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

mahler had forever attempted to live his life without convolutions. he had always been a paragon of stoicism, a final bastion of restraint and calm.
but andraste had unwound him, and wylla unsettled him so very much with the growing strain of her nearness that mahler fair suffered the eternal moment. between the silence of his long-lived love, and the rapture of his long wordless discourses with the fae queen, the gargoyle had been unmade and rebuilt into something altogether unlike his former self.
he did not know how wylla would react, but just as it seemed the severity might become quite fevered, the she-wolf broke its thrumming chord with an action that provoked first a splutter from mahler, then a peal of genuine laughter in baritone.
her words swept round him; he watched wylla glide up the path with an airy sense of wonder that hours later he would recognize as hope.
but for now the shadowpriest was drawn inexorably after her argent flashing, the testing, teasing nature of her sunflower gleam.