of the three’s reuniting with Vercingetorix: how the four of them had rejoined  (and subsequently left)  in the midst of chaos on the coast. Her recollection led her to speak of Dragomir’s capture, the state they’d found him in, and now... here. 

“What have we done?” came the fearful, hushed whisper, eyes shut at his throat. “He cries out in ze dark, lies abed, adrift, broken, and... we...” We don’t deserve our children.

it was not known to mahler how long it had been since he had cradled another so tenderly, one not a suckling child. there arose in his breast a tightening sensation, one uncomfortable, for marigold had only skirted around the edges of his mind these past several years.
as aurëwen curled against him — so light the touch of her tortured frame! — mahler began to glean the portrait of the terrified child still crouching within the motherdove, too frightened to grow, too horrified at the idea of failure. 
even as aurëwen revealed this pieces of herself to his listening ear, mahler let another part of his mind encircle what he remembered of his wife.
he kept himself ever present, however, and when she began to stir and question herself in the tired breathy monotone of the very exhausted, mahler was silent a moment.
”you are his mother, a healer. i am sure you left him vith such. you have therefore done vhat you can, aurëven.” he drew back now to look into her features, seek the woman’s eyes with his own.
”ve cannot blame ourselves for things beyond control. vhen he recovers, perhaps he vill be changed. vhat matters is that you remain a constant in dragomir’s life, something to vich he might cling.”
he cleared his throat, touched her gently with the descent of his broad muzzle, and said no more. a tormented soul, even unto the last days; plagued, pursued, injured, and now robbed of her child’s light. and yet such strength she had to go forward, to draw more breath, as he almost had refused to do when marigold departed this world.

agh messy lil post sorry

’You have done what you can.’ Had she, though? There wasn’t more that within her power that she could bring about? As her once-deliverer continued, Aure let herself wilt into him once more; cheek finding the dark crook of shoulder, in some pilgrimage for solace.
And there was no doubt her boy would metamorphos in some way or another, with this; but the silver would do what she could to be at his side, every thought and step of the way. Even if—

“Mahler,” flit from scarred lips with an almost intimate, la dame blanche-esque incantation; and the waxen herbalist might’ve let herself descend her and her sorrows into the gargoyle, once upon a time. Aure was longing, lonesome... but in her loyalty, loved only one, romantic that she was.
So in the midst of her wearied doze, she was able to continue, “...you should see him. My dragon,” gaze hooded and heavied by wearied lashes. “I have taken him from Diaspora, yet, perhaps it would do him good to see one of you whom he loves, too.”

She’d untwined from where she’d wound herself against him this time, in favor of looking into those pensive lavender eyes to see what was held there. “An epiphany, but... there is not much else I can think to do for him, while he begins to heal.”

the shadow and the dove stayed in a quiet communion, mahler pensive, aurewen desolate. he rebuked himself for the response of his baser self to her tears, to the uncommon warmth of a rare touch, to her femininity; it was not truly what he wished, for mahler found early that he operated separately from the male flesh in which he was encased. 
and still he was ashamed for it, but the moment thankfully passed, and he was able to refocus fully upon her suggestion that he come to where dragomir lay. instantly he agreed; it glowed passionately in the lavender ice of his gaze, and the gargoyle gave a single nod. "i do not know vhere kaisteloki is," he admitted, stumbling somewhat over the unfamilarity of the syllables,"but if you vill give me some leave, a day or two at most, i vill come to see dragomir."
he was moved that even in her grief aurewn thought of him, thought of her son's love for the dour musiker, and his heart ached within his chest beneath the weight of things that had no name but overwhelmed him all the same.

To say that Aurëwen was knowledgeable of her consideration for the mishaps of others through her own wishes was... an understatement. Or, perhaps she was knowing of it, but it’d become such an absent, albeit instilled habit that she thought nothing of it. Perhaps even she might remain unknowing of this soul-sacrificial trait til the end of her days.

The fervent light she spied in Mahler’s eyes was another thing of itself entirely—but then, he’d helped to raise her brood alongside their father and the rest of Diaspora, for a time. It brought a flush of humility beneath her ivory hide; and his words likewise coaxed an imperceptible tug to a corner of her scarred lips. 
“A day, or two, then,” she decided with him, not entirely without humor. Her snowy, shorn snout swiveled from the drags of his stature, and instead pointed northerlies, in the gist of the way she’d came. “Just follow ze river by ze star, and straight on to morning.”

There is a minute part within her that wishes to stay here; to remain with one of the few who seem to truly understand her; to keep herself shrouded in his rigid depths, and him, too ...but she eventually made to rise from his embrace. “I will let them know.”

Another of their many lulls fell between them, and in it, Aure took the moment to brush a mere kiss of parting  (of comfort, of well-wishing)  upon what part of the musiker she could reach—the cheekbone, barely, being so nearly diminutive as she. How else was she to convey her thanks?

and he coloured beneath it, beneath the dark fur of his cheeks, flushing like a boy. it had been so with marigold at first, he remembered, then ruenna, then takiyok — mahler decided he would perhaps never be accustomed to the dainty butterfly of a woman’s kiss, however she meant it.
with a sudden awkwardness did he brush her brow with his own lips, drawing back as to place a buffer of air between them lest he bumble again. ”i vill come soon,” mahler murmured somberly, bowing once. if aurëwen had nothing else to add, he would turn and begin his trek back to diaspora at once, to prepare for a longer trip.