Nova Peak umwerben

can be a read only or a two post thread! <3

he had gone out and pondered all @Wylla had thrown into the face of him;
undeserving.
deserved;
he hung her words upon the houndstooth collar of himself and returned with herbs for his pharmacopia, and things beyond. a sprig of spruce just turning to green. a rounded rock that glittered upon one edge and was studded with obsidian. a curled strip of fragrant cedar holding pale feathers — things for the place where she lay her head.
these he left near the flat stone where phaedra had once lolloped as a fat, round pup, feeling foolish for his boyish gifts, for he still did not understand.
and yet mahler would try.
a pheasant with its naked breast ready for her teeth the next day, and in the nights he settled beneath the umber bole of a spreading oak, near to the woman's slumbering self but not so near as to appear uninvited.
if she allowed his touch, he gave it; in the interim, the gargoyle began with these small, perhaps nonsense gifts, until each day when he found himself upon patrol, he returned with something new to lie alongside the grey surface.

Wylla wore frigidity around her like a shawl, wielded it as though it could protect her damaged self from further harm, and so Mahler's visits were received with a forced cordiality that lacked the warmth of weeks prior. More often than not, they didn't interact at all, but Wylla would return from a patrol or a hunt to find some bauble laid alongside a flattened stone that marked the general location of her home.

At first she didn't realize what they were. A chipped rock that glimmered was met with complete indifference—simply something she hadn't noticed there before, but that had always been there, dislodged by a wandering paw. The spruce needles, merely blown through on the wind or dropped there by some wandering critter. The cedar encasing some soft, downy feathers was more curious, and it was that which first grabbed Wylla's attention. She assumed it was from Phaedra or Thade, denying Mahler's scent upon it as a coincidence. Perhaps he had helped his children to put it together. She didn't have enough faith that he would deliver a gift on his own, especially when he seemed determined to be rid of her, to see her in another's arms, and then to depart.

But as days went on and she woke to find other things, a cracked bit of antler or a rabbit's ear or a curious stone from the river, she began to loosen the winter shawl that choked her. She knew then who they came from. She tucked each trinket carefully away in the knotted roots of trees around her homestead where she thought only she would be able to find them, and each night sought another place to lay down and gather some close to her and cherish them, all while feeling that this was too late, too late by far...

And yet, each gesture chipped at the ice she'd built around her heart and granted another small, fleeting spark of hope. Of love, despite the pain of it all.