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clangenrising · 4 months ago

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Month 18 - Greenleaf

Ghost was struggling today. His right ear hurt like a motherfucker, deep inside his head, and it was taking half his mental capacity to refrain from pawing at it which was making him a miserable hunter, on top of any aches and pains that normally slowed him down. He thanked the Folk for Jagg who was managing to keep the hunting party on task and in control for him.

“Leave that one,” he heard her call over to Mulch, startling the bird that he had been stalking. Mulch spat in irritation, tail bristling as he turned back towards them.

“Why’d ya do that?” he grumbled, “I almost had it!”

“We’ve caught enough robins in this area,” she said. “Remember, we have to be careful or we won’t have any prey come next year.”

“I still don’t buy that shit,” he huffed, slinking back over to them. “There’s no way we could kill all the birds forever. They’ll just come in from other places.”

“You may not like it, but that’s the rule,” Ghost said firmly. “We’re looking out for the future and making sure everyone stays fed long term.”

“Is that why we don’t hunt over the road anymore either?” Mulch raised a brow skeptically.

“That is so no one gets killed by wild cats,” Ghost scowled. Mulch didn’t seem convinced and Ghost wished quietly that the half truth was more convincing. Flick bounded back over to the three of them and dropped a shrew at their paws.

“I thought you liked the wild cats,” he said.

Ghost huffed, guilt exploding in his throat, and said, “I think they should mind their own business and we should mind ours. Everyone should leave everyone else alone.” Then he winced as his ear throbbed painfully.

“Okay, old man,” Mulch rolled his eyes. “I’m sure those kit-stealers will just ‘mind their own business’ if we leave them alone.”

“I dunno,” Flick shrugged and then said something that Ghost couldn’t quite pick up even though he wasn’t speaking particularly softly.

Whatever it was, Mulch rolled his eyes and swatted his brother over the head. “Would you shut up, Flick?”

“Hey,” Jagg stepped in sharply. “He’s allowed to speak his mind just like the rest of us. Why don’t you go grab Lizzie and Wicket and start collecting today’s catch, huh?” Mulch shuffled a bit and mumbled something before padding off towards where the other two hunters had gone. Ghost frowned as he once again failed to hear what was said, a common occurrence these days that only served to make him feel even more like an out of touch old man.

Flick flashed Jagg an awkward smile and said, “Thanks, Jagg.”

��Don’t mention it,” she said with a breathy, nervous laugh. Flick bobbed his head a few times, chewing his bottom lip, then cast a brief glance at Ghost before bounding after Mulch.

Ghost sighed. “Thank you, Jagg. You handled that well.”

“Did I?” she said, blushing shyly and he nodded. She smiled under the praise, seeming to glow, which managed to coax a bit of a smile out of Ghost as well. The evening was warm and muggy but she was like a breath of fresh air in the summer heat. What, he thought, would I do without her?

There was a pleasant, peaceful moment, before Ghost voiced the thought, “What did Flick say just then?”

“Thank you,” Jagg answered.

Ghost shook his head, ear throbbing, “No, before that.”

“Oh,” Jagg’s ears twitched backwards a bit but she still repeated the words clearly and precisely so he could hear them. “He said the wild cats they met seemed pretty alright.” Ghost’s stomach tightened miserably.

“Ah,” he nodded slowly. “Thank you.” Jagg simply laid her paw over his own. Despite the grief the words had given him, he was grateful that she understood he would rather hear them than be left in the dark. He knew that she would never lie to him which was a relief. He deserved to hear every terrible thing that was said to him anyways.

Jagg glanced over her shoulder after a moment and said, “I think they should be pretty occupied now. Are you ready to go meet with Goldenstar?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. He took a step towards the road but stopped with a hiss as his ear pounded again. “Fuck! This damn earache…”

“It’s pretty bad, huh?” Jagg winced sympathetically.

“Worse than last time,” he grunted through gritted teeth.

“Oh, dear,” she fretted. “Do you need to go home? I can handle the meeting on my own if you need to-”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “I’ll be fine.” What sort of man let a woman do his work for him just because he had an earache? He wasn’t a perfect man by any means but he at least still considered himself a gentleman in some regards -- or, he wanted to consider himself one.

