Noctisardor Bypass wore my language like an amaranth
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Ooc — phia
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#1
All Welcome 

sated on a pair of muskrats and warmed by the noontime sun, phaedra stole through the greenwood. spry legs carried her over a memorized route through the idyllic purlieus of a cottongrass glade; the lake that comprised the heart of the territory; deadfall cluttering the forest. 

@Mahler’s scent markers kept her in the fetters of these sort of anxious meanderings. she found that the less bother she made for others, the less likely others were to bother her in turn. as such, she restricted her movements within parenthesis—hewn to the liminal spaces of life here. the little ghost was retiring; troubled. 

scrawny, too, as she did not break bread with the pack, and the choicest cuts were long since enjoyed when she did put in a late appearance. 

lurching from the shadows, phaedra jumped to a half-felled elm and flowed up the mossclad bough until she was midway across and overlooking a path worn by use. she throned herself there, slumped astraddle of it and swinging spectral legs off either side.

presently she sighed, chin finding a perch upon a kinked wrist while her thoughts ebbed and flowed against the shores of languor.
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Ooc — ebony
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#2
lip curled. mouth tightened. these days, mahler could hardly stand the taste in his own mouth.
praimfaya had returned; he would await sequoia, and when it had come, the gargoyle would see his way to moonspear. he would see for himself what had befallen elke; it was the last justice he could do for a child he had failed.
the graf drew closer to the lake, picking up the ethereal trail of his reticent perlenblüte. she had remained with him all this time, from sagtannet and nova, to the cleavstone bracken wood, and now here. mahler would not forgive himself if fate prevailed to move them again; he simply must be stronger than such unseen forces.
flung across her owlish perch; the shadowpriest came upon phaedra. relieved at the sight of her continued existence within the beautiful tumblefall of cloistered land, he stepped somewhat close and set his lilac stare upon the edge of the clearwater flowing. she was thin, he thought, drawn. "hier nisten zwei fischadler." pausing a moment. "welche namen sollen wir ihnen geben?"
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#3
this roused her; the sudden presence of her father’s voice reeled in desultory sea-drift thoughts and her head lifted from its perch. his mention of ospreys bid the entirety of her attention. her eyes cast about the verdure of the century-old trees in search of the river hawks. 

did anything at all escape the graf’s notice?

peering down at him, she blinked, slowly processing the anticipation of a response from herself. she shifted her weight. "oh! ähm— nicht sicher.. whereon a thoughtful furrow tamped her brow, contemplation tarrying awhile on her imagination before falling away from quirked lips: vielleicht haben sie schon namen?
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"nun ist es möglich," mahler rejoined, carefully settling to his worldweary haunches when it became clear that phaedra would not turn away his company.
he looked now to the clearing in a circlet of interlaced branches, where the treeline thinned and sloped gently downward to the lakeshore. one osprey there, alighting. the other would return. studiously he found himself silent, but presently returned to their talk. "was denkst du, wie er heißen könnte?"
this time he did glance toward his child, seeing how unchildish she had become, grown into all her lines. she looked like them both; he glimpsed the fiery woman there in the contemplative gradient of phaedra's eyes. the man offered a small smile, turned his focus back upon the osprey as he marvelled gravely at the swiftness of time's passing.
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ᴀ ᴠᴀʟʟᴜᴍ ᴏғ ғᴀɪʀʏ ᴛᴀʟᴇs
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Ooc — phia
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#5
she followed his lilac gaze to the bower upon which one osprey preened, lips parting slightly with surprise that he'd seen what she did not despite spending many afternoons as so, ragdolled on the log. 

when he spoke her gaze converged with his like crossed dowsing rods briefly before flicking musingly back. she pondered where the bird's companion might be. 

flying, duh; because if phaedra had wings, there would be no celestial force alive that could tether her to this side of earth. icarus revivified in her, certainly grounded for justifiable reasons ...but no more sensible in his modern life, probably.

i think... blitz," she decided, nodding, after a beat. 

wondering how her father might regard her decision, she eyed him expectantly for a moment. wie wäre es mit sein frau?
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it was easier to speak with her now, but even as he settled into her presence, mahler had not forgotten his litany of transgressions. a bitter rosary of reminders, plucked through his mind each day. yet the gargoyle was determined not to let the guilty creep of his mind dispel their enjoyment of the predatorbirds.
"wenn er blitzt, muss sie ein sturm sein." lightning and storm.
had a pair of ospreys been ever so well-named?
a companionable silence followed.
he wanted, suddenly, to run away from rivenwood with both she and thade; to build something else where wylla had dispelled him, and felt that hover in his chest as he searched for something else to say.
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Ooc — phia
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#7
as if summoning a great eddying wind to himself, the proud river-hawk beat his wings, and set shortly to rousing his feathers. phaedra admired him, picturing in her mind herself as a bird, airborne and air-bound, and how freeing it must be.

