Redtail Rise vaterschuld

@Astraeus had come and gone, neglected at the far reaches of sagtannet whilst mahler wallowed in the sorrow and resentment he could not shake. a morass clinging to his heavy limbs. phaedra scarce once more, and thade returned, thade come back to them. but beyond his great relief mahler could feel nothing else, only a sickening empty churn where his heart once dully thumped.
greying along his muzzle now as his numbers dwindled, and as surely the starboy grew desolate and bitter so far from the reach of his dubious love. mahler went out that rainwet afternoon to find the child he loved in word but had failed in deed, and not for the first time he he considered relocating himself permanently to the tangled forest beyond their gatekeep.
a rise, a spray of sparrows rising to pepperseed the air; he breathed out a plume of steam and called hoarsely for the celestial boy.

And yes, he was bitter; bitter as the hops used to make beer;
bitter about hyemal winds and that forcing relations was harder than first believed. Bitter about lopers on the rise, bitter about being hireath. Basket-hilted, broad-sword; cracked and near unrepairable, unsalvageable.
he hardly trusted his body alone, except the drumming of his heart deep, deep down there somewhere and the intake of breath from his nose.

three, maybe four interludes of sleepless rest on the rise. He refuses to seek the aid of his touch-and-go father as love is a privilege he believes he never deserved or earned yet, and now that he mulled over it one or twice it was an oversold concept. Eye-twitch; unbidden tears ( whether from despair or misfunctioning eye, he didn't remember the difference ) and he was off.

The tell-tale shudder of ears comes when Mahler finally remembers him. His toes knead into pebbled path and replies in turn with throaty song, "go away." Would the man see his son as more trouble than he had bargained for and turn away? Or would Mahler pursue him out of vaterschuld — this father's guilt?

wylla's voice, tearing at him in nightmares and in waking;
mahler put it all aside to let the weary lavender gaze traverse the strike of scar splashed now across astraeus' young face, to take in the new hard-limned nature to his long limbs, the demand that mahler depart.
and for a long moment the shadowpriest considered just that; perhaps astraeus would be better off without his entry and exit, and he thought of his daughters, a thousand miles away and tucked into moonspear.
his failures the only birthright for any child he hoped to raise.
"ich will dich nicht verlassen." lips heavy, heart a millstone, but the love existent in the choke of his throat, which he shoved down with a swallow. let astraeus call forth his faults; he would answer.

A jury does not look at a man they have convicted,
so Astraeus' eyes cannot find the flint-chalked Mahler;
“ich will dich nicht verlassen,” and what pseudo stuff, he thinks — the silence thereafter dangles alone like a hanged man on a midsommar night. Mahler examples the biblical patience of a steadfast holy pilgrim, pacific. This boy cannot even pantomime that sought after portrayal of a man:

as Astraeus cannot be a man, no matter how he tries, ever.
Do what he may, in a world where a girl cannot determine the length of her skirt and boys don't cry,
he cannot succeed.

The idea his father may change his love in wild whims makes him clench his teeth and his stomach flipped like churning cheese curds. So in the margin of his textbook, he scrawls on his own ideas and launches into a spiel;
“Lügner,” he breathes, hitched, twinkling, rheumy seaglass eye, “lügner, du hast kein einziges Mal an mich gedacht. W-weil mich niemand sucht. Nur Thade!” his fat-knuckled fist clenched around the handkerchief where he'd worn his heart, sweat clad palms releasing to reveal the wrinkles left behind,

“Phaedra und Wylla wollten mich immer loswerden. Gleichfalls,” just thinking of the cherub and the spade's dislike for him makes him worm in the loam, stabbing Mahler with his whetted words, dressed in poisons from the toxin-limned scabbard,

“Das ist wahr,” and the line had almost died on his tongue, a glum whisper.

