Northstar Vale i miss you in the dawn & most of all, your fingerprints, everywhere (mtr.)

overwhelmed and exhausted, mahler had cast off from his shores into the vale where once before a pale and feminine quietude had sought to settle. liri was all the shadowpriest remembered of the place, and he stole into the emerald depths of it gratefully, relieved to be alone for even a short swathe of time.
water; he idly picked his way toward it, where the hymn of water-bugs played cheekily o’ertop the surface of the pool. and here mahler discovered he was not alone, with a singular stab of wrath that threatened to rob breath from his overworked frame.
aurëwen, lolling with a glowing insouciance in the summer heat while the sun licked moisture from her svelte figure. so far from the river where she had made her bed, so far from the injured son that had no doubt befallen his wounds due to her neglect.
mahler waded into the shallows, lilypads brushing against the dark fur of his shoulders, and closed his lavender gaze against the building fury in his breast, against the steel shard of grief lodged in his soul.
”i see you have left him again,” mahler rebuked, his stare coming to lay stonelike upon aurëwen with the ponderous weight of his disdain. an arrogantly beautiful scapegoat for the death of his kill-brother; he felt as though he could merely reach out and snap her willowy neck, lay her upon the water a gleaming ophelia.
the lap of the underwaves loosened dirt from his scarred pads, and beneath that a thin layer of the ironstar’s blood. mahler pulled his gaze from her, mute again as the pond roundabout his ankles grew red-tinged with what of stigmata had accompanied him here to be washed away.