presently her papa offered sturm for the female, a choice pleasantly germane to her theme. 

she smiled. "ja. es gefällt mir." 
together, cloudchasers. they would bear their names well. 

the silence that fell thereafter between herself and mahler was a vast departure from the facile victories of warm and effulgent familiarity reserved for fathers and their daughters. instead, talking to him was like an adrenaline rush. she perceived a flutter of sensation her breast; it was not quite butterflies. more like bats striving to burst from her mouth.

but what did he feel? regret that she was the one child who wouldn't go away? the snowflower grimaced to think that. 

has there ever been a worse type of daughter?

a slew of topics cluttered her mind, but none so pressing as the one pertaining to her mother’s whereabouts. where she was now. why she had not yet come home for good. why grown-ups were so exhausting.

phaedra rallied words to her to tongue-tip, but the courage to follow through flamed out from her chest. restless, she sighed. fidgeted her ears. “y—isso i was ...” scuffed her paw, eyes dropping to the mat of moss. "i was... um..."

navigating through this realm of politesse was such pick-and-shovel stuff.

“will we... when will we be moving again?” the girl blurted and then looked away sheepishly. 
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#8
whatever mahler had expected phaedra to say as she began, switching from their shared language to common, it was not this. he considered that he had not expanded his contemplation upon what multiple moves meant also for his children. it was with relief, then, that he knew he was able to answer in the way that he always wished to answer, with words he should have used before.
"i do not intend to leave this place. no more moving." if praimfaya meant to relocate rivenwood one day, the gargoyle would not accompany the pale graf. the bypass had been chosen for its proximity to others and for the abundance within which allowed the wolves to be self-sufficient.
his lilac gaze moved back toward his daughter, wondering if she would do the same. "i am sorry that ve have moved so much in the past, phaedra."
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Ooc — phia
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#9
to his apology she splayed her ears; it was the very last of her wishes to instill him with guilt. she sought only to reassure herself. sitting quietly, phaedra was the image a girl picking at her fingernails awkwardly over the sudden nimiety of self-consciousness. 

i don’t remember very much about
 about our first home,” she admitted, slipping off her perch with a grunt to sit beside him. a wistful smile touched her lips, only to falter when a yearning she couldn’t quite place thrilled through her. longing for the memory of a place curtained by the veil of time, perhaps. only that there has been a lot of walking since then. she blinked, eyes flashing with the light of kindly humor. 

would you tell me about it?
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willowy pale limbs folding suddenly, moving phaedra closer. mahler was still. "it vas a very vild place," he began in earnest, searching for and surfacing with every memory he bore of sagtannet. "i vonder — do you remember vintersbane?" he mused, trying to place when his kill-brother had left among any recollection phaedra would have had at so young an age.
"ve ruled there, vith your mother. he vas from courtfall, and, ach," mahler chuffed, realizing he had been about to ramble. "anyvay, your mother, sie hasste den ort," he mused. "sagtannet is very high and vas named for the ring of sharp stone teeth all around the bottom of the mountain. so i understood. she vas afraid that you and thade vould fall down the side. but i also believe eventually sagtannet showed itself to be a beautiful place." stumbling; damned words; should he have even mentioned wylla?
"sagtannet is far removed from everything. it is at the very southern end of the sunspire. remote. there is a river that stag named vindholme," he grinned, speared in the next moment to think of the last time he had seen the boy. unsure of what phaedra wanted to hear, deciding to simply inform her of everything. "i thought it vould be a good place for you to grow up, so high, like a little eagle."
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#11
phaedra shook her head, denying recognition of the man he called wintersbane. she settled comfortably against her hocks and restlessly thumped her tail, lending her father a look of anticipation becoming of a child enshrouded by her blankets as she awaited her bedtime story.

nearly fledged now, that little girl. 


listening on, she felt her spirit pine for the wild montane place he depicted. the fact that wylla had qualms about the locational hazards of it seemed in perfect keeping with her personality. 
she'd always been quite assiduous in making sure her own were provided for. 

still, phaedra feigned disbelief: "my mother?" she rejoined, shooting him an arch look. "that doesn't sound like her at all." 
lighthearted; the topic was nonetheless the omphalos of sorrowed feeling; the axis around which her grief rotated evermore. and while she had forsaken any real hope that her mother would come back for good, it was all the same a nice dream to have. 


just that, though: a dream

currently realizing she'd become lost in such griefspun thoughts, the girl batted her eyes over-alertly and caught the end of "the sunspire". embarrassment spread itself redwood and goosefleshed across her skin.  

