Sunpaw nodded excitedly, glad she could help. "Papa come over here!" she called out brightly, as Sunpetal showed her how to snip off the little plant. She could remember Vulturemalice talking about the other herbs Sunpetal had mentioned. She had always been surprised and delighted by how Vulturemalice could smell a herb from a meadow away. She gave Sunpetal an excited nod.

With her own bitty claws, she yanked a flower out. Marigold was so pretty, she thought happily, as she began her work.

S'not a problem; I've said far worse. "Like that you were gonna break my other paw?" he asked with a soft, crooked little grin. "It'd be a shorter list to say who hadn't said that at some point or another." He grew quieter a moment later, turning his head back to the apprentice and her adopted father, shrinking into himself slightly until he looked smaller than before. "You're just a soldier," Doefreckle went on quietly, his eyes still on Sunpaw and Howlingheart through the shifting veil of fireflies. "You do what you're told." He didn't know if he really believed that, if he could wave off all the atrocities Sagebristle had attached her name to just by being here, if he could ignore the certainty that he wouldn't do the same thing in her position. As self-serving as he often was, he knew he'd rather die. Or he hoped he would. That small fragment of doubt made him squirm, made him sick. But there was that small part of him who knew he'd been training for - dreaming of - the same position she was now in when he was an apprentice. Maybe back then he would have done all these things too, when he thought violence and honour were more admirable than compassion and love.

They sure do make a sickening pair. Doefreckle smiled, gaze following Sunpaw when she leapt up at the fireflies. "They do," he replied softly, and there was more sad, quiet warmth in his voice than wistfulness. Unknown to one another, they were like bookends, approaching the same trauma from the opposite directions: a father who missed out on his children, a child who missed out on her father. When Sunpaw hurried off and he realised Sunpetal was leading them on through the dark, Doe looked over his shoulder, staying where he was for another few moments, before rising and remaining at Sagebristle's side. They followed more slowly in Sunpetal's pawsteps. A little way along the path, Doe's pink nose twitched at the smell of borage and he drifted off to the undergrowth spilling over the earthen track, crouching to gently scrape away the soil to get to the roots. Pulling the whole plant out, with healing leaves intact and soil raining down off the roots, he held it softly in his jaws and limped back to Sagebristle. "I assume these are all going back to Pinesimmer," he mumbled quietly around the stem, "and then on to NightClan. It's a cruel law, to keep cats in need from medicine just to keep up the pretence that SummerClan has something Aspenstar needs." There was nothing accusing in his voice, nothing judgemental; it was just quiet truth. She didn't need them; she just had to pretend there was a reason beyond the fact she'd wanted it. "NightClan has never been short of herbs."

Holding Sagebristle's gaze for a heartbeat longer, Doe looked away and limped on after Sunpetal with the borage in his jaws.

Sunpaw now had a mouth full of flowers, as she trotted over to the others, unaware of their conversations and totally oblivious to the feelings of everyone around her, just as usual. "What did you guys find?" she asked, almost spitting flowers as she peered at Doefreckle with curious eyes.

"It looks like we've got everything we set out to get," Sunpetal murmured, as if unaware of Doefreckle to her left and Sunpaw to her right. She gently scrounged together some to take back with them, then nodded to each member of her patrol- other than Sagebristle, who still received a fleeting glare- and backed away from the bank into the night on the other side of them.

They passed back through that glowing meadow just as the fireflies were beginning to disperse, though a few still flickered by and buzzed against the cats' ears, earning an occasional bat from even the sullen Sunpetal. She hesitated at the camp entrance before pushing through it. "Pile everything here," she instructed, watching as one of the shadows gained sentience and began to saunter towards them.

Phantomfox inspected the pile disinterestedly, shuffling the herbs under a harsh paw. "Sagebristle, you'll be returning to NightClan to deliver the majority of these to Aspenstar. The rest will remain here for Pinesimmer to...do nothing with," he grunted, then dismissed them all.

(feel free to continue rping in this thread but the herb collecting is finished <3)