"What an opener," Eshek purred derisively, pausing in her grooming for a moment to grin up at him crookedly. "Hey, hot stuff, ever met a cat who's had all four legs broken?" With a low chuckle she went back to licking the wound, only stopping a moment later to continue, giving her head a flirtatious little wobble and quirking her brows lecherously, "No, baby girl, you heard right - four."

She was struck once again just how deeply, utterly messed up what Pinesimmer was saying was. A sister letting all your limbs be broken because of some little jibe. God, it was more terrifying than half the stuff she'd done as a torturer. StarClan would have to be a cruel entity to ordain a leader like Aspenstar.

Eshek finished her grooming, looking down at the wound for a moment before looking back up at the medicine cat. "Come on, finish eating and we'll go find some fancy little herb for you. I can be the world's hottest medicine cat apprentice." She grinned, drawing the rest of her mouse towards her with her eyes still on Pinesimmer. Hunkering down, she quickly bit through what was left. "And then we can find somewhere to spend the night. I'm thinkin-" She held a forepaw out in front of her in the air, pausing mid-chew, "treehouse."

"Ooh, trash-talking kids? You can tell me all about how useless and annoying they are while we go help you not die." She sounded like a mother giving a moody child a little task to do to keep them distracted. Scattering the bones of little Louis the mouse over the edge of the cliff with a swipe of her paw, Eshek got to her paws and nuzzled at Pinesimmer's side with her nose, trying to get him up. "Come on, you little failed murderer. Then you can go to sleep and when you wake up you won't have to deal with me ever again."

Eshek would have shot back some quip, if it weren't for the genuine grin spreading across her face - not the usual manic one, but something slightly... happy. Flattered. Relieved? Tender? Even she didn't really know. Her eyes just looked softer, sunnier. She'd given Pinesimmer an out, and even if she likely wouldn't have honoured it and would have come back to bother him eventually, he still could have put an end to their acquaintance after that night. To have him basically say I wouldn't hate it if I saw you again made her heart swell.

But then he was wincing and Esh was dragged back to the present. "You gonna tell me what you need or just play lucky dip?" she asked brusquely as she padded along slowly at his side. "I know what catnip looks like, y'wanna get high?" She burst out a laugh. "No, okay, really, Pine, whaddaya need? We can find a place to cud- I mean sleep and I can go find the herbs for you." She was criss-crossing back and forth around him, on one side one second, on the other the next, never taking her eyes off him; it was both irritating and caring. "I'm good." She was bouncing up and down now like an athlete warming up. "I'm a fast runner. I can be there and back in a second. You, you're walkin' like an old man. You'll be dead by the time we even find, like, marigold. Oh my God this is so embarrassing, the one guy I've killed since I've been back and it wasn't even on purpose. Pure negligence. This is gonna be so bad for my street cred."

Her ears suddenly perked up and she stood up straighter like a pointer hound as she spotted a fat, low-spreading oak, it's short trunk and old, sagging branches forming a natural basin in the centre. "Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed, running forward and leaping up to sniff around it. "Cozy!! Pine, look how cozy!" She stood looking down at him for a moment from the centre of the tree, tail high in the air, before slipping back down to his side and gesturing to the basin with her head. "C'mon, you chill and I'll go be your servant."

“I know ‘em,” Esh replied immediately, sounding almost indignant. She settled Pine down among the sprawling tree branches as she continued conversationally, patting down scraps of oak leaves and pine needles to make him a comfortable place to lie, “my mate was a medicine cat. Well... sort of. He was a bit more mad-scientisty. Did much more harm than he did healing, that was half the appeal. But I’ve always found the whole celibacy thing you guys have going on in the Clans kinda hot. Forbidden yearning and sordid love affairs and all that.” Eshek had never learned and likely never would learn about TMI; she just chattered on innocently as she shuffled around Pinesimmer making him his little nest. At his quip about poppy seeds, she purred and leaned in close, eyes sparking. “Foreplay already, Pine?”

You’re going to be my servant right? She grinned back at him, delighted to see he was clearly in better spirits than he had been at the start of the night. “M’lord,” she replied, dipping her head, and vanished down the gnarled trunk and into the dark pine forest. It didn’t take her long to find a patch of stinging nettle growing in a clump of pines clustered together so close they blotted out the moon. Nipping off a few stems and giving herself a few frantic scratches with her back paw when they stung her, she shook herself out and slunk back through the woods to the oak tree, moving quick, low and silent. She was back beside Pine as quiet as an eerie shadow, gone one second and sitting there the next, like a ghost who’d always been there. “Want me to do it?” she asked, eyes not drifting from Pine’s, already drawing the stems towards her with one paw.

“I can think of worse loons to be stuck with,” she replied with an acidic little smile, flicking her eyes up from where she’d bent down to start chewing the leaves and stems of the nettles into a poultice. Most of Eshek’s smiles were acidic, especially when she liked someone. She didn’t mind the tart taste of the nettles or the way they stung her tongue as she licked them onto Pinesimmer’s wound and brushed the poultice in place with the side of her paw, the backs of her claws running against his short fur. With the wound covered, she sat back and tilted her head, looking down at her work. “Damn, I’m good.” She raised her head to smile at Pine; it held for a moment before she seemed to come back to her senses and shook herself out.

She placed one forepaw on Pine’s head and pushed until he was forced to lie down. “Look at this!” she crowed delightedly as she busied herself patting down more leaves to make herself somewhere to sleep, though she tried to keep her voice quiet. “A NightClan cat and a DayClan one, a medicine cat and a torturer - this is just all kinds of messed up. And a NightClan cat sleeping when the moon is up, it really is the eighth wonder of the world. Now shut up and go to sleep,” she added, like she wasn’t the one talking. Purring, she lay down, rested her chin for a second between Pine’s ears - “night,” she purred, looking down at him over the bridge of her nose - and settled with her head propped up on the brown tom’s side, just below his shoulder but safely clear of his wound. She was basically reverse spooning him, with her belly cradling his upper body and her tail draped like a dormant snake over his front paws. “I’ll make sure no bad guys get us.”

