Eshek, or Carriondare, had been heading to the fresh kill pile from the fern patch behind a small boulder she'd made into her lonely little den. She was more or less just a burden to DayClan, something she was both proud of and frustrated by - or, well, tried to be proud of and ended up feeling vaguely guilty and gross about, in a sad sort of way. It had been different being a useless proxy, because, when it came down to it, she wasn't useless - she was good at what she did, if she ever got off her ass to do it. But in DayClan, she had no role. She didn't fit in on patrols, where she was too violent or too chatty and loud about the wrong things. She wasn't a very good hunter. Even as a maverick she hadn't been assigned anyone to serve. Her days were empty, and so she filled them by bothering Bermondsey and Pinesimmer and whatever other cat could make her feel a little less lonely and a little more like her old self. They didn't know she was unimportant, just an invisible, out of place refugee in a Clan where everyone was family. With them, she could pretend to be someone fun.

So, she was up at dawn, because she liked to be out of camp before anyone could wake up and go off to their friend groups and leave her sitting by herself. And then, she spotted Foxstar.

"Nope," Carriondare said to herself at once, veering sharply away on one heel and walking back the direction she had come from, hoping the fox-furred leader hadn't noticed her or at least wouldn't call her back. The whole reason she'd had Lucistic give her a warrior name and come up for a backstory for herself that didn't involve being Funk's dead wife was to avoid cats like Glowstar and Foxstar, his other wives. Not that she thought they'd care - they were, frankly, disgusting and goals at the same time, the way they were always all over each other - but Eshek did. Plus, Glowstar barely tolerated Innocentia - another ex-Proxy in DayClan might be the breaking point. It was just all sorts of disastrous.

"Oh, aha," Carriondare replied, absolutely thrilled Foxstar was now walking beside her and not at all crawling out of her skin with dread. She slunk along next to the co-leader, movements now stiff and jerky, like she was walking across a stage she wasn't meant to be on mid-performance. "Wow, they're right about you, look at that - you're not just a hunky dominatrix of fiery red fur and intoxicating green eyes. You have a brain, too." She was mimicking something Glowstar might have said, but it was unclear from her calm, faintly subservient tone whether she was saying it innocently or being sneery. Carriondare tilted her head and smiled. "Foxstar," she finally returned the greeting address, slow and calm, but with something sizzling just below. "Pleasure to meet you at last, and with your proper title restored. You were never meant to be a servant."

Smiling all the while, Carriondare held the other she-cat's gaze unflinchingly. It was almost brazen, almost threateningly taunting. She found herself enjoying this tense little game of cards held to chests and something bubbling away just under the surface, enjoyed having something to hold over Foxstar. "The majority of DayClan are sheep," she replied smoothly, looking away like she'd lost interest in playing with the co-leader. "Where would they be if they didn't have an anarchist and a tyrant to protect them?" She glanced back at Foxstar with a small, faux-apologetic smile. "Reformed tyrant."

Eyes oddly serene, Eshek showed her teeth in a broad, almost-pretty grin, caught on an impossible line between deferential and derisive, harmless and sneering. She had slowed to a stop, head tilted. "I'm not insulting it, Foxstar," she reassured her, calm and gentle. "It's a beautiful little pipe dream and I wish you and Glowstar every happiness." Something about her darkened, just a little. "It must be terrible, though, to throw around little threats like 'dangerous game' and remember you can't follow through on them." Her voice was low now. "What would DayClan do if Vixenkismet relapsed? I don't imagine Glowstar would be able to hold them back, all her sheep howling for her lover's head. They're just looking for an excuse."

Holding Foxstar's gaze for a moment longer, Carriondare gave a small smile and bowed her head submissively before moving to walk past her. "And don't think I'm disapproving, Foxstar," she added. "It'll get boring, eventually, playing at the good wife. I look forward to that day. How long can a lie continue?" Not for her - all she'd ever wanted was to be a wife, to be taken care of; but that had all gone up in flames when the mansion roof had shattered beneath her. She smiled over her shoulder. "And either way, I'm hard to kill."

