Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

he did not have the luxury of acting upon the new sensations welling within him at seeing wylla here, seeing her now. there was a time when mahler would have gladly gathered her and little tiercel, and bundled them to noctisardor where he had gone to grieve after the woman disappeared.
but those were eons past, it felt, and now he wore a crown of iron atop a head growing ever weary by the day. diaspora was only just recovering; it must have as many footholds as mahler could muster if it were to be immortal.
stigmata's dream, amended.
he could no more dash into the sunlight with wylla than he could return takiyok's careful and wounded affections. she loved him, and he would only presume to lead diaspora alongside her.
his heart had pined only for two in all his life, and marigold was dead, and wylla returned no measure of the boundless feeling that swelled in the dome of his chest.
at her demand that he not answer, a humourless curve crept to mahler's lips. "i loved you in grimnismal, and nothing has changed since that time." only mahler, perhaps; only his endless obligations and the sum of his affectionate pursuits with another.