The two of them made their way towards the road without much trouble or conversation. Soon enough, they were dashing across the empty asphalt, Ghost’s old bones aching in protest. They pressed onward to the little tree they had set as their meeting place and settled down to wait for Goldenstar to arrive. Ghost closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing to block out the pain in his ear.

After a while, Jagg nudged him gently and said, “They’re here.” Why did she sound guilty? Ghost grunted in affirmation and opened his eyes only for the answer to smack him directly in the face. Goldenstar had Scorch with her, of course, but he hadn’t been expecting to see the two adolescent cats walking beside them, one a speckled grey and the other a distinctive white tabby.

He was dumbstruck.

“Evening Ghost,” Goldenstar said, clearly picking up on the uncomfortable tension in the air. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this but Fogpaw and Slatepaw were very eager to meet you so I agreed to let them come along. I hope that’s alright.”

“No, yeah, that’s fine,” he said, stumbling over the words. He sat up straight and looked the girls over, unsure what a father was supposed to say when meeting his already half-grown children for the first time.

Goldenstar hadn’t been lying before, they were the spitting image of him and Smokyrose. Slatepaw, the one that looked exactly like her late mother, was smiling shyly, her ears pressed backward, while Fogpaw, his own doppelganger, stared blankfaced at him with her speckled eyes.

Then she spoke. “I’m Fogpaw,” she said. “You’re Ghost?”

“That’s right,” he said thickly.

“This is Slatepaw,” Fogpaw said, twining her tail with her sister’s.

Slatepaw mumbled something that Ghost was pretty sure was, “Hi,” and batted her lashes at him. Ghost couldn’t read their expressions right and it was all he could think about. What did they want from him? What did daughters expect of their father? Did they hate him yet or were they too young to know they should? Was he supposed to try and change their minds if they did?

Jagg interrupted his spiraling thoughts by saying, “Hi girls, it’s nice to meet you. My name’s Jagg.”

“Are you Ghost’s new mate?” Fogpaw asked flatly and Ghost felt like his eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

Jagg flushed bright red and shook her head. “Um, no, no, we just work together.” Not for lack of trying, Ghost thought and then quickly squashed that little bitterness. Jagg was smart, it was no wonder she had told him she wasn’t interested, even if she’d been kind enough to pretend he might have a chance sometime down the line.

“Is he trying to court you then?” asked Fogpaw.

“Not currently, no,” Jagg answered, shuffling her paws.

“Well, you don’t have to let him if you don’t want to,” Fogpaw said. “You can say no.”

“Fogpaw,” Scorch said softly and the girl looked at her with a furrowed brow.

“I’m aware,” Jagg laughed nervously, “but, uh, thank you.” Ghost shut his eyes and tried to focus, earache pounding. What a strange child. This, he thought, is why I don’t stick around for the kittens. I don’t understand children at all.

“You’re welcome,” nodded Fogpaw, seeming satisfied. Slatepaw, who had been side eyeing her sister, looked back at him with big, round eyes and his resistance wavered. What a sweet little girl -- his little girl. Despite himself, he smiled a bit and Slatepaw smiled back.

Predictably, Scorch scowled. “Right,” she said, “Now that we’ve done introductions, can we get to business?”

“Yes, of course,” he cleared his throat and gave his head a hard shake in a futile attempt to do something about the itching pain in his ear. It was time to shift his brain into a more professional mindset.

“How is the new hunting program going?” Goldenstar asked with a pretty smile.

“I think it’s going well,” Jagg said with a glance back at Ghost. “I mean, there’s definitely some resistance but I think for the most part people are adapting to the changes smoothly.”

“The worst of it is coming from the Exalted and the cats who really worship them,” he nodded. “They think we should be hunting over the road specifically to starve you out. Some of them even think that’s all the more reason to overhunt the area. I’ve been trying to play it off as a safety issue but there’s only so much I can do.”

“Well, we appreciate whatever you can do,” Goldenstar said.

“What about the fight for Speaker?” Scorch said sharply, ever the mood killer. “Have you and Schmidt made any progress there?”

Ghost huffed a bitter laugh. “No, not really.” Scorch glared at him.

