The golden and flame she-cat's ears pricked at her uncle's voice. It felt like it had been several moons since she had last seen him, but time was not something that felt steady and evenly moving. It ebbed and flowed in ways she couldn't quite understand, where some days felt like years but some moons felt like days. It was an odd existence, but perhaps everyone in their middle life felt the same way, that time was fluid and intangible.

"We must have both been called back by the League's siren song," she agreed with squinted eyes as she tried to make out Bermondsey's shape. Her tail tip twitched back and forth slightly, a soft smile resting on her face. She had told herself that she wasn't ever going to go back to Primal Instinct. The city was not her home; she craved the darkness of the forest, the ruins, not pavement so hot she wondered if she would singe her paw pads. Yet, she hadn't been able to resist the strange song of the group that had once been her home, even if they no longer lived in her home. "I can't say that I'm upset about that, though. It's nice to have a familiar face." All of the cats from their era, it seemed, were dead or long gone. She couldn't say this was unexpected, though; the group of felines she'd grown up with had always been more willing to shed blood than anything else. She could only imagine that at least some of them died at the paws of their League mates. She used to find the cruelty appauling, but as she aged, she had come to the acceptance that sometimes, violence and brutality was just part of life.

"You're alone this time?" she then asked, noticing that the two young ones were no longer in tow. Concern flashed through her eyes for a moment; where were her siblings? She hated the idea that he had brought them with him; Charlotte knew better than most that the League was no place to raise kittens, especially those who were born with her mother's light. The League consumed that light easily, relinquishing its victims only when they were as jaded and cold as each cat that came before them. Yet, at the same time, she hated the idea that they were no longer under the watchful eye of Bermondsey. Although she had not known the kittens for very long, she had been grateful for her uncle's care of them. Would they receive the same care from cats they weren't related to? Charlotte didn't know.

She let out a soft sigh, leaning into his touch for just a moment. If she closed her eyes, sometimes she could pretend that Safi's spirit carried with the tom, and sometimes, the she-cat just needed her mother. Still, she sighed shortly after, resuming the discussion.

"I'm starting to think there is no escape." There was a glint of something in her voice. Resentment, maybe? She had come back to the League of her own volition, of course, but she couldn't help but be angry that the home that had called to her had changed so much, and that it had called to her at all. "It's even worse in the city than it was in the forest. Cats were brutal back then, but at least they were fed. At least there were herbs." Again, something darker flashed in her voice. It had been approximately two weeks since the she-cat had bore her newest cross and accepted the position of Shaman. It had been a funny thing- with Funk gone, there was no cat that even remotely knew how to heal. Her own DIY training had provided the best hope for the League. How pathetic that truly was; not only was the Shaman lineage gone, but they were so desperate as to ask her. She supposed, though, that a real Healer would resent a position in Primal Instinct; at least she was used to low stores.

Charlotte listened to the tom with a blink. A hint of regret filled her gaze. Should she have stayed with her uncle longer? She would have been able to help Evenie, right? Still, she couldn't help but feel like the two kittens would have a much better life anywhere but here. Her tail flicked back and forth as she tried to decide whether or not to tell her uncle her great secret. It was something that she had carried close to her chest for so long...

"I did the same thing," she meowed quietly, her gaze shifting away from him. "I tried to give Reynardine the best life. Unfortunately, that meant getting her as far away from here as possible." She thought about her child more often than she didn't. Perhaps it had been why she had been so good with her little siblings; there was a part of her whose maternal nature had been robbed the day she told her mate that he would have to raise the child, that it was a mistake for her to even get pregnant. "I hope, whereever the three of them are tonight, they feel a peace that we have never known."

