like two ships in the night (c)

Everything was still odd. However, it was just close enough to normal that it made Perchstar feel uneasy. They were back on the territory, even if it was strewn with traps. The river still flowed, even if it was still thick with broken bits of debris from the small flood moons earlier. Her Clanmates were still there, even though a few of them had been taken. If she were less intelligent, perhaps she could be fooled into thinking that everything was over. But she knew that it wasn’t. This was some cruel, drawn-out joke on behalf of the Twolegs. Raiding them all together in one big ambush, and then waiting in the shadows, creeping in only when it was least expected. Well, she wouldn’t be fooled. And neither would the rest of her Clan, if she had anything to say about it.

Still, with as close to normal as life was, it needed to go on. Things like hunting and patrolling still had to be done. And so it was with her anxious mind cooled under a neutral facade that Perchstar made her way down by Sunningrocks, surveying it with as much attention as she could call back from her cycling thoughts. The other side of the border was where ThunderClan lived. Had they returned to their territory, or were they living at Highstones or Fourtrees, like some of the other Clans were? She was uncertain. It had been a while since she had run into cats of any other Clan on either one of the borders. WindClan was almost definitely at Highstones, if she recalled correctly from the Gathering. However, she didn’t know about ThunderClan. Mottlestar was a cat for whom she had much respect. It felt like they had never truly talked together, aside from in passing at Fourtrees. She had been meaning to perhaps speak with the she-cat about mending the relations between their Clans, especially after the untimely retirement of Minnowfin, whom she had also respected. However, what with all the disasters that had been happening recently, she hadn’t had the chance. It seemed the forest would never know a moon’s worth of peace.

She sat staring at the water which flowed around the long, flat rocks, remembering the brief times she’d come here to… well, “relax.” Poppyshine and Stormdance had often insisted on such actions, as against her nature as they were. However, she found a strange longing for the now-passed times where they would rest on the sun-warmed surface in silence. Now was certainly no time to relax. And yet she found herself debating the action, even though there was so much more that she needed to do. Before she could convince herself one way or the other, a brief movement across the river caught her attention. Another cat. A ThunderClan cat? Perchstar's eyes narrowed slightly as she tried to see who it was.

The recent calamity striking the forest had forced the molly into a weird sort of regression, finding herself more and more withdrawn with each day and hardly able to maintain a conversation with anyone who wasn't Mottlestar. Upon returning home, Thistlemask had warily ventured out to her mourning space, finding the tree she bowed to in honour of those lost to her had been splintered and felled - no longer a strong relic of their lives, but one diminished to nothing, a hollow reminder that anything could be taken away from her at any given point.

It had well and truly broken some part of her, and with twolegs taking her clanmates she felt as if she had nothing left to give. So today, upon waking, Thistlemask had decided it was a day of silence and her best attempt at solitude. It was selfish to place such a large amount of the responsibilities on her leader's shoulders but the deputy was unsure just how much she had in her. Even her old name - once she refused to associate with her identity after the last time she had seen her father - had started to sound like home again.

Weary paws had carried her through the forest, snapping out of her own head as the unique smell of Riverclan caught her off-guard, finding gently warmed stones under her paws and the river looming ahead, looking uncomfortably dark and ominous from the turmoil of recent moons. As she continued to gaze out, the figure of another cat caught her wildly unprepared, and Thistlemask peered back, relaxing a little upon realising it was just Perchstar, a leader who wouldn't dare strike a deputy. As she observed her some more, her fur tingled a little, noticing her same exhaustion simply radiating from the other.

The molly looked around for a moment, making sure no others were nearby. Was this even her thing to offer? She was the deputy. Of course she could. Mottlestar had only ever had pleasant things to say of the Riverclan leader and had even gone as far as to suggest sharing the rocks she found herself on. With that, she sat gently, and warily pat the stone beside her with her tail. As much as she wanted a day of solitude that seemed to always prove impossible, but perhaps the other molly would appreciate the silence.

Perchstar considered the cat before her with unblinking blue eyes. It was Thistlemask, the new deputy of ThunderClan. Well--new, as in that she had been deputy for quite a few moons, but they had never shared even a single glance before. While she knew and respected Mottlestar, the RiverClan leader knew very little about ThunderClan's deputy. Even when they had temporarily shared lodgings with all the other Clans at Fourtrees for roughly a moon, she had been far too preoccupied with the business of her own Clan to spend time getting to know the other high ranks. Still, as she met Thistlemask's gaze, she felt the brief impression of a kindred spirit--tired, stressed, stoic. The impression passed as quickly as it came. However, she knew that no deputy of Mottlestar's would be so foolhardy as to cross the border without permission. Though she had taken a step or two farther onto the rocks than was strictly recommended, it was obviously not an intentional gesture.

At the wave of the deputy's tail, Perchstar stepped forward, seating herself on the largest rock directly across from her. This was an easy enough distance at which to converse. But what was she supposed to say? The few times that she had initiated conversation with the high ranking cats of other Clans had normally not been pleasantries. Though she was glad that nothing bad had happened between RiverClan and ThunderClan since Softfall's death, it did leave a distinct lack of things to speak about. However, Thistlemask seemed as content with the silence as she was. So it was that Perchstar found herself sitting on the sun-warmed rock for what may have been several minutes without saying a word. For a few of those moments, she simply closed her eyes, hearing the chilly wind rustle through bare branches on the forest side of the river. There hadn't been a moment of such quiet since before the Twolegs came. It was deeply appreciated.

Eventually, she felt the need to say something. It would be impolite to be silent for so long, as much as she would prefer to go an entire day wordlessly. But that did not mean she intended to be verbose. Instead, Perchstar opened her eyes and quietly spoke a single sentence. "And how does our sister Clan fare?"