[ @
teddy. ]
The twisted idea that he could have been happier, too, crosses over Rainywhisker's mind for a fleeting second like the shadow of a hawk surveying the land for prey. While he didn't regret his choices- He'd long since grown out of that phase of his life- the older tom still sometimes let himself wonder at the alternatives he's missed. Like dreaming and waking without the yearning for what was lost, he would not come out of the thought feeling any nostalgia or longing. It was a curiosity at best. What would his afterlife had been if he'd stayed? Who would he have seen by now?
What he
desired, however, was to be among the ones he'd admired and loved... As any cat would, really. He was a cat who enjoyed solitude but an eternity of
this was not always something he woke up wanting.
Guiding a few brave spirits back into the realm of the living was a worthy trade, regardless of those idle, passive thoughts and occasional heartsickness. And Rainywhisker would perhaps acquire the taste for it, if allowed to continue acting Charon. In the coming seasons, maybe the impact he'd been meant to make on the Clans would finally be seen; Sending lost spirits back to the living for another chance at fulfilling their intended destiny. He always longed to perform services dutifully to his Clan. Surely, in a way, this still served a purpose too.
The stormy gray tabby turns orange eyes across the starry glade. He wasn't expecting to see anybody he knew very well... He was, again, only here because it's where his paws took him. So when a painfully familiar cat shows herself before his very eyes, his heart skips a beat and his breath becomes locked in his chest for a moment too long.
"Dogspirit," her name comes off of his tongue soft and delicate, as if saying it would shatter the image in front of him. She had been murdered in the very same battle as he- Where Lionstorm savaged ThunderClan over nothing but his own self-righteous delusions... It was gruesome and sad.
"Look at you," his next words come out just as soft but full of an almost parental fondness. His apprentice, he'd never come to know so closely thanks to Duskstar. She grew up away from them all, alone, without guidance from the ones she was supposed to rely on. And then she died, a queen with kittens in the nursery, to the claws of a fervently crazed thing. Nothing about these things were fair.
"It's certainly been a while. But you look good wearing that starlight, you really do. What brings you around here? Surely not the scenery."