[BEAR.]

Unlike the cats so loud in their grief, Thistlestep was quiet as he took a spot beside his former apprentice.

It was an unexpected strike to the heart, the unfamiliar tinge of pain that left him with a hollow sensation he didn't know how to describe.

A feeling of failure, of not fulfilling the duty to protect his old charge, the uneasy thought of the time they spent together, everything they had done as mentor and apprentice before Shiverpetal received the alternative path of a medicine cat-- gone, erased with the loss of a single heartbeat, the unsettling realization he had been a terrible companion and friend during the later moons, how little he visited Shiverpetal. He always meant to, he just... never got around to it..

Quiet but stiffly, Thistlestep departed from Shiverpetal's body to leave the growing crowd of cats in favor of heading out of camp. He didn't want to stay here for this.