Sunbeam Lair ❝elyë lantanë melmessë sonen,❞

the zeal of her, the passion of andraste. agony and ecstasy, intermingled as she laid forth her deepest plea, and with it drove mahler into a headspace of stony stoicism so removed as to be cold. he faded beneath the onslaught of her vervency, into the flash of her smile. madness, this; he could not justify a future and new lives upon a feeling.
it was her lot, mahler realized with a hot rush of disappointment; andraste spoke of love and he knew in that way he had naught to give. what was this failing within himself, this anger, this inability to move and to speak as did she. in her eyes the solemn knowledge of yes! and he could not match it.
and so the gargoyle had no answers; the shade of him shimmered silent and empty long after aure had finished.
so assured she was to give this full love to a half-life. why did she do it? what manner of woman was she to throw herself upon so delicate an altar? suppose he were to give her the truth as he had granted the winterwhite; would andraste quail, dissolve, unravel?
his lips could not feel the glow of her own; he was suddenly awash with frost in his blood, and the lilac of his eyes darkened as the winter skies. he had no name for the emotion he bore andraste, but by what he had felt for marigold, he did not apt think it love.
and children deserved more than a contract.
agony then, piercing mahler, who let not a whit of it show upon his closed features. "go home, aureven," he urged quietly. "i am too pathetic and too careful to have answers for you now."
his body recalled her own, longed for her own; mahler kept himself aside and felt emptiness began its seep into his marrow.