when he'd finished the telling of it: "ich wette, da kommen aus blitz und sturm." she looked again to the stormwoven bird, now joined by the tiercel. tipping her muzzle, phaedra moved to butt her shoulder against mahler's
"apropos, schau a mal," she said.
the male preened his mate's cheek feathers while she sunned,

proving that love truly was for the birds.
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my mother? and mahler gazed at the love-swept birds. "ich glaube, du hast recht," he said, keeping himself tied to the present and not to the omniscient thought of wylla gliding always along his brainstem.
was it desperate of him even now to hold the barest glow of hope for such again? he found himself embarrassed to have been so affected by a pair of windfowl.
phaedra's shoulder, butting along his own; mahler returned the nudge and cast her a wry grin, one seeking to chase away the cowl that had threatened to hang only a moment ago. "möchten sie sagannet besuchen?"
mahler put aside his burgeoning thoughts of the duties he held in rivenwood. it would be good to depart for a time, and with phaedra no less. mahler hoped that they might be reacquainted with one another as she stood upon the first threshold of her eventful life.
he would attempt, for her, to be spontaneous.
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#13
so very briefly they were connected by a shade of lorn listlessness—albeit, both uniformed of the other's thrall to grief and shared long-suffering. 

in that small time the smile and mirth had dissipated from the planes of her face like a flock of crows spooked by buckshot. tungsten-dread. a glissading ache that limned her chest, tracing the blueprint of a mother-shaped hole in her heart.

but she didn't dare linger with the feeling
 and by no means whatsoever did she bear the kind of courage it would take to address the weight it laid on her. 

even if she had courage in spades, phaedra wasn't even sure if she wanted to confide in him. not yet. maybe not ever.

what she dearly needed was a soft place to land, 
no questions asked; 
and if she knew her papa perhaps needed that too, it might've been easier to find words among the scree.

alas, the girl did not know what he might need. but she knew she was likewise embarrassed for the affect the birds had on her, and turned her cheek aside to rest violet eyes on the ground. 
his requisite press only-just compelling a smile half to life. 

until, that was, his offer registered in her mind. the dullness in her gaze had to flee to make room for bright surprise and joy that came barging in to replace it while she visibly fathomed the words

"oh. it's a joke? it's not ... say sike right now!" was chirruped amidst an abrupt explosion of stotting and spinning on the balls of her feet to the front-and-center of her father's view; well and truly disturbing the peace of every other local within a mile radius of her thunder. 

"ich glaub mich knutscht ein eich! like, genuinely! when can we go


she would attempt, for him, to remain in one mood for longer than a minute.
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#14
the face of his snowflower remained expressive, even despite the extended divide that had transpired between them this past year. "sike," mahler chuckled, a rich sound filled with true mirth. a rarity, but phaedra's enthusiasm had wrought it in him. now, right now, he wanted to say, but he had just left praimfaya. the young graf had asked him for a definition of symptoms, and only from there had mahler assumed.
and sequoia had not yet returned. laurel here, and perhaps her own season due to start — to leave would only invite —
the gargoyle, cursed be, never able to simply exist inside moments.
"vone month," he said gently. "there vas still ice on the slopes vhen you vere born. i vant to show you all of sagtannet from on high, so ve must vait for it to melt." he hoped that his sensibilities would not chagrin her; the man stood to his paws and offered her another look. "du und in den bergen."
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#15
"oh, okay..." she replied, unable to mask the subdual of fay spirit to hear of their deferred itinerary. she wanted to go now; was ready to go now! but she supposed he had some good reason for it. 
if nothing else, phaedra could trust that. 

and his aim of mountaineering was as good a reason as any. 

you and i in the mountains;
"sounds dangerous," she ventured, shaking the excess energy from her body. "so obviously i'm in." 

the geist turned to leave, feeling guilt edge its way in for having monopolized the time of rivenwood's vanguard, but she hesitated midstep. her cheek canted towards him: "papa. nicht vergessen, ok?"
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phaedra was turning away, but she did not seem to have grown gaunt and pale beneath his pronouncement. "ich werde es nie vergessen, schatz." as surely as the day was long, mahler would hold himself to the echo he had made here: to take her back to her birthplace, and for himself also, one of the last territories in which he had truly felt whole.
mahler smiled at her.
he would let her go now, but for a long while he wanted only to watch the birds and think of his pearlblossom's mother, teeth and steel and the stresses he had put her beneath.
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#17

her tail swayed amiably at her hocks. "hoffentlich," she smiled back, glancing once more to the twitterpated birds before finally padding away. 


phaedra would hold him dearly to that word of honor,
tucking the token of his vow in her breastpocket to brush her thumb over when sleep eluded her.

she awaited the turn of the moon with impatient yearning.