Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

Wylla's just here to give a report from her long patrol mission since it'll be finished soon (I think), it can be a super short thread if that makes the most sense!

Once Jigsaw was given directions to Diaspora's claim, Wylla continued her long patrol, bedding down for the second night on a plateau at the edge of Porcupine Ridge where she could overlook the valley below with her back to the flatlands. She fell asleep in an instant but was haunted by a dream of being dismissed from the pack in the cold of winter by a wolf who could take no more of her teasing nature ...

And rose bright and early, eager to escape it all. The wind was blisteringly cold along the mountain ridges, so she dipped lower and sought what shelter she could as she crossed Razorback Ridge and made the gentle ascent over The Sunspire. She was forced out into the open as she skirted around a canyon, following tall ridges and peaks until at last she could see the hollow below. That was when the dread came hard and fast, because she had to report her findings, and she didn't want to face him.

It took way longer than Wylla would ever admit to calm her nerves enough to summon @Mahler out of some fear that he would choose to use his authority to punish her for being so forward, but by the time he might arrive, she would be as sanitized and succinct as he had been when he left her company last.

powerful shoulders rolled beneath heavy winter pelage; breath rose in a white column of steam from flared nostrils as mahler pursued a terrified hare along the bottom curve of a snow-laden ridge.
its scream pierced the quiet cold, blood flinging in an arc of heated scarlet across the drifts. hunger roiled within, a dull ache that was sharpened at the taste of salt.
he allowed himself the better part of its flesh and took up the remainder for the cache. it was upon his way that he heard the call of the greyscale she-wolf; it sent intrigue rippled into his psyche, and he flung the half-eaten hare over his shoulder.
mahler arrived before wylla blood-stained and awash with snow, lilac stare intractable as ever, and drew to a halt some feet away — desperate to keep her from hearing the quick pace of his heart.

In the interim, Wylla shifted in the snow, watching her breath fog out before her eyes. While travelling she'd felt nothing but the inexorable pull of her venture, and something akin to the relief of escaping a misfortune. Now that she was still, she felt a myriad other things: a dull cramping in her travel-worn legs, a sharper punch of hunger, and the rapid fluttering of unwanted anxiety in her belly.

It ratcheted up the moment Mahler became visible, and by the time he stopped in front of her, warm with blood, it was screaming at her to turn and leave. If Mahler's heart was racing then Wylla was in atrial fibrillation, breathless with the certainty that he'd changed his mind about allowing her to stay. It wouldn't surprise her. How could he, a purported general, tolerate the opinionated lashing of a subordinate's tongue with anything but utter disdain? Especially because she knew—and he likely did as well—that she couldn't easily quell it?

She sucked in a slow, rattling breath, made herself stand tall, and gave her report in a tone that was wooden and nearly scripted. I have patrolled the majority of the range. There are no packs forming in the mountains. I directed one wolf named Jigsaw toward Diaspora when he asked after a home. It was otherwise uneventful. The smell of blood was cloying and her hunger manifested the strangest desire to lick it off his fur. She refrained in spite of an audible growl in her belly. That is all.

mahler was silent through her stilted report; she was uncommonly polite in her regard of him, with none of the flameworthy tone that had characterized the first days she had come to diaspora.
he knew it must surely be a response to how he had closed like a vise before her criticism of him, and now mahler struggled to justify his actions that day.
wylla need not worry, for despite the gargoyle's status as her leader, he had never once considered that he might use his rank against her, even in the face of her rancorous tongue.
dusky auds twitched at the sound of the she-wolf's belly announcing her hunger, and in a fluid motion, mahler drew down the cooling carcass from his shoulder and lay it between them. 
"eat, vylla." it was not a request; the general's lavender gaze assured this as he waited for the woman to do as he bid.

He seemed to have nothing to say about her report, leaving Wylla to feel even more unsure of herself. Had she done an unsatisfactory job, or was he simply angry enough with her to not acknowledge her? Maybe she'd misunderstood the task laid before her. Maybe what he'd intended was for her to leave and never return from it; but, no, she refused to allow herself to be stung by an assumption. It wasn't like her to be self-conscious or ashamed of herself and she would hate to let him see it in the subtle way her jowls stiffened.

