It's a starry night - the clouds are scarce and the air is frigid, but the crispness of it all makes the sky seem almost blue-tinted instead of bleakly black and the stars acute in their glimmering pallor. The moon is missing, but if it's hooded gaze was glowering down, Flickerheart would've guessed it was well on its way down towards the horizon.

Mother was likely asleep, past the trees and the border, past the rocky slopes, the silver tabby could picture Spottedfang: curled up in a nest in the elder's den, with Gingerfang and some of the other respectively retired cats. She hopes her mother isn't too lonely, tonight...

She hopes that a lot of nights, even when Mother promises again and again at the Gatherings that she isn't, because Flickerheart's mother is too good at saving face.

Did she visit Cairn Peak earlier tonight, the dilute tortoiseshell wonders, laid down in the frosted grasses; she turns over her paws and stares at the pads: the two-toned flesh, hardened and calloused from moons climbing the rough terrain of Ridgeclan. She wonders if its lonely, for her mother to sit with the graves of her brother and father without any company.

She knows it's lonely for her, to watch clanmates go to the - what was... right, to go to the Groves of Ancestors to see their fallen kin and yet not be able to do so for herself. In all likelihood, she will never see her mother or the Cairn Peak again, never get to sit with her mother and bring trinkets to the final resting place of Flareflight and Foghawk--

A bit of dead grass crackles under someone's paw, somewhere behind her; her ears flick around, but she keeps staring at her paw-pads. After a heartbeat, she turns them back over and tucks her paws under herself.

"Hello." The word is a calm poof of air, visible as mist in the chilly air.