Spotted Eagle Mountain die unmöglichkeit

a fire-torn forest.
annaliese had not come back.
mahler did not know if the flametalon still lived, or if he had survived the fever that for two weeks had gripped him fiercely. he came to along the lower ridge of a nearby peak, tongue dry with thirst; in his sleep he had wandered away, and now trembled and sweated beneath the raining sleet. the beckoning of tree-branches lay just before him, but mahler was rooted, rootless, marigold's face spinning through his mind, and pelt clinging loosely to his massive, too-thinned frame.
would diaspora prevail?
before his staring eyes a vale of golden sunlight and verdant forest; mahler saw it, inhaled the fragrance of the pine. birdsong, twittering, drawing him. "oh, da ist die musik!" he mumbled sharply beneath his breath. children, laughing; his mind spun visions from nothing and led the ailing gargoyle along a narrow precipice beneath which jagged stones yawned to spear his breath.
papa! astarte cried
"ich komme, entlein." his vivid daughter, laughing as she had once upon a memory, and mahler lifted a forepaw into open air.

Diaspora remained quiet in their move and it unsettled the pale ghost. Her verdant gaze had followed the paths in the nearby lands and she could feel the itch of despair pull at her breast. Her children were just as silent, the hunger of the famine slowly taking the light from them. 

as loathe as she was to stray from them, the widow trailed the scent of the fevered General, worry for the man the only reason she strayed so far from her children's sides. 

he called to the air words she did not understand. Sweeping forward, the woman curled her slender form to him, worried stress upon him as she nosed along his jawline. He was not fit to be so far from his pack, and she felt helpless as the sickness of him roiled from his very being. "Mahler, come back to us," she whispered as concern knitted her fine brow.

a voice, a touch; mahler was transported back to the cold and to the strife of the current shifting chaos. gasping, he reeled back from the hungry edge, collapsing upon his haunches as fever-weakened limbs found they could not hold their burden.
"ketzia!" he hissed, shocked, adrenaline pulsing sickeningly in his gut. "i vas ... i vas dreaming." presently a look of consternation came over him; the gargoyle peered right and left confusedly. "vhere im i? vhere ..."

Her breath was easier to find as the gargoyle returned to reality—the reeling back from the edge of a terrible disaster stirring her to follow quickly after him, the sharp surprise of his voice only met with her slender muzzle grazing along his cheeks and nape, reassured that the man had not fallen to an untimely demise and joined her beloved in the stars above.

“Mahler,” she whispered smokily, the worry emanating from her as she pulled back, watching him carefully. Diaspora was falling apart—and the stress of it perhaps only fuelled his sickness moreso. “You’ve wandered,” was all she responded, for she wasn’t as familiar with this part of the mountain as their old home. She was beginning to feel the cold of the jagged mount’s cliffs, yawning as they lured potential death, and it gave her mind further pause that something was to be done. And she would do it with or without the man before her.

But now was not the time for such a conversation.

“Let’s get you home,” she coaxed, her gaze sweeping over him as the cool winter wind bristled the soft hairs of her pelt. “Can you walk? Or would you like to rest, first?”

unbeknownst to mahler, his fevered trek had cemented the fate of diaspora in this moment. it was a chilling veil that graced him as he fell silent, attempting to make sense of the choices ketzia had given him. "ve should go back," the general muttered. shame burned into his soul. "i —"
what was the worth of an apology? she would only push it aside, reassure him with her dulcet voice, but the fact remained that he was failing at the head of a pack upon the precipice of splintering into a thousand pieces.
a muscle along his heavy jaw jumped; mahler said nothing more, refusing to lean upon ketzia as he struggled bodily to his large paws and indicated that the pair of them should move back along the path he had forged in a stupor.

Determined, delirious…
Stubborn.

Mahler was multifaceted in intricate ways that Ketzia suspected he kept below the surface of a stoical facade. Pink tongue swiped to the corners of her lips, now drawn thinly in contemplation before she gave way to his wish. She worried he would only weather his health more, but she too was eager to have him returned safely—to ensure that yet one more important wolf within her life was not lost or taken from her.

That did not abandon her.

He made to say something—the gargoyle quickly falling to silence as the mother bear began to usher him in the direction they had come. Jaded eyes swept over the fevered General, exotic muzzle leaning forward to sweep across his ruff in encouragement—enticement for their home. Come back to us, she begged quietly within her mind, but dare not speak it. Instead, sternly, the valkyrie rumbled in her smoky dulcet tone. “Don’t you dare try to apologize,” she murmured, coaxing him along the unforgiving trek of the mountains, knowing it would be a journey of stress to her heart.

"of course i must apologize, ketzia," mahler groused in an agony of humilation and the pounding of his temples. "i bear diaspora, vich needs me. if i cannot lead, then somevone else must take up the mantle." a mere illness, but at this time, could spell doom for his numbers. for them all.
he fell into a pensive silence as warrioresss marked their steps with her care, but in time his lilac stare laid bare and agonized upon her a harsh second. "vhy vould you not blame me for all that has happened since i became general?" the spurring of the land was no fault of his, but she had lost little ones to the changes. takiyok also. 
into a black and silent pit mahler fell, surrendering himself to the yawning mouth within his own psyche as he focused upon the trajectory downward.

He agonized--the fervor of it spurned only more by his ailment, she could assume, and as his pointed pale stare fell upon her, questioning her, she allowed her pace to slow and her eyes to bore upon him. He ached with not just his sickness, of that she was sure. Spinning, her paws lithe upon the rugged terrain, the honeyed wolf of snow once more closed the distance between them, her own heart aching at the thought of his hurt. Kisses were pressed along his nape, a cold nose lifting to nudge at the underside of his chin. 

"Takiyok is perfectly capable of leading in your stead," she murmured, dulcet lips finally settling to press against his cheek. "That is why she has been elevated." Was it not?

But the final question stretched between them. Rendering a stolen moment of truth. "I blame Stigmata. Not you." And there was the harshness of it. The levels of grieving had found the mother bear in the throes of anger now, though it was a silent storm in which she carried. "Stigmata is gone. And to carry on Diaspora purely for his legacy will no longer suit the needs of the pack you both had established." Her lips curled, ensuring her smoky tune placed more emphasis on the word both, for Mahler's hand had been equal in the packs creation.

but i do not want takiyok to lead, he thought jealously, ashamed to realize it was not the work of his fever, but his arrogance. in all of diaspora, mahler believed himself the only one most able to lead. but was that not how he was supposed to think? he was leader by way of their submission and continued following — if they did not think him the most apt, they would not continue.
ketzia had not — mahler sensed it though he could not justify it. had she ever respected him in the same manner as stigmata? cool, genteel, aware of her place in the hierarchy, ketzia had never pushed against his command.
but mahler still fancied her sensed her disdain.
"i carried out his plan," mahler murmured softly. "it vas through i too diaspora vas fulfilled, and to keep it as ve both meant i vould be my legacy." what changes would she have him wreak?