The war had ended, and the forest, for the first time in many moons, breathed.
The wounds of battle healed slowly, like frost leaving bark. Apprentices returned to training. Kits played again in the clearing. Warriors rested without fear of shadows slipping through the trees.
Alderidge, as ever, did not speak much.
But she walked the borders daily - not out of mistrust, but habit. Her pawsteps left no mark. Her presence, like stone, steady and watchful.
Peace didn’t soften her. It simply allowed her to endure in silence.
And it was during this stillness, beneath a waning moon near the river’s edge, that she meet them.
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Their name was Ashwhisper.
They were from another Clan - quiet, sharp-eyed, with a voice like wind through reeds. They met at the edge of the border, both arriving for patrols that didn’t quite overlap. At first, they passed with only nods. Then words. Then silence that felt like conversation.
Alderidge never spoke much, but Ashwhisper understood.
They never asked for more than she could give.
They never questioned her scars.
They saw through the bark-skin to what pulsed underneath, and they never turned away.
Sometimes, they met when no one else did.
Not for disloyalty - but for quiet. A space where Alderidge could rest, just for a moment, from being a sentinel.
Ashwhisper brought her feathers, odd-shaped stones, questions about stars. Alderidge brought only her presence. That was enough.
They never said “I love you.”
But it was there - in the way Ashwhisper leaned against her without asking, in how Alderidge once touched noses to their flank, unprovoked.
It was a love of fire.
It was a deep root.
And then -
One dawn, Ashwhisper was gone.
No scent. No trace.
Not in their Clan. Not in the forest.
Vanished, as if the mist had carried them off.
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Alderidge did not search.
Not because she didn’t care.
But because something told her: this was not her battle to fight.
Stormfern noticed the stillness in her, the way she stood a little longer at the riverbank.
Barkclaw left a single feather by her nest, saying nothing.
No one asked.
And Alderidge never told.
But sometimes, at night, she would sit at the edge of camp, where the stars were clear and the wind tasted of river.
And she would listen.
Not for a voice.
But for the absence of one.
