Barrow Fields shine a light into the wreckage

the wounds wrought in the flesh of his foreleg had stiffened; mahler had dutifully limped to the sea each day since the one of injury, to bathe the toothmarks in the brine. yet he had suffered more, and now the stirrings of fever were within the dappled man. setting his charcoal jaw, mahler had turned his mind to more pressing matters.
in a change too swift for the musiker to follow, and one that left him reeling with frustration and worry, wylla had left her post and departed the sound. wounded though he was, mahler wished to follow her, trail the small woman with the humility of a dog. aside from kierkegaard, the she-wolf had been the man's only known packmate.
mahler wandered the borders, meandering with a flush beneath his dark pelt toward the fields where he had fought the brute. tongue stroked his dry lips, but there was no sign of the shadow here, nor wylla. a dour expression covered his features, even as he sat heavily on the thawing earth with a panting at the uncommon warmth along his limbs. he regarded a figure not far off, slim and finely built, arcing in graceful hunt toward the ground. and somehow he hated the creature, if only for its show of sheer delight when mahler hunched so miserably in his own tracks.