Windsweptashes' ears perked, a little surprised to see the apprentice that close. They hadn't been paying attention either, but for very different reasons. Lost in their head as always, he hadn't even noticed the apprentice really, until they verbally admitted to him that they had almost bumped into him. Even still, they turned a slow and soft (if still a bit mildly surprised) gaze down to them, to better address the apprentice who was barely a few inches away.

"Oh no, it's fine. It's easy to do, I used to do it all the time." Used to. As if a moon or two was enough to use the past tense. He wondered if when life felt normal again, he would go back to making an idiot of himself like he used to, bumping into poles and apologizing to them, accidentally wandering into cat's ways and then having to practically jump with surprise and apolgize for getting in their path. The thought scared them a bit, because they were pretty sure such behavior wasn't really befitting the position they had managed to find themselves in. But they tried to wave away those thought, and instead turned their attention back fully onto Comsicpaw.

"Were you going somewhere?" He asked. It was gentle small-talk, the best they knew how. They hated things like, "How was your day?" and "Is the weather nice out?" because the answer was always one word, and the other cat always felt obligated to try and carry on the conversation. But Windsweptashes had learned that, "Are you going somewhere?" was nice, because it was just as easy to carry on the conversation on from there as it was for the other cat to state they really had to be at "x" location and they needed to be going, and it was all very simple and easy and polite. Which was how Windsweptashes wished all their conversation would end, instead of the quiet and long awkward silences that filled the air until one of them excuse themselves, which was the way most of their converstaions went.

"Would you like company, or is it something you'd rather keep sacred between you and Selene?" The question was gentle, it had no expectations behind it. The Commissioner had no way of knowing that the tom only intended on going there for quiet and for his own training, his assumption was as it would be with any other cat; that they were going there to pray, to make an offering with Selene, and to spend some time in her holy place to feel closer to her.

But equally so, he always felt bad leaving the apprentices alone to wander the territory. Of course they did it, multiple times a day in fact, with no real guardians or supervision beyond a concerted effort to make sure the most loyal, skilled, and straight-laced of students took the helm of hunting patrols and of actual patrols, and that the most untrustworthy and impulsive were corralled along by those they knew could be trusted. But that didn't reassure them that in the case of emergency they would know what to do; and they couldn't just force the students to never leave camp without permission alone. Well, they could, but they hadn't yet. And Windsweptashes was always worried about what would happen if one of the apprentices out alone ever came accross a fox or an intruder two times their size, with no recourse at all. The very thought even now filled them with unease. There had been so much death, so much change, so much loss; the thought of even more happening, especially to all these young, frail lives who had already had so much taken from them, made them feel ill with a newfound wave of anxiousness.

"I'm sure I could at least offer a few tips." Windsweptashes told him, rising to his paws. "I was never the best hunter, but I certainly know how to." It was said with a hint of soft humor, though it was certainly true. Back when he had been a shadowhunter, there were many reasons why he had never continued on with his schooling to rise to higher things, a reason why his rank at the time had never gone past the former run-of-the-mill members of the clave. There were certainly more than just the fact he was a huge, lumbering tom with mostly cream-white fur lumbering through nocturnal Moonclan's territory, but it hadn't helped his case.

But he shook those vague recollections off, no one, bar the eldest of students and the few remaining adults in the clan, would recall what those terms even meant. They were hollow now, meaningless, more-so even to the student in front of him who had known the city while Moonclan was still under its old regime. That was gone now, and all the systems that kept cats like him in lower places were gone now. Obviously they were, he was Commissioner. Or perhaps, really, the more evident reality was that nepotism had pervailed for him, and family ties were stronger bonds than any form of actual merit. But even still, the tom couldn't help but think he would have done better in this Moonclan gowing up, if only because, though he was only subconciously aware of it, it certainly rewarded a sort of, "Head down, listen to authority." style mindset.

With a small flick of his tail, a gentle, tacit request for the tom to follow, he slowly started walking toward's the estate's exit. "I know a few places I could suggest we hunt," He offered softly, his words laced the way they always were with that shy, demure sort of warmth. "but really it's up to you if you have a place you're more familiar with."

