Prelude:
Frost clung to the lengthy grasses that surrounded the hilly moorland, glistening beneath the generous glow of a brooding full moon. A light wind with a big voice scraped over the landscape, ruffling all that it touched with its ragged claws. The night was set.
Within a scoop of land, a long-furred cat laid, her belly pressed against the ice-glazed ground in a vain attempt to keep from the wind's harsh grasp. Sometimes she couldn't help but wonder why her ancestors thought the moorland was adequate territory to thrive within. Other times, she looked her figure over in the puddles that pooled around his camp, wondering how she fit into such a clan; the clan of loyal, nimble, and swift thinkers, as she was not any of those things. She did not have short, coarse wiry fur. She did not have small, delicate paws with thick and durable pads. She did not have the dome-shaped ears that her peers did. She did not have wide, owl-like irises. She did not have an exceptionally lengthy tail. She would freeze under pressure in battle. She would tuck tail and run sloppily away if it was her pelt or a clanmate's. She would stumble when she ran. Perhaps that's why she chose the path of a medicine cat.
She shuffled uncomfortably in her nest, wondering if she had been birthed to another she-cat in another clan, if she would be a treasured warrior or maybe a prized huntress. She wondered if just maybe she wouldn't have guilt weighting on her conscious, that maybe if a more qualified kit would have volunteered itself, that her clan wouldn't have lost four clanmates in one day.
It was a bad set of moons to be a medicine cat
The sickness would creep on slow with a bought of depression. It would all snowball from there. Infected cats would be put off food, lethargic, and dehydrated, but they would request no water. Then, they'd start the trademark symptom: shivering. Their throats would swell and breathing would slow to desperate pants followed by their body convulsing into uncontrollable shaking, always in that order. The most terrifying part of it though, had to be either the twitching eyeballs or the madness that would overcome them, that's when they'd start to bite and claw at whoever was around them.
The Shiver wreaked havoc throughout all four clans, taking dramatic numbers of irreplaceable lives. Each clan would cope and deal with The Shiver in different ways.
RiverClan would banish the infected as soon as depression set in; ThunderClan's remedy was a hearty dose of death-berries; ShadowClan originally slaughtered the infected, which only boosted the number of the infected, so they took on ThunderClan's method; and WindClan, her clan… they kept to their moto of loyalty. No WindClanners would be slaughtered, poisoned further, or exiled. No, no, they were kept in abandoned underground tunnels beneath the medicine cats' hollow, for her to deal with. They were always offered fresh-kill on a daily basis, water was provided constantly, and their bedding was to be changed as often as any other patient's would.
She was not loyal like the rest, she wanted them to be gone, as there was no point in putting herself at such risk for infection. Besides, there wasn't a cure, no, death was the cure. She was tired of staying awake during the night, watching the tunnel entrances with great unease, as they were unblocked at all times and guarded only by her. Any mentally ill cat could stalk up to her area and maul her, give her The Shiver too, and that in itself drove her crazy.
She purred in sick amusement; oh, if only they all knew… if only they knew Buzzardpaw had already done it, bitten her sunrises before. If only they paid enough mind to her to see that she hadn't been eating for days and days and days… if only they knew what loyalty was going to cost them.