Tears at a funeral (c)

Sageroot didn’t really know how to handle a situation like this. Should she speak, should she hold her tongue? She hardly knew Vipershade, and yet here she was visiting his grave alongside his sister.

His sister, who was definitely not a ThunderClan cat. Sageroot knew her duty as deputy was to guard the ShadowClan warrior, make sure she didn’t try anything, but somehow after only a single conversation she found herself trusting Swiftheart.

“I’m glad to see someone cares for him still,” she finally mewed. “I’m sure he made some mistakes in life, but it’s not mine to say what those were. I just know we’ve all made mistakes, and I think we should be honored for our strengths in the end.”

The journey to the thunderclan side of the forest felt to go by quickly. The white pelted warrior now found herself by her litter mates resting place. All her life she had known him as night and hearing the name viper felt foreign to her ears. Not foreign in a bad way, different was all.

She supposed a lot of things had changed over her and nights life. Her earliest memory together with him was him awakening from a nightmare and her doing her best to comfort him along with their mum murkystar.

They grew up together, fought by each other’s sides and were always there for each other at least until the end.

When he became leader he slowly isolated himself more and more weather out of a sense of duty or perhaps a way he felt the need to protect her. In either case by the end she just remembered him leaving without saying goodbye. Him faking his death to the rats to escape shadowclan. She closed her eyes, he thought everyone no longer trusted him after that horrid gathering but she always had.

The knowledge that he had run away from home out of it chewed into her. The self guilt that she wasn’t enough to make him want to stay and try and rebuild things over again.

When she first came here, to thunderclan she worried she would have an over anxious warrior watching her every move. She was most pleasantly suprised to see it was actually Sageroot, the deputy she met gathering ago.

Sageroot was respectful of things and never seemed to rush or hold any mistrust at what her intentions here where, which was to say a final goodbye to a lifelong littermate.

She glanced upwards roused from her thoughts and mourning At Sageroot’s words. She nodded slowly thinking about them.

“yes that’s a good way to think of it. I try to remember us in our younger days before he felt the pressure of having to lead the clan. she took a bit of a pause thinking

“perhaps his life is a reminder to live and not be too worried about what the expectations are of you. Up until now, I thought I had failed him because he ran away from home. But now I see it differently… I don’t think he was running from me as much as he was running towards a new life here. He got to spend the last of his days with the cats he cared about, his kits and his mate”

A tear ran from her eye as she thought about her brave littermate, surely he was amongst the stars once more with ratrunner, and their family loudy and basilbloom and mistyfalcon.

After some time she glanced back to the thunderclan deputy- “thanks for letting me come here, I’m sure it’s a bit odd having to watch a shadowclan cat, but this means a lot to me she meowed quietly barely a whisper.


From everything she had seen, Sageroot had been a kind, trusting soul, something that she wished to be like. It made her reflect, if someone came to a shadowclan border and asked of this would she let them? She hoped she would. Of the pair of siblings, she had always been the more outgoing and easy to make friends compared to nights mistrusting more catious style.

Sageroot shook her head. “It’s far from the most unusual thing I’ve done, believe me. I feel like I spend half my time translating everything I say into other languages.” She chuckled a bit. Learning Feral and helping develop sign had made her life so much richer, but things could definitely get tedious at times.

Swiftheart's ears perked up a little bit and she tilted her head to one side curious as to what that would be like, being multilingual.

"oh? she blinked looking at her paws and smiled a little,
"perhaps I could learn it as well" she whispered liking the idea of getting to pick up something new, and perhaps it gave an excuse to see Sageroot again, she liked her.

Sageroot fidgeted with a pebble under her paw. “I probably can’t teach you Feral,” she admitted. “It’s not really my place to teach it, especially without express permission. But should ShadowClan ever have need of sign language, say for a mute or deaf cat, I don’t see why not. I don’t think being able to communicate should ever be restricted from a cat, regardless of what clan they’re from.”

Swiftheart nodded thinking, "Perhaps we could meet up at fourtrees? I like getting to spend time with you" she suggested not giving it much thought at all, it felt like a perfectly fine request.

Getting some time with someone outside of her clan was making things a lot easier, especially with the fact that she was very extraverted by nature.

Sageroot nodded hesitantly. “I’ll try to head that way next time I have a free moment. Being deputy though, I’ve got a million things to prioritize over a cross-clan chat, no offense of course. You’re nice, I just… yeah. I’ll see if I can make it work.”