Noctisardor Bypass zögern

set whenever!

was it pain or pleasure that drove him now?
mahler felt his body's pull toward becoming an automaton — when he woke it was with breaths that came faster. he did not run so often, but his patrols never wavered.
he felt an inexorable stride toward weakening. mahler resisted, but when the first true cold front of autumn rose one morning, he experienced the creeping leech of energy and warmth from his tall frame.
yet he would not allow himself to falter.
mahler rallied in the afternoon and went at once to discover @Phaedra. "heute keine landwirtschaft," mahler joked when he had discovered the snowflower.
"sie wählen, was wir tun."

when papa joined her, phaedra was staring intently up the length of an old tree, a rigid set to her mouth and one leg helmetting her head. 

“ich bin farming,” she informed him, wearing the regalia of pride about her ruff when she turned to warmly greet him. the swarth of his voice was momentarily jarring; her dear father was diminished—

but the facts remained to be seen, the walls of her heart for once buttressed against desolation all and the looming death of innocence. 

it was only a cough.

pleased to have his attention, phaedra dropped down, plume brushing against her legs while her eyes glittered and gestured to the many tree nuts cluttering the ground. “ich habe die rehe beobachtet. sie fressen die gerne,” said the girl, nudging an acorn with her foot, feeling hellish clever to have thought of it. 

she squinted up the many-storied oak. 

“das rieseneichhörnchen mit dem job nicht zufrieden ist,” she said, scratching her acorn-assailed crown.

"er bestraft dich dafür, dass du das reh nicht aufgehalten hast," mahler remarked in a sober tone that did not hue his eyes with anything more than humour.
he settled close, scattering acorns with pushes of his wide paws. phaedra lay in pleasant repose, observant of nature as she always was.
a dire grief faded into his chest. ciri had gone. alone was his snowflower, alone was astraeus. mahler felt he might always bear the regret of his children never reaching the closeness of siblings.
"was hast du bewirtschaftet?" the gargoyle chuckled lowly, ruff flaring at a sudden zealous and cool wind.
mahler bid the cough lie low and grinned toward his daughter.

”harte strafe,” she huffed, cutting her gaze to the branches high above. would that she could navigate them even half as easily! the squirrel was lucky to have the advantage. his rufous coat would line her bed handsomely. 

the pettiness of such thoughts made phaedra smirk  to herself as she absently gathered the tree-nuts mahler tried to spread into the crook of her wrist. 

pushing herself from her elbows, she considered his question for a beat. partly to glean the new word he provided — bewirtschaftet! a-ha! — but mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure of her answer. 

acorns turned into trees, did they not?

”ein wald,” phaedra decided. was there ever a more ambitious vision? she watched her father carefully, discerning of any flicker of doubt that might touch his face. 

a grin unfurled on her mouth, its whimsy reaching her eyes. she would find some other project to do before the day was done, leaving the squirrel to his peace.

and now that papa was here, her mind was indeed glad to retire from the topic of boring agriculture and turn instead to what knowledge she could pry from his. 

she presently covered the acorns with leaf-litter — a vain attempt to hide them from the black, beady eyes watching her activities with scorn. 

”wer hat dir diese dinge beigebracht?”

or was he born smart like she suspected, born knowing his path in life?

and why was it so hard to find hers?

"ich erinnere mich jetzt nicht." half a truth and half a lie. mahler wished he had more to tell phaedra of her grandparents, but he had forgotten them. this knowledge had only the first root in his mind, as if the gargoyle had imagined it himself.
a forest, she had said, and mahler smirked to see her wit.
"es ist wichtig, diese fähigkeiten fortzusetzen," he mused aloud. someone had passed it to him. and he had taught phaedra and astraeus.
he wondered if there would be children the following year. his snowflower was close upon it but nary a whisper of interest had come to him from her. she was a dryad, content to be part of rivenwood's elven and wild forests.
"so etwas könntest du deinen kindern beibringen." mahler's plain way of speaking might be a perturbance, but he was suddenly consumed to know if he would lose phaedra to marriage before he had a chance to reforge with her their earlier bond.