"Okay," Kier drawled with a little purr in his voice, eyes half-lidded, "Rhiannon." The way he said her name was far worse than Mother. He'd backed her into a corner where she'd now stripped away another layer keeping them apart - Mother was gone, now he was through to Rhiannon.

"Oh, I don't know," he replied frustratedly, tossing his head from side to side as he padded along. Being asked questions he didn't know the answers to always threw him into a tantrum; and now that she was no longer Mother, that bit of respect had been stripped away as well. He regained composure a second later. "It's blessed by StarClan or something. If they found a pretty rock they liked, they'd bless that and then it would be the Moon Rock. Or the Moon Tree. Or the bloody Moon Junkyard. I don't know, Rhiannon." He hopped up onto a log running parallel to their path, walking level with his mother but a few feet higher. "Isn't that why we're going there? To find out? Patience is a virtue, my dear." His voice dropped to a low purr once again as he looked down at her, a dark, lazy-eyed smile on his face.

Annoyance bubbled up in his chest, because he so hated being called stupid. His voice was silky and hateful when he replied. “Yes, Rhiannon, that’s it - scold a seven moon old kit for ignorance when you, a grown she-cat, have accrued nothing more in the entire time I’ve been alive than what I’ve just told you.” He only referred to himself as such, only pointed out how young he was, when it served him.

“Very fine, to admit you don’t know any more than a kitten.” Kier leaned down over the log like a lizard, almost vertical, his claws curling into the soft bark to keep him upright as he peered daringly at his mother.

Kier was hurt. He felt sick with it. Trying to push it back down with all the rest of the thick, roiling grief he carried around in the pit of his stomach, he gave her the win for this one and fell silent. He’d outlive her; if one of them was going to fall to her god, it would be her. He backed up, feeling suddenly self-conscious and silly and dramatic.

Still quiet, Kier picked his way along the log and then soundlessly hopped off it, padding through the fern bank a little further from her than he had been before. “It will be,” he answered her quietly. Despondently. He led the rest of the way in similar, downcast silence, the same as he had been on his journey with his father and siblings to the League. For once, he wasn’t lost in his head; he was just glum and hurt.

After a long time of walking, he finally pushed his way through dark, damp bracken and began down a smooth, dimpled path pressed in on either side by a narrow, echoing canyon that didn’t reach much higher than a tree. When he broke free of it, the space had the effect of a cave: treetops clustering so tightly above them that everything beneath was dark; wet, trickling walls; slick boulders; and everywhere, a pale blue glow from shards of shining crystals imbedded in the towering stone. A glistening, opaque stream burbled through the middle of it, fringed by no ferns or undergrowth and stark in its isolation. It was so pale and perfect that it should have been translucent, but instead it was so impenetrable that nothing reflected upon its surface, like it was an otherworldly thing defying the laws of physics that had been laid upon the mortal plane.

With only the faintest glow of satisfaction leeching out through the glumness, Kier sat upon one of the rocks and let his tail trail down into the creek; it burned with cold, and when he first touched it the water steamed and hissed. “Special enough for your tastes,” he asked quietly, “Rhiannon?”

Kier had been staring listlessly down at the pale, shining water, his eyes empty and unreadable. But at her faint praise, his head whipped up and he fixed his widening eyes on her. “I do?” he exclaimed breathlessly, a genuine grin spreading across his face. He bounced up, filled with new life and true, glowing happiness. “Well, of course!” he continued, addressing her private musing as he hopped off the rock and trotted over to her.

He didn’t look at the crystals she was inspecting; instead he just stood beaming at the side of her face. She was so beautiful; he searched for a trace of him in her, his mismatched pupils darting over her profile. His cheerful voice didn't betray any of his thoughts. “If there’s any hidden meaning, we’ll crack it together. But we know the obvious one: to give leaders and Nemeses and— Priestesses, heaven forbid,” he let out a nerdy sort of laugh, “and whatever other names they call themselves nine lives. Sometimes five. Sometimes none. I’ve heard of leaders being rejected, though why I don’t know. I can find out,” he added quickly. “I will find out. There was one in SummerClan— oh, years before I was born. Before you were born, too, probably.” He said that part with a sickly sort of quiet; he liked that thought, the both of them just existing, drifting, in the ether, neither one of them older or Mother, just unborn equals. He looked at the water disinterestedly. “To commune with StarClan I believe they drink a bit of that and then fall into a sleep, though I wouldn’t try it.”

I just said I didn't know, he hissed to himself. But he just smiled on the outside. "Did I say it was a he?" Kier replied silkily, like he was teasing Rhiannon with the knowledge he dangled over her head. But he quickly relented. "He, she, they - by all accounts it's hard to tell. Uh..." He made a great show of thinking. Did he really not remember, when Kier never forgot a thing, or was he just drawing it out torturously? "Stag- what's the female version? Doestar." He leaned in victoriously as he said the name, smiling through slitted eyes. Settling back down, he raised one little paw and went about studying his claws disinterestedly. "No one knows, at least none of the SummerClan cats. He died and then came back - but nothing to do with StarClan, because he never had nine lives. Isn't that interesting?" He looked up at his mother, quietly expectant and eerily still. "The rules seem terribly malleable."

He stood and drew closer to the stream, small beside his mother. "Shall I try it?" he asked, gazing up at her unblinkingly. "If I die, you'll go home and eat supper like nothing happened." There was spite just beneath the surface, simmering like poison. His voice was more upbeat as he continued, more taunting. "But if I drink this water and reach StarClan - oh, imagine that. Without you. What a terrible dilemma."