Jade Fern Grove but you are dressed in night and snow

She had promised @Mahler she would come with all she could. A few things had been collected along the way, easier for her travels.

Yet it was a medic's feast at her paws for him.

Honey, lavender, and tansy.

She had considered to bring something for pain, but she did not know his exact severity. Especially now. Ten sunrises after their conversation.

How odd how much her heart yearned for the well being of Rivenwood.

ten days. 
he found little time till now to come to their meeting-place, and found the familiar paths eagerly.
a coughing fit paled him in his earnest tracks, and it was a subdued man that came finally into iana's presence, though his doktor's eye cast approvingly, and wonderingly, over the things the duskfire wolf had brought with her.
"how fares the glacier?" he asked first, not wanting to speak of himself.

It is well.

She breathed softly, allowing him to distract from himself in that moment.

Wintersbane has taken a lead female. The first children have arrived. More will arrive soon surely.

Disjointed in her voice, rough compared to her usual soft tones. She could not bring herself to look into his gaze. Eyes trained on the collection of medical supplies laid before her.

in the revelation, mahler felt he saw many messages underlying. iana was leader, but was not mother. unless — she also meant herself. the season was coming to a close, spinning into an uncomfortable summer. perhaps he was right to assume iana would not.
this put mahler into a discomfiting state of thought: recalling that moment, wondering now if it had affected her in matters of a personal choice.
this, all — dauntingly wrong.
iana was leader, not mother. wintersbane had put a woman above her. children to come. he knew of one.
lane, perhaps. but she had not spoken in such a way.
brother. do not follow my mistakes.
iana did not look at him.
mahler thought now of where he had told laurel to go.
"vould you like to talk of this or medicine?"

She did not know.

There was the slow release of pressure when the words tumbled free and yet — I fear if we talk of this too much then I'll have no good things to say. A curl of her lips into a smile that was anything except happy.

She had already said too much, had she not spoken in such a disjointed way as to let the negativity break free from her confines?

she had, and for the moment, despite the taste of blood at the back of his throat, mahler would not hear of only taking her healing potions.
"a vhile ago, i met a voman named lane. she told me it vas vintersbane to blame for her condition. i gave her a midvife's advice for nausea. ve parted vays."
he searched iana then. "and another from duskfire. a silver coat. angry to be pregnant." 
a pause.
"vone of these, placed above you, then?"

Perhaps, she wondered, that relief of pressuring escaping merely opened the wound. To hear him lay it before her and know that even then — those two labeled, the silver one she had not been aware of! — he still missed the others.

There are more. She breathed in silent confession. Eyes adverted still.

There is a northern woman who is expecting. A warrior woman too.

It is the warrior he has taken by his side.

Rightfully so, perhaps.

She should have been there with celebrations and congratulations. Yet all she could taste was her own bitterness in the back of her throat, a building sensation.

more.
four, at the end of it, for that was how he followed the end of her revelation.
mahler was caught between a masculine, impertinent sense of impressiveness, swiftly tempered by the fact that his own halfway experience with this had left everyone bereft in the end.
a warrior woman above the medic.
he knew wintersbane perhaps better than iana; he had served with wintersbane, two men at the head of a pack.
or perhaps he did not know the northerner at all.
"there vill be vone more, if things come to pass," he said grimly. "rivenvood vill raise them." mahler expected now that the duskfire woman would think lowly of him, but readied himself for this. 
"vhy did you not choose motherhood this year, iana?"
he must know! he was not entitled to know!

Her heart thrumped and her stomach twisted.

"Rivenvood vill raise them."

She might have rebuked with a sharpness but she could not find it within her. Not to mention the way she wilted beneath his question.

I still yearn for it.

Meek and whispered. How she wished she had a veil to cover her own downward features.

It was not a true answer to his question, but perhaps it cleared the thought that she had simply not chosen it. If only this whole thing had been that easy.

she yearned for it still. 
summer had come to them, but she had not pursued it. mahler did not need to remind her of her rights as a leader. she simply had not exercised them.
because — but even he could not go so far as to ask.
if iana had only wished children, as sequoia and praimfaya, she would have sought a sire outside the borders.
silence engulfing them.
mahler did not know what to say, and so only inched somewhat closer in weak semblance of support.

She stared through blurry vision at the herbs laid upon the ground for him.

Not inclined to stop his silent approach.

Every time she grew a bit more selfish in his presence. She was unsure if the behavior was encouraged and nurtured. Perhaps it was not a selfishness at all. Perhaps it was a safe space for her to unravel everything.

When I arrived here, Carefully glanced around to the jade tops of the grove. I thought it tragically funny how much I care for Rivenwood.

I cherished the good things you shared and I worried over the bad that you fold me into. I would eagerly tend to you any hour you called. I search for your wayward mother and I think dearly of the children left behind.

Sometime I cannot tell where my heart is, Mahler.

