"Hollowheart is dead." I said.

I expected and fully braced myself for floods of tears from the opponent. Misty eyes, clogged throats. Who cared whether they be false or not, they were what defined Hollowheart and the size of the imprint he had left in this world. I braced myself for something that would elicit the same emotion from me, and would make me blow the joint in red-nosed humiliation and face-burning embarrassment and the overwhelming inrush of the memories that should have obliterated, but excruciated every single moment of my life.

Every single moment of my life without him.

Milkwhisker was uncomprehending for a heartbeat, eyes blank and jaw slack. Then reality hit her like a monster on a thunderpath. "Hollowheart?" she whispered.

I nodded.

"Thistles and thorns, Stormcloud, I'm so sorry." Milkwhisker was pacing around, tail swaying back and forth. "All of what he did for me… was a real humdinger. I'm up to my neck in debt to him, hell, it's not an understatement when I say I owe him all the stars in silverpelt. I'm overdue and I always will be overdue. StarClan took a dump in his lawn… seriously, what happened?"

"Hollowheart was killed by a ShadowClan cat. They're the one who deigned to have a shit." I said harshly, putting emphasis on the last word. "We will serve justice soon."

That is, if Aspenstar goes along the easy lane and prevents me from pulling a Beechshade.

"I… I'm glad to hear it. I hadn't seen Hollowheart for yonks… now, me boyo, you must have had an rough time."

"I'm fine. Like I said, payback is a nose away." I smiled. "Revenge is a great feeling, I relish it with gusto. My only wish is that Hollowheart were here to see me stand atop the body of his killer, and chant a victory tune in my highest falsetto."

Milkwhisker sighed. "Hollowheart will watch you from afar. He… he was a great fellow. Although I'm peeing on my face because, to be plain with you, I couldn't have said the same in the past." She looked up at the sky, blue eyes lit upon a swathe of thick leaf-bare cloud. "Sorry 'bout that, mate. But it's the bare truth!"

Something lurched in my belly. "What do you mean?"

Milkwhisker started poking at the ground again. It seemed like a habit. "It's quite obvious, isn't it? The rumor, or more so like a load of codswallop, was on everybody's lips. Once it circulates, it doesn't matter to them if the rumor was snowballed, or on that matter, truth at all. If the rumor has it so then the rumor is real. Thus worth throwing around."

"Milkwhisker," I said, "What are you talking about? What rumor?"

"Rumor had it that Hollowheart killed Flamestar and ravaged his own brother, Losttrail's eyes." Milkwhisker laughed. "Badgers fly. Although I am surprised you'd never heard of it. It… it was a popular rumor, among all those other ones surrounding your tom."

I suddenly remembered the conversation I had with Wrensong a few days ago.

"Well, the day Hollowheart walked in camp with whore – I mean, with you in his jaw just happened to be the day Flamestar died. It also just happened to be the day that Losttrail was found unconscious with his eyes ravaged – who knows did it to him – and… well, this just seems all ominous, doesn't it?"

"Flamestar was killed by rogues, and Losttrail slashed his own eyes. When they found him, there was blood on his claws. Mere coincidence these incidents happened on the same day."

I swallowed heavily. "What sort of other rumor was there?"

"Fifteen she-cats, twenty sons, forty-two daughters and eighty-three toms." Milkwhisker listed off. She sounded like Snakeshriek assigning names on patrols by rote. "And that's only the beginning."

My bet was that one of those fifteen she-cats was the cat who was standing before me now, drilling diddy-little, deep-driven holes into the ground as though a professional miniaturist. "Why are there so many toms?"

"Cats love to imagine." Milkwhisker paused. "Especially Drizzlesong. She in particular loved to imagine."

"I daresay he joined the Dark Forest. Considering his crude-mouthed, spiteful, impure characteristics, I wouldn't be so surprised if he did. StarClan would not assent of such malicious demons corrupting their sacred ranks, no, absolutely not."

"Yeah… sure she did." I muttered. Jeez, Drizzlesong.

"I believed in the rumors… until I didn't." Milkwhisker said softly. "It was only when I thought of what I'd gone through that I realized I'd been the wrong'un. It was irony, hating on Hollowheart and believing in the rumors when I, out of all those cats, should know what it feels like to be subjected to that kind of treatment."

"The sheer irony of it, the vulgar hating on the vulgar!"

That was what Flaxpaw had said, heartbeats away from his death.