He gave a gentle nod in understanding. In truth, he didn't expect any of the apprentices to know the territory that well. Most of them, he was well aware, had gone out and tried to learn it the best they could of their own initiative, but he was also equally aware that some of them were so newly promoted after the culling happened that they had never gotten a chance to even get their first tours around the territory, and he had often figured at least one or two were too intimidated to go exploring on their own. And he couldn't blame them; had he been an apprentice their age in a time like this he could only imagine he would have been terrified, petrified of even taking a step outside of camp. Not even out of fear of getting lost really, just out of the sheer, overwhelming sense of the world just crashing down around him. Even now there was part of him that debated if that was why he had lingered around camp; more so than even fufilling duties, perhaps the silence of the forest that normally had been a comfort now was just a constant reminder of tragedy. He tried to shake the thought off though, just the contemplation of that made him feel pathetic, small.

And so he tried to instead turn his attention back to the apprentice that was now following along behind him, flashing him a gentle, reassuring smile to match his more sheepish one. "Well, I've certainly had a lot of time to get to know it. You'll probably know it better than me one day, if you give it time." He said, a note of soft reassurance in his voice as he continued onward, a little more confidence in his steps now that he knew he was taking the lead as he manuevering through the many long, winding halls and corridors to the estate they called camp, until eventually they went out of the doors and into the courtyard.

Oh how ironic it was, if only Cosmicpaw knew. If only he was aware that the cat in front of him, leading him through the courtyard and down the steep downward decline of hillside the estate sat on into the forest below, was much more like him than he could have ever possibly assumed. Windsweptashes might have been the Commissioner now, but it hadn't been long ago he had surely been one of the least impressive shadow hunters of the old regime, dragged in as a rogue's kitten in the middle of the night by his uncle, ripped away from his sister and dunked in as a mundane ranked kit until Puzzlemaker had managed to worm his way high enough through the upper echelons to speak on his behalf and get him into shadow hunter training. Perhaps the only difference was that Windsweptashes had the saving grace of the now-minister to put a paw in for him, but even still there was some distance there as well. Clearly, him and Puzzlemaker were close; close enough that he had been put in as Commissioner — but Puzzlemaker was known for being distant and cryptic, and though Windsweptashes had the chance to see bit and pieces behind that veil of mystery that others would never get, there would always be that sense of never knowing, never being close enough. Or perhaps that was just because Windsweptashes was a cat who was always looking for more emotional intimacy in a family that didn't seem to care for it beyond in passing acts of affection; perhaps his status as Commissioner and the fact that Puzzlemaker had put a paw in for him multiple times in his life was a tacit way of saying they were much closer than the Minister would ever betray through words of more obvious familial connection.

Either way, Windsweptashes at least knew the feeling of being an outsider, of being lonely and distant and looking for something that told them they weren't a burden on their clan. Sometimes, even as the second highest ranking cat in the clan, they still knew that feeling too personally, like an old, grim neighbor that sometimes, in the dead of night, came knocking at their door. But those feelings, that passive understanding, wasn't shared in words, it was shared in other ways he knew better. In the gentleness and in that tacit, empathetic understanding that Windsweptashes would never dare mention verbally unless it was brought up outright — he couldn't talk about even general topics on a good day without feeling like he had royally flubbed it up, and he never could share his actual feelings without feeling like in hindsight it was embaressing or too revealing. Perhaps he did share something with his family's reserve after all.

"I still haven't led a border patrol!" Windsweptashes gave a small, gentle laugh, a small,lightly amused smile on his face as he looked back at the apprentice. "Well, leading a border patrol doesn't say much about knowing the territory, nor is it really all I think it's cracked up to be. I didn't even lead one until very recently." He admitted with another, small chuckle, before returning his head forward and continueing on the path ahead. It wasn't until the words left his mouth he felt the burn of regret was over him as he realized the exact implication of what he had said — there was probably something inherently uneasing at the idea that the second-in-command of your clan had never even so much had lead a border patrol — and he winced slightly at himself and his own awkward stupidity as they continued on.