Sunbeam Lair ❝elyë lantanë melmessë sonen,❞

don't mind me just getting carried away-

And thus her passions were misunderstood!
Fondness, thought to be fury; ardency, thought to be anger. The mountainshard of his plea to listen stilts what-ever soft sounds had since wisped from throat; he parts, unsmothering. And as the musiker delves into his own agonies, wishes her believed temper away away away, her rubied brow ensnared in utter perplexation:  "Fight?"
Though enrage him it might, a second smile of this day arrives unbidden upon marred guise; disbelief; cannot take her adoring eyes from he before her as she slowly, solmenly shakes her head.

"No. No, it is not enough, Mahler. But, do not misunderstand,"  she breathes, beseeching that he might look upon her once more and see that the only torment was him — and that it is not indignation,  "I speak of figments. I speak of what, in your choice, may very well not come to pass. It hurts. I cannot bear this, though hold you I might. But I cannot burden you with blame, as well. So please,"  nearing, gently, gently,  "let me give you life. Let me love them,"  silvered tones,  "let me long for time spent with you. Let me give as only a mother may. Let us become better."  Faint, so faint she had become; how much more did he wish to unveil her? How much more did he wish to hear her wax comfort that she had weighed the gravity of his choice thus far and would, nonetheless how many a seed be sowed, she would not condemn him for it? She could scarce speak — but did he wish for some sonnet?

A fool she must be;
to look upon her bewitcher and whisper all things that may or not myriad come to pass.  "If this is right?"  There was the stardust within her head, yes, of soulmeld to ceremony and she cannot resist the laughter that leaves her; something whimsical and weary and wondering, entire:  "Is it right for one such as me to love you as I do? To love you, to know that I would perhaps be alone? To give you a brood that is of—? Heavens, you—"  barely a breath; brow furling with a frustration that would ne'er be fury,  "—would that I wish that I did not wish for more, if only ever to bring you some easement. But I know, I know that such is not so! And still, I— you are ze male who sends me into this madness. Do you not see? Do you not know how I wish I were not me, that I would not be so tormented?"

In body and in soul; in soul and in body; breathless;
"Tell me,"  chords a worn melody, low and patient,  "tell me, did it feel right to speak to me of such things that have so ailed you, always? Did it feel right to hold me? Be a part of me? Within?"  chesire and dimpling, if but for a heartbeat before once more she retreated to patient seriousness.  "Does our having children between us feel right? Having them flourish from my belly?"

Nevermind those he was now obligated to lie with! This would be theirs: Andraste neither blushed nor balked, here; only entreated that he see that the only rebellion within her against him was in keeping her weakened footing awares within his very presence.

the zeal of her, the passion of andraste. agony and ecstasy, intermingled as she laid forth her deepest plea, and with it drove mahler into a headspace of stony stoicism so removed as to be cold. he faded beneath the onslaught of her vervency, into the flash of her smile. madness, this; he could not justify a future and new lives upon a feeling.
it was her lot, mahler realized with a hot rush of disappointment; andraste spoke of love and he knew in that way he had naught to give. what was this failing within himself, this anger, this inability to move and to speak as did she. in her eyes the solemn knowledge of yes! and he could not match it.
and so the gargoyle had no answers; the shade of him shimmered silent and empty long after aure had finished.
so assured she was to give this full love to a half-life. why did she do it? what manner of woman was she to throw herself upon so delicate an altar? suppose he were to give her the truth as he had granted the winterwhite; would andraste quail, dissolve, unravel?
his lips could not feel the glow of her own; he was suddenly awash with frost in his blood, and the lilac of his eyes darkened as the winter skies. he had no name for the emotion he bore andraste, but by what he had felt for marigold, he did not apt think it love.
and children deserved more than a contract.
agony then, piercing mahler, who let not a whit of it show upon his closed features. "go home, aureven," he urged quietly. "i am too pathetic and too careful to have answers for you now."
his body recalled her own, longed for her own; mahler kept himself aside and felt emptiness began its seep into his marrow.

Again, this moment;
yet rather than flay her with the fear of it, this golem retreated entire into his very self with such a silence that made the vulnerable and bareness of her shiver; ache. Again; the shame of feeling so truly a thing; the balefire of it ripping through every frayed nerve; the shrieking of it renting her spine anew. But more than that were the words he so spoke; and how she wished to kneel before him, reach for him; to tell him it was not so. For it was her doing again, this, was it not? Too much, she; too much, surely; reforged or no; yearning the feel of his spirit so near hers or no.

And yet, forever adamant:  "I already am."

But! this shame, as envy, had no place within her  (save for the pressing of all she had uttered), for though her features faded and faltered into moonglow inscrutability, both had exhausted the well of all that had been felt and had been said. And so his Andraste  (Aurëwen?)  says not a thing more; cannot be galvanized into further fascination as quiet shrouds starlit and stygian;
and thus it is with a murmured well-wishing of his return meander to the people he so sought to sacrifice for, of  "Auf wiedersehen,"  that the fairylight rises, and soon takes her own leave — lest he call after her slow, misted step; parting from the echo of him against all of her.