She’d never gotten the memo about personal space - when she vibed with someone, she was just... on them. Still purring, she blinked out into the dark woods, planning to stay awake for a while even as Pine dozed. She was feeling more like she had a purpose than she had in a long time.

After only a few days, Eshek’s pregnancy was already starting to show; for such a tall, skinny she-cat, all lines and angles and short fur, there was no where to hide it. But more obvious than anything physical was the new air of care she had about her: she had taken to walking incredibly carefully, deeply aware of the precious lives she was carrying. She’d already lost her first litter to carelessness and stupidity; she wasn’t going to let it happen again. There was a strange contrast between her motherly softness - her fear - and her usual sharp, buzzing mania. Terror rolled off her, filled her thoughts every second of the day and night - but so did a deep, tender happiness, so that she both looked and felt younger, more open, more innocent. Her usually dusty, coarse fur looked healthier too, almost glossy.

And so, on the evening after the Gathering where she hadn't gotten to spend nearly enough time with that annoying medicine cat and where she'd realised she'd been missing him after having spent those nights together in such quick succession and then hardly seeing each other for the next moon, Eshek slunk merrily to the NightClan border and lay down on her back just beyond it. "PIIIIIIIIIIINESIMMEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR," she yowled into the later-summer dusk. The shriek-y shouting sent ravens cawing into the air; it echoed through the gathering gloom of the pines, reverberating off the trunks. She sure had a set of lungs. She shifted in the dusty earth till her body was twisted in a c shape, her forepaws resting on her belly like a bunny rabbit, and sucked in another quick breath, tilting her head back against the ground and puffing out her chest. "PIIIIIIIIIIIIINESIIIIIMMMMEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

As soon as Esh's sharp ears picked up pawsteps in the forest beyond the open expanse of earth near the border, they pricked and she stilled, eyes darting this way and that across the first stars in the evening sky as she listened; then, when he spoke, she strained her neck back to look at him upside down, a huge grin hooking across her face, and scrabbled to her paws. "Aww!" She did a funny little trot-walk forward, her legs swinging out side to side so that when her weight was on her right forepaw and back paw the other two were sticking out to the side and vice versa, like a dad at a barbeque running forward to pick up a baby, and butted heads hard with Pinesimmer in her usual form of greeting. "I missed you too. You look handsome, have you been workin' out? Liftin' some really heavy herbs?" She slunk around him as she spoke. "Me? I'm just gettin' fat, it's tragic, don't say anything or I'll- are you sensitive about your legs? Too bad, I'll break 'em."

"Oh, and-" She gave him a quick kiss on the lips, then darted her head back to grin at him. "Tradition."

Eshek listened to Pinesimmer's endearingly psychotic rambling - only he would make inviting her to break his legs sound like submissive foreplay - with a fondly bemused smile; nothing strange was ever strange to her, nothing ruined ever ruined. "Maybe I just like kissin' you," she replied smoothly, looking at him over the long bridge of her nose. It was the kind of thing that was impossible to tell whether she was joking or not; she didn't follow it up with her usual crooked grin, but that might have just been because she was playing subconsciously into whatever weird vibes were rolling off the medicine cat. As a former torturer, she subconsciously picked up little details and truths to play with and exploit that her conscious mind wasn't aware of.

At Pine's comment about borage, Esh let out a growling groan and sat down hunch-shouldered, rubbing her forepaw over her face. Of course a medicine cat would be able to tell, it had been stupid to think otherwise. "Yeeeaahh," she replied with a guilty grimace, paw still flattened across her eyes. She dropped it, looking around as she spoke. "It's so bad for my reputation. But maybe getting beat up by a pregnant lady would be even scarier, d'you think? And now I get to be a Peacekeeper for a little bit so suck it, Glowstar. I'm gonna make all the apprentices bring me food." Her eyes wandered back to Pinesimmer half way through his speech. "Your insults are gettin' weaker, Pine. They sound like poetry." A moment later, her face broke into a bright grin, a little more relaxed and intimate than her usual sharp ones, her eyes dark in the gathering gloom. "Gotta practice in a mirror, y'know?" she added as she stood up and shouldered him as she passed.

"So, what's on the agenda for tonight?" she asked as she stalked along, looking around at the dark pine woods like she was waiting to be entertained. "Got anyone ya want me to terrorise? Wanna watch me rip someone apart and pretend you ain't standin' on the sidelines simping?" She was joking. Any feelings Pinesimmer may or may not have had went straight over her head. "Romantic stroll? What?"

"Fine, I'll go." Turning away, Eshek veered across the path and left, disappearing into the bushes at the edge of NightClan's border. She waited there in the gloomy shadows for a long while, just picking at her claws with her teeth and holding them up against the moon to look at, before, like a little oven alarm in her head had gone off, finally sticking her head back through the undergrowth to grin at the medicine cat. The grin softened as she leaned down to stretch out her neck and rest her chin on the ground, looking up at him. "Ready to stop being a brat? You can be scary to your Clanmates but I've spooned you - kinda takes away the believability."

Standing up, her chest and underbelly dusty, Eshek loped back over to Pinesimmer, knocking her cheek roughly against his, and led the way along the edge of the pine forest, having no real clue where she was taking them. "Come on, Pinesimmer. Live a little. How've you been? Tried to trip your sister in front of any more rabid dogs - oh, no, sorry, that was a misunderstanding, wasn't it? You were helping her." She grinned over her shoulder at him.