a bitter, beloved in irony, that astraeus was no child of his body and yet knew the tongue he gave his own. he watched quietly the boy, and finally he sent his own gaze away, spinning toward the high misted treeline that sought brazenly to climb into the icy plains of the peak's pasture.
astraeus was not mistaken that no one had searched for him, and while mahler wished to explain each moment with a formulaic mathematica, it would not nothing to calm the rancorous hurt that surely had embraced the constellation with its thorned arms. 
wylla had been cruel. phaedra; he did not wish to assume, but his pearl loved her mother, and perhaps just as easily had spurned the abandoned boy as well. and mahler, stretching himself web-thinned and failing between the first four; would it have been easier for astraeus to have been treated with a cool indifference, set upon his way as soon as it was able? was love worth the upthrust jut of anguish between them.
"es ist nicht wahr dass ich dich verlieren wollte, astraeus." he would refute that claim first, perhaps; arguing against a broken heart was its own exercise in futility. "und wylla entscheidet nicht wer hier geliebt wird."
a lie, for she does. for she had. 
swallowing, his lavender stare reaching in solemnity for astraeus even if the boy would not grant him that. "wenn ich dich nicht zu meinem sohn gemacht hätte, hätte ich dich vielleicht auch nicht im stich gelassen." an admission. astraeus deserved more than any lie he might tell to mollify his own treacherous heart.

i'm so sorry about the wait! :,o

The ashlar's refutation does nothing to sate the looming haint that was his misgivings, his regrets.
The pang of wanting to believe his father is ephemeral, so were the days when there was no proverbial grand crevasse groaning betwixt them. He wants it to be sealed close, but only a fool tests the depths with two feet first.

“Sie beeinflusst es.” — his words as loud as the mutterings of a child underneath their duvet reciting Green Eggs and Ham but are the definition of brevity being the soul of wit. He settles finally on his hocks, loam-limned toes drawing circles through the chilling grass.
He thinks about the long days on menstalk he'll only wish to get back, or that his mother would never be able to carve out soap dolls for him unlike the other mothers with their brood, tuck him in in his partna crib and press him into her breast, teach him how to distinguish from the littlest Dipper from her elder brother —

His last admission had officially pressed their relationship under duress. An all too familiar sting bloomed under his his eyes and cheeks. Mahler's words wanted to be mistaken by him. This bone-rattling sadness cruelly staved his heart. He remembers his words for later. 

“Wenn du dich so fühlst. Gibst du dann auf?”
Astraced faced the shadowmeister in the eye this time.
Outside looking in, Mahler was the ghost of what he needed.

no wait at all! <3

he shook his head, but did not look away from astraeus. a muscle jumped in his cheek. the boy was right to question him, but when had questioning turned to such bitterness? who had changed the starwolf, and why? mahler knew all the answers to such; he knew that he was to blame, but searched for hope in the new honesty between them.
it was after all, the sum of what he had to hold for himself.
"ich war kein vater anwesend. das heißt nicht, dass ich akzeptiere, dass es immer so sein muss." to say it aloud struck anguish into his heart; to say it aloud relieved in some tiny way a burden from the backburner of his heart. mahler wanted to repeat it to phaedra; finally, the words he had never meant to lose or leave unformed.

Vielleicht hätte ich dich auch nicht im stich gelassen, wenn ich dich nicht zu meinem sohn gemacht hätte.
the hum of a wasps' nest; his mind fashioned into a home for the insects. The conclusions he wanted to draw were pinched and pulled into a cat's cradle. He could assume no deeper inanity then surface sentiments and move on of Mahler's paternal vows. Simpler; easier on his mind. Yet the trajectories of possibilities extend farther in his mind, net into criss-crosses of chicken wire;
he compared the colors of their pelages for a clip before being able to put it to rest
( for a second time ).

The truths exchanged between father and son did not lave his salt-cured heart if not rub more into it. A demure “Ja.” is all he leaves to interpret.
Coincidentally, the thistledown girl occupies his mind, as well as Thade. He knew Phaedra's disdain and already it wormed in his breast for Thade out of jealousy. He wonders if things will always have to be this way too. Pondering aloud, “Wie macht man jemanden glücklichmit dir?”

100 for uuu <3

congrats! <3

it was a question mahler first did not understand, then comprehended and felt awash with a joyless pity. to be so young, and even as affected as astraeus' life had been, to still believe that love could be made. or perhaps he had not gathered the proper meaning, mahler himself. he was aloof, turned to a reticent pillar.
"du kannst nicht." a directness, a truth which yearned to be spoken aloud. "du kannst dich nur glücklich machen." whatever it was, mahler wished that he could be the one to grant it to astraeus.