It's a ritual.
His mother had been fond of them, he remembers in brief flashes, just like he remembers her unruly dark hair and her rough voice when she told him stories. He stops to think about that for a moment, tries to bring her back to him as a whole instead of in bits and pieces. But Misha finds that time works strangely, and he doesn't remember as much about his mother as used to. Just her hair and her stories and the funny rituals he never understood about her.
It's the soft yowl at his ear that brings him back from piecing the past together. An orange tabby is resting on his shoulder, ears flattened and tail twitching as if to say 'hurry on with it'.
He wonders, maybe, if that is what Harshaw heard in her, too. Read the twitches of her nose and the flex of her claws and called that language.
Misha wonders if that's what he hears now.
He leans forward to continue his task, lighting each candle in succession. The flames flicker shadows across the floorboards of the room, and an old ache clutches at him. It's fear, but it's also pain. He remembers, more vividly than his own mother's face, the flicker of shadows in an old woman's face where her eyes had been once before.
Oncat slips from his shoulder and curls up between two of the candles - he's left the space wide enough for her.
After all, it's a ritual, and she is fond of the fire.
He sits back, his hands cupping the last candle, feeling the wax warm over his fingers. This one is for him. For his mother that he was forced to leave behind, for an old woman he couldn't protect.
He looks at Oncat, the fire making her fur glow brighter. Her eyes are closed as if she's asleep, and he wonders what it is that cats think. And what it is that they feel. And if the fires remind her of Harshaw.
It's the creaking on the floorboards behind him that has him whipping his head around.
In the doorway of his room stands Alina - or the woman who was once Alina. Her name is on his lips - Alina, Sun Summoner, Sankta - but he swallows them all down.
Her eyes are on the candles, on his hands around his, on Oncat sleeping between her two. And then she's looking at him, an infinite sadness in her eyes that tells him she understands.
"Oncat misses Harshaw," Misha says suddenly, the words tumbling out of his lips.
Alina's lips part, a flicker of pain flashing over her face. He regrets what he says instantly. She hesitates and then steps into the room, folding her legs as she sits down next to him. Her teeth sink into her lip, but Misha forces himself to stare at the fire instead, his eyes welling up with tears he hoped would stop happening eventually.
"Why do you think that?" she asks softly.
"I miss Baghra," he says. "I feel the same way as she does."
"Misha…"
He looks up at her then, at the way her white hair flickers in the candlelight and the infinite sadness in her eyes when he realizes she's watching him. He doesn't want to cry in front of her anymore. He wants to be strong for Alina, and for Mal, and for Oncat. He wants to be strong so they can rely on him.
Misha wants to be strong so that he doesn't have to watch someone he loves destroy herself to save others again.
The war is over, he reminds himself. But that doesn't stop the nightmares and the pain. It is the end of one chapter that simply moves into the next.
He stares at Oncat, whose eyes have opened now. "I used to wonder if there was something special about Oncat." He glances back at Alina. "Like one of the creatures from my mother's stories. Old stories, she would say, about times before Saints."
Alina's quiet for a moment. "What do you wonder now?"
"Oncat is just what she looks like," he says. "She is a cat, nothing more and nothing less. I think that is what makes her special, because she is like me. Otkazat'sya."
Orphan.
He is motherless and Baghra-less, and Oncat is without Harshaw. Misha thinks that Harshaw had seen that same thing in this tabby.
Alina takes a deep breath, and her hand is warm against Misha's back as he bows his head. And he cries, because there is nothing profound about this stupid cat. Alina doesn't talk as he cries, only keeps her hand on his back.
Part of him wishes she'd insult him in that gravel tone he's used to. With his eyes closed, he can remember the feel of an old woman's dry hand on his cheek, and his shoulders shake with the force of his loneliness and grief.
He remembers an old woman better than he remembers his own mother.
Eventually, Oncat finds her way back into Misha's lap. Alina doesn't let her hand drop from him, doesn't mention his gasps for breaths as he struggles to calm himself again as his fingers burrow into orange fur.
"Can I light a candle, too?" Alina asks, and both cat and boy turn to look at her.
This is a ritual for orphans.
Cat and boy both nod.