“There’s been a… development,” Jagg said carefully. “Bella Swan, do you know her?”

“Yes,” nodded Scorch.

“She got Portia to back her claim for Speaker.”

Scorch opened her mouth but no words came out. After a moment she shut it and looked down at the space between them, eyes flitting over the grass as her mind went into overdrive. Goldenstar glanced at her with a slight look of concern then over at Ghost.

“Portia is the Interpreter,” he explained. “She supposedly understands the will of the Folk so her saying Bella is supposed to be the next Speaker has a lot of weight to it.”

“Oh!” Fogpaw said, surprising Ghost. “Like a sign from StarClan!”

“Shh!” hissed Slatepaw quietly.

“Yes,” Scorchplume said, laying her tail against Fogpaw’s leg to quiet her. “Like a sign from StarClan.” Ghost heard the undertone of ‘and exactly as fake’ in her voice and felt a fleeting moment of connection there. When it left, it left him aching. How he had enjoyed being a skeptic with her when they’d met. Now they were both still skeptics but they were lonely ones.

Fogpaw didn’t seem to notice though and nodded in serious understanding.

Goldenstar shifted forward as she said, “So, how does this change things?”

“Well, she’s got a big leg up on Sardine now,” Ghost said. “His claim was basically ‘I was here first’ but since we’ve never had a Speaker besides Razor, it’s kind of anyone's guess as to how we’re supposed to choose the next one and if Portia says it’s Bella then she’s gonna have the hard nosed spiritualists in her crowd whether she’s a woman or not.”

Fogpaw scrunched up her face in confusion. “Why does it matter if-”

“Shh!” Slatepaw whispered harder. Ghost winced.

“Fogpaw, save your questions please,” Scorchplume said firmly. “I’ll answer them when we’re done but right now we need to focus on staying on topic, okay?”

“Okay,” Fogpaw frowned but fell quiet. Slatepaw had puffed up in indignation and set about smoothing down her hackles with her tongue. Ghost groaned softly. Of all the days to have a terrible earache, it had to be the one where he really needed to be patient with children.

“Okay, so she has a leg up on Sardine,” Goldenstar said, bringing them back to the conversation. “What does that mean, practically?”

“I’d say that within…” Ghost paused to think, “a few weeks -- maybe a month? -- she’ll have enough support to fully cement herself as leader. Sardine’s a good thinker but he’s just not a big enough personality to get the support that he needs.”

“What about Rudy?” Scorch asked.

“Eh, it’s hard to say,” Ghost frowned, pawing at his ear. Jagg gently swatted his paw and he quickly put it down, chastened. Clearing his throat in a way that only served to make his inner ear itchier, he continued, “Sardine and Oreo have been doing a lot of damage to Rudy’s gang lately. A lot more of his supporters are Chaff than Bella so Sardine has more license to do whatever he wants. They killed a good six or seven cats just last week, them and a group of Exalted purists.”

“Uh, is-” Jagg nervously cut in, glancing between Goldenstar and the two adolescents, “is this appropriate to discuss around children?”

“Oh,” Goldenstar blinked as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to her.

“It’s fine,” said Fogpaw with a confident grin. “We’re warrior apprentices, we already know about that kind of stuff. Let’s stay on topic.” Scorch sighed a little through her nose but Ghost swore he caught a glimpse of a smile on her face.

“Yeah, it’s alright,” Goldenstar said when Jagg didn’t look convinced. “Please, continue.”

“Right, uh…” Ghost couldn’t help but give Fogpaw a bit of a concerned stare. She smiled back at him. He decided to just ignore it and move on. “Rudy. Right. Basically, he’s got more support but the other two have more power and with Bella closing in on Sardine, pretty soon it’ll just be her versus Rudy and that will either be a bloodbath or an immediate victory.”

“But, wait,” Goldenstar frowned, “what about Schmidt? Is he not in the race?”

“Not really,” Jagg shook her head apologetically.

“He had me in talks for a few days,” Ghost sighed, “talked about all the changes he wanted to make and asked me how to make them work. But that’s just the thing: cats like things the way they are, for the most part. Rudy’s gang want to let Chaff hold positions among the Exalted, but otherwise they’re not radical at all. Most everyone still hates wild cats and wants them dead, even if they disagree about whether we should stay in the city or not. Most cats don’t like ideas like food shares and kitten care programs and it’s not even like Schmidt and his reformer friends can agree on their own ideas anyway!”

