Jade Fern Grove lift back and see the darkness hid

All Welcome, tags are more for reference, but they're welcome too (even if I think I have current threads with most of you <3)

How could she not be hurt?

She had been there from the start. She had tended the wounds and had helped form the base for everything they had. She had been foolish enough to offer herself as a right hand should one ever been needed, perhaps even an equal.

Now she struggled to believe the things she had known before.

Women had bed. She had not. She had been cast down in rank and her anger only bloomed further. No season upon her in all of her gloom. So she stole away with a confidence she had never had before. Reminded of how she had wandered away from home once and had not been able to return. Would such happen again?

She dared to think not as she neared somewhere with a familiar mingle of scents. She thought of @Mahler and how easy it might be to summon him right now. To soothe herself with his presence. She thought of @Imaq and how perhaps she should have stole away with the woman in tow.

How had everything become so dark?

Even the sky was littered with clouds above the canopy of leaves.

he had come back here to search for wylla.
praimfaya and sequoia both carried young now, and mahler predicted that their litters would arrive closely together, within this month if he put his midwife's guess to it.
here alone in the fresh greenery, mahler dreamed up her face again, the things that had been spoken; all stormstruck and pierced by her scent. and stag! how horribly the gargoyle had acted, and in it, he had broken his last bond with stigmata.
a breath.
he coughed, the sound rattling into the emptiness of the void viridian place. 
and all at once he was not alone, the sound of a familiar light tread swinging his attention toward the slight form of iana. "ve meet again," he jested lamely, attempting and failing to wipe the last amethyst sorrow from his welcoming expression.

A cough like a rattle.

She felt like a caged bird at the sound, abound to flutter away, but it was soon clear who it came from and worries rolled off her back like a lame duck. Mahler, No jest in her own voice but perhaps something akin to...relief.

Although her relief might not last long as she realized that he looked as she felt. Tis the season.

Are you okay?

"as vell as i can be," the gargoyle said genuinely. "a cold at the end of vinter caught me and left me vith this," he explained directly. "it is not so bothersome." 
mahler looked into the mallow-soft and earnest features of the duskfire physician. he could not say they knew everything between them, but his time with laurel had left him more sensitive to the things women left unsaid. something too harried her, though it was only assumptive and amorphous to him. "are you?" he ventured.

Winter colds. Curse them and the mark they left upon those they touched. Yet she had to trust him in his proclamation of it not being so bothersome. Surely he had done his own work on it, perhaps requested the help of another as well. He is smart, she thinks and knows.

It is a fear come true though when the question was turned on her. How she loathed it. It likely showed too on the downcast look upon her face.

Has the spring season been kinder to you than winter was, Mahler? Will you midwife your own? A questioned introduction to her own troubles that plagued her mind and her biological instinct.

ooh congrats on the promotion! :D

mahler felt the assured sting of her words; not her words, but how he must answer, how it would gall him and tangle him to answer. and how in that he saw admittedly his own fault and his own shortcoming. "this year i vill only be mentor to rivenvood's new children" he said directly, though his tone was melancholy. "i treated the privilege of fatherhood badly in years past."
more to say hovering on his tongue, but he continued along their same line. "vill spring bring motherhood for you, iana?" though the lilac of his gaze saw her moroseness, and too late he wondered if he had misspoken.

Thank you! <3

Not words she would have expected, but truthfully she was not sure what to expect. Perhaps she expected him to have...litters upon litters. Maybe one large one. Who could say?

I do not know. And it was the truth. She did not. She had not bed and she did not have a suitor in mind at that moment for when — if — the time came.

If I was to, I have not even chosen a man. Candid bareness laid at his doorstep as if she had known him for a lifetime.

mahler would be foolish not to read the scroll of her silent appeal, or what he took to be such. and it would have been an untruth to say that he had not considered it — again, after all the mad dash of the previous year, another attempt for peace and for familial normality.
another cough; mahler fading briefly into his own embarassment.
"it depends upon how you vant to raise them," mahler said softly, simply. "this year i told those who vanted to be mother to seek outside the border." this was traditional in terms of primality, but not so in the face of the pair-bonds made by their kind. "i had thought that it vould be vintersbane, for you." candid in return.

