Mothwing dreams, of course. Every cat does. But Mothwing is a healer, not a prophet.
There's something comfortable in knowing what lay on the other side of sleep. For the other medicine cats, she thinks as she lays down to sleep, closed eyes might mean awakening in a dream-battle, fur torn and eyes wide with revelation of a truth too mystifying to grasp until blood has been spilt. Mothwing does not know what tomorrow will bring, but she doesn't waste her time trying to figure it out. She doesn't dream like that.
Except, that is, for the silver-blue cat and the flooded plains.
Young, just barely a medicine cat, and buried by the weight of what that meant, Mothwing opened her eyes to a sky beneath her feet.
She gave a cry and jumped back, but the sky moved with her- and she realized, feeling the water round her paws, that what she was walking on was merely reflection. It was just a pool, the sand under her feet not unlike the island camp of the old forest. That she recognized. The rest, though...as she lifted her gaze, the world expanded beyond any horizon she had ever seen.
It was sand and salt and water, as far as the eye could see, the nothing of the landscape gaping eternally distant. This place was endless, empty, and glimmering with the reflection of the orange sky.
Sunset, and the salt flats seemed to glow.
"How strange," Mothwing murmured to herself. She stepped forward carefully, unsure of what to do.
"But beautiful, I think."
Mothwing whipped around- there had been no one behind her only a moment ago, but now there stood a silver-blue cat, her muzzle frosted with age but her eyes sharp as glass. Her figure looked blurred, as if Mothwing's vision was double or triple, multiple versions of the other cat overlapping and blurring at the edge.
"I haven't seen you before," Mothwing murmured. "Dreams are such odd things. Places I've never been, cats I've never met- and so different from what I know..."
"Pleased to meet you as well," the other cat said. "I'm as surprised to find myself here as you."
Mothwing purred at the idea. "Hope you didn't go too far out of your way," she said, slightly mockingly.
"I don't believe that's how it works. You called me here."
"Did I? Well, you can come with me now, or you can-" she gave a wave of her tail. "-Disappear, I suppose."
"Excuse me?" The affront in the stranger's tone brought Mothwing up short.
"You know. I'll stop thinking about you, and you'll disappear. That's how dreams work- no offense to you," Mothwing explained.
The dream cat laid her ears flat. "I did not come here to be talked to like some passing kit's fantasy."
Mothwing was cautious about putting her paws near any water she didn't know, but hey- it was a dream. She could do whatever she wanted. "And once I wake up, you'll never have been here at all." She padded forward in a random direction. Might as well explore.
"You're terribly comfortable in the water," the other cat remarked. "You must be a Riverclan cat."
"Of course I am," Mothwing called, not bothering to look over her shoulder. "And you must be part rock -you're awfully comfortable just sitting there."
"Riverclan always has been arrogant."
The barb pricked, but not so much as her choice of words. "Always?" Mothwing asked.
"Sunningrocks bore enough blood to show that," the stranger said.
"Sunningrocks," Mothwing sighed. "I miss the old forest."
"And Highrocks. I remember how the Moonstone used to shine...like a thousand stars all swirling around a cave, like all the echoes of the past playing themselves through in light."
"I remember moonlight. Nothing like that, though. Just a pretty rock."
It was so freeing to be able to just say it like that. Normally she had to keep so quiet, remain so firm in reminding her clanmates that she was the medicine cat that they needed her to be.
"Ah," the stranger said. "You're the non-believer."
Mothwing paused, looking back, and realized that the pair of them hadn't moved at all. In the salt flats there was no direction, no time- only a burnt sky and a pair of sharp eyes staring back at her.
"What do you mean 'the' non-believer?" Mothwing asked. For a dream, this cat seemed awfully realistic- and awfully knowledgeable. But then, anything that Mothwing knew, a dream would know as well. It still didn't explain how her tone had wriggled under Mothwing's skin and lingered there, uncomfortable and hard.
"We talk about you sometimes," the cat murmured. "the medicine cat who cannot dream. Around whom the river flows but the current never takes." She traced a path with her paw in the water, breaking ripples through the clouds. "You're a phenomenon."
"Next thing you're going to tell me is that you're from Starclan," Mothwing muttered. "And you're here to reveal the next great quest to me, some prophecy about fire and darkness and doom- well I'm not having it."
With one turn of the tail she went from standing to bounding, racing across the flat and sending a spray of water-and-sky behind her flurried paws. Her pelt was getting soaked and her paw-pads grated on the rough sand below. She felt raw. She wouldn't face this, wouldn't face the hope and the inevitable betrayal, the pain of separation when she awoke and had to face reality again. She would not face death, and she would not face a dream; none of it meant anything, and it hurt too much to try and see anything more.
"Where are you running to?" The stranger asked. She walked beside Mothwing, blue paws slipping into an easy gait. No matter how fast Mothwing ran she couldn't break away. She forced her legs faster, and still the stranger kept up effortlessly.
Lungs burning, chest heaving, Mothflight finally came to a halt.
"What do you want?" She gasped. "What could you possibly want from me?"
"I don't want anything," the stranger meowed. "As I said, I didn't choose to come here. It was chosen for me- whether by you or by Starclan, it doesn't matter which."
"Who are you, then? What are you doing here?" Mothwing couldn't get her hackles to lay flat.
"You won't believe me no matter what I say. But I think I know why I was sent here." The cat nodded at a spot on the ground, as if asking Mothwing to sit. Seeing Mothwing's reluctance, the stranger swept a paw across the spot and the water retreated from it like the beads of rain off a beaver's pelt. The pair settled in the new spot, Mothwing assiduously avoiding the other's eyes.