Only for her lips to part moments later to protest—sure, she was hungry and wanted to snatch that bit of meat away from him, but she was capable of hunting for herself. Surely someone else in the pack needed it more than she did. When she was younger and led Grimnismal, she would have demanded it for herself, but now she knew how to quell those selfish desires when it counted most. A quick glance upward was enough to know he wouldn't take no for an answer, and she shut her mouth with a click.

Fine, she acquiesced, bending to grasp the remaining hare in hungry jaws that wasted no time crushing the bones and flesh alike. Fu-huck, she thought, for was there anything as euphoric as food when you were starving? She forgot his presence for a few minutes as she polished off what remained of his kill; only when it was done and she was licking her chops did she glance at him again, sheepish for her ravenous manner, but anxious enough still about what he would do or say next to form any words.

mahler glanced away as wylla set to devouring what was left of the limp corpse, politely refusing to stare. the tension between them had thickened, rising to a choking crescendo as she finished and raised her sunlit gaze to regard him with what he believed was wariness.
"thank you for going so far, vylla. it is dangerous to travel vith these changes, and moreso around volves who struggle as ve have." he paused as a wave of sheepishness coursed his blood — mahler's breath emerged in a low sigh and he motioned back along the hare-trail.
"vill you valk vith me?" the gargoyle asked softly, hesitantly; the veil had fallen from the lilac ice of his features, and contrition lurked in the undercurrent of his invitation. 
so very tired was he of parting with wylla under bittersweet circumstances. there must be another way, an understanding to which they might come that he did not need her to reciprocate his feeling.
it would be a lie to state that mahler did not still sting from the last time her razor-edged tongue had been swung against him, but here they were now, and suddenly the man wanted nothing more than to buoy the energy between them.

Wylla swiped her tongue across her jowls and straightened while Mahler spoke, acknowledging her trip and requesting a walk. She was rigid for two beats—like the dreaded "we need to talk", she assumed nothing good could come of his request. It was wildly unfair of her to think the worst when it was she who had scorned him again and again and again, but there they were.

Guessing that he wouldn't look favourably upon her if she declined and knowing that she wished to stay, for reasons of her own, she said, sure, and gestured for him to lead the way. Once again she knew she was in the wrong and once again any attempt to apologize stuck in her throat.

So she looked expectantly to him, expecting a lecture, and said nothing herself.

turning his nerves inward, mahler led wylla along the game trail he had taken up to the ridge. within him, the man's stomach roiled uncomfortably, as much with the sudden infusion of fresh meat as the situation with which he must deal.
only just returned from a trek outside the hollow, he had not expected to meet wylla so soon, and found himself discombobulated, jarred to and fro between first his lover and then the source of all this heartsickness.
she padded beside him and the silence stretched interminable, until mahler cleared his throat. "i vanted to apologize for how i behaved that day," he began, voice low, hushed. "i think of myself as logical, but i am still a man, vith a man's pride."
the admission did not hurt, merely rankled somewhat; mahler allowed himself a sidelong glance at the she-wolf as they pressed on.

Not what she anticipated.

There were a lot of things that Mahler could lecture Wylla on as they walked through the snow, beginning with her attitude toward her superior. But just like everything between them, his apology came unexpected, especially because she didn't feel there was anything for him to apologize for this time. Things were made awkward between them not by Mahler's behaviour, but by hers.

I noticed, she joked, then frowned, voice catching in her throat, and started again. There's nothing for you to apologize for. It was ... I was in the wrong. Oh, she still vehemently disagreed with his decisions and would even moreso if she knew the half of it, but her criticism was unwarranted. It always was.