She thought nothing of the cough. Brief worried but he carried on and so did her frazzled mind.

Outside the border was a thought but...who? How? Did she just wait with baited breath for a lone man to stride by her? Not to mention the complications of how it felt to reach outside of the borders, to a stranger she did not know.

Maybe. Meek and unsure, what followed would be just as meek in a hushed voice as if it might hide her shame.

And — if someone asked such of you? As strangers outside of borders.

Foolish, whispered her mind.

lips gently parted to deny her, but the crush of it kept him silent. would their new bond now be corroded if he said no? he thought of laurel, how she had fractured before him, how she had come to find him again in his solace. how she too wanted children, and how mahler, bound by his word to wylla that day in the frozen wetlands — how he could not find it in him to do this without a mateship, without a marriage.
without her.
"i vould tell her i cannot, that i vant her children raised inside her home and tended by a father who can be there alvays." seeking, now, the corestone of iana's eyes, seeking and asking that they share this understanding, even as a man's weak desire began to flutter behind his veins.

But of course, whispered her heart.

I understand. Soft even as her chest pounded with her buried shame. It is a noble thing to ask of her. She gave him her gaze, even as it filled with her emotion but remained dry. Just the deep pupil contraction of a whirlwind's emotions.

No tears.

They were not those strangers she spoke of who shared what he spoke of. They were...professionals and she would not break in front of him for the morals he held.

it is not you, it is i, but he would not sully iana's genteel, graceful acceptance of his rejection.
mahler plummeted. whatever ridge of acceptance to which he had clambered now broke beneath him, and he felt lower than almost ever before.
was this self-imposed loneliness the apt price to pay for his sins? yes, mind whispering at once. 
iana was more than capable of rearing her own children beneath wintersbane's knowing eye, though mahler briefly thought in an objective manner of what such a bond could mean for duskfire and rivenwood. then in the next, muted horror. there could be no more babes born through a contract.
he felt the pulse of pain through her eyes, and stared at the ground, though in the next if it could be said, if it could be permitted, mahler reached toward iana with a slow and hesitant sway of muzzle.

And she reached out in return.

No reason to shy away from him for he did indeed bring comfort even if she had not secured what she had asked after. Carefully she'd push her cheek against his own if allowed. To melt into him for the moment and be a selfish leech of his fur, of his warmth, of his shelter. She was a small thing against him — as she oft was with others — and there was familiarity in taking the protection of a bigger form.

for however long iana would remain, mahler held her to the thump of his heart. she was small against the largesse of him; a myriad sensations came and went, until all that was left were the two of them plagued by their own grieving.
the old arrogance; why should it be this way? sloping away only to knowingness, and to the grim imagination of iana set with little ones alone, where mahler could not daily be and would not always follow.
the cough tightened in his throat, but he could not give it voice now, and so mahler only focused on her breathing and his own, eventually setting them together as regret tingled with want in his figure and he held both back for the sake of the little healer.

What could she say to patch herself, him as well, back up?

Nothing that would mean more than the silence settled between them. Something that bonded her very close to him in that moment. His rejection had been needed. A reminder of what she was sworn to, perhaps. If she allowed it to be. If the universe allowed it to be. Mahler had spoken of Wintersbane and she knew that, if she vied for motherhood so deeply, then he would be the best option.

Yet it was clear that was not who she thought of here as she was buried into the lavender fields of Mahler's fur. A springtime reprieve compared to the glacier back home.

There were plenty of things she should say the longer she stayed here. Except her voice would not break through her tightly sealed lips, afraid to be the first to speak as she sought to stay glued right to him. Fearful of what came next when she had to retreat from him.

likewise, mahler would not speak and could not move away until the boulder-words had all been rolled into one sentence, and he felt it heavy on his tongue. he wanted to dip his broad head and explore the silken salutation of her ears; he wanted to fade into iana, until the boundary he had lain paled and pulled up and up.
he had known no one since before the birth of his children, an enforced celibacy that now yawned heavily within him.
but mahler would not squander anyone else upon his desire and the futile feeling of i am able to do this.
for even if he were, the gathering cough in his body reminded him of a mortality made flesh.
and so the graf let his chin rest momentarily atop the small roundness of her skull. 
"even if i do not vant to bring more children into the vorld, i do not vant to leave your life if you choose to have them," the shadowpriest said softly. the glacier was not too far to travel, to teach, to be present weekly if he so chose.
without little ones to call him father, mahler was granted a new role in the lives soon to breathe.
his heart raced quietly.

