Back on the moors, Kier would likely have snapped something poisonous upon being barrelled into - far from a lifetime of being manhandled making him submit to it from cats other than his siblings, it had left him high-strung and angry and biting. Where he wore a snivelling, harmless smile and stooped to their whims around Mal and Kate, with anyone beyond the family he dropped the act, becoming someone theatrical and spiteful.

But since being inducted into the League, he’d been happier than ever. Happy for the first time ever, really, looking back at all the other pitiful times he’d believed he’d experienced the feeling. It felt like something plastic and foreign in his chest, like it shouldn’t have been there at all, like all his cells were bound to start attacking it soon.

So, when the far larger tom crashed into him, Kier just whipped around with a friendly smile and beamed up at him. “Hello!” he greeted cheerily. “In a particular hurry? You look quite angry. I was just looking for my mother but she’s run off again - she’s always doing that, I suspect it’s because of my brother. Or maybe it’s me!” He laughed. “I’m an acquired taste. I know you’re in a rush, but do you know her? Her name’s Rhiannon. Very pretty name, don’t you think?” His natural accent, though it carried a distinctly non-League lilt, had been influenced primarily by Harley’s; however, ever the faithful mimic, Kier had picked up his mother’s after only one true meeting and could replicate it perfectly on command. He used it on the final question, then stood blinking up at the tom with bright, shining silver eyes and an innocent smile on his face. At that moment, he was just a seven-moon-old kit.

You're Rhiannon's kit? Kier nodded eagerly, that same sweet smile on his face. "Yes, I only just met her." At his comment about Kier sounding like he was from the loch, he answered cheerfully, "oh, no, I'm just good at accents! It helps..." What he had been about to say was it helps when you haven't got any friends and are lonely all the time, because then the voices you use to talk to yourself can sound like other people. But he was acutely aware how pathetic that was, so he changed his sentence at the last second, not tripping at all over the adjustment. "It helps when you move from place to place, like I always have with my dad. You can blend in."

The way the tom was looking at him made something sad and broken grow warm in his chest. He'd never had anyone look at him like that, like he was... wanted. Like he would be taken care of instead of just left for his siblings to slap around, because their father was too tired to intervene, or because he wanted Kier to be a man, or because... because... He didn't know what possible reason there could be for that.

"Kier," he replied, and his voice was strangely quiet, strangely affected. For once in his life, it didn't sound like he was lying. He just sounded like a nephew suddenly faced with a family member he'd never known he had, with someone who was being kind to him just because of the trust that blood afforded. "Hi," he greeted softly, his narrow eyes studying Hywel's face like he was trying to understand him, like he was trying to comprehend what motive a family member who didn't want to hurt or dismiss him could have. But his narrow eyes didn't look unfriendly; they just looked child-like, afraid, as innocent as Kier had ever looked. "Not... not terribly far, no," he replied at last, trying to get himself together. "We took the trip in stages. I'm... Well, I'd have slowed my family down otherwise." That wasn't true; Kier was lying again. His endurance was unparalleled. "We'd been living in some woods when my father suddenly decided to return to the place he'd been born. He's been sick. I think he was worried about what would happen to us if he... That, or he was hoping they could help him here. I don't know." He looked up at his uncle again, the uncertain fear of being treated with kindness back in his eyes. "I'm glad we did, though. I like it here. The freedom out there was nice, the open skies... But this is home."

"My mother hasn't told me much of anything," Kier replied, sitting down heavily with his sharp little shoulders angled up around his head, and he didn't have to fake the bitterness in his voice for sympathy from this new uncle. "She doesn't want anything to do with me. She'll probably be won over by Mal and Kate - those are my siblings," he added, looking up briefly, "but everyone comes around to them in the end. When we first met she said that Mal's name should have gone to me. It's Mallacht, his full one. I've asked around but no one knows what it means." His voice was quiet enough to be an undertone. He was rolling a pebble back and forth under his black paw pads, looking down at it with a tired sort of forlornness.

When his uncle started talking about the journey he and his mother had taken, his voice still so warm and friendly that it was making Kier's gut strangle itself with an unnameable sadness he had never known before, the little black tom looked up and watched him as he continued, listening in young, sorrowful silence. His silver eyes were as harmless as they had ever been. A sceptic would say he was eating up everything Hywel offered him so trustingly, memorising facts and names and information and kindness. A soft-heart would say he was just a lonely boy faced with love for the first time in his life. "Will you tell me some stories about her when she was younger?" he asked, voice so quiet, so lost, sounding like he was apologising for some innocent child's crime he hadn't yet committed. "This is my home, but only... half. The loch is in me, too, but no one will say anything about it. Why did you leave? Will we ever go back?"

Hearing the translation of the name his mother had said ought to have been his, it was all Kier could do to stop himself from physically trembling with anger, with hate, with bitter, sickening resentment. Instead, all he did was make a little hum of acknowledgement - a little 'ah, how about that - in his throat and smile up at his uncle politely. "Mm," he thought for a moment, thought even he didn't know if he was actually grasping for a memory or if he knew the whole time and was just pretending to. "Kiernan, I think. But my dad never calls me that. I've always just been Kier. Does that mean something?"

All Hywel's warnings about the loch did was ensnare Kier's interest further, making his paw pads tingle. What had his mother done? Who was she? Why weren't they wanted? Superstitious - that meant easy to manipulate. He could be a god there, in the north. His mother and uncle weren't welcome - that didn't mean he wasn't. Of course he wouldn't be stupid enough to give his name - already he'd started to wrack up a dozen different names to use as it suited him around the forest, from Clan to Clan to Clan, so no one would ever be quite sure if the little black cat someone else had met was the same one they had. But he didn't say any of this - he just nodded along gravely, like he was taking everything he said to heart. Really, beyond all that, all he was thinking at a base and jealous level was how good-looking his uncle was. He'd missed out on those genes. Mal must have gotten most of them. All Kier had gotten was the size of a she-cat and his mother's eyes. Well, but he had those at least. No one could ever pry them away from him. Looks rotted. Eyes didn't. He'd have a leg up over his uncle in the end. It would just take time.