I care about kids, that's all, she revealed, but lacked a proper way to tie that in as an excuse for her unsolicited judgment without it sounding equally critical. She didn't wish to re-open that discussion and she was certain he didn't either. I don't know how to talk to you, she said instead, which was probably worse.

he could not have expected her apology, nor the bare admission that came next. breath clutched in his throat, and mahler was silent, a quirk of his lips the only indication that he had heard her. they shared another several steps of heated quietude before he blinked, returned to himself.
there had only been some few children in his life, but mahler had loved each of them, from tiercel to stag. perhaps the truth of it was, if they were his, no amount of geography could separate the bond of fatherhood he had only once been able to experience, and only in brief. 
perhaps the truth was that mahler wished to be in control to avoid the deepest loss replaying itself upon the halls of his heart.
in true form, he said none of this to wylla, but his jaw tightened and at length he paused in his steps, looked upon her with a long and solemn shade crossing his features. "i do not know how to talk to you either. i do not know how to treat you," mahler entreated, pressing on. "i do not know if you are happy here, or if you should be here vith ... if you vant to be here."
now that you know the truth.
now that you know the reality of what i plan to do.
love met with scorn, met with disapproval, met with anger — and still mahler returned for her, again and again.

That was the question, wasn't it? What if Wylla had shared his feelings? What if she had confessed to it? Would his plans have changed or would he remain a man with a desire to father multiple litters, a desire she considered selfish? Maybe if she was a man she might understand, but as a woman, she couldn't imagine having to explain to her child that their father wasn't happy with just them, and therefore was splitting his time.

(Merely her opinion, of course.)

So now that Wylla knew, even though it truly had nothing to do with her, did she even want to be here? The answer was complicated. She wanted to know him better, for his confession had admittedly planted a seed of "what ifs" in her mind, and yet she still planned to search for Tiercel, and she could do it from any hearth without having to watch his desires come to fruition ... only to burn him, she was certain of that.

If I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be, was the only thing Wylla was truly certain of. No one could make her do something she didn't want to; she'd chosen to stay for a reason. You know that, she added.

how could she stay, now the the outcome had been writ for himself? mahler did not know that wylla had entertained her own personal thoughts upon an alternative outcome.
it would not harm her to see him pursue his aims, he believed; such emotion was reserved only in a reciprocal fashion. and yet she lingered, and it occurred to him that like sarah, perhaps wylla wished to see her warning of doom come to fruition.
the she-wolves within mahler's life shared a grand myriad of opinions upon him, and some childish part of the man demanded that each of them be disproved in turn.
"i do, mahler assured, though it hovered at the forefront of his mouth to ask if she felt even an iota of what he had professed to her.
such knowledge was not his to know; mahler proffered a gentle smile that was careful 'round its edges. "i have ... felt many things since you returned, vylla. and vhile it has not been a time of ease for either of us, i vould not have it another vay."
why discontinue a pattern of honesty? the gargoyle's charcoal ears fell back against his heavy crown in the next moment; only she could drag him bodily from his cold niche and force him into exhausting lengths of wordiness he experienced with no others.

Such a confusing man was Mahler. Who would admit to feeling so many things, not all of them good, and then express that if they could change something about it, they wouldn't? If Wylla had the opportunity to have everything go just how she wanted, she would take it in a heartbeat.

Without strife and discomfort, there was no metric against which to compare one's enjoyment. It was a lesson she had yet to learn, along with many others, like keeping her mouth shut rather than spewing the errant uncomfy thoughts that crossed her mind, which is exactly what she did next.

What have you felt? she asked, and then in an incredible moment of weird and inexplicable insecurity, she baldly asked, do you feel that way about me even now, or did you mean only in the past? Only after a few seconds passed did she think about what she had said and turned her sharp muzzle away, hotly murmuring, don't answer either of those questions.

he did not have the luxury of acting upon the new sensations welling within him at seeing wylla here, seeing her now. there was a time when mahler would have gladly gathered her and little tiercel, and bundled them to noctisardor where he had gone to grieve after the woman disappeared.
but those were eons past, it felt, and now he wore a crown of iron atop a head growing ever weary by the day. diaspora was only just recovering; it must have as many footholds as mahler could muster if it were to be immortal.
stigmata's dream, amended.
he could no more dash into the sunlight with wylla than he could return takiyok's careful and wounded affections. she loved him, and he would only presume to lead diaspora alongside her.
his heart had pined only for two in all his life, and marigold was dead, and wylla returned no measure of the boundless feeling that swelled in the dome of his chest.
at her demand that he not answer, a humourless curve crept to mahler's lips. "i loved you in grimnismal, and nothing has changed since that time." only mahler, perhaps; only his endless obligations and the sum of his affectionate pursuits with another.