Why was I thinking of it now? Same usage of words? No, it was something else, something that rolled deeper than that…

"But it was that day when I was able to finalize my position on Hollowheart." Milkwhisker continued. "That day… when I left ThunderClan because I'd bided my time enough. My quarrel with Mossjumble was only one slab of bark in the Tall Oak. I always hated that damn clan and the cats that consisted of it and the rules that followed my place in it. I gathered my three kits and left, vowing over and over – I will never return, never return. It became a mantra. Maybe that was what made me a complete wackjob. I would have known that what I was trying to do was stupid if I'd had my calming herbs as I had requested before my leave, but Mossjumble never allowed me to take anything – bad for the kits you will bear soon again, he'd say. But trying to cross the stream with three kits under wing was a death wish. When Hollowheart rescued me, three sodden bodies were sprawled to my next. One of them was a corpse."

Rainkit, I thought, staring at Milkwhisker. In the background, I could hear Friskfields continue on with his story with a strong streak of flamboyance and thick skin – "Regret? He did not know regret, only happiness! A poor sod he may be, but he was a poor sod who was happy." The kits were laughing at his words, although I wasn't sure if there even was a point to laugh at. Kits had a weird sense of humor sometimes.

"I thought Hollowheart would force me back to the clan. But he heard my words. Your pa heard my words, as insignificant as they were in ThunderClan, and found me a place to stay, this gorge. He told me that it'd been abandoned for moons, and it was made for me and my two kits. It didn't stay two for long. I was crazy with grief after… after what happened to Rainkit. And two just… didn't seem like the right number. There was an empty void where there should be my third. Then after that, my forth, my fifth, my sixth. I wanted more… no, I needed more. Something that would make me forget. The affair I had with the kittypet was enough to bring me what I wanted. She was upset when I told her that I, nor our kits, was going to live with her. She was a real uber-babe, with golden fur and a sweet smile. But I couldn't bear a mate the second time."

"I.. I thought this gorge belonged to ShadowClan." I said stupidly. I couldn't relate to what Milkwhisker had told me, and if I tried to pretend that I did and comfort her, I knew that I'd end up saying the wrong thing. That was always me. "And the whole of these marshlands, too."

"No, this is a place beyond ShadowClan territory. It's actually closer to ThunderClan. Twolegs come here often to poach, with hunter dogs and a strange twoleg thing that kills with a loud bang." Milkwhisker tried to laugh. "Y'll should have heard it. A sound apt to wake the whole forest, I assume. Blew my ears right off, and I was fox-lengths away."

I frowned. How had Hollowheart known about the gorge, or for that matter, the marshlands at all? I'd never stumbled upon this place before until now, not even while patrol..

Silence resumed. I said, "I like those holes of yours, Millwhisker."

"Thanks, son. But I'm pretty sure your clanmates would find them as ornaments of a madhouse." Milkwhisker joked, but it came out as bitter.

"If they do, my clanmates have bad taste." I told her. Was I saying this right?

Probably not. I never said anything right.

Milkwhisker pat my head with her tail. "The whim of a pregnant she-cat, Mossjumble would say. But my feelings were more than a simple whim, and my clanmates knew it. I was an inconvenience to them already, but I became a jar on their nerves when I started on the holes. All I ever wanted was a distraction from the reality where I stood my footing."

"Was the treatment bad?"

Milkwhisker hesitated. "… Quite. And although I told you that I left the clans because of its wrongly ways, that was only half of the truth. What would my beloveds have thought when they saw me as who I was, perceived as a lunatic by all, a nuisance who cannot fight nor hunt? But… mind you, I was a good queen to Mossjumble. No, I was a good queen to ThunderClan. Quiet when my kit was gored by a rip-and-tear loner, or stomped to death by waterfront hoodlums named RiverClan. Obedient when they saw what I could do and assigned me to it for the rest of my life. This is what legacy that I had, Stormcloud. This is what legacy Hollowheart tried to protect and preserve by telling your clanmates that I were dead and not a pathetic runaway who abandoned her clan. I just wanted…" Her voice trailed off. "… I just wanted them to think that I'd died with a harness on my back. Not the harness of a warrior who sold their life dearly, not the harness of a medicine cat who committed their soul to StarClan. The harness of a queen."

"A queen, who is the public benefactor of present ThunderClan, may I say." Friskfields stepped towards me, Stream and Ripple bounding happily in his wake. "'C'mon, Storm. Let's look to the kits together."

