Sawtooth Spire But the bruises on your ego make you go wild, wild, wild

Since Thade's disappearance, Wylla was forced to adopt a rigid daily schedule: wake up, tend to Phaedra's needs, ensure she was thoroughly distracted by whoever happened to be sitting that day, venture into the lands just bordering Sagtannet in search of her son, return around midday with lunch for Phaedra, do a long circuit of the borders to ensure the presence of a leader never wavered, spend the evening with her daughter. On the nights that Phaedra managed to fall asleep and stay asleep, Wylla still stayed up until the late hours of the morning either crying her heart out or stewing in self-loathing. She avoided @Mahler at all costs.

All this made for a very haggard, very worn down, and very unhappy Eisen. On more than one occasion, she'd considered walking away from everything, if only to spare herself the pain of her continued existence here. She knew when she wasn't wanted—it was a regular feature of her life. By some miracle, she'd stayed put for now, but her trips outside the borders were growing further and longer, and not only because the search for Thade needed to be expanded.

Mid-morning found Wylla among the snowy crags of Sagtannet's highest reaches, surging across a narrow ridge and trying to ignore the way the wind up here cut through her thin fur. Even down in Sagtannet's valley, it was a windy day; here at the peak, it was howling. She narrowed her eyes against a gust, pulling her muzzle down into the thicker fur of her neck and flattening her ears. She was buffeted frighteningly given her spare size, but held her ground. Thade! she called hoarsely when the wind died down.

1300 for u <3

he had found her scent farther across the borders; he had followed it several times, only to halt himself and turn back to his endless patrol of their high-flung territory. with all that had gone on, mahler kept himself to a strict routine, one that brought him to phaedra as often as he might, and the other division given to his growing younger daughters.
but he had grown distant, embattled by the coldness within him and the miasma of guilt he dragged behind himself as if it were a ragged cloak, moth-eaten and pathetic. 
he visited star upon his rounds as doktor, and as father, mahler descended to the jagged rocks that wylla had once believed might take one of their brood.
and he stared at the toothed stones, and knew in his heavied spirit the torment of never understanding what had befallen the boy.
upward he trudged, until despite his shackles of exhaustion and horror and the deep ache of festering anger, mahler began to run, along some narrow stone spine that sent the gargoyle's pelt flaring with harsh currents of air. and then all at once he was climbing, feeling the air began to thin and frost; it caught in his throat, swelled his lungs, and as the earth turned to hard-packed snow, he heard her.
voice, shot through with tension, frayed; it tore at mahler. thade, his name thrust into the moan of the wind by his suffering mother. helplessly, he followed, suddenly, eyes half-shut against the rake of the air and fixed upon wylla. he would lose her, had lost her; she would fall here; she would give way; she would give up.
he could not bear the thought of losing the woman that his failed love had hardened; mahler trudged through the snow until he had overtaken her small build, seeking to shield her from the worst of the elements as thade's name echoed from his own throat into the void of sagtannet's unhearing heights.

In truth, she no longer believed she had a son to find. It was a dark thought that sometimes stole across her mind in the late hours of the days, after hours of fruitlessly checking and rechecking every nook and cranny she could find. Thade was too young to be in the world by himself, and there was no way a child his age could've made it much further than the foothills. Deep in her heart, her belief in his strength withered, and soon she would give up, presume him dead. Her fire would go out that day.

It was only a sputtering little thing now, anyway. Not much left to lose. The high gale atop the mountain might've been enough to snuff her out, here and now. She peered down at the ridge so dangerously close to her paws and wondered what it would feel like to fall from there. Would that pain be more immense than what she felt inside right now? Somehow, she doubted it. The yawning abyss called to her.

Wylla teetered on the edge, but then Mahler was there, a blockade against the wind that called hoarsely for their son. She should've been grateful that he was there to stop her doing something truly terrible to herself, but instead, she was numb. Ice lined every feature of her face when she saw him, but lacked the usual sharp edge that she levelled at him when she was angry. At best, he received an empty stare, devoid of emotion or personality, before she continued along the ridge, almost as if she hadn't even seen him.