He huffed loudly and took a deep breath to calm himself from the little rant he had gone on. Things like this always got him so worked up, it was honestly annoying. Fogpaw was squinting at him while Slatepaw stared wide eyed. Once again, he wished he could understand what they were thinking behind their expressions.

Jagg laid her tail gently over his and said, “That’s all to say that Schmidtt’s platform is a lot less popular and a lot less clear cut than the others. It’s extremely unlikely that he’ll be able to make a run for Speaker himself with any success. Right now, he and his base are talking about trying to get in with Rudy but it’s a… controversial idea.”

“They’ll spend all their energy fighting each other and get nothing to show for it,” Scorch scoffed disdainfully. Fogpaw opened her mouth and then shut it again.

Goldenstar glanced briefly at Scorch, worry tugging at her features and said, “Well, is there anything we can do to help them?”

“You?” Jagg asked with a nervous wince. “Um, not likely. If you got involved with them, that would only make them more unpopular, unfortunately.”

“What if we kill Bellaswan or somebody?” Fogpaw offered.

“Fogpaw,” Scorch said curtly.

“What?!” Fogpaw bristled. “It’s not off topic!”

“Something like that would be incredibly dangerous,” Scorch said, “and very complicated. It’s not just a simple thing to-”

“Why not?” pressed Fogpaw. “We killed Razor for you!”

It was Scorch’s turn to bristle. Ghost raised a brow at her. The Clans had killed Razor for Scorch? That was news to him.

“Fogpaw, stop it,” whispered Slatepaw, ears pressed flat against her head.

“I’m not-” Fogpaw started then gave a frustrated shout through her teeth. “I just don’t get it! If these cats are a problem then we should do something about it, right? That’s what warriors do!”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Jagg tried, “but Scorch is right. These things are really complicated. This whole power struggle started because Razor died. We don’t know how much more complicated things will get if Sardine or Bella or Rudy are killed.” It seemed to be working, to Ghost’s surprise. Fogpaw’s hackles had started to lie back down and Jagg had her full, undivided attention.

Jagg continued, emboldened. “And besides, a lot of city cats see you all as bloodthirsty savages. If you came in and killed another one of their leaders, it would only make them scared and angry and then they’d try to come for you.”

“If we want to avoid more cats dying, cats who don’t need to die, then we need to let the city handle this through politics,” Scorch said, having managed to pull herself together again. “Bloody solutions usually return bloody results.”

“Oh,” Fogpaw nodded slowly. “Right…”

“Slatepaw, are you alright, sweetheart?” Goldenstar asked. “Do you need to step away?”

Slatepaw opened her mouth, glanced at Fogpaw and then Ghost and then shut it again, shaking her head mutely.

“Okay,” said Goldenstar, “just let me know if you do, alright?”

Slatepaw nodded.

Goldenstar turned back to Ghost and said, “If there is anything we can do, just let us know.”

“We will,” said Jagg and Ghost was grateful. He wasn’t sure if he would have been able to say anything.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Scorch asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Ghost shrugged. He went through the list of things in his head. He’d already told them about the kit stealing rumors last time. He didn’t think they needed to hear every detail of who thinks they should do what and who (namely Jo) thinks that’s all stupid. As far as he could remember, that was everything relevant to the conversation.

“Great,” Goldenstar said. “In that case, the girls wanted to talk with you, is that alright?” Ghost glanced at Jagg and felt guilty when she caught his eye and gave him an encouraging nod. Tooth and claw, he was pathetic.

“Sure,” he said weakly, pawing at his ear before Jagg stopped him again.

“Go on, girls,” Goldenstar smiled.

“Okay, but are you guys gonna get mad at me about it?” Fogpaw asked, glancing between Scorch and Slatepaw.

“No, go ahead,” Scorch said evenly.

Slatepaw mumbled something Ghost couldn’t hear, looking at her paws, and Fogpaw frowned.

“No,” she answered her sister, “why would it be embarrassing?” Slatepaw’s response was too quiet for him to hear again.