"In life I was many things. I was smart. I was compassionate when I could afford to be, and knew that to survive, the right choice was often a hard one." The cat sighed, casting her eyes over the water. "And I made mistakes. But that is what it means to live, I think. I've heard that you've learned that as well."
Mothflight grimaced. "I do my best."
"I'm sure you do. But mistakes are not what we have in common, or I would be walking in the dreams of every cat from here to Highstones. But I believe that I am here because of more than simple similarity." She dipped her head. "You are the non-believer, and I am the leader who lost faith. I know how it hurts to feel yourself wandering blind while the rest seem to have stars lighting their paths."
"A leader-" and the blue-gray fur- "Bluestar," she breathed.
"It doesn't matter to you, does it? If I am all that you say- or perhaps better to say none of it. Born out of an idle mind, my name is nothing to you. But you can learn from my story."
"I know your story."
"Really," Bluestar drawled. "Then I suppose I'll go." She turned and padded towards the sun.
"Wait!" Mothwing called. She hadn't thought the action through, but it felt right. This place, this dream- it was something.
"So now you want to hear what I have to say?" Bluestar asked. "Very well." She sat once more and looked Mothwing in the eye. "I used to believe in Starclan like I believed in the stars themselves, like if I looked hard enough at the night it would crack like an egg and all the secrets of the past would spill across my lips." Mothwing glanced upwards out of habit. "It was who I was as a warrior. When I fought it was to win; when I slept it was to dream."
Mothwing couldn't help but snort.
"Young cats are so impatient."
"Aren't they just?" Mothwing returned. "It gets things done." She shook her head. "I never had all that, and if you knew me at all you'd know that. I came from nothing. Like recognizes like. I always knew the night was nothing but darkness." She huffed, drawing her tail closer to her body. It wrapped like a shield around her paws.
Bluestar reached up into the sky and leapt, her powerful back legs flexing as she almost flew through the air. When she landed, she held something between her paws.
Tears pricked at the corners of Mothflight's eyes when she saw what it was: an injured moth, flapping weakly against the ground with its good wing, the other a ribbon of laceration.
"Why would you do that?" Mothwing whirled to face Bluestar, claws digging into the soft sand. "Look at it! It's can't even fly now- it's going to drown!"
Bluestar dipped her nose to the sand and blinked slowly.
"Don't touch it!" Mothwing cried. "Haven't you hurt her enough?"
Bluestar lifted her head to reveal the moth's other wing in her jaws. Tail lashing, Mothwing lashed to bat it out of Bluestar's mouth. "Why are you being so cruel?"
Silent, Bluestar let the wing fall to the ground. Beside it, the now wingless moth was crawling along the dirt. As Mothwing watched, its segmented body grew longer and larger. Her eyes widened as the moth's legs turned to talons and feathers sprouted out of its broken wings. Long legs and a sharp beak stared back up at her before it set to flight.
"The stars failed me as well. And it hurt," Bluestar said. "Though I feel clear now, my last life was one guided only by fear. I feared betrayal, I feared death, and I feared the cold, harsh judgement of a Starclan that found me wanting. As my eyes became clouded by my mind, I lost sight of the stars."
"You had been abandoned," Mothwing murmured. The things she had seen today…"But I always knew better. I was taught to ask questions and wonder in ways that do not allow for belief like that- I had nothing to lose." She let out a bitter bark of laughter. "I'm simply alone. I always have been."
Bluestar's eyes cut like claws in her pelt. "Have you learned nothing?" She snapped, cool as ice.
Mothwing shrunk against her words, and Bluestar's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps I am too harsh. It has been a while since I have taught anyone. You love your clan. You love your kin, your friends, and you serve them as best you can, do you not?"
Mothwing shrugged, uncomfortable under her gaze. "As you said, I do the best I can. Not everyone would assume that's any good, though."
"And you would follow your brother to the end of the world because you feel he is the only thing tying you to it."
"So?" Mothwing shot back. "Is that so wrong?"
"I too loved someone as kin- and Fireheart, -star, now, I would have followed until the sun fell down, because he was all that seemed real to me in the end. He was the anchor around which the world seemed to spin. Is that how it is for you?"
Mothwing swallowed, nodded. Love hurt, but it was meant to. It was all she had.
"I understand. I am not here to say that you need to abandon your kin, your beliefs, and follow the paths of those who have come before," Bluestar started. "I am here to tell you cannot heal without finding faith- and yes," Bluestar said, cutting Mothwing off before she had a chance to protest. "I know it is exactly faith that you lack. But there are more things to believe in than Starclan."
"I don't understand. The only things that need to be believed in are the things you cannot see- and what else is there invisible other than Starclan?"
"You are so young, but your mind is inflexible," Bluestar said. "Your brother pressed your budding faith too far and snapped its brittle stalk in two."
"I never believed-"
"Not in Starclan," Bluestar hissed. "But the clan itself. You must have faith as a medicine cat that your skills are good and that your patients will make it through the night; you must have faith as a friend that you will not be betrayed and that your words are heard; and you must have faith as a member of a clan, as an adherent to the warrior code, that your clan will endure- no matter the winter, no matter the plague- the clans will survive on faith alone until they have something else to fill their bellies."
Bluestar looked at Mothwing with a compassion that Mothwing had not seen before. "You do not need to be what they expect; but you must be what they need." The moth-bird circled overhead. "You need not hold Starclan in your heart, but you must- you must have faith. You do not have to be that claw-caught moth, but for the good of those you love, you must find a way to fly."
The bird called a keen, high and clear, and the salt flats were gone.
The smell of forest lingered long after Mothwing had woken and shaken the sleep from her limbs. If she had taken to gather herbs particularly early or stayed out particularly long, no one had said so.