Noctisardor Bypass ich muss dir sagen

caiaphas.
mahler wanted to laugh, for he had always been terrified of the salt-hag, and somehow into old age. but he saw now his fear had only been at her fearlessness, the complete absence of anything like mediation. caiaphas had belonged to the dark grey waves and blackpines of grimnismal, as much as wylla had ever been.
"i missed my chance to go vith you to the ocean," mahler realized aloud. the words felt gauzelike and muffled upon the inside of his tongue. he watched her weep until something further gave, and he simply could no longer only see — he reached blindly for her, charcoal ears with the nicks and notches of long years falling flat against his heavy skull as he sought the only succor he had ever truly been given.
and for once it was not regret that burned him, it was resolution. 
mahler did not believe he could be saved, but he had always held to them, to the cornerstone of what they had become and had remained. he twined himself tightly against her small and eternally haptic body and whispered that he was afraid, that the cowardice in him had always been just that, terror of horizons over which he could not see.