Phoenix Maplewood string in my hands tethered to faceless friends

forward-dated about a week. maybe @Mahler? :eyes:

isolation feels like a crime, somehow. it feels unfair — undeserved, even, as if he ought to force himself into the company of his packmates in some sort of cruel, self-imposed punishment. but it isn't like he chose this — the constant sickness, the feeling of the earth spinning beneath his paws with each slight movement, the cravings for foods that aren't even really foods and leave him feeling sicker than before more often than not.

through all of it, he knows something is wrong. he has a sneaking suspicion that he knows exactly what it is that's wrong — but denial is second nature, and ignorance is easier.

at least, until the cause starts to show — visibly, not just in his ever-present state of sickness. it seems to happen overnight, though he knows that can't be the case. one day he simply... notices. and it disgusts him. the swell of his belly, the prominence of the little protrusions he'd never noticed until now. he vaguely remembers them from his mothers. the memory only upsets him further.

so he sequesters himself even further from the pack, determined to keep his secret for as long as he possibly can. he doesn't want to see wintersbane, or any of the others who are likely bearing his children (at least, that's the wraith's assumption, given that he is unaware of the presence of any other men early enough in the pack's history to have sired them). he doesn't want to deal with the consequences of his carelessness, his couplings with strangers, his lack of parental desire or instinct. it's all too much. he just wants to be alone.

the scent of duskfire in the berrywood forest. 
mahler came to stand amid the fruit-heavy branches and the frigid alpine scent of sap he had once used. he had come here to collect more, collect more, collect more — dutiful despite its frailty. 
dutifully he leant forward to lap some into a bolus that settled against the inside of his cheek. he felt the soothe of it low and deep at once, and sighed wearily, no small measure of relief.
but he was not alone here.
with the scent, the thin twining vine of something that felt rosy and green. new life.
a tiny, pretty creature with a man's coldness and serpentine silver. alone, like mahler. rounded sides and hard muscles. youthful until one beheld the hardbit resentment that life had drilled into yet another man.
mahler cleared his throat.
"the last time i saw you, it vas in the sunspire. sick. your father came to save you from us." dry, no judgement passed, only the wandering observation of a memory that the sight had evoked. it was comforting to see individuals you might have once known, if only for a brief, harried time.
the lilac eyes did not dip to the swelled flanks. mahler only looked out across the fecund maplewood again. "is a congratulations in order?" he asked softly, considering only that his brother in the glacier had become prolific.

a dark figure materializes, unwelcome in its familiarity. the wraith thinks of his time in the hollow, his own bitter recollection of the day the stranger goes on to describe. funny, how benign it sounds in this brief accented summary; it's almost insulting. and perhaps, in another reality, one in which zephyr's body was not pitching a rebellion against him and his sides were not slowly swelling to blimp status, the wraith would have launched an attack based on this alone. after all, anyone who would attack a child — a wounded child! — certainly deserved a cold fate among the worms. at 9 months old, malnourished and undereducated, zephyr had certainly been closer to adulthood than he felt... but he hadn't looked it, nor acted it, and while he's past expecting others to meet his own standards, he can't help his continued resentment toward the cruel ignorance of the world.

unfair, he thinks, for anyone to see the wreckage of youth gone horribly wrong and think that it ought to be punished.

much as he yearns to say it, to force a confrontation for the sake of laying one of his own demons to rest, he finds himself all too aware of his current state of weakness. and so he remains guarded, silent until the stranger makes an inquiry that chills his blood. immediately zephyr realizes he should have known that others would be able to tell, especially those with many more seasons under their belt than the wraith. no doubt this man has seen the signs before, at one point or another. the ice sprite goes tense, the only change in his otherwise stoic demeanor, and then —

no, clipped, sharp-edged for a moment. wintry tones soften back to flat nothingness as he continues. i would not have chosen fatherhood, had i known enough to make the choice at the time... and i certainly would not have chosen to give anyone a reason to call me a mother.

the statement doesn't feel personal or private, so he has no qualms about making it. if anything, he wants the whole world to know; let them hear that he is no mother, nor even the picture of a warm and welcoming father, for he'd never had that capacity in him. let them see what happens when a child is born twisted at its core, malformed in ways the eye cannot see, then abandoned to the wilds to make a life for itself among those who would sooner carve bloody pathways to their own satisfaction than suffer the smallest inconvenience for the sake of another.

wintersbane, he feels, is no better than the stranger before him in that regard; he'd taken what he wanted, and left zephyr to drown in the consequences. perhaps everyone is the same in that way; it makes no difference whether they want pain or pleasure from him. regardless, it never seems to matter what he wants. not to anyone but him.

fatherhood.
mahler, who saw nothing wrong with how their first farflung meeting had gone, transferred his attention more solidly at the mention of the word. the man was ruefully, painfully binary in all of his meandering thoughts, and for a moment was only silent. the wolf here was not feminine, the curve of flank somehow decorative or —
unwanted, to hear it now. and while mahler did not truly grasp all corners of this missive, he found pity inside himself for a man who was called otherwise.
"there are remedies that can be administered in the early veeks," the midwife opted to say. and others that might prevent it from occurring again. to scar the inside of one's self. he could not suggest this, knowing that each season, many died in different lands and maybe this one as well, from such agitations against their own wombs.
in all his years, mahler had not come across a plant which might end such agonies and bring peace of mind.
"vintersbane is not a man who is tameable. but he is a provider. a varrior."
would these things bring his baleful young companion some measure of peace?

remedies. temptation and nausea crawl up his spine in sickly tendrils, so closely intertwined they are all but the same. remedies... but at what cost? a shiver flutters over his small frame as he tries to imagine it. in his mind's eye he sees death, and he feels emptiness. and... guilt, unexpectedly. for all that he is twisted and lacking, he is aware, too, of how he came to be this way. born broken, yes, but not irredeemable; not until later, long after those who had given him life failed him time and again.
perhaps he is not equipped to give his children all that his parents had failed to give him. but he can't help but feel that this alone does not absolve him of the responsibility, the desire to try. it is by his actions, his mistakes that these children live, however small their lives might be for now. and while another wolf might make another choice, while he would not fault them for it (perhaps it would be better to nip tragedy in the bud, prevent suffering before it becomes tangible), he knows within moments that he cannot take the man's offer.
he doesn't want this, but it is no longer just about what he wants. it's about redemption. not for him, and certainly not for his parents. redemption for a concept he can't name, an ideal he has held tightly to his chest since the day he decided that parents suck ass and their kids deserve better.
redemption, perhaps, for the better that so many children never got.

he shakes his head, swallowing hard. thanks, but... no, he can't explain it, wouldn't want to even if he could. there's more intimacy in his convictions than in his defects, somehow. easier to flaunt the broken pieces, hide any thin weakling sprouts of goodness within him. wintersbane is... busy. with the half dozen women he knocked up. he probably doesn't even know about me yet. bitterness, yes; that's definitely easier.

so it was true, of wintersbane. he would make the same mistake. well, perhaps not the same. were they all aware of one another, upon this mountain? duskfire must certainly be exploding at its veritable seams with an outburst of children, and from what he had seen, most of the glacier was feminine in nature.
he kept all this judgement and perusal to himself.
"the mothers." mahler paused. "do they accept you?"
zephyr had never seemed the sort of wolf who might easily make such bonds. wintersbane had built an immediate and admirable empire.
perhaps rivenwood might be its healing counterpart.