Northstar Vale zwilling

it was not to be.
andraste uttered, and from the first he knew, as he had felt ketzia fully cool against him the night she had guided him through fever.
where had she gone?
but now, now, now —
the first planning of his life jerked aside, future sundered with her crystal tears and the anguish of the tearing he felt in his breast.
he saw then the dire way in which he had ravaged her spirit, allowing her to believe that love reined true beyond obligation, for the simple fact that she had spun out of him sensations never before experienced.
and so smitten he had mistaken it for love; for it was in its own way, as was all depth of such feeling. mahler cursed himself, lilac gaze fracturing with a stab of his own pain.
he had not granted the dove an honesty he had given takiyok. and therein he believed was the tragedy of diaspora's first; and here mahler stood having repeated the transgression.
head swam; the gargoyle might have reached for her, had not — astarte.
the name was flung into his awareness; mahler's eyes cleared as he carefully suspended his sorrow and stared upon andraste.
beautiful astarte; she had been the golden-tipped child come second from marigold, preceded and followed by a pair of brothers.
her laughter a pure belling; he had loved her with a sacredness of spirit always reserved for a daughter. 
it was astarte who had died first of his children; he had gathered her against his grieving chest and lowered muzzle to tiny ribcage, her last breath a splintering of his spirit.
marigold then; fevered, ready to follow her child off into a land mahler could not walk.
astarte.
he had heard no more spoken beyond the name; the gargoyle tasted salt and realized that noiseless tears had begun to cut swathes through the sable fur of his scarred muzzle.
no words came to this throat; for the first time in his life, mahler had no idea of how to respond when the cruelty of his child forcibly exhumed cast its claws into all his senses.