She didn't know what she was aiming for, exactly - the confusing thing was, she liked Foxstar, even felt inexplicably close to her because of Funk, like they were connected without the other she-cat even knowing. She loved a woman in power, and she liked the glimpse of something gentler, more melancholy, more broken beneath all of Foxstar's careful ice. She liked her. She cared about her. But she also wanted to destroy her.

The second Foxstar spun her around and she felt the older she-cat's claws at her jaw, smooshing her cheeks in slightly, Carriondare forgot what they were even talking about. She stared up at Foxstar, her eyes huge and her mouth slightly open, though she'd forgotten to breathe. She hardly heard a thing the co-leader actually said - she just heard the silken purr of her voice, rumbling down through her claws and making Eshek's whiskers quiver; just saw the glint of her green eyes, the way she tilted her head ever so slightly like she was looking at nothing more than prey. When Foxstar dug her claws in deeper, Eshek made an involuntary little sound. You have a lot of claims, but they're all quite silly, don't you think. She found herself wanting to nod; she caught herself just in time, letting out another sound that was closer to a grunt, like she was fighting against hypnotism. Her lip was twitching up slightly into a grimace, but her eyes had glazed over like she was enjoying this despite all her better instincts.

Well, Eshek didn't really have better instincts, did she?

"Jesus Christ," Eshek gasped out when Foxstar released her and she slumped half to the ground. She stayed like that for a moment, acutely aware of her heart hammering in her chest, the fact that she literally hadn't breathed in half a minute, and the slight shaking in her legs. She raised an unsteady paw to her cheek and rubbed at the fur, drawing it away to see nothing at all. No blood. So this was what Glowstar got to have every night. She understood, too, why Foxstar had managed to creep her power over so much of the forest - if Eshek had been there at the time, she would have been like a panting dog, stealing and killing kits just for one little sidewards look from the russet she-cat. Suddenly her own vendetta against Foxstar seemed silly and insignificant; there was just the messy feeling in her gut and the fogginess behind her eyes.

"Yeah- you- you're right, y'know," Eshek told her, still half-sitting on the ground and not looking at her properly, her voice a bit louder and forceful to make up for the fact she had no idea what she was saying, "I dunno what I was talking about. DayClan's lucky to have you, Foxstar." Now she sounded almost like a henchman, ready at the reformed tyrant's beck and call. She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her paw. 

Carriondare hesitated slightly as Foxstar held her paw out to her. She was by nature surprisingly trusting, almost stupidly so, of fundamentally villainous cats - being surrounded by terrible cats all her life who she'd always found the soft spots of had left her with a backwards sense of trustworthiness, devoting herself unthinkingly to cats who wore their darkness on their sleeves and frowning at good cats with true morals like they were the ones who were hiding something - but even so, here she slowed. She got the distinct impression, in a distant, mostly buried part of her mind, the warnings echoing out frantically through the fog, that this meant more than she could truly understand. Eshek had never met the ex-Priestess personally until she'd joined DayClan, but even she knew, mostly through her little birds littered through the Clans as Foreign Affairs Proxy, that when Foxstar switched moods within a single minute, it meant she'd already come out on top. While the cats around her thought themselves the victor, the russet she-cat had already planned a year ahead to their downfall and her ascension.

But now, lying on the ground of the DayClan camp, Eshek felt herself backed against it without a clear way out. Take her paw and she owed her; cast it aside and she made an enemy she now didn't think herself entirely able to handle. These thoughts weren't entirely conscious in Carriondare's mind, however; mostly she was just a little blindly bewildered, her subconscious warning her of a thousand things she couldn't consciously understand.

So, finally, Eshek put her paw in Foxstar's.

She stood slightly hunched and wary when the co-leader helped her up, her white side covered in dust. "Thank you," she murmured quietly, eyes flicking over Foxstar's face. Even standing there now, she felt like something had fundamentally shifted. Like thin red strings had just been wound down from the sky and knotted themselves around her legs. She felt like the very air within her lungs was no longer completely her own. Swallowing, Eshek dipped her head slightly to the older she-cat, her eyes never leaving her.