Chapter 17

    “…I know the answer to that,” Dove meows, nimbly walking over to Missy. She’s momentarily worried about Magpie, but the black cat follows silently at the stray’s side, expression clouded with anguish. He’s ignoring everyone around. Dove stops in front of Pinecone, who bares her teeth at him. “Moon got us together,” he meows, answering Missy’s silent question, and she flicks her ear in acknowledgment. He would make a great seer indeed. “Pinecone and Coconut had shared a past life together and then gone to the Great Night Cat to be granted a new life. But Coconut didn’t remember, and Pinecone hated her for it.” Silence reigns, momentarily, and someone asks “How?” It might’ve been Missy. Pinecone tries to rise, but Twine-Sky presses herself against the elder’s weight threateningly, and so she remains downed. She glares at Dove.

    “People are horrible, and my Coconut always agreed that she would rater die than be Owned. They hunted us and hurt us and then killed us, and then this life she goes and frolics in a garden with Owners, none the wiser! I have always hated people, but it was only in the past few turns that my memories cleared and I knew why. I tried talking to Coconut, but she didn’t believe me! I pleaded and pleaded and pleaded with her to run away with me, but she said that she was doing important things for the cats, and that she felt sorry, but she wasn’t the same as the one I knew. I had to free her from Ownership!” Pinecone tries to move again, to no avail. Her tail is lashing about. “And then I met Magpie,” she hisses, and Missy sees Dove flinch as the sister’s attention is all on him. “Still but a kit, really, lost and abandoned by the cat he so adored, who had taught him freedom and fighting and then left like the coward that he is. My brother by blood! Who wouldn’t even visit me! So I took Magpie under my wing and told him the truth. That the Dove he so adores sees his dead mate in Magpie, and he left because Magpie could never be her again, just like how my Coconut was lost to me.”

    Missy blinks at the revelation even while Dove’s ears flatten down and he hisses, incensed, “I left because I was afraid that I was influencing a young cat badly, and because I thought it would be fairer to let Magpie chose whatever life he wishes instead of following in the shadow of my Lotus.” Pinecone laughs.

    “Then you’d never should have taken him under your wing, brother.” Magpie flinches, curls closer to Dove. Missy turned her attention back to Pinecone.

    “…so you had Magpie kill the Old Crone to make sure she could never join you in a rebirth again, I get that, but how does Russet tie into this?” She asks, because that had been bothering her for a while now. Pinecone just shrugs, amused.

    “The color of his fur is the color of lifeblood, and it had seemed poetic,” she admits, laughing again. Missy stares at her, aghast, as Pinecone dissolves into manic laughter until she hacks up blood. She keeps going, shoulders and tail shaking in deluded amusement while the gathered cats watch on in silence, stunned. ‘Do you see this, Crone, from wherever you are now?’ she thinks, and then sends a silent prayer for the lost cats while Twine-Sky packs the mad sister by the scruff and silences her for the last time.