"Do you hate me?"

Startled, Crookedstar spun and rose in one fluid motion. Innocent, dark blue eyes met his green ones, and he felt a stab of pain. Featherkit was too much like her mother, her grandmother...sometimes he was even grateful to Graystripe for being her father. His thick pelt, his plumy tail; they were all that allowed Crookedstar to even look at his daughter's kits.

But Featherkit didn't have her father's eyes.

"Do I...hate you?" he repeated, the words sounding wrong on his tongue. "Why would you think such a thing, little one?"

"You won't look at me...no one will, except Mistyfoot and Graystripe. Was it because I killed my mother?"

Crookedstar flinched slightly. Immediately, he regretted doing so; Featherkit's eyes were sad, lonely, and she was trembling ever-so-slightly. She no longer had a mother to watch over her. The same fate had been his as well.

"I don't hate you," he meowed in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "Who has told you that?"

The little she-kit stared at her paws.

"No one did. But...you're sad. And lonely. I'm lonely too, but you're lonelier. And I know...that if I wasn't born..." Featherkit almost seemed to choke on her words, and shook her tiny, silver-furred head.

"It wasn't your fault, little one. I don't blame you. My sorrow...it is greater than Silverstream's death, and older as well. I am tired, and I am lonely. But I didn't mean to make you lonely as well..." Crookedstar trailed off, having run out of words. But his clumsy attempt at a gesture of friendship had been enough for Featherkit, who was smiling.

"Thank you," she whispered, the chill night breeze ruffling her soft kittenhood-fur. The delicate, almost ethereal she-kit shivered only slightly, but it was enough. Crookedstar silently invited her to sit by his side with his long, pale, tabby tail. Eagerly, she hurried to his side, pressing herself against his fur just as Silverstream had.

Just as Willowbreeze had.

For a time, Featherkit sat nestled up to her grandfather contentedly, gazing at the stars. She wondered, quietly, to herself, if maybe—just maybe—they gazed back.

"They look so lonely," she murmured, wrapping her tail around her tiny paws. Surprised, Crookedstar glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"Silverpelt?"

Featherkit shook her head.

"No, Silverpelt isn't lonely—all the stars are together there, dancing. But the other stars look lonely, all by themselves."

The light brown tabby was slightly bemused by the silvery she-kit. She was a strange, lonely dreamer—and she would always be so. The cruel fate that had snatched her mother and her mother's mother away from him was waiting in the shadows for her, and she knew it well. Featherkit had time, but eventually it would run out, and whether or not he would still be leading Riverclan when it did, Crookedstar mourned.

She was Silverstream's last gift to him.

Willowbreeze's last gift.

Just for a little while.

Crookedstar was so weary, so very weary...