Sagospot, even giving all the credit where it’s due, can only conclude it was a pretty wretched ceremony.

He glances toward Ula, who looks only a little miffed at the chant of “Keliheart!” being cut short in the wake of the young molly storming off mid cheer. No one else seems to care, but to be fair, that had been a common theme throughout the whole rite. Freezenut had been by far the most ecstatic when setting the bar, but even his jubilance could not make up for his wispy voice, marred from moons of grief. Sagospot supposes he was a close second, and that thought is quick to trickle down the well-worn rivulets of guilt etched into the vertebrae of his spine. It’s uncomfortable and familiar, and his fur stands on end wherever the feeling touches.

The ceremonial circle collapses around him, the clan quick to return to their previous obligations. It’s as if this was nothing but an inconvenient interruption to their days. Narrowing his eyes, Sagospot’s gaze follows Keliheart’s retreating figure, homing in on that tense posture and fluffed fur. A haze of whispering shadow has settled over her shoulders, and–following that uncanny urge yanking at him from the same parts of him still chilled by shame–Sagospot takes off after her.

The tom catches up by the time Keliheart has taken a seat at the edge of the ocean. Her limbs are set for a truly impressively macabre sulk session. She’s just out of range of the lapping shore, eyes narrowed as she sneers at the foaming water. When she throws her head back and stares blankly at the sky, Sagospot takes that as his cue to insert himself.

His younger sister’s ear twitches at Sagospot’s approaching pawsteps, but she otherwise does not comment. Anxiously, the tom watches as her features begin to swim. Something moves out of the corner of his vision, and he forces himself to blink several times. The whispers of the ocean have begun to sound more and more like chattering voices.

That’s enough of that, he thinks at himself decisively.

“Ooh, you found the prime brooding location,” Sagospot meows aloud, finding delight where he can. “I think every cat’s been here at least once. In fact–“

“Does he know,” Keliheart interrupts, voice hard as ice, “that he can name us after literally anything else?”

Sagospot, shepherded into silence by the vitriol–but not quite surprised at it–does not answer her. She seems to take this as a need to elaborate.

“That’s two for two on his protégé’s,” she explains bitterly.

Sagospot smiles weakly, trying to find the right words around the vestiges of Scaleheart and Bouvardiakit clamoring for his attention. “Is it really so bad to be named after her?”

The pushback, however slight, seems to take most of the steam out of his younger sister. Keliheart hangs her head, ears flat. “I dunno,” she mumbles, voice no longer edged with a serrated bite. “Just thought I could finally have some individuality. Something of my own.”

Sagospot hums agreeably, settling down beside her by the water’s edge. (And after he just got all the starchy salt out of his pelt from moons of doing nothing but mourning by the ocean! Really, the lengths he goes to.) “We all need a little something of our own,” he concurs.

Keliheart glances at him. She opens her maw to say something, thinks better of it, and then closes it. Instead, she says, “So, like, first I was Bullpaw’s twin. We looked so alike. Then he got taken – RIP to a real one by the way, straight up Fanum taxed, really.”

Sagospot stares at her blankly. Slowly, he nods. “Sure.” Then, “Do you guys even know what you’re saying half the time?”

His sister acts as if he hasn’t said anything. “And now, as soon as I get some freedom, I’m nothing more than Scaleheart’s daughter.” She pauses, glares at nothing, then shudders. “Or, even worse, I’m just some K-Mart Mambaheart.”

Sagospot means to ask what a K-Mart is. “You do kinda look like Scaleheart,” is what comes out of his muzzle instead. Keliheart bristles. Flecks of the shadow along her back spatter onto the ground next to her. A little gets on Sagospot’s paws, and he does everything in his power not to react.

“Ugh,” Keliheart groans, turning to face him, “look, dude, I really don’t mean this in a cruel way, but don’t you get tired of being known as the weird one?

Well. I never. “… Rude.”

“I don’t want to be known as just ‘Scaleheart’s daughter’ the same way you don’t want to be known as just ‘the weird one’.”

“… Okay.”

“And – okay, this is going to sound awful, especially coming from me to you, but – she’s DEAD. Gone. We don’t get Spirits or Starclan or Naiads. No one is ever seeing her ever again. And, you know what? Get over it. I sure did. I got over it like that.” She does her best to snap with her paws. “Oh, well, Ula knows how to do it.” She tries again. “I did it yesterday, I swear.”

Sagospot uses the brief reprieve to really digest the implications of that onslaught. It settles in his belly like moon’s old carrion.

