Sleepy Fox Hollow Gain the weight of you, then lose it

The last time Wylla felt Mahler's embrace in such a fashion was... Well, she supposed it was when they first laid claim to Nova Peak. Anything that transpired between then and now was charged with tension or occurred out of some necessity, like when both of them were injured by fights at the cliffside. Since then, they had only grown more and more distant and reticent in one another's company until the only promise of contact was in the threat of Wylla's teeth.

While she hiccuped into her arms and suffered both the wretched clutch of shame and sorrow and the dizzying sensations of continued sickness, she heard Mahler move, but until his body contacted hers, she assumed he was walking away. That was what they did, right? They walked away from one another and never resolved any of the things between them, only constructed more barbed words as weapons for the next time. Instead, he curled around her and the warmth of him suffused her thin spine and passed a calm soothing through her that contrasted sharply against the fever from last night.

Why could he not see that this was what Wylla had always needed? Support and comfort and reassurance; the pacifying touch of someone dear, the confidence that it was reserved for her. Well, she couldn't be sure of that now, but rather than lashing out with her teeth like she so often did these days, Wylla shuffled around and pressed into his side, burying her face in the thick fur of his neck and weeping out her shame, agony, inadequacy, longing, loneliness, and every other terrible thing that had come to root in her soul.