Whitewater Gorge i wish i could rub the grief from you as if it were a smudge on the cheek

aurëwen said many things, but the kapitän’s ears cut only a fragment from the emotional flow of her words. son; deathbed. and in the next breath the motherdove seemed to overflow with regret, breath juddering in her throat.
a demand to know what had befallen dragomir leapt to mahler’s lips, but he turned it aside viciously, for like a broken fledgling she had come to him downcast, and he looked upon her with affection warming the cold purple appraisal of his features.
gingerly mahler reached to aurëwen then, seeking first the small satin hairs between her auds, and then her torn ivory cheek.
”diaspora is your home,” the gargoyle gave forth gently, genuinely. it was where she had borne her children; the blood of birth bound her inexorably to the earth of that mountain place. he wished that she would return with him, but mahler knew she could not. 
all wildhearted and flighty, a swan which must be alone; the doktor, if she would allow, slowly gathered aurëwen to his chest and let her exist there for as long as she would, a silence curling around them both while he tried to think what demon must have courted her son, a boy he had come to love.