She sucked in a breath and held it, because Mahler did not listen; he answered even when she requested that he not and once again his words punched through the heart of her. This time with something new: potential.

Wylla hadn't believed him the first time, not truly. She'd waited for the other shoe to drop and it never had. She doubted him the second time because on the tail end of it he admitted that he intended to father children with multiple women. She didn't believe any man was stupid enough to tell someone they swore to love such a thing, because requited or not, doubt was cast that way.

But Mahler claimed it a third time, earnest in spite of the ways she wounded him and continued to, and now Wylla believed him. He was an honest and direct man, if a foolish one. The simple, thrice confirmed existence of his feelings—his singular love, she thought—was enough to wash her (or surely any woman) in emotion, so that although she did not love him in the way he did her, there was a sudden surge of affection there, and if nurtured in the right way, then there was the potential for it to bloom.

You had to know telling me that would change things, she prompted, half a question and half a statement.

"i did," mahler confirmed, powerful shoulders rolling with the force of a sigh. he wanted to proceed no further; caught by a sudden weariness that exacerbated the already great strain upon his physical form, the general settled himself upon his haunches alongside the path, the cold threatening his undercarriage with a vague bite of ice.
"i did not think you vould stay," he revealed, "but you did. and then this ... i do not have a vord for it."
ears cupped forward gently. "vhatever it is, it has thorns and leaves now, and ve do not know vhat to do vith it." what could be done? it was best to allow such things a quiet death, or a return to the grave where it had been interred over a year in the case of mahler.
a glow flickered in his eyes; he lay them upon her thoughtfully. "vhat has this changed for you, vylla?" his mind, tongue, physicality — all clung to a thread of coherence, but he doggedly flung himself into the nuanced chords of their discourse, intrigued despite the bite of mild despair.

It has thorns and leaves now. He had that right. Wylla thought it always had, just in different ways: his acceptance to Grimnismal was rife with suggestion and teasing, and the way she left him was mired in deep hurt. The only time they'd interacted positively was when they swam in the frigid waters of the Sound and then fell asleep in the grotto ... ironically during the most volatile time of Wylla's life when her body underwent its transformation from girl to woman, when Mahler might have been most tempted.

Their game of questions might have ended positively had not her opinionated lesser self reared its head, if she could be a more demure creature than she was. But Wylla was the wild in all its messy, contradictory glory, and Mahler had seen fit to impale himself upon the worst parts of her. His resilience to do it over and over and over again while finding forgiveness in him for all the ways she stabbed him could only lead him closer to her, but how many times would he take it before he turned his back?

What has it changed? What hasn't it? she blurted, wondering how on earth he couldn't see how telling someone you loved them changed the entire dynamic. It introduced potentials. Such a confession brought forth feelings of its own accord. Perhaps not strong ones yet, not like his seemingly endless devotion, but ones nonetheless that could feel the hurt of him shutting down and the mischief of teasing him in ways altogether different had he not confessed at all.

Lacking any kind of ability to put meaningful words to her thoughts, however, Wylla eyeballed the blood glistening and frosting on the tips of his fur as he sat on the trail and chose actions. She asked, quietly, may I?

all the details of wylla she silently regretted upon the cold footpath, and before, and again, eternally — it was to that nuance and fire of spirit that he was so drawn.
a nod; yes, it had changed many things; both known and unknown, both felt and unexperienced.
her chaos was a direct contradiction of his own obsession with the rote, with organization.
with obligation. 
mahler felt a thaw between them, and then a glissade of fear that she would not forgive himself the agreements he had made the upcoming season. and, couch it as he might in the wants of others, allowing his body to respond in the natural manner rather than keeping a tight rein upon his physical wants — it had been a welcome diversion.
andraste's heart lay in a thousand amethyst pieces; he attempted not to think of her last wounded expression, lavender stare flickering with surprise as wylla gestured to him.
"please."

