Noctisardor Bypass And emptiness is all you know.

Set the day after this.

When Ciri woke, her lashes fluttered. She roused to a bright beam of morning sunlight that warmed her face, but her eyes were unprepared. Gaze squeezed briefly shut, she turned her face away to recover from near-blinding and blinked toward unfamiliar surroundings.

The yearling had been too drained to pay much attention to where she settled for much-needed rest, so took some time to take in the sights. She'd made her nest for the night at the edge of a small woodland, and a tufted raven lobe twitched toward the nearby sound of running water. She could smell the stream and, reminded of her dry mouth, Ciri shifted to collect herself.

A grimace hissed through gritted teeth as her stiffened muscles protested. She slumped to the ground again, mindful of the pain in each limb as she prepared again to rise - and managed.

Her steps were careful as she picked her way through the forest, and rose her slim muzzle to look out over the flatlands stretched before her. Proud, impenetrable walls rose up on either side of her father's claim and, although void of mountain slopes from childhood, the swallow was hopeful that she would learn to appreciate the land that was to be her new home.

it was odd, to have wylla and ciri back beneath the same banner.
the former was still ensconced a good deal of time away from the rest of the pack, healing. but it would not be long at all before wylla stubbornly resumed her duties.
he was truthfully, though in secrecy, rather worried that she would not find rivenwood to her liking, given the children here and now, the appearance of ciri.
but mahler would not put one out for the sake of another. he had no illusions that their family would be combined, or one, or even exist in the same spaces. rivenwood was large. it would suit them all in whatever way they wished.
yawning, mahler sought out his returned daughter, tail swaying to see her out, looking through the woodland. "vould you like to come vith me to hunt?" he invited, figuring he had some time before he was due back at sequoia's den to take the next watch over the four children.

It was not long after Ciri began her careful steps that her father picked his way through the foliage to join her. She regarded him fondly, yellow eyes soft on the marrings of his dark features that she could recall from childhood as he neared, but her gaze did not linger long and nor did she pause to greet him physically. So long had they been apart that it felt inappropriate to force herself into his space again, now that the shock of their reunion the day before had passed.

So she smiled with warmth, and focused on the path before her as Mahler suggested that they hunt together. "I would," she answered simply, discomfort in her tone as she twitched a tufted ear to the buzz of a fly, "but..." she continued to stare ahead, and was suddenly very aware of how the last thing she wanted to do was disappoint him, "my body feels broken."

mahler nodded understandingly. his own muscles had become hard in the long years of living upon the mountains, but time ceased for no one. his own levels of discomfort were more easily ignored, perhaps. "you came a long vay," he said softly, voice suddenly ragged to remember that she was here! to see her again! ah, the emotion, clutching at him.
"i vould like you to vait here. i vill bring you medicine and something for breakfast, ja? ja." mahler was not prepared to hear her refuse, and turned abruptly despite his smile. 
he had forgotten, it seemed, to talk to a daughter.
when he returned a handful of minutes later, it was with an easier mien, a cheekful of dark green, and a hare killed hours earlier and put into a cache. a lucky take, considering its speed and his lack of it. 
mahler crouched close and turned an eye upon ciri.

Her made comment on Ciri's long journey, and her ears splayed backward in a beat of embarrassment. To her she clutched the memories of her Brokilon caretakers, the wolves who'd sheltered her at the heart of Winter and treated her as though she'd always been one of them. There was some level of shame deep at the heart of her to have left the forest where she'd better learned to see the good in strangers, but had she chosen to stay she would've always wondered:

Are they looking for me?
Do they think I'm dead?
Do they miss me?

Because she missed them: her mother, her sister, her father. Ciri was elated that the latter remained and that she'dmanaged to find him, yet she felt she would forever long for those who were lost.

She had not answered Mahler's question at the riverside, did not even recall it. In that moment, Ciri had been so fixated on how a sliver of luck was finally on her side, on the unbridled joy and relief to look upon his face once more. Her bright eyes watched him go and her pace eased until she stood there at the edge of the woods, and finally lowered her haunches to wait.

