three hours lay until dawn, four until first light.
        taikon and takiyok had gone, but mahler felt no grief for their abandonment. it would come with the rest of it, he supposed, in its own time. for now he was honed, sharp, a paladin routing sin from the stone walls of the emptying packland.
        quiet now, as he sought the dreamer @Asra. her voice too, risen in resistance at the meeting, but with none of the disrespect her counterpart had shown.
        a test for the girl then, as he viciously writ together angered missives for his future.

        he found her not long after, discovered her smile. this time there was nothing in him to return it, only a brief softening of his stance. "no," the shadowpriest grit in a round of frostbreath. "i have come to tell you vone."
        "there vas a young voman who joined a pack and refused to go to war for it. that day, the pack lost four of its number, including vone of her leaders by next light."
         staring at asra, heart turning with pain. "so now she faced a long vinter vith hardship ahead. now she is asked if it is vorth it. now she is told that if she is not prepared to be loyal to those in her pack who stayed and did not abandon for other things — she is told to leave. and quickly."

        mahler listened through asra's explanation, but it was the last of her words that brought his breath tot trail out in a quiet relief. "good." to the rest of her words he scarce had a smile, but he looked at the woman with new eyes. "there vill be no battle if i can help it." he thought upon what he had told star, what he wished to tell asra.
        "for now we vill remain here. but i think that it is not safe to stay so close to the seavolves without more fighters." already his mind spinning a hundredfold ahead of himself, keeping the enormity of all that had happened beneath a swift and tight rein. 
        "and it is all right to be afraid." more unsaid; the image of takiyok turning her back upon him etched into his mind.

        had she asked, he would not have been able to explain to her.
        wylla is going to leave flashing in neon mantis shrimp colors across the surface of his brain, synaptic ticker-tape.
        he concentrated on his breathing. "thank you for that. i thought it important to be honest about vhat ve now face."
        was there any such thing as we? mahler had steadily lost his grip upon hope of that.
        elke and ciri; what if he never returned? never returned and spared them his failure?
        that manful little part of his mind, whispering that he was a bachelor now, as he had foretold to takiyok. that the most vicious response to his stony beloved's departure was to take the first wife he saw, not bother with love, and set his next years to building something higher than he had yet gone. that there was no stopping him from reaching to asra, using her to drive out the agony of the image he had created: wylla beneath another.
        wylla was leaving, but now she was not gone. for now she remained, and his flesh belonged to her, unmoved and still moored despite the dreamer's pale-marked beauty. helplessly numb. "think about vhat it is you vant for your loyalty, asra. you do not have to tell me now."

        "a home can grow boring. a story can turn sour." he was dire suddenly; he had not told her of wylla's departure. it had hurt too greatly to even reveal before star. and he could not do it a second time. asra must learn that it was more that dreams which bound one to the earth.
        "tomorrow i am going to search for a new place. i do not think it vould be prudent of us to remain." she must stay with the older woman, he decided, to keep a watch over the distant bevy of adolescents and the growing children underfoot. the promise of more cubs was not any more promised, he knew, and so would not make it a goal for sagtannet to achieve.

        "that vould be velcome." he was no longer in a position to deny her company, but then thought of star. she could not be left alone with marble and calcifer to tend, and no one else to hunt. "but i need you to remain here until i have found a better place," mahler said softly. the night called, and he would throw himself into a patrol, alone, blindly heading away from wylla in the darkness.
        ear flicked in silence; he hoped that asra would understand.

        "hopefully that vill be a time sooner rather than later." he could not muster a smile, not now, but lit his gaze upon her with a bare approving light.
        if asra had nothing else to say, mahler would quit her presence with something like relief crossing him. nothing to do with the snowblazed woman, all to do with the dread clenching in his gut for morning.