Mahler was right to fear, but for now there was scarcely even a bud upon which she could rest her ire, and strong opinions aside, Wylla knew it too. She could not even tongue words to reveal how his proclamation and subsequent pardons had changed things, had opened a door that had been tightly closed, even just a crack. Until the day she could find the words—if ever such a day would dawn, because nothing was ever certain with Wylla—she had no right to police what he did, no matter how much she disagreed with it.

No matter how much she believed it would bring him and his imminent children both to absolute ruin when he proved mortal and fallible.

She was slow to approach, hesitant as she teetered on the ever-present razor's edge of making a snide remark or a sassy joke to break the tension, but for once it wasn't necessarily a tension wrought in anger or hurt. It was something else. When she was close enough to feel his heat radiating against her nose and the smell of hare's blood overwhelmed everything, she reached forward across that tiny gap and lapped at the fur on the side of his neck and the crook where it met his jaw to clean it, and for once there was nothing about Wylla's tongue that was barbed or thorny. She was gentle. She was warm. That was what it had changed, spiny exterior aside.

if there was a time in which wylla had touched him before, mahler did not know it. the flicker of her tongue was like a blaze; it trailed a line of smooth fire over his flesh, set the root of his pelt there to heat. he was hard-pressed to keep himself still.
mahler's control of self was admirable, and yet even he found the bloom of her warmth against him an undeniable dirge to compulsion.
rapid blinking assailed his eyes; he closed them a long moment before slowly bringing his face alongside her own, pausing a moment before up came the broad scarred expanse of his muzzle to seek the same place upon wylla, if she did not first draw away.
a sugared torment; he gave himself only a moment before pouring steel once more into the base of his spine. birdsong in the cold air; the low sound of her breathing so close, so close.
and the totality of her simple touch, the gentle grace of it; the glint of something mahler desperately refused to let himself take as invitation.
it was not. there was nothing reciprocal in this interlude; wylla had reached to him only as a wolf might preen her packmate in passing.
so he told himself; his emotions tangled as strands of woven vine, unsorted, for mahler had not bothered to categorize the things believed only to be felt one time.
now they reared like jungle foliage from the neck of a bottle, spilling over ivy-grown and green, tendriling, spiraling — he locked himself in check.

It was more than that to Wylla, who saw this as the only way she knew how to say she was open to this. Words in serious moments had always failed her but her body never had—except that one time she got pregnant and birthed a hellion—and so body language was her most trusted form of expression. She could not keep the sting from her words, the sarcasm from her tone, but her body could convey no such thing. And yet, and yet ...

All at once it became too much when Mahler reciprocated, tracing his tongue along the underside of her jaw only momentarily. Her throat bobbed as she hesitated in her ministrations, just a second in time where the truth of it might be known—that the touch of his tongue had made something flutter behind her breastbone. That something was followed very closely by the abrupt desire to flee, which seized upon her so suddenly that she very nearly did lurch away, and grounded herself only by gripping the ground so tightly with her white toes that the knuckles hurt.

She had to do something to break the tension now. She wasn't made to handle it without snark. So Wylla did what she did best and ruined it by reaching suddenly up and poking her tongue directly into his ear in a wolfish wet willy. She indulged in this abrupt silliness, which she thought might irritate him more than anything, for only a second before finding the words to say, haltingly and with a rigidity that was almost certainly nerves, we can just see how it goes, day by day. And then she pulled away, surging further up the path in a desperate bid to escape her own vulnerability, but with a slow wag in her tail that invited him to continue their walk if he wished.

mahler had forever attempted to live his life without convolutions. he had always been a paragon of stoicism, a final bastion of restraint and calm.
but andraste had unwound him, and wylla unsettled him so very much with the growing strain of her nearness that mahler fair suffered the eternal moment. between the silence of his long-lived love, and the rapture of his long wordless discourses with the fae queen, the gargoyle had been unmade and rebuilt into something altogether unlike his former self.
he did not know how wylla would react, but just as it seemed the severity might become quite fevered, the she-wolf broke its thrumming chord with an action that provoked first a splutter from mahler, then a peal of genuine laughter in baritone.
her words swept round him; he watched wylla glide up the path with an airy sense of wonder that hours later he would recognize as hope.
but for now the shadowpriest was drawn inexorably after her argent flashing, the testing, teasing nature of her sunflower gleam.

