"How many consecutive moments of lucidity would you predict impossible?"

"I don't know.  On the one paw she was getting worse, but on the other if Fireheart is picking when you meet and leading the discussion he could keep it up a long time.  She wasn't at the last Gathering; Fireheart spoke in her stead and claimed she was recovering from having breathed smoke during a recent fire in ThunderClan.  Mainly she was just much more suspicious and less competent.  I don't know how obvious it would be for a - Twoleg, who didn't know her before."

"Well, I'll keep an eye on it. Do you think she knows she's declining, when she's more aware?"

"It's hard to say.  She certainly didn't discuss it with me if so."

"Fair enough. Anything else?"

"I believe not.  I'll escort you back to Fourtrees."  He starts walking, not quite in the direction they came from.

Cam picks up his violin and follows.

Fireheart is still waiting for them there.

"Hello again!"

"Hello.  How did it . . . go?" he asks, glancing at Tigerstar.

Tigerstar sits a bit off to the side from where Cam is standing.

"Fine. I gave him a computer like Princess's, do you guys want one too?"

"I don't know what you gave her."

"A thing to help her learn to read and write, which can also send me messages while I'm not right there."

"Alright."

"Where d'you want it?"

"Probably closer to camp."  He keeps glancing at Tigerstar and the tip of his tail is twitching.

"Great, lead the way."

He does.

Cam is not sure exactly how well cats can hear, so he waits a while before saying, "So it kind of looks like either Tigerstar orchestrated all his criminal enterprise to look thoroughly coincidental and innocent to a form of evidence-checking he cannot possibly have anticipated, or it's just that you kind of read into things which would be understandable since he does have a genuine prejudice against pet-background cats. Mind, I'm not saying it's not the first thing, it's possible, but it would be sort of weird. Lots of things are weird here but not all of them."

". . . What does it mean to 'read into things'."

"...sorry, it means to interpret them as having more depth and meaning than they necessarily do."

"So - you think I . . . made it all up, to myself, that he did all the awful things I said he did.  Or that it's the other way and he's much more clever than I already thought."

"There's, uh, some possible middle ground? He might have some doublethink going on, like he had some impure motives but wasn't really thinking about them. But he didn't make any moves that were apparent, viewed in conjuration, as malfeasance. I can show you if you want, I took pictures of the conjurations."

"Yes please."