After Sunset: We Need To Talk is a short play written by Vicky Holmes, which takes place halfway between Sunset and The Sight.
Vicky wrote it for her first US tour; she had fans act it out at each tour stop. It was written to hint at a major reveal in Power of Three. An archive of the PDF file from the official site can be found here
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Three moons after the end of Sunset, Leafpool watches along the WindClan border. When Crowfeather walks past, she stops him and says there's something he should know. He bitterly says that they belong to different Clans now and shouldn't even be talking, and his Clanmates have just barely started to trust him, and that's thanks to Nightcloud. When Leafpool asks for clarification, he explains that Nightcloud has just had his kits.
Leafpool decides that he is right and they don't have anything to say to each other. She turns to leave, but then a ThunderClan patrol arrives. They confront Crowfeather and make sure that he wasn't bothering Leafpool; Berrypaw brings up the fact that the two were once mates, but Brambleclaw tells him that's in the past. A WindClan patrol arrives soon afterward. The two patrols get into an argument, and finally WindClan decides to move on. The ThunderClan patrol heads homeward as well. Leafpool quietly says to herself that she hopes she and Crowfeather won't regret that they didn't get a chance to speak to each other.
Tropes appearing in this story:
- Marriage of Convenience: Crowfeather and Nightcloud's relationship has been described by the authors as one: he knew that with a mate and kits he'd be trusted more by his Clan again, and Nightcloud figured that he was a strong young cat that was going to be "going places".
- Shotgun Wedding: Crowfeather must get his Clan to trust him again after he had a romance with a cat from a rival Clan. His solution? Sleep with a random she-cat (Nightcloud) and get a bunch of pureblood kits, of course! Fans have nicknamed this ship... Shotgunshipping.
- Treachery Cover Up: It's hard to judge whether or not they did this for Hawkfrost. They did cover up the fact that Brambleclaw killed him, but there is conflicting evidence on whether or not they covered up why he was killed. In The Sight, some warriors have a conversation about the mysterious circumstances of his death, and say that his Clanmates mourned him, and RiverClan seems relatively ignorant of his treachery in other books, which would suggest he did get a cover-up. But then in After Sunset: We Need To Talk, Cloudtail says to a WindClan patrol that Hawkfrost tried to kill Firestar, which suggests everyone knows about it.
- Un-Confession: Leafpool is about to tell Crowfeather that she gave birth to his children, only to be cut off by Crowfeather telling her that he now has a new mate in his own Clan who has just given birth, so she doesn't tell him.