Only know would she try to muster the strength to set her green gaze upon his own lilac.

wow @ me, got carried away again smh

an admission, one that spiraled on and out until mahler felt the press of it against his ears, his very visage, the blood thrumming in his veins.
i would eagerly tend to you any hour you called.
roughened inhale, watching the way the sunlit countenance moved with her words.
her heart — she spoke of it in a way that brought a furrowed brow.
"i am not a man fit for your heart, iana."
mahler began to speak now, and at length. he told her of marigold and their three, their foolish young idyllics, how he had watched her and their daughter succumb to fever. how he had run away. how he had come to the teekons, how he had found grimismal.
how he had met wylla.
how he had lost her when the bear sundered the coastal pack, and found her again in swiftcurrent, her and tiercel. how his love for the entlein had not been enough to keep wylla close, to earn her forgiveness for how grimismal had ended.
how he had tried to claim the place rivenwood now stood for himself. how he had thrown out morningside. how he had come to meet stigmata in the sunspire, the formation of diaspora, the feral ideals of his kill-brother. how stigmata had sired seven children, and died before he knew any of them.
the meeting of nyx.
how mahler himself had whelped the first brood and helped to rear the second —
how diaspora had at last fallen, and how wylla had found him in the hollow. what he had said to her of love, and still gone on to embrace and let himself be embraced by nyx. how he had wanted to love her too.
the story of wylla, gone round with his children. how diaspora had merged with courtfall after the death of wintersbane's wife — yes, something for iana to hold in duskfire — how he suspected the season had led the man off again.
sagtannet, where three daughters and a son were born to him from nyx and wylla.
thade, lost to the wilds for a long time, and wylla unforgiving, for had he been with them, the boy would not have disappeared.
how wylla had hated him for his lies of passion — how his children had all suffered, and none so much as ciri and elke. how he had at last, watching nyx die a slow death in sagtannet — first from sawtooth, then to nova peak — escorted this part of his family to moonspear — and left them there in hopes of peace and a new start for them, and an end to the horrible tension and lashing-out he had created in sagtannet.
how he and wylla had tried to love one another. how he had betrayed her during the fateful meeting.
how he had broken sagtannet after she left, reforming into rivenwood.
how he had heard of the storm that took ciri and nyx, and the star that took elke.
how he had not searched upon moonspear for them.
mahler, tears hot upon his face as he sought to prevail upon iana the number of times he had harmed wylla and set her rightfully against him.
and still his love had abided.
that wylla had begged him to run away and begin again, and he had refused. that she had loved him in return more fiercely than he had showed her, binding himself to rivenwood in selfishness. that he had found her in her season, and pledged love, and hurt her again —
that ciri had come back to rivenwood;
that wylla healed within his ranks even now.
"so you see," mahler finished hoarsely, "vhatever kindly thing you think of me is untrue."

"I am not a man fit for your heart, Iana."

It was something that dawned upon her herself as he spoke at such length. As the time ticked on and his history became clearer, she realized the list of things.

It was not love she sought from him. Nor was it the feeling of any such act of love. It was not any sort of drive to tangle herself with him romantically as she so might have wished not all that long ago.

Instead she had realized, mid-point through his history and solidified by the end, that it was mere safety she felt in his presence. The ability they shared to dispose of everything they held before each other. The trust they exchanged with the wellbeing of each other's body and home. She thought of the things he had said in their confusing tangle weeks ago in this very spot.

"It is good to find an — ally, in all things, not only vones of pack life."

An ally.

A companion.

The support they shared strengthened and weakened her all the same. How much she had blossomed under his teachings and moral support!

It is not. She softly declined his unwillingness to see the good left through all of that.

Through all of this I have seen what you've said. You have been honest about the man you have been and the man you are. He was right. You aren't fit for my heart. A slight shake of her head. But maybe...you don't need to fit that way. You spoke once of an ally in all things. Is that not what we are? I tend to your health and you mine, in a way. Trusted with the careful details of each other's life.

It is not love, heart or touch from you that I need. We have moved beyond that once already. I won't return to it.

I trust you, Mahler. I care deeply for the well being of you and yours.

Perhaps it is Rivenwood and those within that has captured my heart from your words.

perhaps;
something plinking and metallic inside mahler;
the cracking of some robotic core that splintered him through with a sudden breath of freedom.
had that been his curse then? to believe that every intimacy with a woman must certainly be —
destructive, perhaps, in the end. the confusion of rapport with romance. 
a lurch to think that this was how he had overstepped and undersuspected all first feeling, transferring it at once into some push for carnal knowing, and as a result, children.
iana, speaking the words he had long wished to hear but had never heard articulated before, even in his heart of hearts: that to love wylla was not to betray any others. he had not forgotten the duskfire woman's first request, but now it seemed as though these things had become unsnarled, more clear to the vision of it. 
iana, telling him that she wished only to exist in trust and alliance, that she harbored no secret demand or desire for children from him, upon which she might act.
a swift ice-rush of realization to know that this was the truth of who they were to one another: a sanctuary. and that was all that they had come to expect of one another.
a friendship.
how long had it been since mahler had been possessed of a friend?
he found his mouth was dry. "i trust you also. look how you have listened to me prattle on," and a smile. "i have shared so little of this."
tentative, "you are never far from mind. you. your pack. your health. i hope that vone day i might do for you vhat you have done for me, iana."