"How does a cat come to smell like a clan?"

"A Clan's scent is made up of all the cats who live together, and what they eat and where they live.  So a cat joining a Clan would start to pick up its scent, but they'd also change everyone else's, a little."

"Huh. But can't you distinguish individuals by smell too?"

"Yes?"

"So the scented trespassers were - identified as Brokenstar et al, but you didn't know they were not part of the clan?"

"Oh, no, it's just that you have to know a cat fairly well to recognize them individually, and we mostly meet multiple members of other Clans at once - and not usually for very long.  That's why Yellowfang was able to tell the difference, because she used to live in ShadowClan."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"Right.  A while after that ShadowClan and RiverClan tried to drive out WindClan again, and ThunderClan was called in to help defend them.  - That was the time Tigerclaw saw Leopardfur about to kill me and did nothing.  Which I mentioned before because Spottedleaf had warned me about it."

"Whence the grudge against WindClan?"

"The other Clans didn't know about the rogues yet and might've thought it was WindClan.  Or perhaps they were just low on prey and unconcerned with justice or keeping the balance of the Clans."

"The Clans are supposed to be balanced in a particular way?"

"Well, Fourtrees has four trees, so presumably StarClan doesn't want us driving any Clan out?"

"I admit I'm not sure how you get from the trees to the Clan number thing."

"It's - Fourtrees isn't just a spot with four big trees.  It's right in the middle of all the Clans' territories, and it's where we come every moon and put aside our differences and talk to cats from other Clans like they were from our own, and all the elders share stories, and queens talk about their future kits, and apprentices brag about their latest accomplishments.  And during the actual meeting the leaders announce what's been going on in their Clan, births and deaths and apprenticeships and new warriors and things that might be of interest to other Clans, like if a fox or a badger was scented near a border.

And - sometimes there's fighting anyways - with words only; I've never seen the truce broken.  But Gatherings are us trying to be like we'll be in StarClan, all together instead of separated by Clans.  And that's - important.  And we have them at Fourtrees, and the fact that there are four trees and four Clans is also important, because . . . if any Clan left or was wiped out, then - all of us would be missing something, even if it meant we'd have more land or more prey."

"...okay."

"Was something about that confusing?"

"In my own world I'm better at evaluating claims about things in the same - general category as claims about Starclan - by comparing to what else I know about the world. Here I know much less about the world, so I'm still not sure how much I should take assertions at face value but I don't have a good way to improve on that."

"So you . . . think it would be okay to drive out WindClan, or . . . ?"

"No, not at all, but I wouldn't base that belief on a number of trees."

"Does your sort of Twoleg have anything like Fourtrees?"

"Nah."

"Then it makes sense you wouldn't really get it, I think."

"It's certainly not giving me any advantages."

"After that, Graystripe and I spent a lot of time collecting evidence about how Redtail died, which involved a lot of talking to RiverClan cats.  I'd tried to tell Bluestar about how dangerous Tigerclaw was before, but since we didn't know as much then there were a few pieces that didn't make sense to her and she thought I was exaggerating.  We - also found out - " Fireheart pauses, the tip of his tail flicking back and forth in consideration.  "A lot of other things.  And found and returned some drowning RiverClan kits; it was newleaf and the river was flooding from melted snow.  They'd been washed out of the camp."

"Were the kits okay?"