She listened to him speak with a nod of her head. "I don't understand how they got this way," she meowed, although perhaps she did. They had gotten this way because they had grown lazy and complacent. Gone were the days of Primal Instinct being the phantom at the edge of the forest, waiting for its next opportunity to strike. They had gotten too comfortable. Yet, was that something they could be faulted for? The darkness that had once covered the clan had been all-consuming, an inescapable fire under all of their tails that suggested that if they did not fight, if they did not struggle to bear the weight of the League, they would die. Death had been nearly constant those days. "Perhaps they grew tired of always being one step away from disaster." It had been her only hypothesis. "Yet, if that were true, why would they be here? Sadists turned masochists; once willing to kill each other, now willing to be killed by an enviornment that is wholly non-viable for survival." Things truly had changed.

"At least it isn't a daily bloodbath," she then meowed with a shrug. "It makes my life a whole lot easier when I don't constantly have to heal cats with approximately nothing." She clicked her tongue in irritation, although it wasn't directed at him. It was directed at the situation that the two of them found themselves in, in a home that was not a home, living in a culture that was so foreign to that in which they had grown up. They were alien to their own homeland. It was almost ironic; she had resented the place that she had once called home, only to resent it even more when she had to return.

"My biggest mistake," Charlotte meowed, "was allowing another cat to be brought into this world." There was genuine regret in her voice. "The day that she opened her eyes was the day I left her. I couldn't let her remember me. It was the only way I could think to atone for my sin, to leave her before she could ever know me."

She sighed slightly. "Perhaps you're right," she meowed, her shoulders rolling. "Maybe it'll feel more like home when they're murdering each other because they looked at their sister's aunt's favorite piece of prey the wrong way." She let out a humorless chuckle. There was a twisted part of her that missed that kind of chaos, the thrill of always being one step from death.

Then, she shook her head. "I can only hope that leaving her delayed the inevitable," she meowed, her voice solemn. "I did everything I could. Now, it's the stars choice." She didn't believe in the stars, or anything really. There was nothing scientific about believing in life after the end. However, it was amusing to her to muse like that.

"Care to take a walk?" she then asked. "I've got some herbs to collect, and it might be a good way for you to become more familiar with the territory. God knows it took me a moon to know where I was going."

She shook her head. It was hard to tell if she loved or hated those moons of her life; perhaps it was a mix of both. On one hand, the light that Safi had had clung to her, too, and she had been far too soft to ever survive in the League. On the other hand, Primal Instinct's depravity ran through her. As much as meaningless bloodshed disgusted her, it had also enchanted young Charlotte. It still did. After all, why would she have selected her career path had she been afraid of a little blood.

She nodded once to the tom in agreement, but said nothing. It would be her daughter's biggest mistake if she ever made it to these parts. She could only hope it never happened.

"Now, try navigating it with the eyesight of a mole," Charlotte grumbled. It was her own personal hell most days to figure out how to get from point a to point b, not that she'd really tell anyone that. As he continued, she motioned him to follow with a sweep of her tail. "Well, you see, that's an excellent point. There is no place to get herbs, at least not propperly and in enough quantity that they're helpful. That, my dear uncle, is why I don't like hunting for herbs alone." There was a hint of mischeif in her voice, but they walked along quietly for a moment until they reached a large apartment complex. "See up there, third floor?" She pointed to a balcony that was accessible by the fire escape. "The two-leg keeps a garden on the wooden cage. We've gotta get to it and raid it."

"To answer the question you didn't ask first, yes, there is a high chance that we will be caught by two-legs if we are not careful," she meowed with a casual shrug. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. "There are two things that would happen if that's the case. One, they'll spray us with something to chase us off. If that is the case, do not attempt to immediately get it off you; we'll have to double check what it was." She blinked, remembering the day she got dosed with a spray bottle of vinegar. She'd made the mistake of not swimming off the residue, and she couldn't get the taste out of her mouth for what felt like hours.

She jumped to the first step of the escape, before quietly moving up it higher and higher. "Today, we are looking for borage. I have none, and it's too early into kitting season not to have any at all. Our queens aren't being properly fed, which means that without the herb, there's a chance that any kittens born would starve due to lack of milk production." If every thing the healer had learned was from trial and error, there had to be a story as to why she was so insistent. Her eyes flashed as they got to the first landing and she looked back, for the first time chekcing to see if he had actually followed her.