“I dunno,” she sighs, oblivious to Sagospot’s constipated expression. “Maybe I just never learned empathy. Y’know, I keep thinking to myself that maybe that empathetic trait skipped me and Jessaminewish just to give you and Shadowpaw an extra helping of it.” She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “I mean, you’re out here with me. I would’a just let me go. Everyone else did.”

Sagospot shrugs uncomfortably. “That is… incredibly heavy.” He can’t bring himself to look at her face anymore; it’s starting to adopt the features of someone he loved quite a bit more than her. It’s terrifying, because she doesn’t have to change much. He wonders why she got their mom’s face when she’s nothing like Scaleheart.

Keliheart picks up the conversation thread. “So, no, I don’t think ‘heart’ fits me – not in a metaphorical, or literal, or familial way. And, like, I really did consider making a bigger deal out of it, but Pinethud already did that, and it was embarrassing for everyone involved.”

Sagospot shifts uneasily, drawing line after line in the sand with a gentle claw. Every line is as straight as he can manage, and he focuses on the motions of doing so. Slowly, the ocean turns back into water and Keliheart’s body is just her own again. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

“I don’t think it’s wrong for either of you to fight for what you think is best for yourselves,” he murmurs. “A name is anything you want it to be. There’s no reason to have to stick to it if you don’t like it. It’s not ’embarrassing’ to feel so strongly about the way others perceive you. It’s why we groom our fur, flaunt our scars.”

Keliheart grunts. “Scars are gross.”

Sagospot fights the headache swelling like a building storm behind his eyes. “What do you want others to perceive you as?”

“Strong,” she says instantly. “Steadfast. Not afraid of confrontation.”

“What do you want your name to be?”

Keliheart falls quiet. Her eyes catch on Sagospot’s lines in the sand, and she scrunches up her nose. “What are those?”

“Coping mechanisms,” he replies automatically, repeating what Freezenut had called it. “Or… stimming?” He furrows his brows. “There are far too many words for all the things I do.”

“That’s because you do too much,” Keliheart comments somewhat reproachfully. “We didn’t have enough words beforehand, so now we’ve gotta make some stuff up.”

“What would you want your name to be?” Sagospot reiterates snappishly.

“What do you think would fit me?” she retorts with an equal amount of venom.

Kelishart, he thinks. But he’s going to be the bigger cat. “Why should what I think matter?”

“Why shouldn’t it?” she barks, suddenly loud. “I want to be seen for who I am by other cats. I don’t want to be the only one who knows who I am! I want–” her loud voice breaks. A low snarl starts up deep in her chest, one that grows until it’s more pathetic than frightening. “I want proof that others know me,” she finishes, spitting.

Sagospot gives her some silence. It is in part to let her reign herself in and in part to indicate that he hears her. That, at least in this moment, he knows her.

“You don’t make it easy,” he says as gently as he can when the air is no longer a taut thing. “To know you, that is.”

She makes a face. “You do make it easy to know you. Everyone knows everything about you. And it’s cringe.”

A little something snaps in the back of Sagospot’s head. “You cannot live a life abiding by other people’s thoughts of you,” he snarls, bristling at the hackles. “And–“

“People?”

“A holistic reference to a community’s conscious populace. Cats or otherwise.”

“Ah. Go on, then, you academic.”

“You will not be happy with yourself if all you think about is how other people see you.”

Keliheart sneers. “I’m sure you’re well-acquainted with that.” But there’s an undercurrent of something hesitant in her voice. Sagospot latches onto that hesitance with all four paws, hoping beyond hope he can find its tender throat and rip at it until it bleeds.

“I think you have empathy. I think you have kindness. I also think,” he says, cutting her off when it looks like she’s about to interrupt again, “you have become so incredibly self-absorbed as an attempt to have someone care about you first and foremost that it means you can only find that empathy in your own reflection.”

Keliheart lapses back into silence. Sagospot breathes calculated breaths, trying to follow the pattern Freezenut had explained to him. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four…

“… It’s really not that serious,” Keliheart growls. She doesn’t meet his eyes. “‘Even if you can only find it in your reflection,’ who fucking says that?”

She’s quiet again. Sagospot just breathes.

“Fucking weirdo,” she mutters.

“I wanted to be left alone, and you took it as a fucking challenge or something,” she snarls.

“Y’know what would have been more fun than talking to you? Jumping into the ocean and getting mauled to death by a shark,” she hisses.

“I dunno, maybe, like, Kelibeetle,” she whispers. “I like beetles.”

Sagospot breathes out. “And you don’t like scars.”

“I like beetles, and I don’t like scars,” she says at the sand. “Okay.”

Sagospot shakes the sand from his pelt like yet another ghost. “Okay.”

He leaves Kelibeetle to it.

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