Upon his return, the gargoyle's jaws were full. A soft curve to her lips communicated her gratitude, but she felt the flush of her cheeks and averted her gaze. "Thank you," she said with a flop of her raven tail, then assured as he crouched closer, "I will replace this, when I can."

ciri seemed somehow deferential, and mahler found that his sudden position starkly above her as patriarch and leader of rivenwood was not a dynamic he enjoyed. "that is not necessary. i vill replace it today," mahler assured, voice warm and muffled around the wet schluck of leaves in his mouth.
he did not intend for her to feel beholden to them; she was of his blood and he of theirs, and despite all that had gone on, mahler wanted theirs to be a new start.
he set them down a small ways from her paw. "you may think othervise, vonce you have tasted this." the doktor smiled gently, turned away with a sigh. he wanted to speak to her of rivenwood and those in it, but was unsure if ciri was ready to hear it all. 
and so he would allow his daughter to set the pace of their discourse.

She didn't like to feel useless. For a long time it'd been so among the wolves of Brokilon, who had never expected her to be a provider in any way, but it wasn't in her nature to leech provisions without offering something in return. Ciri had spent her first weeks clinging to life after the cold almost claimed her, but as she began to heal she learned a great many things from them. They taught her how to listen to the forest, how to appreciate what it had to offer, and when she announced her intentions to leave when she was able, they taught her how to survive on her own.

Ciri owed them everything. She would not forget them anytime soon, nor the kindness they'd shared with her. She wished she could've given them more as repayment.

In an effort to prevent any further discomfort between she and her father, the swallow did not reject his offering. She reached for the hare tentatively and gathered it between her teeth, tasted copper on her canines. It was swift to remind her of her aching hunger, and she felt the drive to devour the flesh as quickly as her fangs could sever it from bone. Trying for a more civilised approach, Ciri picked quietly at the creature's hide.

"Oh, uh..." she lifted her muzzle only briefly to regard the motion of her sire's jaws as they worked at some plant matter, "what does it do?"

"it is made for sleeping, but this amount vill only relax you somevhat. two plants there. vone to relax and the other to reduce the inflammation in muscles." he did not again comment on ciri's journey, having seen the backfolding of her ears. he still wondered what it had entailed.
when thade had gone, he had been tormented away from them. his son had never recovered from that unsurety, from that distance. it seemed wherever ciri had returned from might have not held such weight. but she had not shared that part of her chapter, and mahler knew better than to press for it.
"have you any interest in medicine?" the gargoyle asked instead, folding his broad forepaws one over the other.

The young Ostrega listened with curiosity as her father explained what his concoction contained: one for sleep and another to ease her aching muscles. She blinked toward him as she worked at her breakfast, her gaze void of mistrust - Ciri had always known her father to be a doktor who excelled in his trade. It was not she who aspired to follow in her footsteps, however: "Elke was more fond of plants and potions than I ever was."

A solemn smile then, as the swallow's stare averted once more. She tore at the haunch of her hare and roughly freed it from its skeleton, and crunched the delicate bones between her molars. Ciri gnawed despite having suddenly lost her appetite, and her mind conjured an image of Moonspear's destruction.

She shivered.

elke. a tightness climbed the length of mahler's cheek. he looked away, unable to even offer ciri a bracing word. elke, out somewhere in the world. would she also return? was she able? had ciri alone been blessed with some darkened luck that brought her back to a life once left behind?
"yes," was all he managed for a moment, one blistered aching syllable spoken more for himself than for his returned lioncub. 
the sting of tears against his eyes. mahler forced himself not to close.
he saw the quake of her shoulders, sorrow drying beneath worry. "vere you sick at all, in the vilds, ciri?" he asked, tone filled with a quiet urgency.

There came a beat of silence, tense and heavy with emotion. It had been to hear how her sister was present on Moonspear when the star fell, a tragedy that would stay with her for as long as she lived, but Ciri did find some small comfort in knowing it was not hers alone to carry. Mahler would be there to share the load.

He asked after her, questioned how she fared out in the wilds, and she lifted her muzzle to look his way. "I was," the swallow managed, for her thoughts were still with Elke, "I thought I might..."

