Jade Fern Grove klagelied

in the most fantastical of his visions, mahler had never envisioned such barefaced sentiment from wylla. taikon was one wolf but takiyok had been — mahler, and subsequently sagtannet, had lost a great deal in tthe departure of the winterwhite.
the small circlet of her ribcage was swelling with more sound. "i did not vant to go to battle vith them. and in hesitating, i vent to battle vith you." mahler maintained that he could not have forced them into conflict, but properly handling the challenge would have mitigated that.
before them all he had stood inconsequential. perhaps after these weeks he understood that the wolves of diaspora and sagtannet and now rivenwood followed him. and he alone, for the present. had wylla ever been granted the grace of their full fealty?
run away with her? throw aside what had been built? the tension returning to his features. the hollow.  sawtooth. nova. their yokes unequal. wylla saw the breadth of his commitment as willingness to forsake all on the word of love.
mind thinking upon star now, who had taken the loosened reins to hold in his absence. what cruelty now to reward her loyalty with his abandonment. the wolves that had followed him for days across the taiga — not necessary to wylla but because she had never been embraced by them she had not embraced them.
she would have him turn his back upon all else and take their children into the wilderness, give them a far harsher birthright than their lot so far. mahler saw only selfishness in it; he was pierced through by her plea all the same.
returning from shadows and roaming and yes, yes, the touch of another man — he knew it in the marrow of him and it etched ache on the plinths of him.
wylla had put herself into sagtannet and gained nothing back. she had put her efforts into the gargoyle himself, until the heavy wall of his limitations struck her truly and completely.
now she spoke of worthlessness, of an inner death, of how she could not come back; no, she could not return, but neither could he depart.
for all the brokenness of his soul to feel that this was last, to feel the warmth of her breath and hear the shattered sound of her voice — it moved mahler, but not the honorbound pillars by which he set his tenets.
"i hurt you greatly," bile and grief, "and i cannot continue to make choices only for myself." wylla did not need them. mahler did, and what was more, the structure of a pack life provided him with a settled feeling of security.
fear now, that if he took another step in the direction she wished him to go, he might not return to rivenwood; fear that if he embraced the heady, appealing nature of wylla's plead, he would somehow fail her again. that he would not be enough. that he would hesitate where she demanded action and take actions she had not sanctioned. 
mahler could not fail her again, could not promise his commitment and then compromise it. could not put love before obligation. it was the sundering curse of him.
"do not ask me to leave the ones who stayed," mahler swallowed, clawing out a place for the words he felt he must say for the sake of them both. baleful agony filling his spirit. "not now." not when wylla had chosen to go and he had forced himself through the grappling hurt and the despair and the acceptance of her choice. once more a test from her; once more he was failing it, placing routine above the love he professed to have; and yet patrols and hunting and guardianship demanded far less a toll than love, and how much of a fool he had been to think he could rule in bliss alongside her, when she knew he was unable to uproot but asked it of him anyway, to abandon his post and run headlong into a future that he had no hope for any longer. love, then, the measure of his hardened heart — he would never have so intimate a companion again, had barred himself against the possibility, and now barred himself from inching into a world wylla beckoned for them, rooted by his own utter lack of trust in his own decisions when it came to her.