Good, good. She had agency about her, the mind to follow him without question. Questions, as much as he cherished them, could often draw out for far too long... or perhaps he had simply spent too much time with the littler things in the clan as of recent.
"Mmm... As it goes." He muttered in response to her retelling, flipping through mental notes of the cats that had found themselves in new company amidst the clan. Perhaps Heather would find herself in the same fate, and soon find herself with a new name, a new identity, and even a new purpose... or perhaps she would slip through the cracks, rushing through the clan's paws as immaterial as the water they lived from.
"Living, I suppose." The lynxpoint answered after some deliberation.
"With some structure, some ordinances that we all live by, that we all die by..." His steps were long, languid as they spoke, trekking a winding path that was somewhat backwards, somewhat confusing. It was not exactly trusting of Heather yet, did not trust her innocence, and so he took a rather meandering path that was bred out of deception. They would likely come across the camp, but the time that it would take would be ample for him to screen her motivations.
"I cannot definitively say what it is without knowing what it is not... Tell me—" Piercing blue eyes met the other's, studying with a sort of scholastic interest.
"How have you lived? What sights have you seen?"
He sniffed, somewhat bemused by the curious response. It was all he knew, really, to be named as he were. It knew of a time when it wasn't, when it wasn't even Gale
kit, but that time was long in the past. It had been folded away neatly, stacked in some forgotten folds in his mind, nothing but a footnote in his life.
"Convention." Galepaw replied easily, simply.
"And nothing more. As simply as you are named Heather, I am Galepaw... for now." An ear flick, an easy shrug of the shoulders.
"Soon I will be Galerunner—a named earned in time, in virtue. And after?" Once again, a gentle shrug as he looked away, vibrant gaze focusing on something far in the distance, something immaterial.
"If I am no longer here, if I am nothing but a whispered word in the mind, does it matter what others call me? Does my absence matter, if I am to never return, and never to know?" It was a simple notion to him really, the idea of
names. He could be called anything, called nothing, and it would not change what he was. There was no weight behind them, and so he lived ambiently, distantly aware of his name and the meaning of it, but nothing more.
"Perhaps I am Gale in the way that the wind blows through my fur, or the stripes upon my pelt, or the color of my being—I cannot say for certain, as those who knew have long since ceased." So it goes.
With a curious look, his blue eyes once again focused on the other.
"This question... you must have a reason for your name, then?" The question was more of a formality if anything, a polite continuation of the conversation. Perhaps he could glean something about the unfamiliar cat through her words, a sort of determining of the circumstances of her nature. Or perhaps the words would be empty, and they would part nothing but a vaguely interesting moment in a lifetime of moments. Gale did not mind either way.
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Galepaw
✦—Riverclan Apprentice | 10 Moons
✦—He/They/It
✦—"SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
✦—A fluffy high white lynx point with curled ears and deep blue eyes
#87878E #BAB2AC