For weeks she'd struggled, but the wolves of Brokilon had shown her nothing but kindness. Their medics had worked hard to keep the cold from claiming her, and a great length of time thereafter was spent regaining her strength. Her eyes flicked to seek her Papa's face, his cool stare, and she finally shared: "I got lost in the snow, and I... I don't remember what happened, but I woke up somewhere new. A hunting party said they found me and took me home with them. They were good to me."

thought she might.
he too, did not want to think of it.
during this recollection, mahler realized she did not mention nyx. 
so she had been apart from the both of them, nursed to health and tended by hunters. not a pack. wanderers. his mind skipped with a half-dozen assumptions before he tightened his control once more.
the stoneflower gaze had opened with regret and sorrow as ciri spoke.
"i am glad they found you."
"i vish —" and then no more; how dare mahler consider himself in relation to such.
the girl had grown into her mother's soft ways and elegant mien, the gold of her reminding the gargoyle with a reeling shock why they had been lionesses and cubs upon sagtannet.
instead, he would only move to kiss ciri's forehead, if she allowed, holding her for a moment.

Her will to survive throughout those dark days had been powerful, and still she wished desperately to live - even without the other half of her family. Ciri, biting back tears as she acknowledged emotion in the thickening of Mahler's voice, swallowed the lump that swelled in her throat as she veered away from the brimming well of her own grief.

A raven ear flicked forward, fleetingly, to catch the break in her father's words. He wished for... what? That he'd been there? That Nyx and Elke had found her? That they'd all returned to him?

The finer details of her parents relationship were largely unknown to her, but Ciri had always firmly believed they'd cared for one another. Not once had she detected strife between them, none that she could recall. She was naturally curious now that she was grown, but it wasn't a conversation she was keen to initiate anytime soon.

A kiss, then, delivered above a vibrant eye, and she leaned into the gesture. When he withdrew she mustered a watery smile; despite the awkwardness of making up for lost time, the young Ostrega was glad to have the chance to do so. "I met Kukutux when I returned and found Moonspear in ruin," she carried on, "she said that you meant to look for us, but you'd been injured." Her eyes briefly roamed over what part of him she could see, and thought he looked well enough. Older, a little more rugged than before, perhaps, but outwardly fine. "What happened? Are you alright now?"

kukutux. injured. he did not know the name, but he did know the latter.
wylla.
a swallow thrummed along the column of his throat. "i vas injured in vone of those sorts of fights only had by foolish men. it opened the old injuries from the peak near the coast," when he had fought savagely with the dark and maddened sea-woman.
and then a sickness,
and now a cough that would not abate.
he studied ciri's face for a gentle moment, wanting so much to ask again after where she had gone, with this hunting party of wolves who had been kind to her.
mahler had given up hope upon hearing of moonspear's demise.

A fight, the gargoyle said, a fight had only by foolish men. Ciri pursed her lips, not knowing exactly what that meant, and she hoped her sympathetic gaze upon him was enough to convince her father that he need not explain. She wasn't so sure that she wanted to know, after all.

So she let it be, content to learn what little he had to offer regarding the battle that'd reopened his old wounds. "That sucks," the swallow attempted to conclude, and looked away as she felt his stare upon her face, for she wasn't sure how to proceed.

the moment was lost; he had lost it, mahler supposed.
he made no answer, motioning toward a flicker of movement. a doe, standing in the falling shadow of a birch-tree. 
brave, to stray so close, and yet mahler softened the lines of himself to see her, to somehow experience the thrum of rivenwood about them, deep and steadying.
"you might take up vatching vildlife vhile you recover," the man commented more lightly than he felt. "i have found it to be a rather satisfying pastime."

You wanna fade here?

She felt it, the weight of their sorrow - shared in some ways, but very different in others. Ciri did not wish to dwell on it and nor did she wish to pry. Her father seemed to share similar thoughts, as he tried to divert their conversation toward a new topic.

Bright eyes followed Mahler's frosted gaze, and she was swift to find the long-legged form of a doe. It stood quietly, ears twitching, and Ciri wondered if it had companions close by. It didn't seem afraid, not really, but she could see caution in the way it regarded the forest.

Ciri did not avert her stare. She continued watching, regarding her father's suggestion with a sway of a raven ear toward him, and nodded.