Noctisardor Bypass ich muss dir sagen

mahler moved through the ashtone fields. flowers had been gathered nearby, laid out neatly by color with his usual medicinal methodry to his movement. 
today the man worked slowly, compelling himself not to think of the moments that flowed by him. each one could not be wasted. each one must be dedicated to one task or another. it was how he had driven himself for some time, and it was not something mahler could change.
he dragged a pair of indigo flowers toward the heap of purple, glanced toward the mound of azure. he decided it fit nowhere and began another collection.
that morning a fit had come upon him. it was only through some grace that there had been no one to witness his collapse in the cool shadows of dawnleaf. he had woken with throat raw and mouth metallic, weakened from the endless rack of sorrowed breaths. 
but during that time he had dreamed, half-conscious of the sun arranging its consistent arc across the sky. he had dreamed of jet waters and crimson trees, of faces calling for him, paws reaching for him. he found himself standing in a field of stark white trees against black grass, ghostly, but he felt no fear. 
it was only when he finally awoke that the dread returned.
mahler cut an orange blossom slowly, feeling the click of teeth together, and thinking in a sudden spate of anger how hale he had been only some months before. 
the sticking cough had begun its wasting. it was only through some grace that his coat had begun to thicken and change, covering the diminished musculature and the new sharpness of his hipbones. he should have been ravenous but was not, and yet he ate as much as ever, packing weight back into the fresh furrows where his flanks struggled to remain. 
mahler refused.
sundown arrived, and with it a shifting of light, which turned all the flowers only to gold and mahler as well. the warmth of the golden light was peaceful upon his roughened pelt and the side of his face, which suddenly was wet and tense with a sudden saltwater rush that he would not examine.
the gargoyle thought with his old longing of @Wylla, never far from the forefront and throne of his living mind.