Jade Fern Grove klagelied

;__;

you did not ask for them but you will not recognize them, and there was the crux of it. wylla saw little reason to do more than turn aside the things he had done but not for her. the events he had caused to shift were not things to which she could point as tangible evidence of his love;
and he, having belaboured himself into a beaten state, only heard that she would not see the worth of it 
ignored everything i did ask
in his mind the mistranslations whirling into a maelstrom against which mahler valiantly fought. the allure of the beckoning hnd that gestured him closer and provided relief with the suggestion that he should sink deeper into his resentment. into the contempt wylla claimed he had felt for her.
strange that he did not recall contempt; stranger still that the heart he had broken time and again would still beat in any way for him. and his thoughts, circling back and back and back to the things she had not asked for: his daughters; he had taken them to moonspear himself. stag, not stopped, not proven as a father might. sagtannet crumbling as he threw taikon into the cold and bid takiyok follow if she so wished. binding star to him, binding the rest of rivenwood; a worthless split rock in a tangled icy forest, but something to which mahler might return again and again, instead of the fathomless unknown wylla painted with her wants.
not better, not preferable. consistent. constant. uncompromising. if in the bouldered forest mahler found himself in mistakes, they would be upon his head alone, not that of the one he loved. if he held a war-meet and they did not rise to his call, it would not be another compromised before the eyes of disrespect.
carving himself into the barest oaken whittle of a knifeblock;
and all for wylla to tell him that the things he had done with her in mind had not been worthwhile, for she had not asked after them. and that he had ignored the things she did wish;
and mahler with the fight gathered and then released, ebbing out of him as if he were moss pressed beneath stone. no, she had not asked for these things. and no, he ignored even now what she asked, for what she pleaded: for him to come away at once and prove his love in the way that only mattered to the goldling strands of her beautiful, fractured heart.
i will talk to star, he wanted to say, at last, at last bending beneath the pressure of a hope that could not die so long as wylla stood before him.
give me the winter to put rivenwood into order;
and the thought of spring looming with less agony when he thought of the sun;
yes, yes; come away with me, and mahler was ready in this moment to crack beneath the haunted host of her words and comply. come away. leave rivenwood and its inhabitants. give up the ghost.
you were enough before
a millstone that turned too slowly upon its axis, all the intelligence and cunning mahler possessed wasted beneath the grind of his cautious nature;
tiercel.
mahler blinked, ears cupping forward. the little child he had called entlein in swiftcurrent, the first child he had loved as his own since losing his own to the accursed fever. and he had loved tiercel for the simple fact that she was wylla's child; he had adored the woman even then, though he had not the words for it. tiercel received the same devotion in extension
but wylla was still speaking —
mahler's face suddenly grew very grave, lavender paling to nothing as he stared at wylla, as she lay before the terrible thing that tiercel had suffered, and bound him to its event in a single sentence
while i was here with you
first the enormous rage that swelled in him to know what the girl had suffered, to be attacked and then to lose children. and then the greatswell of pain that he too had not been there, that his love had not been enough of an offering to wylla so that she might not have left. he had reminded her of the pained coast; she had gone, and he had left and —
tiercel, and the winnowing away that surely shredded the mother's soul within wylla. horrifed, stricken silent, impassivity blanching from his scarred face to hear of the girl's hatred, and finally what had been given in the end.
while i was here with you
the roof of his mouth felt as if it was made from sand.
while i was here with you
wylla pronounced her leaving again, while mahler sank within himself to the proverbial ground, searching through rainwater for the shards of his voicebox and the echo of the words again again again again;
while she was here with him. while she stood before him now, returning to he who had exacted so great a cost from her.
i'll go — he would spare her the ignominy of a fumbled close, for there was nothing he could say after so great her heart-scar had been revealed. she should go; while i was here with you
land nor territories nor titles could ever be great enough to heal such;
more than loving me
he could not shake what she had said; that he had given her nothing while tiercel lay in stillbirth and wylla's name turned to poison upon the lips of her own daughter.
"sacrifice nothing more for me, vylla," came the gliding scratch of his throat, and then he was turning away, blindly toward moonspear in the distance, steps heavy and the line of his back stonewarped
while —