It's nice, to have a walk out of camp and spend a moment away from the constant mewls and kitten arguments and stubbed toes. The pleasant conversation continues; perhaps it carries an underpinning of sadness, or perhaps that's simply her own inclination. Often it feels as though the very air is charged with sadness around her, like a static shock, and Blazestar has his own old spirits hanging about; he makes her nervous, it's true, but oddly puts her at ease as well. To be around someone without judgement for her own history, for her kits' lack of a father, feels like a rarity; a cat who can understand the aching loss it leaves is rarer still. It's as though someone clawed a cat-shaped hole in her soft heart and left it to fester. She stirs herself from this somewhat morbid comparison to keep her attention on the conversation.
He stammers, odd for a leader perhaps, but far be it from her to pass judgement on that; she'd thought her childhood stutter defeated, but it'd made a return as of late. Bobbie keeps quiet as he returns her conversational bats, eyes careful but focused with genuine interest. She's chatted with the other queens, had the occasional conversation with a Clanmate, but to talk casually with a cat sharing both the mantle of parenthood and of heartbreak is foreign, but enjoyable. The kits have kept her paws full much of the time, left her little space for thinking of their lost father; to hear him mentioned dampens her mood a touch but brightens it at the same time to hear herself and her kits mentioned as something lucky to have.
It's a mantle she feels her kittens, her three loves, certainly deserve; a pawful perhaps, and the idea of them leaving her behind as they march towards adulthood makes her sad—but Blazestar is right, she hopes, that they'll grow into fine warriors in the relative safety of a Clan that so far has accepted them. She prays that they'll never have to know the heartache she shares with the flame-point leader, that their training will shield them from the painful helplessness she'd felt before her arrival here; her limp has eased with time, but the reminding scars and old nightmares of gnashing teeth have not. Her kits will be trained to handle whatever life throws at them; she can't hide them from it forever, much as she would like to, but they'll have Clanmates to protect them. To accept them.
Herself ... she's not entirely sure the Clan's lucky to have her. Arriving on their doorstep battered with injuries to waste herbs on and a swollen belly to waste prey on; her kits are as much of a blessing to the Clan as they feel to her, she hopes, but she lacks any skills. Any benefit to the Clan on her own. The dimpled scars that mar her soft lilac fur are a painful enough reminder that her previous life, which most cats (out loud or not) regard as a soft one, has left her with nothing; she cannot fight, cannot leap in the sky for prey fast as a shadow like her new(ish) Clanmates do. Bobbie's hoping to leave the nursery with her kits, not that she'd ever frown upon the life of the permanent queens (not now, knowing how hard it is to handle kits), but she wants that assured skillfulness so many of the cat around her hold. Perhaps it'd be rude to talk Clan business matters now, but she thinks about broaching the topic.
"They ce-certainly keep me busy. Stars forbid I try to take them ou-out of the nursery or they all start wailing and climbing on me," She mews in an amused tone; his own children, from what she'd seen around the Clan, had grown into fine cats indeed and she hopes hers do the same. Perhaps shyness made Crowkit rude, Drowsykit slept a little too much, Lupinekit was easy to be discouraged, but her kits were so much more than that; it was hardship that had driven them to grow up without a father (a topic she hopes they never ask after because she doesn't know what to tell them), but it was also hardship that had grown their little family so close already. Her kittens loved each other, protected each other, soothed each other and she loved them so much she thought her tender heart might burst with it. Bobbie blinks at his sincere comment, that her former lover didn't know what he'd given up; perhaps the effects of carrying kits still linger, because she blinks back sudden tears. It means a lot for her to hear, for some reason. The leader's tone is aching but genuine, and the queen mews more quietly, "Thank you."
The topic changes to one of a more light-hearted nature as Blazestar smiles and waxes wistful about his own time spent with his kits, when his family was apparently all together. Apprenticehood for kits—the thought shocks her a bit, that in only two more moons the kits that are now fuzzy bundles that cry out for her when hit by a leaf and snuggle into her shoulder fur to sleep will be gone and learning how to be warriors. Learning for the battlefield—Bobbie yanks herself away from that thought quickly, stars forbid she start down that path. She mews, "Perhaps I'll take them there once they've learnt to hu-hunt, then. Plenty of time until leaf-bare now." The lilac queen ponders that thought, her kits living with the skills of a warrior promised to them by birth, able to take on anything that should face them. Maybe it's selfish, but she'd like to be on the battlefield alongside them when they do. Bobbie takes a deep breath and rather nervously raises the topic, "I wa-was thinking ... that, um, that I could try to become a warrior once they're apprentices. Wo-Would that be possible?"