Mahler countered Wylla's expectations at every turn. Where she expected him to snap at her muzzle for shoving it into his ear, he laughed instead and hastened after her. Hopefully she'd conveyed what she couldn't say with her words. If not, then it was only a matter of time before they were at odds again. Knowing them, that was inevitable either way, but she hoped for a truce for a time so their navigation of their joint situation didn't need to be so rocky.

Wylla wished to dispel the tension that had developed between them further, return to a more friendly sort of banter, but she also had thoughts of her own on her mind. Canting her muzzle, the grizzled she-wolf shared one of them with him: I intend to move up the ranks of your pack. Not to his lofty position, of course, but she was an ambitious wolf and wouldn't sit idle as the lowest for long. Whether or not she would stay in the spring when she could range longer and wider in search of her daughter, Wylla wanted more regard than that.

It might make him unhappy to hear, for it had the potential to cause unrest among the pack's members if Wylla sought to climb the ranks, but she didn't mean to do it hastily. She gave him a chance to intervene by asking, any suggestions?

wylla was swift to turn them aside from what had occurred, and mahler followed biddingly enough. "finding a kill vould bring you status," he mused. "and being more respectful of takiyok than you perhaps feel necessary."
diaspora's kapitän was a logical, aloof shieldmaid who managed to keep herself more closely guarded than even mahler,  but the general knew soon would come a time where she must assert herself more fiercely.
and whilst he had his own laid plans, mahler made none to try and temper takiyok, nor stop her from meting out discipline.
that reminded him of something; mahler grunted amusedly. "after i found you and tiercel gone, i had very harsh vords for durnheviir. not only over you," he added, "but her policies tovard children that vere not her own. she insinuated she might have killed tiercel and chusi's young brood."
a muscle leapt angrily beneath his shoulder. "takiyok is not like that, i believe. and i am not." 
forgetting the trail of his thoughts, and shamed, mahler lifted his head to look straight ahead. "what glory do you vish, vylla?"

Finding a kill sounded reasonable enough, but it wasn't in Wylla's blood not to be a challenging nuisance to other women. There wasn't a woman she'd ever met that she got along with besides her mother and her daughter, and both of those relationships were questionably tame at best. She loved them but also fought fiercely with them when the occasion arose. Besides them, there were few females with whom Wylla could get along ... few unrelated males, too, which made Mahler an exceptionally rare specimen.

Case in point: she had always respected Constantine more than Durnehviir, even though it was the latter who permitted her to keep her child. That aside, Wylla had once housed the seed of a plan to oust the woman from her place in the pack; she had left before it could manifest, and partly due to knowing the trouble it would cause her daughter. She was therefore amused to hear Mahler had harsh words for the woman, because it was neither he nor Durnehviir who had driven Wylla to return home, but her own discontent, in the end.

A brief flare of her hackles as she said, it would have been her funeral if she tried. Durnehviir had granted Wylla leave to keep her pup and would have not hesitated to kill the fire-kissed woman if she reneged on that once Tiercel was born. On the subject of Chusi, Wylla had naught to say. She had never and would never have any love for her late brother's girlfriend and the fate of her children meant little to Wylla, who unlike Mahler, could sympathize a little with Durnehviir's feelings regarding children who weren't her own.

But she would never kill them! She cared too much in her heart of hearts for young lives. It was one of her (few, she believed) weaknesses. Or real strengths, depending who you asked.

I will make the effort to be more respectful than necessary, said Wylla, even though she knew it wasn't likely. She would make an effort, but no promises. He asked what she aspired to and she paused on the cold trail, letting her breath plume out in front of them, before truthfully saying, second. But though she had much ambition, she was in no hurry to seize it. Tiercel beckoned, and who could say if Wylla would even be around long enough to reach that high? Perhaps she would have a reason to stay that long ... or perhaps not.

As for Mahler, she had no designs on his rank whatsoever. She had led him once and failed; she was not worthy to do so again.