Mudminnow River If I ever were to lose you, I'd surely lose myself.

tears, suddenly, on the river of ciri's voice.
mahler, snapping himself from the dread he felt for praimfaya, elation rising from its ashes to choke him with happiness. and still the thorn of pain.
perhaps, not too late — he reached for ciri now, sought to awkwardly bring her closer, unused to her new height or the hard muscles beneath her pretty pelt. 
his child, returned.
maybe mahler had lost enough children to be hardened to it, an unfair trick of the mind for ciri.
lavender stare suddenly burgeoning with his own tears, the dread of the last several months washing from him. "ich war kein guter vater," the man grated cheerlessly, searching all parts of her expression, her face, for injury, for the sheer skyrocket of joy that she was alive, alive, alive.
"ich hätte dich nie gehen lassen sollen," not to moonspear, not from nova peak; the ruin and guilt of accompanying his own children to their fate.