Sleepy Fox Hollow Where I thought I knew it all before I knew what love was

the tension leeched out of wylla; she too found a physical respite near him. mahler relaxed then — if she wished to strike, she could have done it at any time — and cupped his ears forward to listen.
in those few sentences she bared more than she had ever before, and he found himself wanting. in a few uttered syllables the woman had entrusted to him not only a hardship, but the sum of it.
so much she had suffered, the gargoyle knew. and still she found the strength now to persevere in spite of herself, to push forward through the thorns set at her own gate and whisper the low ghost of an apology to mahler.
he was pensive a long moment, for he saw that it surely had cost wylla a great deal to speak so plainly. she did not exist in a world of basic directness; hers was one of anger, and so she had brought his out as well.
was it possible, now, for them to put aside their resentment and enmity and exist as simply as those of their kind might live? the man’s heart ached with the want of it. to see her depart again would be agony, but to know they had resolved this between them would soothe the harshness. 
”i do not blame you. i vas sad and angry vhen you seemed to disappear from the vilds, but i understood vhy you left. at least a little.” a pause. ”i am sorry for your brother. i must have reminded you of many things.”
”i alvays hated her, vylla. i hated her family, her children. after you left i lived upon the edge of the pack. and then a bear came, and scattered us, and i did not stop for anything that followed.”
he wondered now if he might reach to her, but dared not; he trained himself into silence and regarded the sprawl of the hollow’s borders, returning his stony lilac stare to wylla presently.