Sleepy Fox Hollow kapitalende

this is a leaving post for mahler & @Ilse, who will be going to join wylla out of game. it's been great writing him! he may return, he may not. at any rate, i have treasured his incredibly detailed story and everyone who has made it wonderful <3

word had come. wylla had found a place for them to reside, one with dryer air and a fecund sprawl that did not have so many wolven demands upon it.
the decision to leave was one mahler found quite difficult. there was the matter of @Anselm, still recovering, and @Etienne besides, and @Paeon, who perhaps had meant a return to paleo. there was @Emmerich, who by all accounts had dispersed for his own fortune, for phaedra who had gone to sagtannet and not come back, a queen alone in the high reaches. for thade, a boy whom mahler hoped had gotten far away from the teekons to a land where he might thrive. and little isa, lost at the pivotal moment of her life, though her life might still continue where her parents could not see.
but each night the air grew cooler and their youngest daughter, their final child, pined for her mother, or so he suspected.
and so mahler took the hard question into his mind once more, and at last chose a painful path that would preserve what still existed.
it was to anselm he went first, seeking etienne as well. mahler was clear: another winter in the sunspire would claim his life. already he felt the old illness, the taste of blood upon some mornings. he did not want that count of cold dawns to lessen any more his time. ilse would not thrive without wylla; she would be the only child of six who had lived without her mother if he kept her in the hollow.
mahler could not allow this to happen, and he did not expect that his son would expect any less.
he spent quiet mornings with the younger wolves, gathering what he would need from his pharmacy. to etienne he gave the names for all his greeneries, and for anselm, a reminder of each namesake in paleo, for remembrance.
"if you come vith me, or if you stay, i vill love you alvays, liebchen," mahler told his son one evening, voice rusted with emotion.
and one morning, the end came to his gathering. mahler had visited each tree and stone in a near-holy communion that reminded him he had once been a musiker.
now he was ready. ilse bundled into a makeshift hide-covering which he could carry when weather and her young age determined it to be necessary.

dornenfelder, the time of marigold.
grimnismal, the time of wylla.
swiftcurrent creek, the time of fatherhood.
noctisardor, the time of challenge.
disapora, the time of brothers.
sagtannet, the time of nyx.
rivenwood, the time of grounding.
paleo, the final chapter of this place.

mahler's song was long and sonorous, and in it he remembered elke and ciri, children of his heart always, no matter what had gone on before.
he would leave the teekons in as much newness as he was able.

beneath its fading notes, the ageing patriarch gathered his little daughter and moved off into the blaze of butter-gold light marking dawn.

auf wiedersehen.