Those were words she didn't know she needed to hear. Provided more comfort than even his large form against hers.

I hope you would not. Soft and vulnerable as she aimed to suck in his scent through her nose, maybe try to feel his pulse through a scarred neck. Then come free the words she felt the need to give him.

I am sorry to have come burden you with this on your own doorstep. It was not polite to make messes in somebody else's home and these woods with these words might as well have been that.

"never be sorry vith me," mahler told her gravely, flesh beginning its guilty lilt toward the heat of her breath and how her slender muzzle sought the aspect of him beneath the weathered coat. for a long moment, the graf only let it be, eyelids veiling the tired welcome of his stoneflower stare. 
wylla.
and he knew that so long as his radiant thorncloud love remained fierce and existent in his world, he would never be — he would never want to be free. nyx had tried to love him, and now she was gone, with their daughters, and mahler had not gone to moonspear; he had grieved and let them move to the hallowed place of memories in his mind; his failing; his passion helpless when he thought of her.
unfair to respond to iana now, not after what had been shared. unfair to allow her any hope of possessing some piece of him.
mahler belonged in entirety to another.
and so he sank his lips down to the crown of her head and drew back in the next moment, apologetic, reassuring. "it is good to find an — ally, in all things, not only vones of pack life." a companion.

There was temptation to not speak once more when he whisked away her apologies. To settle back into the soft silence and see where it took them, but his words weighed heavy upon her. It almost felt physical the way it laid in her mind.

Was she an ally? Was it her he spoke of? Or was it more...wisdom for her?

Perhaps...when we think of these things, when they grow too heavy, we can call upon one another. A slight pause for a small, timid breath. We're but stone walls apart. Yet right now they were much closer than that and she cherished it.

it was telling that the old pride in mahler had died, and it was just as well. emptied of the potential he had felt for a second's time, mahler drew a soft sigh, one that echoed the one that hummed in iana's throat. 
he thought of laurel, how she had slowly unwrapped herself as they spoke, as they went to the grotto, as she shared with him the horrible pain of a life she had not deserved. and now the earnest little medic, still so close to him, offering kinship even in the face of his reticence.
mahler was not sure he was so worthwhile.
yet "i vould like that, very much, iana," came from him all the same. if his heart and body were bound to wylla, he would put his energies into cultivating a companionship, one deep and as of yet unexperienced.
the cough, raking his throat again. 
"i should —" return. rule. remove himself to the recesses of rivenwood. but he did none of these things, only remained quiet and malleable as he was.

Another cough sputtered through and she did not budge. Despite the fact that...perhaps she should have.

It would be his words that did that. A delicate press of her nose to his cheek before she feathered around him. A brush along one side before she rounded him in a circle. Intentional, but she did no more than that.

You should — She started with, keen on finishing his thoughts for him in a way that might separate them from her...antics. See me if that cough gets worse. We could meet where you left your gift for me. Away from the concern of those within the glacier or his woods.

she circled him.
mahler felt a masculine pride rising upon the surface of his choked desire.
how easy it would be to revoke all he had said and turn to meet her with —
"yes," he said gently, lifting his chin with a smile that did not touch his gaze. "i vill meet you there."
it did not matter to say a day nor a time; their paths had twice touched now, and would again.
mahler lingered only a moment before turning and striding away, before the melancholy broke beneath a moment of something he would not call weakness then, but would see it as such only after.

Can close! <3

No day, no time. Only the promise of if things got worse they would be there. It was enough for her.

She’d watch his departure for a moment before she left as well. Stopped by that stream she spoke of and submerged herself in the waters. Cleansed of herself and the way she felt, she would carry on home with only the memory of their closeness pressed in her mind.