Nova Peak If you must leave, leave as though fire burns under your feet

Wylla dragged herself back from the cliffs on paws that stumbled in a drunken swagger. She couldn’t attribute this to pain or blood loss–she had only one injury and the pain of it had long since faded into a dull pounding. Adrenaline was miraculous that way. No–it was the sheer horror of what she’d lost on the cliffs that made her sway zombie-like and unseeing back to Nova Peak.

It didn’t occur to her to call for anyone. She didn’t realize that the remains of her eye remained lodged in the socket, and she didn’t know that it would rot there if left unattended. All she recognized was how dog-tired she was. Maybe if she slept, she would wake up and find that it was all just a bad dream. Nothing had happened to her eye.

She found herself at the den where @Mahler was recovering. She poked her head in and found it empty. Without a sound, Wylla slipped into the darkness and closed her singular eye, willing away the night's events.

it had been near a month since the gargoyle's tribulation upon the cliff. the side of his next remained a twisted mass of pink scars, along with the scanned facial lacerations. but it had been a relief to know that his gait would not be affected. the cuts to his flank had healed well, the swiftest of the lot.
he had come back from his first patrol in many weeks. wylla's scent was painted thickly outside the denmouth, tinged in blood and the coastal fragrance she had brought back with her.
and the smell of that demon.
heartbeat quickened. "vylla?" he inquired hesitantly, but did not wait for an answer. mahler moved inside, inching toward her small, curled figure. exhaustion had her deep within its clutches, but there was a great sense of wrongness about it all. once more he spoke her name, nudging along the she-wolf's jawline.

It wasn't as easy as it sounded to wash her hands of the affair. Exhaustion was quick to claim her and drag her into a fitful sleep, but it was far from peaceful. She relived it in her dreams, only Umbra plucked both her eyes from the sockets and threw them over the cliff, laughing and jeering while Sunhawk danced obscenely around her—

Wuh? she gasped when Mahler touched the side of her face, startling awake with a jolt. She turned to face him before her brain fully surfaced from the dream, revealing the messy remains of what was her eye. Her mind chugged sluggishly along and screeched, don't let him see, don't let him see, he'll hate you, you're disgusting now, much too slow for her to hide it from him. Nevertheless, she turned her face quickly away from him and half-heartedly hoped he hadn't noticed.

Pah. Impossible. Bitch was still there, she said, folding back her ears and stubbornly hoping he wouldn't insist on seeing her ruined face.

but he had seen, and shock rippled through him like a thunderclap. in grim silence he stared at wylla, hearing the explanation in her brief words while her pretty auds swept back.
surely she was in such agony! one eye left to her; the other a congealed smear of red-black tissue. "a thousand deaths to them," he growled in a crisp agony, and then he straightened.
"come out." with the she-wolf mahler knew he could not stoop to negotiation, and he drew himself back up to tired paws and aching flank, worried with a pulse of adrenaline that dulled all before. "let me tend you, vylla."
despite himself and his misgivings, the gargoyle was galvanized with adoration, for if she had lost this much, it was a terrible vengeance wylla had enacted on the foolish brute who had come back to the cliffs.

But Mahler was wrong.

All she had to show for this was the missing eye. She’d felt the splinter of Umbra’s bone in her jaws, but that would heal. Bones grew back, or so Wylla thought. Eyes did not. Umbra would bide her time and return and wreak havoc again if she so chose with nothing lost, but Wylla would never regain what she’d lost to the cliffs, and she didn’t think she would find the mental fortitude to risk a repeat in the future.

Mahler’s voice was a roar in her ears as he withdrew, damning the cliff wolves and demanding she vacate the den in the same breath. Stubborn fire scorched her throat, threatened to blast him with a bellow that he should piss off and leave her alone. In the end, she swallowed it, along with the last vestiges of her pride. Only shame left to her now.

