Otatso Wetlands Break free and leave us in ruins

when praimfaya had come back from moonspear, she had told him of what she had discovered there. two, gone, and one remained. and still he had not gone back, had not searched for his elke-child, in numb sickness toiling ahead. seeking to build something after evoking their names, and perhaps thereby cursing them — mein gott.
"i have failed fatherhood too many times for this to be a vant of mine any longer, vylla," mahler said softly; she had heard his words, had spoken specifically to the sound of his passion in each — if there was a leap of hope in her small fierce self, it was a tsnuamic surge along every dried bank of his innermost heart, nile inundating with long feathered arms lifting to the sun of her eyes.
he had spoken something unrealized until now; mahler filled his softening lilac stare with all of her, all of her. 
"some days ago i told those in rivenvood who vanted to be mothers that they were free to search beyond the territory for fathers. i offered myself as a midvife. not a choice." and it had been a similar rivercoursing sensation, to free himself so willingly of what he had thought would be his obligation. "i mean to elevate praimfaya to leadership. she vill be my successor vhen she has gained her strength. she has come back and given me an apology and her loyalty, and it was vith her help that i set down the final roots of myself in noctisardor. i mean her to be my successor, to hold the rein of rivenvood vhen she has learned. but i will not father her brood. no contract vill ever exist in me again, süße taube." a stake through the unfolding stone wrappings around his heart; the breath he took filled him with a heady darkness, and he tightened the rein upon the urge to sidle, to shatter the new-made vow before it had a chance to be heard — to drive stag away. only the lash of tail behind him, unwanted but unstoppable, to evince the struggle between heartsickness and bloodshed.
"i have spent the last months reforming rivenvood into a place you may vant to come again, vylla. even if you do not," the stinging feeling of acceptance now dulled beneath faith, "it is good that i have changed things. bound to no vone. bound to no helm. i vant you back even if there are no more born between us."
denial of every fibre in him, and moreover wrapping a quell around the primal wrath burning swordlike within the forge of his heart. lavender eyes finally burning toward stag, though now a sense of how much hurt he had brought to bid his chosen son from his side — lancing his expression with understanding.
mahler brought his gaze back to her.
he must leave, now. now.
"if you returned in any vay, not even to rivenvood, vith his," the last word exhaled like cooling steel; an intake of breath after — "if you vanted, somehow, after all of this and all i have done — if you returned vith his children ready to be born, i vould raise them as my own. or only as mahler. i do not need the title of father again."
sunflower gilt and lilac gemstone vying; the swift-unraveling rope of his control caught by the swift hard hands of a years-taught authority, mahler bringing all his strength to bear to say the last: "vith them. not at all. i vould vant to give you the name of ehfrau. i vant to call you vife."
he swallowed, wheeled, pulled himself away and back; mahler swung his broad head reluctantly and tightly away from the assumed pair, and only if he was stopped by the sound of her would his trajectory stop, tall powerful limbs preparing to flee, not wylla, not stag, but himself, and the awful violence he would hand to his beloved son if he remained near the new-grown boy a second longer.