Hawkfrost has this dream he can't explain.
It comes to him on nights where he is alone.
The dream starts after Sasha leaves.
She tells him about his father and licks his ear then says goodbye.
He would be angry with her, if the heartbreak wasn't so clear in her eyes as she turns back to look at him and Mothpaw a final time.
Now the stories of Tigerstar and the memories of Sasha are the only parents he has.
Leopardstar and Stormfur and Feathertail have been kind to him but it's not the same.
Leopardstar's approving meow, Stormfur's gentle encouragement, Feathertail's kind words, they don't fill the empty inside him.
So even though he curls by Mothpaw, her sweet scent the only thing that really feels like home, he feels alone.
It takes him too long to fall asleep. The moon is hanging high in the sky and he'll be tired by the time sunrise comes. Mothpaw's breathing steadily beside him.
He strains to match her breaths, and then dwindles slowly into slumber.
He opens his eyes.
It's dark. It's so dark he can hardly see his paw in front his face. He looks up and realizes why the shadows seem so much deeper than usual.
There's no moon. No stars.
It takes time for his eyes to adjust, time to see the trees hanging crooked above him and the cooling fog sweeping the ground.
It's so quiet here. There's no sounds of birds singing or mice scrabbling or fish splashing.
Just quiet, dead quiet.
That's the only reason he hears it. A sound, so small and slight he doesn't even know what it is. A twig snapping? A leaf crunching?
He turns and sees nothing.
Until he does.
A flicker, so dark in this dark place he squints to see it.
Then another flicker and suddenly eyes are on him.
He swallows his gasp.
Those eyes. He knows those eyes.
They're his sister's eyes but the shape of the figure is wrong, too small to be hers.
He tries to look closer but the lines of the cat staring at him refuse to be defined.
Their fur is too dark.
Too dark.
"Tadpole?"
He's said the magic words. The eyes blink and disappear into the woods, his paws fumble into and he tears through the undergrowth to keep up.
"Tadpole!"
His paws hit the ground so hard his pawpads sting but he keeps running. The tail is right in front of his face now, dark and black and small.
"Tadpole, wait!"
The tail vanishes into a bush. He looks for a way around and when he glances up he notices the sky is different here than it was where he began the chase.
There's a smattering of stars just beyond where the bush is and when he strains his ears, he can hear all the sounds of prey which had been absent before.
Where is he?
"Tadpole?" His whisper is too loud in the stillness of this nightly place.
Another crunch, from the patch of trees he'd just run through.
He leaps around to face this new cat.
But their eyes.
Their eyes, too, are familiar.
"Tadpole?" he asks even though this cat is much too large to be his long lost brother.
And yet their eyes are the same.
"Hawkpaw," the amber-eyed cat says, "I've been waiting for you."
The cat steps out of the trees and Hawkpaw's flinches but his eyes aren't all that's familiar. This cat looked enough like Hawkpaw to be his kin.
"My name is Tigerstar. I trust you've heard of me?"
Hawkpaw is too speechless to do anything but nod.
As the moons pass, the dream continues the same. He awakens in the woods, the Dark Forest is what he learns to call the place, and meets Tadpole every time.
And every time, Hawkpaw gives chase only to be led to a mysterious border but just as he attempts to cross, Tigerstar appears.
He learns to love this dream. His father is every bit the wise warrior his mother said he was.
Tigerstar teaches him battle moves his Clanmates wouldn't dream of enacting and gives him lessons on cats who seek to poison the Clans.
Firestar is a name he learns to hate.
As the dreams continue, his path diverges from Mothpaw's further and further.
Tigerstar has taught him power and ambition.
In Mothpaw, he learns to see only weakness.
His father tells him to encourage his sister's dreams of becoming a medicine cat and so he does, with vigor.
Tigerstar instructs him on how to gain Leopardstar's favor and he does so, easily.
Everything is easier than he ever imagined it would be and his lust for all that his father earned but had ripped away from him through death surges through Hawkpaw like a river after a flood.
He wants to be leader, not just to Riverclan, but to all the Clans.
They need strength, to be purged of their weakness, to be led by someone who knows what to do with the power.
All while these tiny thoughts grow heavier and darker and more twisted and strange in Hawkpaw's mind, the dream changes.
He begins to chase after his brother with less and less determination each time, he lets the space between them grow larger with every passing night until one day Tadpole doesn't appear at all.
Hawkpaw doesn't have time to miss him, not with all these other things consuming him but he still looks for him the next night and the next night and the next night until he forgets to do even that.
The last time he sees Tadpole, he's waking up in the Dark Forest again, only this time he knows it's for good.
He can still taste the copper of blood in his mouth and the stickiness of it as it gurgled from his neck and washed down his chest.
He's still seeing Brambleclaw behind his eyelids, mouth agape like he can't imagine what he's done and fury ignites Hawkfrost's pelt.
He opens his eyes and looks around and for once, Tadpole isn't hiding.
He's sitting in the center of this clearing Hawkfrost has awoken in, tail over paws.
His eyes are full of sorrow, too much for a cat too small to be an apprentice.
"What!" he snarls and Tadpole says nothing. He doesn't start to run, doesn't try to lead Hawkfrost to wherever he had wanted him to go so many moons ago.
He just sits, watching with sad eyes.
Hawkfrost is too exhausted to say anything more and they sit there for a while, staring at one another, until Tadpole finally stands to his paws.
He looks at Hawkfrost a final time and darts away through the woods, just as he had the first time.
But, Hawkfrost doesn't follow. He doesn't even try to. He just curls himself into a ball and closes his eyes.
He knows it's too late for him.
This was fun to write though the style was definitely a struggle to work through and I'm still not sure about it. I was hoping it would lead to a more mysterious tone but it might have made the story more confusing than I intended so if you have question, please ask away. The break-down of the story is that Tadpole was trying to lead Hawkpaw away from the Dark Forest and to StarClan (much like what Spottedleaf did with Jaypaw in The Sight). This implies that Tadpole is a part of StarClan, which is something that I personally like to believe seeing as Tigerstar taught Sasha about StarClan and she might have taught her kits about it, but if it goes against your beliefs you could easily say StarClan recruited Tadpole from wherever his resting place was in order to try and turn Hawkfrost away from the Dark Side. I'd like to continue with this story, featuring dreams from different cats. I was thinking maybe Birchfall up next (I have a rough outline for his going) but if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks for reading! :)