"Something terrible must have happened there to have you so afraid of it," he replied, voice quiet and awed, slightly breathy, like he was speaking of something sacred and forbidden under his breath in the dark when he shouldn't have been.

Kier noticed how his uncle's eyes changed, but aside from a brief little flick of his gaze up to study the change his vulnerable, faintly nervous expression gave nothing insidious away. What a mistake it would prove, to let a predator into the family and welcome it as a nephew. But at the mention of Kier having been named after his grandfather, he was genuinely thrown for a second. So his Mother must have loved him - must still love him, as much as she tried to pretend otherwise. He held back a smile. And when Hywel spoke of his dark fur suiting his name, that smile was allowed to break free into a genuine beam, his eyes bright.

He listened as his uncle droned on about whatever trouble there had been up North, bored by the fact he wasn't going to give anything away but still dutifully ferreting the bits of information away for later. Didn't like winter babies; Kier had been born in the first month of spring, at the end of winter. Was that a blessing, then? End of... Oh, end of the dark months or whatever the idiot pagans believed? Demons. He had to hold back a sigh of disdain at the stupidity of them, before sharply reminding himself he was one of them. They were his heritage. They believed in death and cold. There was something redeemable about them. Well, he'd love to go and see for himself, to find out if they were where he really ought to be, but his insufferable uncle wasn't going to give him any useful information about how to find them. And, much as he knew he'd survive the journey in the same way a rat survived a shipwreck, he didn't particularly want to go wandering the Highlands, asking dirty little rogues about a group of cats with accents like this (yes, I'm very good at accents; yes, you're so clever for noticing; yes this is all very interesting; okay I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you because you simply won't shut up). He assumed his uncle had been the winter baby they didn't like but he was going to faint just for something interesting to do if he talked about it, so he noted it down and resolved to ask some other time when his blood sugar levels were higher.

Rhiannon had gotten to Kier first; she spoke of the rituals with wonder and hunger, and so that was how he saw them, too - Hywel was a weak do-gooder. But! Of course Kier was the picture of warmth and gleaming-eyed interest - and sympathy, maybe, or concern, whenever he thought they was probably due. That was the good thing about whatever was wrong with him: he could put on expressions like someone painting eyes onto their eyelids to sleep discreetly and then knock around backstage in the workshop of his mind, zoning in and out when he thought the subject was changing slightly and he ought to alternate his expression accordingly and then leaving his body to do its job while he went back to tinkering. Now Kier zoned back in. "But you like it here?" he asked softly, young and skinny and innocent, scared to hope, a nervous little thing bullied by his siblings and bearing the scars to prove it. Those were real, at least. "You're going to stay? I've only just found my family - I don't think I could bear it if you or any of them left now that we're finally together."

Bleh, gods— kill him.

Do you know, that had never occurred to Kier. As independent as he was, he still saw himself as irrevocably chained to the package deal of his little family. He'd go off in the day or in the evening, curse his siblings to whoever would listen, but he'd always come dutifully back to eat dinner with them at mealtime. Mealtime was the same time every night, it always had been since he was a kit on the moors or in the barn or in the woods. It never changed, and much as he might claim to despise his family and scorn the fact that he was too old to still eat dinner with them, he found a great deal of comforting stability in that fact. Whatever evil deeds, he'd always be back to sit in silence and squabble with Kate until Harley told them to settle down. The thought of that ending, of actually severing ties, startled him. Terrified him, even. He'd never thought of himself as rigid in a routine or-or attached to the idea of being the middle child, but apparently he was. Well... well, that would clearly have to go. He didn't know why that thought pained him and made him feel restlessly panicked. Horrible Northern genes though they were, clearly family was something Kier was devoted to.

"Oh, I don't know that I could," he replied, to cover up his lengthy internal monologue and the fact he was currently screaming and beating himself and the apparent preoccupation with family to death with a stick inside his mind. "Now that I've finally found my mother, I couldn't part with her. Even if she..." Kier's head drooped. When next he spoke, his voice was quiet as a kitten's, sorrowful and confused and insecure and so deeply, deeply sad. He looked up a little, just enough to fix his uncle with his miserable gaze, his brows pushed together and his eyes swimming with the misunderstanding of a child. "How can I make my mother love me?"

Unless she already believes in it. He knew what she believed in - eternal life, sacrifice, death. Alright. Alright, he could work with that. I suppose your father must've gotten through to her once upon a time. His father, he thought with an internal curl of his lip - well, he was better than him. Smarter. If Harley had figured out a way, he could, too. In record time. Mother didn't actually love Harley, though... Didn't matter - what did he care whether she loved him or not? Or rather, whether she wanted to love him or not. Her world just had to centre around him. That was all he wanted. She could hate him, jeer at him - she just had to be consumed by him. Kier and Mother.

Tender feelings played no part in it; it was about ownership. He loved her; he didn't need her to love him back.

"Well, I can wait," Kier replied quietly, bowing his head sadly. "Thank you," he added in that same soft, dejected voice. "For telling me. For being honest. Not many are honest with me." Well, that was true. Oh, he loved when the lies swooped back to align with the truth, it gave him such a little thrill. "Will you spend some more time with me?" he asked, looking up uncertainly, shyly, from under his lashes. "Take me on... a tour? Or-or show me your favourite spot? My brother and sister never have time for me; they find it so easy to make friends..." He trailed off, dropping his eyes slowly back down to the ground like it was a sore spot.