lingering at twilight [o]

At the river's shore, under the slowly setting sun, the uncharacteristically quiet form of a RiverClan warrior rested in silence. One paw swept over the surface of the water just to watch it ripple at her touch, long finished with the day's hunt. It wasn't the first time Flashlight had found herself in this position, whether at the edge of camp or the broken pools where kits learned to swim or here at the river; it was peaceful, and the last hints of evening sunlight reflecting on the water were pretty, and as the day drew to a close before the stars appeared she always felt wonderfully and painfully alone.

The sky tonight was cloudless, and when the twinkling lights of her ancestors emerged they would be infinite and blinding, stretching across all she could see of the sky and somewhere beyond it. They were watching even now, she knew in some distant corner of her mind, but when she couldn't see them the distance felt greater.

It wasn't that she didn't care. Or maybe it was. She wasn't sure of anything now, a lifetime of certainty long since washed away.

It was easier to think, without the light of her ancestors and all of their judgment. The fleeting moments between day and night had easily become her favorite, a time where she was unlikely to be disturbed and so free to cast aside her everyday self. To play with the water's surface like a carefree kit, to wonder at the nature of the stars and her own place in the forest, to swipe lazily at minnows she had no intention of catching for the sheer joy of watching their scales flash beneath the surface as they darted away.

The sadness that haunted her, swept over her like a lingering storm, seemed to fade in these moments. Though it never left for long, for the moment the rarely heard sound of genuine laughter carried on the gentle breeze.

Loonwhisper was caught between many conflicting moments in deputyship, from acceptance of Asylum cats (despite Ivystar's hesitance with outsiders) all the way to the designating of kits to mentors. Nothing made any sense. Every decision was made without much thought to the last; every choice was circumstantial. There seemed to be no rules but the will of the cat making them. It bewildered him. Frustrated him, even. He needed order, and the logic of the Code, to function. But the Code did not tell the clan deputy when an apprentice was ready to be made a warrior, or how to react when your brother is murdered and the offender now stands among you at gatherings, or what to say when your leader's kit appears in camp with a new name and no memory of her life with RiverClan... and she says yes, join us. Could he ever be a competent leader or deputy, if he was so easily torn to pieces by such minuscule disruptions to routine? At these times he dreamed that he could take control of his clanmates' free will, as malicious as it made him feel. If they all felt the way he did, and walked the way he walked, there would be no issues, and RiverClan would be paradise. But that was not the way of cats. Loonwhisper was the outlier.

He restored order however he knew to. Under the healing light of the moon, as the sky-fish swam around him, he dove into the water, merging with the Not-Loonwhisper. Down, down, down. The water was warmer than it has been a moon ago. It tickled his skin. Here, he was the way he wanted to be all the time. This was his most delicate, private self. Not all personal faults and failings could be hidden from his clan, and so he was still strange to them, but if they saw him here they might certainly think he was deranged. He rarely came up for air, only when positively necessary. When he sank down again, he twisted to face the sky and did not paddle. He sat suspended in the river as it drifted around him. The sensation of water embracing him comforted his troubled spirit. Peace and order, something only the steady wandering of the river could accomplish. Not even fish feared him in this state.

When he was through, having satisfied his troubles for the moment, he rose for air and spotted a familiar face on the bank. He swam towards her, and when he stood knee deep in the water he made no effort to shake himself free from wetness or dry off in any manner. He didn't mind the dripping. He sat beside her, looking like a funny thing. He was so thoroughly soaked that his fur clung to his skin completely. The exposed, hollow angles of his face made him look quite a bit ghoulish. Same as his tail, the fur of which hung down like limp tendrils on a vine.

"It is late," he cooed to Flashlight. It was so matter-of-fact that any other cat would take it as a statement of fact, but Flashlight surely knew Loonwhisper better than that, and saw it for what it was: true concern. Deep worry.

Loonwhisper was quite possibly the only cat left alive who could have interrupted Flashlight's wonderings and escaped unscathed; the only acknowledgement, at first, was a small twitch of her tail. He spoke, and she understood the tone hidden within it, as much as she ever understood Loonwhisper. As much as she ever understood anything. It unsettled her - not that she could read his words, but the feelings they contained; what those feelings might have been for. "It is," she agreed, a twitch of something - amusement, sadness, something in-between - accompanying the words.

He was the deputy now, as much as he was her brother, and she didn't want to burden him with her own thoughts and concerns when he was carrying responsibilities she couldn't truly understand. Still, she'd never been all too good at keeping her thoughts to herself, and so the words slipped out without meaning to.

"I miss..."

Shrikefrost, her mind supplied. A time when we were all together.

But that wasn't it, this time. Tonight she missed being a kit, free from the worries of warriors; she missed a world that made sense, having a place within it that she understood. Believing that the stars that looked down on them were fair and just.

"I miss when things were simple," she decided, watching the water ripple out from where she swept with her paw.

She didn't think they ever were, not really; but once upon a time, they were meant for someone else to deal with.

Loonwhisper ran his paws over his head, pushing the wet tufts of fur back and forth in a feeble attempt to dry off in some capacity. The night was warm enough, and his legs restless enough, that a brisk run back to camp would easily fix the soppy mess he had become. But he did not much feel like running. Flashlight's words stuck to him like sap.

Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he shook out the excess water from himself, getting a few smatterings on his sister beside him. "There is a great big scar on my back. Lyralei's. I had hoped it would heal over, and fur would return. I did not like the shape of it. Look — shaped like an adder. It did not heal over." He sighed deeply, "Hoooo. We will always have the mark."

"Hooooo.... Ooo!"

Loonwhisper's ears pricked up. He had not made the sound. He smiled eagerly at the shadowy bird on the river downstream, and responded, "Hooo..... OOO!"

It did not sound very much like the loon before him, but it made him very happy. He looked out at the horizon and saw birds which he once viewed through peepholes in the nursery, and down at his paws he saw Not-Flashlight stare woefully back at herself, and he looked up and saw the clouds circle the moon like cotton blankets. Eyes filled with starlight, he purred, "It is not all gone, yet. The Simple. It is right here." He patted the sand for emphasis. "When we were kits, they said I was very simple. Though... I do not think they meant it the way that I mean it. But, maybe I am very simple. And that is why The Simple comes easily."

Loonwhisper became quiet, objectively less joyful as he had been a few moments before. "I don't think deputies are meant to be simple, as clans are not," he whispered. "Maybe our brother and I could have swapped. Maybe the river could put Not-Shrikefrost in me, and Not-Loonwhisper in him, and we could have been each other. How strange. And he'd be Ivystar's apprentice, and she'd see his complexity. And she'd make him deputy. He would be a good choice. And... And... I'd be on patrol with you and Raisha, instead."

A horrid, existentially dreadful thought. Loonwhisper grimaced, shuddering, and tried to diverge on a different conversational path. "The river could make me a queen, maybe. A few kits at a time are much easier to lead than a clan."

Realizing Flashlight was a queen, and may not like this sudden line of reasoning, he added, "I... I think. I do not know."