She had, but the lick of her anger had left her devoid of anything else—she couldn't bear to be around him, this man whose insufferable pride had consumed everything. There was none of her usual fire. Her verve was all but gone, the price of their combined pride.

in silence he trudged after her. though he could not help the stinging feeling that plagued his gut when she acted so, mahler knew he must not question it. there were no words he might offer that could assuage the pain upon the strings of her heart.
this time, however, she had not railed at him, nor reacted. mahler let his eyes travel the line of her back, then dropped his gaze aside. he did not speak, only continued to use of his worthless flesh as veil against the sharp bite of the thin ghosts that swarmed here.
no words to be conjured; only the ache of his heart and the way mahler knew wylla must feel, but unable to go to her and unwilling to cause her more strife, he was only seized by a sudden helplessness.
he swallowed the ice upon the wind; he held fast to the feel of his paws in the snow, and quiet, pressed on not too closely as he trailed her flank and hunched his shoulders against the slash of sagtannet.

They walked wordlessly along the ridge, but their silence was far from companionable. Wylla felt like she was walking on the sharp edge of cracked ice; on one side, dry land, warmth and safety. On the other, frigid water that would paralyze her limbs and strangle her lungs. There was no comfort in Mahler's presence any longer, only a sense of dreadful foreboding.

So after tolerating their silence for a short time, Wylla dared to speak: What do you want, Mahler? Her voice was deadpan and defeated, rife with the belief that he would not bother being in her presence unless he absolutely needed to. Every bit of anger and disappointment she felt for him had doubled back and stabbed her heart with the black thorn of self-loathing the moment Phaedra began avoiding her. It left her only with the quiet voice telling her that everyone wanted her gone, and it would be better if she was.

Maybe that was why he was here. To tell her to leave so he could pursue his life with wolves who didn't make him feel low.

this time mahler did not respond with any sign of trepidation; only a long and weary moment in which he surveyed the rift between himself and this fierce, tormented woman he loved.
insurmountable.
uncrossable, for he did not know how to even lift the beginnings of a bridge, and with no energy to propel him, mahler surrendered in an internal collapse of cowardice toward the love that had burned hotly within him for years.
it was wylla. it had always been wylla. and now she spurned him, and he saw little reason to press her; mind worked wearily to justify: she did not want him, she had not wanted him for many months, and now she did not wish to salvage the scraps of what had been between them.
did he wish it?
you, his heart shuddered in throes of misplaced anguish.
"you," mahler breathed, voice a plume of white in the frozen air.

You.

The word hung heavy between them, poisoning the mountain air. Arguments crowded the space behind Wylla's teeth, but with no flame left in her belly, she couldn't forge them into weapons to wield against him. How many times would they come up against one another, incapable of communicating like adults as they were? It was always mistrust with her. It was always pride with him. Yet he kept coming back to feel the lash of her cruel tongue, and she always crumbled, hurt, when he could no longer withstand it.

She could've said so many things, started another fight, but she lacked the energy. What was the point? Everything she'd ever held him in contempt for seemed so stupid now. Who cared about Nyx? Who cared about his other children? Their son was gone, probably missing. Their daughter, as reticent as the pack she was reared by. Moreso, these days. Was her pettiness worth losing more than that? With no indignation left, at her lowest of lows, it all seemed so stupid.

Her eyes were inscrutable when she stepped toward him, her jaw set in a firm line. By now, he might expect nothing but threat from her and she certainly looked the part, but instead she dropped her head and pressed her crown against his chest with a wrenching sob.

wylla stepped forward, and mahler was ready to bear her wrath, to continue to trail her helplessly even if she lashed toward him, turned him away. 
he was unprepared for the lowering of her head, the way she ensconced it against his chest and sent his heart to ache with a renewed hope. for a long moment mahler scarcely knew how he might respond; the wind rose again, laden with snow, and buffeted his guard hairs. he stepped closer to wylla, pressed his lips into the silver swathe between the dark dove-grey of her ears, shifted to embrace her smaller form with a love that had long been anguished in the absence of her love.
no words; mahler only closed his eyes against the cold air and breathed in all of her, of every year that he had been bound to wylla in silence, as if each moment he had loved her reverberated against the edge of this one where she had returned.