"Don't call me Storm." I groused, tossing a look at Milkwhisker over my shoulder as I joined the Frisk-Stream-Ripple train.

She smiled graciously and waved her tail.

…

"Don't we look just like mates, a herd of kits under our wing?"

"Yeah, clanmates." I said, all the while trying my best to pluck a glutton out from my eardrum hole. The only reason I hadn't ventured out on a whole new field called kit murder was because I was overjoyed at the fact that this demon wasn't my brother after all, and I still (hopefully) had one sibling.

Friskfields' face slightly fell at my words, but his cheerful demeanor did not. The kits seemed to have done him a great deal. "Clanmates?" He teased, mimicking my subdued, between-the-teeth voice. Which I hated, because Friskfields' voice was as lovely as it was and I was not a fan of my own. "One step at a time, is it?"

I shrugged. "I'm an old bird; wary by nature. I'm taking my feet off the ground when others are striding towards the finish line."

"How are you going to live life at such a slow pace, tortoise?" Friskfields asked. The kits on his back started to tug at his unruly mop of a pelt. Rather than jerking away from the tweaks, Friskfields turned his head towards the perpetrators and made a funny face, eyes wide and dangling, lips stretched into an inexplicable smile. The kits gurgled with joy. I gurgled with disgust. Why weren't the kits crying?

"They do say that the hare got outstripped by the tortoise. So somebody better prepare himself, because it won't be long until the ginger bunny who's as cute as a bug's ear is gonna get miserably outstripped by a dawdling laggard." I said. It was too bad that I sucked at being cheeky, because it had been just the right time to be that way.

"That's a shame." Friskfields said, putting the kits down from his back and in their baby cot. He started blowing lightly at their cheeks. "I was hoping that the hare and the tortoise could cross the finish line together, paw in paw."

"Tortoises don't have paws." I said. Even to this day forward, I'm not really sure of what expression I was wearing when I said those words. My memory just isn't clear of that point. But then again, there's really no such thing as everlasting memories, is there? When a cat dies, their memories die with them, and nothing can restore them back.

When I die, and so do all the cats that ever knew of me, I realized, It is then when I am truly lost to the living world. Brilliant leaders like Flamestar, or capable warriors like Lynxspots, or even mouse-brains like Aspenstar will exist through every achievement kept score in their legacy, their names forever monumental. While no more than a ten dozen moons later my birth, I will be reduced to nothing.

What legacy will I be leaving when I die?

Probably something akin to Hollowheart's and Milkwhisker's. I mused carelessly, watching as Friskfields the scammer set the kits on their heels as he made five stems of wildflowers turn into six. What a deceptive performance… but I was sort of curious, how did he pull that thing off?

Friskfields walked towards me, the bouquet in his jaw. "For you." He said, placing the flowers carefully on the ground in front of my paws. "Five of them were supposed to go to the kits, but I was afraid it'd go straight into their mouths."

I studied the flowers. One had a prickly stem, decked with sharp thorns. The others did not.

"Kits are greedy beings." I said quietly, eyes still fixed on the stick-out among its beauties.

Friskfields' face creased into a wonky grin, very much like the one that I'd seen on him while fighting the dogs. He was the kind of cat who smiled with all of his face, never mind the wrinkles that arose when he did.

But for some strange reason, his grin looked wan.

"Adult cats are greedy beings, too." He said. "Most times, even more than kits."

"I agree with you." I told him seriously. "I could even bring up a good few names."

Friskfields suddenly turned his back on me, hasty on his feet and in result almost tripping over his own paws. Big, clumsy paws like a Twoleg. "I, ur, I think I should pick some flowers for the mum of this group." He sounded like he was doing an imitation of me again, his voice apparently seasoned by a severe dose of whitecough. "She deserves a bouquet of her own, doesn't she?"

Friskfields stumbled out the nursery hole before any of us could answer his question. Or was it a statement? I wasn't sure, and I'm still not. I wish I asked him before everything happened and I wasn't able to ask him.

Nevertheless, I did reply. Although he wasn't there to hear it.

"She does," I murmured. "And her holey walls of a madhouse deserve something more floral, too."

"… Oh, and couldn't you save those wrinkles for your elder days?"

The kits were staring at me, the words still afloat in the air, which was strangely ever the more hot and humid. Stream in particular, was regarding me with dancing eyes that looked like trouble.

So I said the only logical thing that a cat in my situation would have said.

"Oh, bugger. Let's just pretend that nothing ever happened in this tiny, smothery, cramped-up cubicle."