Noctisardor Bypass [m] The taste of liquor on your lips

They had lost a year. It was both their stubbornness. Wylla, feeling undermined, begging for Mahler to start life anew with her somewhere else, and Mahler, feeling scorned, digging his heels in, insistent that the life he had built himself was more important than the one she dreamed of.

Even now she had moments of self-doubt where her inner voice whispered to her that she had abandoned every dream she had for her life in favour of his. Even now there was a niggling doubt that the life she lived was fulfilling in all the ways she wanted it to be.

They had lost a year, and she did not plan to lose another, and not only for love and stability, things she felt they could provide when they had not before, but because Wylla was unmoored and purposeless outside this relationship now and desperately needed... Something more. That was a deeply buried secret she would never, ever tell. She did not think of it often, but it was not entirely selfless, this desire. No. Nothing Wylla did was ever entirely selfless.

Regardless of what drove her, she and Mahler deserved this this year. Both of them. So she wound her lithe body against his, relished the firm muscle even after his body's wasting, leaned into his affections, stole heated kisses and uttered purling growls to stoke his passion while she warmed the air around them with spring's hopeful glow.