Sleepy Fox Hollow she tells me 'worship in the bedroom'

I have a bazillion threads to reply to/what I also want to start, including our other one, but I feel this is rather important ICly to note, given she's leaving Diaspora. ;-;

The heaviest of hearts would have weighed the exotic crown of the sylph down, had she not felt the uprooting despair of her own mind and solace begin to crumble. There was a certain sickness that coiled in her breast at the thought of leaving Diaspora—leaving him. For once, the focus of her unsettled mind was not of the man buried by the lake, but instead of a General with a lavender stare and rich voice.

Her feelings for him clouded—the brink of friendship that quickened to desire, and in that way she felt the ache of guilt fast upon her, for her lover, torn from her far too soon, should have been the last one to touch the exotic curves of her hips and the slender planes of her features.

And yet she craved it now.

Steeled—a resolve she had taken the moment her pregnancy had been confirmed in days that had been much different for the pack, the gypsy sought @Mahler now—the bitter taste of goodbye so close on her lips.

;;;

mahler was beginning to believe it would be all right if he never saw another woman again for all of his days.
he had broken things with andraste, closed wylla to him, upset nyx, and latest of all, tormented takiyok until the foremost thing he could recall of their last meeting was her disgust and the flash of her fangs.
the general crept in disgrace upon the fringes of his territory; it was at once both his land and not his land. more than once his wilder mind suggested he leave diaspora in the hands of takiyok and disperse, but that would surely be his own undoing.
riddled with melancholy, dragging a coffin of shame behind him, the musiker trailed on.
when the little goddess found him, he was perched upon a crag peering balefully into the distance. this time last winter he had been alone, claiming noctisardor for his own. now he stood at the helm of a pack and was thoroughly miserable.
cool heliotrope rested upon ketzia. mahler was silent, expecting nothing more from the women of his diaspora than the pain he had managed to engender between all of them.

She found him, but stripped of the proud stance that graced the General. Her steps hesitated only momentarily before she ushered more quickly to his side, slender figure pressing gingerly to his own stalwart frame, exotic muzzle seeking the warmth of his ruff as she inhaled his scent sharply, eyes fluttering shut as she stole this moment to enjoy as it could be one of the last they had while remaining on good standing, should he turn to hate her after what was to come.

Something ailed him, and at that moment, the sylph came to the realization that she hurt when he did—a dangerous game, indeed.

“I have something to tell you,” she admitted, pulling away, gaze beseeching his own as a light frown knit her delicate features. “But first, what is it that weighs so heavily on your shoulders?”

"everything, and nothing," the general murmured, pushing away from the crag that he might fully face her. he had come alive at her touch, but fretfully spurned it as an effect of the coming season. what was it she had to say? mahler only wished ketzia would speak it, would not allow them to converse so casually when the weight of her true reasoning lay damp between them.
some inner thought spurred the want to reach toward her again, but he dared not. the tearing would be too much, for he had lost her respect in his fever-time, and had long lived in fear that ketzia too would be lost.

Distress weighed heavily upon him, and as he spun from her touch with a recoil not yet tasted by her form him, she could not withhold the surprised arch of her brows, her eyes flashing with something unreadable as she steeled herself against his reaction. He did not wish to confide in her, and with a swerve of her hip, she gave way to his unspoken demand.

“I can’t stay in these mountains any longer.” The words left her with regret in the smoke of her voice, and her eyes fell upon him sharply, uncertain how he would react. “Everything I have thought to built here has… It fell apart.” But how next to voice her mind—that the only reason she had stayed was for him—their friendship, but was that what it was? And how she could feel that last thread of connection drift from her as he lost himself.

mahler knew all too well the feeling of sundering, of worthlessness. lavender eyes blinked; he fought the overweaning need to withdraw from ketzia now, to curl into himself as if he were smoke. 
i have failed, came the cadence of his heart.
such selfish thoughts! what of her pain? what of all she had lost? the general relented, turned his muzzle mournfully toward her again. "i vill think of you often, ketzia. i am sorry such a price has been taken."
leave diaspora. leave me.

Sorrow. It drained the energy from the very air they breathed, and for a stolen moment, she watched him, her eyes tracing the tense line of his jaw, the depth of his gaze as he looked toward her soul. She was bare before him—frayed heart from loss she still had yet to fully grasp, and from the bitterness that had stemmed in the aftermath of even her proclaimed mateship. Stigmata’s death. Takiyok’s ire. The ever-changing shift within their ranks and familiarity that gave way to nothing.

She could not.

Somewhere, she had lost herself.

“Mahler,” she breathed, his name falling from her lips before she sucked in a sharp breath. And yet she could not say more—could not speak what ached to flit from her very being. ‘I could have loved you. I could have chosen you,’ she would have told him—but what pain would that press upon him? For surely, had he any feelings for her that surpassed friendship, he would not so easily let her slip away.

