Noctisardor Bypass bedauert

Perhaps Mahler told Wylla once of Stigmata's claim to two litters, but if so, she no longer remembered. One of Takiyok's wayward children, she assumed. Maybe one day, if she found Stag, she would have the pleasure of reuniting him with his brother. That might bring happiness to the young Sandraudiga where Wylla had only wrought ruin in his life. It would bring her some measure of peace to do that for him.

Mahler seemed to lapse into thought, and without thinking much about it, Wylla reached to comb her teeth through that snatch of grey fur below his jawline. Uncommon intimacy from her; she truly had not indulged in Mahler in any significant fashion since the birth of their children. Brief moments here and there, shattered readily by bared steel between them each time. She did so now with a hesitant and almost shy tenderness, awaiting the moment he might turn away and name her false for it, or demand to know what she wanted from him.

All at once she was struck by the amount of grey feathered around his mouth and nose. Not a young man, and yet, not so old as his jest would suggest. She snorted and pulled back, scanning him with one shrewd yellow eye. My mom's probably like eight or nine and she could run circles around you still, Wylla boasted, with no real way to know of her mother's health. Lusca was a young and wild spirit. Her daughter was quite like her, in that way, but life had crushed that spirited manner out of her.

Not quite the fierce woman Mahler fell in love with any longer, but one whose ferocity wore the grey shroud of deep melancholy most days. Older than her years for it, like he was, despite a distinct lack of maturity on her part. You are not that old yet, she pointed out.