“How about this:” Goldenstar cut in, “Slatepaw, why don’t you and I go on a little walk and let Fogpaw talk with Ghost and then when we get back it can be your turn. Does that sound alright?”

Slatepaw pouted up at him with her mothers big, golden eyes, and then nodded. Standing, she slank over to Goldenstar’s side, casting him another glance, and then they walked off together, Goldenstar giving words of encouragement that Ghost couldn’t hear. Damn these ears of mine, he thought and his earache throbbed in response.

“Alright,” Scorch said to Fogpaw. “Go ahead and say what you wanted to say.”

Fogpaw tore her eyes away from Slatepaw’s diminishing form and nodded seriously. “Okay… Okay.” She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, staring at him like she was about to chew him out. He braced himself with a slight wince.

“Did you really love my mom?” Fogpaw asked. Not what he had been expecting.

“Um,” he tried to think of how he was supposed to answer that. “I… I think so.”

“What do you mean, you ‘think so’?” Fogpaw said with the same determined expression. “Shouldn’t you know?”

“It’s not always that simple, Fogpaw,” Scorch interjected smoothly. “Sometimes cats don’t understand their own feelings well enough to say.” For once, Ghost was grateful that Scorch had spoken for him. Her response was much more eloquent than the one he would have likely stumbled through.

Fogpaw’s brow furrowed upward a touch but she wouldn’t be stopped. Turning back to Ghost she asked, “Okay, but then why didn’t you come back? Why did you make her think you didn’t love her?”

Ghost felt like an icicle had fallen straight through his throat. Had he made her feel that way? Of course he had! What girl wouldn’t feel unwanted if a tom just abandoned her without a word?! He swallowed thickly and tried to find words. Jagg pressed against his side and he took a deep breath. He wasn’t brave enough to risk a glance at her face.

He did look at Scorch’s, though, and he was met with an intensity he hadn’t been expecting. Despite her placid expression, her eyes were burning holes through him. Those eyes clearly wanted something from him and it was silence.

“I didn’t want to put her at risk,” he said and it wasn’t a total lie. “If I kept coming back to visit, cats would notice I was missing and come looking and she wouldn’t have been safe.” He cleared his throat and added, “You wouldn’t have been safe.”

“But we weren’t safe,” Fogpaw said. “They still found us and she died.”

He swallowed, saliva feeling sickly sweet. “Yeah…” was all he could say.

“You leave all of your mates, don’t you?” Fogpaw was relentless. “Did you love all of them too?”

“I-” Ghost floundered. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?” Fogpaw asked again, more incredulous this time. “Did you like them or not?”

“Sweetheart,” Jagg said gently, “Ghost has, uh, courted a lot of different women. I’m sure every situation was unique, it’s not that easy to say yes or no to a question like that.”

“Why not?” Fogpaw scowled. “Why would you be someone’s mate if you didn’t love them?”

“Fogpaw,” now Scorch interrupted, “we discussed this.”

“Ugh, fine!” Fogpaw lashed her tail and stood up straight again. “Did you know that Scorch didn’t like you back?” Scorchplume bit her lip to keep herself from interjecting again.

Ghost couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “No,” he said, a bit of ire creeping into his voice, “she sure had me fooled.”

“Like it was hard,” Scorch rolled her eyes.

“Hey,” Jagg said uneasily.

“Well, she didn’t,” Fogpaw said firmly. “But you wouldn’t have kept her safe if you knew the truth so she lied and that’s foxdung.” Ghost raised a brow at the odd curse -- at least, he assumed it was a curse.

Fogpaw kept going. “You should take care of cats even if they don’t want to have sex with you, you know that right? Isn’t that your whole job, taking care of cats?”

Ghost shifted. “It is.”

“Well, you’re bad at it,” Fogpaw said. “If you were better at it, people wouldn’t have to lie to you about how they feel. You wouldn’t hurt them like that.”

He’d hurt Scorch? The thought was ridiculous! Laughable, even! She had taken advantage of him and then left him the second she had a chance to trade up! He found his hackles rising. The absolute gall of this child to lecture him on his job -- on his love life. He looked at Scorch, expecting her to shut the child up or maybe even be smiling smugly at him for his troubles.