And even with her beloved gone form this world, the words she withheld still could not surface, for fear of betrayal of a man long dead.

his name, in her tones, and finally mahler let his eyes climb the cream planes of her face to the vulnerable, anguished glimmering of her summer-green gaze. so many things to read there, things he would rather not and yet drank in all the same.
mahler, sunderer of hearts.
mahler, collector of failed romances.
mahler; worthless.
and he thought only of himself until she said his name and something hovered upon tonguetip behind teeth, just beyond his reach; he saw it and he heard and reached out, at last, at last, to ketzia. not with a promise, but with the same agony of soul that ached in her own breast.

The barrier she always held had remained forcefully tepid with the gargoyle before her, knowing to allow anything more or less could very well be her undoing. There was a flash of something in his eyes—was it agony?—she did not know, but he reached for her and it was then she let the walls come crumbling down.

Heat licked at her stomach—her eyes jaded as they fluttered shut, unable to look to him as she tested these waters now, the most haunting of kisses placed to his cheek before roving down to his throat. She waited his reaction—whether her intention was spurned from grief, from a goodbye or from the need to cling to something she could never have, she would never know.

For now, she only lived for the moment, for if she had learned anything in her time with Diaspora was that tomorrow was never promised.

the attraction between mahler and ketzia had always been a courteous sort, vague, half-formed and half-lit. her heart had always belonged to stigmata, and the gargoyle sought to respect the memory of his kill-brother in many aspects. 
but as she reached to him, yielding finally into the long unspoken undercurrent, mahler drew in his breath. for a moment he was still, allowing ketzia to kiss his still form; in a short while he stirred himself and began to return the same, wondering at how sharply both grief and desire warred within his aching heart this very second.

He was still beneath her seeking lips—as if even the slightest of motions would render sense to the way she sought him now—or, perhaps he sought to consider ways to pull away from her embrace.

Pull away he did not. She withheld strangled relief within her throat—what would have been a sigh of yearning, but not released vocally—and selfishly, she pushed past thoughts of what any of this meant—this goodbye was nearly as hard as the one she had given Stigmata, for this was choice rather than being stripped from her.

She had to be strong enough to do it. To move away from the passive days she had fallen victim to with her grief.

His own ministrations were gentle—her teeth plucked forward to the base of his nape, rumbling toward him, insistent for his attention. White and honey blended to smoke and darkness. The scent of the gargoyle before her was all that she knew in that moment, and the heat that radiated from him—and how she needed more.

breath mingled with her own as mahler closed his eyes, feeling the pleasant pluck of her teeth through his charcoal hackles. hungered for it, he had found a desire for a certain melancholy in his couplings, something altogether unhealthy and dark and the wistfulness of ketzia's mouth parted warm for his own laps and nudges.
he pressed his crown between her shoulderblades, growling a low response as his sigh came shuddering and his body ached for the sorrow to be passed out.

The pressure of his crown settling to the back of her nape drew a soft sigh of need from her—as if the very weight of it grounded her. Desire coursed through her—butterfly kisses trailed to the masculine edges of the rugged man, and she urged him with a quiet ‘please, Mahler, please’ the wispy smoke of her voice pleading—more than she had ever done for any other man in her life.

She wanted him—did not consider it wrong, and given everything they had been through, she felt the safety of his embrace the one solid thing within her life at that moment.

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she was leaving. 
he must then fix that within his mind, even as ketzia urged him on.
he would not see her again.
why did she depart?
she must; there was only pain for her here, and he sought to make a balm for them as she disconnected from diaspora and yielded in his embrace. a harsh breath, the buckle of his grief beneath which he should not bend. she held the last vestiges of what it meant to love stigmata, and he had only ever been father to the brood his kill-brother left behind.
no words after her own featherlight voice; they stepped into the desperate waltz and he felt as if he were coming undone, thread by thread.

Fade or one more from you? Sorry for dragging this out... I'll miss RPing these two. Retiring Ketzia from game for now. <3

Trembling beneath him, just as her heart and emotions gave way to him fully, as she had tried so hard to render them unable to do so. Another lifetime, another time, perhaps she would have tried to seek more—to explore him wholly, body, heart and mind, and to see if the gargoyle could indeed be tamed. There was an innate knowledge that his feelings for her ran deep—just not as deep as others, and so she could not press him for more than this. For more than this beautiful goodbye.

The weight of him was the embrace she needed. His guidance met with her own urgency as she gave way to desire and broken emotions. He was everything she needed and more—the father to her children when they had lost theirs, the sound mind that kept her grounded, and the physical force of perfection that scorched her veins with flame.

She would miss him so, but for now, she settled perfectly in his embrace. The final piece to the puzzle that had become her time within the Teen Wilds.

Departure was bittersweet. But she never believed it to be a final farewell.