[TGB] Gift of the Pipers

    She should have known it would catch up to her again. Should have known her life had begun to be too happy. Just when everything was finally going right - when she finally felt at home again, and had friends around her, and was figuratively surrounded by kits from her last mentor and adoptive aunt - just when life was great, Death caught up to her. Perhaps she was just lucky, or someone else was unlucky, but it wasn’t someone close to her. Nevertheless, it hurt, because she did know the pale she-cat who lay in Death’s cold grasp, and it hurt to see others in pain.
    She knew Mister Cyrus had to be utterly devastated, having seen how close he was to his mate...and if he was hurting, she knew Aunty Palette would be sharing that pain. Mister Kakoora, too, seemed to simply break from the news; Tsu had seen him grieving, as she sat a fair distance away to pay her own respects. And Miss Csilla had just had kittens very recently... The Pink-Shadow knew what it was like, to lose a mother early in life, to grow up with only a hint of colour and dreams of a faded scent. To be raised by a she-cat who was, for all intents and purposes, a ‘mother,’ but wasn’t ‘mama,’ even though she was kind, caring, supportive, and loving.

    Sighing into her nest of feathers and luminescent moss, Tsu thought of those kittens, the still-tiny bundles she had glimped when visiting Palette’s litter. She wished she could be there for them, and for Mister Cyrus and even Mister Kakoora, too...but she wasn’t close to them. It wouldn’t be right, to try and give them comfort when she was little more than a stranger. And yet...there had to be something she could do...
    Taking a deep breath, she accidentally inhaled a strand of feather, causing her to sneeze suddenly. As she sat up, rubbing her nose with one paw, she watched the feather drift a little before it settled back in with the others...and that’s when she realised - she could do something. A simple, quiet gesture, unintrusive, one that could be cherished or simply forgotten. And she thought she knew just where to find what she needed...


    It didn’t take her near as long as it should have to reach her destination, the shore of Cat’s Eye Lake on the small piece of land where Pangur had held his meeting. Where the river met the lake, there was a wide swath of sand and tall grasses, a perfect habitat for birds of all sorts. Including the one she was after, a bird she had seen only once before, and hoped had returned. Crouching and catching her breath, she watched the clumps of grass and the reeds and cattails by the water, hoping to see the fowl.
    And soon enough, she was rewarded with a faint rustle and a beaked face emerging not far away. It was a strange sight to one who was used to forest birds; a small, otherwise normal head with a long, pointed beak, attached at the base of the skull to a medium-length neck, which then connected to a sleek body, all held up by long, spindly legs. It stepped delicately out of the brush, strutting across the sand with careful precision, and occasionally sticking its long beak into the sediment. Tsu had seen some shorebirds before, but not often.

    Quietly, using what both D’ialia and Kintsu had taught her, she crept up to the patch of grass; she didn’t want to use her powers, for fear of the initial glow alerting the sand-bird. The Pink-Shadow gently nosed through the shafts, hoping to either find a nest or, at the very least, lost feathers. At first, she had no luck, and feared she may have to either kill the sand-bird, or distress it by holding it down and removing ‘live’ feathers by force - something she desperately wanted to avoid. What kind of condolence gift would that be, feathers taken through force or killing?
    Glancing out of the patch, she saw that a few more of the unique sand-birds had joined their fellow, all pecking at the sand in search of whatever it was they were after. Withdrawing once more, careful to make as little noise as possible, she continued her search. Then, finally, after what seemed like an age of investigating this one spot, she found them.

    Three medium-length feathers lay in a small, bird-shaped hollow, lying delicately against a bed of grass. One was slightly longer than the others, dark buff on the underside, but with a spot of black on top, from the upper wing or back, Tsu thought. The other two, however, were perfect - pale buff-cream, likely from the back of the head or the chest. Sighing in relief, the Pink-Shadow picked up the two pale feathers and secured them in the fur behind one ear, where the fur liked to tangle - tangles which were perfect for holding the shafts of feathers. Carefully, she backed out of the patch of grass, moving on to another which was past the group of sand-birds. If one had nested here for the night, the others surely had as well.


    Some time later, as the sun began to drift towards the western horizon, Tsu made her way towards Light-Tribe’s camp, four feathers tucked behind her ears, and five carried gently in her mouth. She knew Cyrus was there, with his kittens; it was to them she carried these special gifts, a feather for each kitten who lost a mother they would one day forget, and to the tom who lost a mate he could never replace...and one to the friend who lost someone so close, it shattered his heart. And two extra, for any who needed one, or to place in a special location in memory of the one who was lost...