He did not expect her to be looking anywhere but at him with her paws tucked close together, her throat laboring.

Wait -- had he hurt her? No, he thought, surely she was acting now, pretending like she had as long as he had known her. Still, he couldn’t deny that she seemed genuinely withdrawn. Stupidly, he glanced at Jagg and the absolute sorrow and pity on her face was like a punch to the gut.

Fogpaw hadn’t stopped talking, only growing louder. “You keep hurting cats -- cats I love! Slatepaw thinks you hate us! Mom thought you didn’t love her! How many other cats have you hurt and left behind, huh? All because you’re too selfish to help them when they need you! Are you even sorry?!”

There was a long, quiet moment and Ghost felt like he was in freefall. What could he say to all that? What could he say that wouldn’t get Jagg to finally throw him away? What could he say that would make his daughter feel any better?

His voice was hoarse and sluggish as he mustered up the courage to say, “I’m… trying to be.” Scorch scoffed.

“He is,” Jagg said, her voice too angelic to bear. “He’s really trying to be better.” She swallowed and met Scorch’s gaze. “I know it might be hard to believe but he is trying.”

“Good for him,” Scorch growled coldly.

Ghost watched Fogpaw’s face. She was studying him, staring hard as if she could look straight into his mind. After a long, very tense silence, she sighed a little, seeming to deflate, and looked away. Ghost didn’t know if he was grateful or distraught.

“Come on, Fogpaw,” Scorch said. “I told you it wouldn’t make you feel any better.”

“No,” Fogpaw said. “I wanna wait until Slatepaw is done.”

“Alright,” sighed Scorch. “Slatepaw is going to want to talk with him on her own though. We should give them some privacy.”

“Fine…” Fogpaw said slowly, glaring at Ghost. Scorch cast her gaze over the grass to where Goldenstar and Slatepaw were walking nearby and waved her tail to get their attention before laying it over Fogpaw’s shoulders and shepherding her off to the side.

As Goldenstar and Slatepaw approached, Jagg leaned into him and said, “Ghost, try not to be too hard on yourself. She’s clearly got a very black and white way of seeing things. I’m sure she means well.”

“She’s right,” he shrugged in defeat. “I mean, tell me I didn’t do all of those things.”

“You’re working on it,” Jagg said. “That’s what matters.”

“Not to them,” he said, thinking back to Tadpole’s bitterness. How many cats despised him like Fogpaw did and just didn’t say it to his face? The thought was soul crushing.

“You can’t control how they feel,” Jagg said firmly. “You’re trying to be better and that’s all you can do.”

And when it’s not enough? He thought but Slatepaw was already approaching and he didn’t have the heart to say it in front of her.

“Alright, Slatepaw,” Goldenstar said. “This is your time. Say whatever you want to.”

Slatepaw shuffled her paws, glancing over to where Fogpaw was scowling at them. She mumbled something to the ground and Ghost squinted as if that would improve his hearing.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Ghost can’t hear very well,” Jagg said clearly, “You’ll have to speak up for him.”

“Oh, sorry,” Slatepaw said, trying to mimic Jagg’s volume and diction. “I said ‘I’m sorry Fogpaw yelled at you.’”

Ghost sighed. “That’s alright, uh…” He struggled for what to call her -- her name was too formal but he didn’t think she would buy something like ‘sweetheart’ coming from him -- and settled on, “kiddo.” Regretting his choice, he glanced away and said, “I deserved it.”

“Really?” Slatepaw said on the bottom edge of his hearing.

“Yeah,” he nodded, trying to think of what a good father would say. “Apparently, I’ve made you think I hate you and that’s…” he paused, then finished with, “Well, I’m sorry.” Jagg’s tail brushed comfortingly against his.

Slatepaw’s big golden eyes shone like she was about to cry. “Th-that’s okay! You don’t have to be sorry!”

“Well, I am,” he committed. Goldenstar wore a sentimental if sympathetic smile. Slatepaw sniffled and moved like she was about to rush him before holding herself back.

“Um, okay,” she said, smiling despite her tears. “Maybe, um, you could come back with us and we could share tongues or something?”

“Share… tongues?” Ghost glanced at Goldenstar in concern.