Maybe Mahler didn't realize how deeply his words before had cut her. In the absence of her own fire, she was halfway to expecting that it was her turn to be burned. He'd certainly sounded like he was through with her before, comparing their relationship to a contract, claiming she made him feel lower than anyone else. Her breath was held tight in her lungs while she waited for the inevitable, "but..."

It never came. Mahler folded around her, embraced her even after they'd torn one another to pieces and left one another bereft, and she choked and crumbled against his strong chest. It was so unlike her to cry so openly in front of anyone, but lately he drew tears from her easily. The weight of everything—Thade's disappearance, Phaedra's distance, Mahler's duty and pride, Tiercel's biting words, the loathing that threatened to swallow her each and every day—came pouring out of her as she shuddered in his embrace.

He's g-gone, she gulped wretchedly, isn't he? Not just missing, but well and truly beyond their reach.

mahler was a man, and as all men did, bore failings that cracked up to the surface like ice in spring. yet, perhaps through his love for wylla, he had become aware of such faultlines, and aspired to be a better man than before. he saw how the paths he had taken had tangled; how they had hurt and affected all those whom he truly loved.
and how love forced a hierarchy in their world, simply by way of the roles they played within sagtannet.
mahler swallowed a bit as her small shoulders swelled within his embrace and began to shake with the tormented, trembling sobs that scintillated through one's breast until exhausted, the agonized sound of one's heart pierced over and over.
mahler felt the horrid tepid water upon his cheek even as hers burned through the fur of his chest. there his heart thudded with a sudden anvil of throatsick sorrow. "yes, vylla," for she deserved more than platitudes and promises. she deserved at last the truth, not whatever half-hope he had wanted to serve, in any regard.
she would feel him quake then, a single ripple as the gargoyle closed his eyes and allowed himself a single hoarse breath, all fractions of himself atomized and sliced and colored black with pain — a wormwood cup for both of them to swallow.

The hollow ting of sorrow's hammer striking Mahler's anvil heart sent a ripple through Wylla's slight frame. It coursed down her ribs and pooled in her belly, an icy bath to dunk the tatters of her pain in. She didn't know whether she'd prefer a comforting lie or the bald truth, but Mahler supplied her with the latter, and it brought her to her knees.

Her jaws wrenched open in a wretched sob and she let herself collapse against his chest, setting loose all her pain and loss in a cascade of emotion. Thade was gone, he was dead, she'd failed in her duty as a mother again—again and again and again, that was all she was capable of doing.

If not for Phaedra, for Mahler's embrace, she might've stepped off the cliff, for that was the only thing she felt she could ever succeed at, and certainly it would be better for them all. Tiercel had said as much, hadn't she? Her grown daughter hadn't wished her dead, but she could feel it in every word, every accusation, that Tiercel would've preferred that... and now she had failed Thade, too. Failed Mahler and Phaedra by letting him disappear. By letting him die. If all she could sow in this world was

this

pain

then wasn't it better if she did? Mahler might then feel the slight tug of her frame toward the cliffs as she contemplated her compulsion, but she remained anchored to him.

wylla fell into him, and mahler held her for as long as it would take to calm her foot from the edge of the cliff. all sharp edges fell away under the glasslike roundness of her trembling breaths, the clawing rawness of her throat, the echoes of pain that shuddered loose in her voice.
until he too began to break. but for her he would remain with strength, providing a place of solitude and validation that she had always deserved from him, but never received.
wormwood now, that this be the moment of their reckoning.
mahler grasped a tremulous breath, held wylla as close as he might while the heart within his breast threatened to truly shatter.

From stalwart Mahler, Wylla began to draw a tendril of strength. Just enough to remind her that accidentally causing them pain was still a lot better than doing it on purpose. Taking her life wouldn’t better theirs. It would only make things worse.

Eventually, she steeled herself enough to step away from him. The wind caught her fragile form and made it sway, but she maintained her footing and she found some resolve. She began to walk again, like nothing had transpired between them, but when she found a towpath leading down, she turned away from the cliffs, and her demeanour was more welcoming and less frigid than before.

She had nothing more to say, but her search for their son–and her vivid anger with his father–was at an end.

Can fade here or keep going!