Nova Peak schädigen

ich hätte dich anlügen sollen.

about his contract, about the existence of his love; secreted nyx somewhere off before their daughters were born, covered her as if the trio of them were a secret. he had not wished to do that; he had reared elke and ciri first upon sawtooth, then here. they knew him as papa, dad — he had given them the gift of his words, and in that task, had alienated wylla and phaedra from his very self.
the incompatibility that was so riftlike between he and her was not surprising. it was the chipped, harsh edges of it, as if they had both woken to their resentments of one another. wylla, her love unrequited. mahler, his own unremarked. both searching for validation in one another while the ways of their affections varied so greatly.
by this time and this year, mahler remember little of his own father. it was only marigold for whom he delved so stridently for, limping back to that particular hallway of dusted memories. but what did remain, the musiker knew to be faded remnants of a bygone day: you must always tell her the truth.
but what had truth ever done for him? and where had truth ever taken him? down a thousand bitter paths. away from marigold. he knew every name of those he had wanted to love and did not; he knew but one name that had inspired him finally to open again, and it was her own. 
mahler, having watched the solemn ocean gather between them these past long months, now waded to the far proverbial shore and watched the waves flock over the remaining bridgework. he would not love her beyond his heart for his children. she would not accept that for what it was. 
it would be settling, then, for wylla, and his soul ached with the longing to kiss her. inexplicably; to dash the tears from her fineboned face and take her into the age-old way of things, the matching of body to spirit.

es ist zu lange her, seit ich dich berührt habe.

the last, to clean her wounds, and before, her devotion to his own.
but beyond — repelled by her hurting shield, not comprehending her sudden lashes, or attempting to know them, he had not tried to love her. not in that way. she did not wish even his kiss. and so he had held back from her. put aside the base desire and striven to become more for wylla. yet he had only lost himself in the doing of it. 
another hurt then, that he had applied himself wtih diligence to the daily life of the pack and forgone all others, though she had rejected his first offer. spurned by it, she had said. and that mahler did not understand, and had grown too numb to consider exploring it.
for what he now contemplated was the darkest image of another man,
a better man,
embracing wylla, calling with her into this air and among the tall forests of this place. driving any memory of the gargyole away and —
mahler wanted to gasp, for he could not abdicate the thought, and fixed in his mind the nature of the very loam, the pebble pressed into the sole of his right paw, the cold clawing at his flanks; gorge rising, head swimming,
i deserve better
mein gott mann, du wirst sie jetzt wirklich verlieren.
wylla and the soft voice in the back of her throat for another; wylla and the gilded vein of loyalty in her for another;
if he scarce moved it would decide what he did not. a breath as the shattered vase of her voice dripped into the fragmenting pieces of him. 
"i vant," husky and barely audible above the now-keening wind scudding its claws along the ice toward the peaktop
you, he had said before. he had said it had said it, and had not kept it. even if the desire existed within him, he knew he could not repeat it a second time for already it would be a doomed sentiment.
"i vill," and voice broke again, lip twitching upward in disgust with himself as he rolled his heavy muzzle away from her chastised, chastising expression and into the teeth of the coming storm itself.

ich möchte dich anflehen.

ah, but she deserved someone who did not grovel, who did not grind himself so far into the dirt that he must wallow in it as if he were mad. mahler set his jaw, blinked at the bitter salt that had not departed but would not fall. 
"i vill stay until you choose another."
lungs nearsplit with the effort of reining back his own sobs; but this time he would not be the one to turn the line of his back to her; another contract, the only damnable thing mahler could ever feasibly write, and wylla's departure ink on the waiting line. unfair of him, so it was, to force her the rest of the way; he knew he knew he knew, but the sick lurch of the sneering image in his mind kept him moored, that fantastical, horrible dart of lightning down the center of his mind that had hurt him with its lurid nature.