“Groom each other and share gossip,” Goldenstar laughed. “We’d be happy to have you.”

“That’s… that’s alright,” Ghost said. “I should probably be getting back to the city.”

“Oh,” Slatepaw’s smile faltered and faded. Great going, dumbass, he thought.

“It’s not that we don’t want to,” Jagg said. “We’re just very busy. And Ghost has an ear infection, so he really should go get some rest.” Ghost groaned as her reminder seemed to redouble the pain in his head.

“Wait, really?” Slatepaw’s eyes got big and wide. “Then you should come back with us and get it seen too! Oddstripe will make it feel much better, I promise!”

“I… I don’t know,” Ghost said, feeling very old and tired.

“If left untreated, an ear infection can be very dangerous,” Goldenstar said with a serious expression. “Please, you don’t have to stay long but I’d really appreciate you letting our healers take a look at it.”

“Please,” Slatepaw said in the most adorable pout he had ever seen. Fuck, she looked just like her mother. How could he say no to a face like that?

“Alright, alright,” he laughed a little, “if you insist.”

“Yay!” Slatepaw cheered a little, her tail unfurling over her back. “Thank you, papa!” Ghost blinked. No one had ever called him that before.

He nodded stiffly and said to Goldenstar, “Are you sure this is a good idea? Scorch and Fogpaw seem pretty mad at me.”

“It’ll be okay,” Goldenstar said, glancing over at them with a sympathetic frown. “They just need their space, I think.”

��If you say so,” Ghost said, not sure how this was ‘giving them their space’.

“Come on,” Slatepaw said, “it’s this way!” She reached out and wrapped her tail around his foreleg to guide him and he held his breath.

The first step was the most difficult. After that, his body took over, trudging after his daughter as she led him deeper into wild territory. Goldenstar explained the situation to Scorch and Fogpaw who didn’t seem pleased but neither complained enough to stop it from happening.

When they reached the camp, Ghost was suddenly overwhelmed with memories from the last time he had been there before. It had been almost a year, hadn’t it? And still, the smells were the same, the shape of the place the perfect background of a picture that Smokyrose was missing from. He took another deep breath, hoping no one noticed the way his chest trembled, and let himself be guided into a burrow that smelled strongly of herbs where a molly nearly as old as he was insulted his appearance while a confusingly androgynous cat rubbed chewed up garlic inside his aching ear.

After that, Slatepaw dragged him to pick an animal from the prey pile and then shared it with him on the big flat stone he had sat with her mother on all that time ago. Fogpaw made sure to share a piece of prey with Jagg and watched him the entire night which was unsettling to say the least. She wasn’t the only one either. A big ginger tabby in particular scowled at him from across the camp throughout the entire meal. Still, he tried to make the best of things and listened to whatever Slatepaw said and tried to respond in the way a father should. He wasn’t sure if he was doing it right but Slatepaw seemed happy and that eased his aching heart.

By the end of the night, his aching ear had eased too. Slatepaw made him promise to come back if it ever started hurting again. Fogpaw made a point to tell him that this was what it looked like when cats took care of each other. He couldn’t look either of them in the eye.

When they finally let him go and he and Jagg set off for the city again, he gave a heavy sigh of relief. He’d known being a father was hard work but he’d never thought about how much hard work there was in just sharing a meal with his kittens.

Jagg leaned against him, purring reassuringly, and said, “That was very sweet of you.”

“It’s the least I could do,” he mumbled.

“No, it wasn’t,” she shook her head. “You did something difficult, Ghost. You should celebrate that.”

“I just want to go to sleep,” he groaned, glad that his earache had numbed enough that he might actually be able to.

“A perfectly fine way to celebrate,” she chuckled and Ghost wished he could make her laugh all the time. Then a thought occurred to him.

“Shit,” he frowned. “We’ve been gone so long… people are going to assume…” He glanced at her but didn’t have the energy to finish the thought. He just hoped her reputation didn’t suffer too much on his account.

Jagg shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. “There are worse things,” she said simply. He sighed with a little smile. What did I do to deserve your patience? he thought but let the thought go. No use in stewing now. Purring softly, he leaned his head over hers and let himself enjoy her company on the moonlit walk back to the city.