She slunk from the darkness with her head cast low and rolled her face toward him almost resentfully, granting him the access he sought. Let him see, then. Let him bask in her ugliness and denounce her in his heart of hearts, let him finally see the wolf she was within wrought plain as day in her flesh, and maybe then he would at last make a real decision about the future he wanted to have, or not have, with a broken wolf like her.

it was worse within the wearing grey light. despite his great love for her, however, mahler put upon the air of the doktor he had become over the years. "vait here," he murmured, limping off to retrieve the satchel he had painstakingly gathered to his recovery cave.
he brought back a mouthful of greenery, but in this moment it was not necessary. the wound had not been cleaned; it clutched at the edge of her smeared socket, and mahler began to cleanse it with the compelled nature of their wolfkind, scrubbing the abrasions and inside edge free of its ageing gore with precise, careful laps of his tongue.
only then did he pause, tucking herbs into his cheek and beginning to chew as he looked down upon wylla. "it vill mend vell." not her eye, that had been lost, but the torn skin, the way it fell around the empty bonehold of her missing orb.

Wylla watched him go with one deadpan eye. Part of her felt guilty for the self-pity she wallowed in now. He was still hurting, too, and here she was allowing him to waste his time and energy on her. She followed his limping figure until it was out of sight and then hung her head with a slow sigh.

Umbra would pay for what she’d done to Sagtannet.

Mahler returned at length. He would find her lying on the ground, staring furiously out toward the storming cliffs. When he first reached for her socket, she withdrew with a growl, but eventually she let him clean it. She winced and shuddered with every press of his tongue against the sensitive flesh within. She only silenced her own whimpering by biting her tongue so hard it began to bleed.

He offered assurances. Wylla snorted, made a sound low in her throat, then said, don’t bullshit me, Mahler. You know it’ll never mend. Not the eye, anyway. The socket, maybe. She knew what he meant, but the petty need to argue soured her tongue all the same. She would always wear a scar there to remind her of her folly, and to project outward the ugliness of her soul.

mahler's intake of breath was all he mustered in answer to wylla's snap. she had just returned with a grievous wound that surely played upon every physical nerve as well as each heartstring. and he knew, through the great love in his soul he had always borne her, that there would be nothing he might say to soothe her now.
and so the gargoyle was only silent, finishing his chewing and his poultices and his cleansing, until the blood and bits of clinging flesh had been washed away, the round empty socket set with a bound bundle of healing herbs.
"i vill bring you food," as she had done for him. he sought her newly mismatched gaze with a stare that meant to rest a long moment, to convey in silence that he would be to wylla what she had been to him during the mending of his own torn self. and that was how he remained a long moment, before rising to gesture that she should come back to the cave and rest.

She felt immediately bad for her reaction. It was minor compared to her usual outbursts, but was no less unwarranted. He was only trying to help. Luckily, Wylla would bounce back from this relatively quickly, at least in the psychological sense. It would take a great deal longer before she adjusted to hunting and operating with her diminished depth perception, but she would. One day.

Leave it to Mahler to return the favour she'd done him when he returned injured. A part of her reared back in protest, but she was too tired to breathe life into it. Without the adrenaline rush and pain, which was slowly fading thanks to Mahler's ministration, exhaustion clutched at her bones and weighed her down. She nodded dumbly, feeling numb and far away as she heeded his suggestion to return to the cave.

She wasn't sure she'd stay awake long enough for food, but she fixed him with one yellow eye, hoping to silently convey the gratitude she'd failed to voice thus far.

<3

mahler saw it, the silent message wylla bore on the pupil of her remaining eye. consumed by a whim, the gargoyle reached toward her hesitantly, pausing only once to gauge the ironvein woman before his muzzle brushed her cheek. high upon the curve of it; he dared to linger at the outward corner of her gaze before pulling away. 
"off i vill go," the gargoyle gruffed cheerily, when they had come back to the cave. the gentle press of his worried stare, and then if wylla had no other needs of him, mahler would head off at once on a hunt.
more to keep himself pliant and honed against the threat of winter, the shadowpriest would keep his search straightforward in hopes of returning soon to wylla.