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

for a long moment mahler thought ciri might decline. and what of it? she had every right upon their green earth to refuse rivenwood. had not sagtannet refused she and her sister? mahler felt himself tugged back into the inexorable loop of failure and grief, a place he knew he must not dwell in but could not help himself all the same.
ich werde.
a shuddering breath then; mahler gathered her close and held her against his heart. it was not so unfamiliar now, how she fit against him with her longer body and her mother's eyes; she was still his child, and he her father. 
it would not be as it had been upon the mountains. he would never allow it to be that again.
but mahler did not say this. words held nothing. he must strive to make a new world for her in noctisardor.
"komme, schatz," mahler murmured, though he did not yet release her, and would not until ciri herself pulled away.
then, and only then, would mahler remember the bundle just behind them. "are you hungry? vone of our allies sent, ah, food." stumbling, a father who did not remember how to be fatherly.