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Being back home is - well, it's a relief, and it's almost just as troubling all the same. So many faces he'd missed, cats he worried he'd never see again, and yet now that he's among his clanmates again, he can't help but think of those that he wouldn't see again - at least, not on the same terms as before. It just feels...different, now, as if he's fallen out of rhythm in the time that they'd been gone. Waking up in his own nest again feels wonderful, more than anything, but it also feels wrong in a way he can't quite put into words - as though sleeping on whatever could be scavenged for the night is what he should be used to, and not the other way around. Worst of all, it's like he's seeing ghosts, in a way; a flash of color out of the corner of his eye, a dark pelt, and it's Nightbird there, or Duskpool, or even Little Wolf, and it feels as natural as breathing. He wonders if any of the others are having trouble adjusting like he is, but if it's anything more than the same out-of-placeness they all seem to share, he wouldn't know.
It happens again, like some sort of cosmic trick - there's Scorchpaw, and even as he feels himself instinctively gravitating towards her, she's already talking with Lightstrike - with Thriftpaw, he corrects, and he almost wants to drift away at that slip-up, even if it had only been for him to know. Luckypaw had known the journeying cats for a moon and a half; he's known his clanmates far longer than that. An adjustment period is only natural, what with everything they went through to retrieve the lungwort, but even he can tell this is starting to get ridiculous. And yet, he's not sure how to fix it - other than waiting it out, of course, learning how to be a WindClanner again (is that something he'd forgotten, up on that mountaintop?). Amidst his own thoughts and his late approach, part of the conversation is already lost to the wind, but he catches enough context to know they're talking about the dogs.
Even now, the chase makes him shudder, the memories of the burning of his muscles and the awful howls of the beasts engrained somewhere deep inside him. At the time, he'd hardly known what was going on, only enough to lead a dog away, and to keep running until he couldn't anymore; it had been agonizing, not knowing what had happened to those left behind, but now he's glad he didn't know. If he had been able to glance back, to see some of his companions ravaged by dogs...well, he's not sure what he would have done. Or, perhaps more aptly, what he wouldn't have done. Would he still have been able to run with the same fervor, knowing he might be leaving friends behind? Would he have run that much harder? Luckily, he'll never have to know - and all of his clanmates are here, alive and safe, at the very least, though Stormpaw's fate is still a mystery to him. They'd gotten her back, he knows, but not much more than that - perhaps at the next gathering, he'd be able to find out more, or at least somebody would be able to find out more.
Sedgepounce appears, and thankfully, he is just Sedgepounce - just as familiar as he's always been, as he's been this last moon and a half, and his suggestion of telling the story of the Twoleg bridge next settles his heart more than the story of the dogs ever could. It's strange, to think back on their first setback - how divisive they had all been, how uncertain and untrusting of one another, especially in comparison to where they'd all left off on the journey. It had been terrifying at the time, and though he'd be more than happy to never do something like that again, knowing the RiverClanners were there to catch anybody who slipped would weigh much less heavy on him now than it had over a moon ago. "It was pretty crazy, really. I mean, we'd only just set off, and we came across this huge river - way too fast to think about crossing, or anything like that. We were trying to figure out how to get across, like if we should follow it until we found a shallow end, and honestly, I think most of the RiverClanners were ready to just leave the rest of us behind until Fernpaw thought of - well, of something else." Even now, it's as if he can see the RiverClanners slipping into the water and swimming out to the bridge, as though it were happening all over again.
"There was this - uh, it was like...kinda like the Twoleg bridge by RiverClan, only this one was made different, and it was all broken up. The RiverClanners - you've never seen anything like it! They just - just swam out there, like it was nothing, and they held the broken bits of the bridge in place." How uncertain they had all been, in those moments - it's almost silly, looking back on how terrified he had been that the RiverClanners would drop them all into the rushing river and continue on without them. "The whole time we were crossing, they all held it in place - except, when Stormywing fell in," he adds, giving a pause for dramatic effect. "She wasn't the only one, either, but you know what happened? The RiverClanners worked together to fish them all out, and everybody made it across, one way or another." Now that it's over, it feels much easier to paint the experience into a more positive light - after all, they really had all made it to the other side, even if some were more sopping wet than others. "I think the cliff was one of the craziest things, though," he tacks on after a moment of consideration. How they'd all managed that, he'll never know; instead, he's just grateful nobody had been seriously injured there of all places.
