You were flotsam, drifting quietly onto the bank of our home. Some say that some flotsam, instead of debris and waste, there are jewels, purer than the cleanest diamond from the richest caves.

You were that jewel, that came crashing ashore. You, spluttering and so innocent, I, curious and naive. Lost and confused, whilst I was inquisitive and jovial. Something made me want to help you as you sulked and cried in the reeds. So I brought you in.

You were not a meer brilliant jewel, no, you would come to mean more to me, and soon you would be tossed about with mental gifts. More than a jewel, you were the sun that helped be grow, kept me from wilting when I failed, when my sister passed.

You were an emblem of love, loyalty, the one solo cat I could trust with my heart, my emotions, my struggles.

You had won my trust, it seemed so deserved. Then I must have fallen deep into the fools gold. I believed you were unable to have faults, tiniest flaws even, were not possible.

You drank my honesty, my belief, and it seemed to feed your desire to be, more. You were not a jewel, you were fools gold.

You might have been real, dreams and expectations reality, if it had been another way, but your bright front of this life was none more than a mask.

You were turning your cold back to me without my noticing. Soon we were farther apart than before I'd even met you, and you became isolated. It was only till you found a mate, that I realized I was the giver of the respect, the trust, you were the taker.

Your darling queen gave birth, and I was not allowed to watch over them, only learning their names till their apprentice ship. I mentored one of them, Beechpaw, and you made sure to demand I treated Beechpaw well.

You nicked my ear when Beechpaw was clawed by a fox. You growled when I ate other than the scrawniest of prey if your mate ate less than plump.

You ignored my signals if I were the leader of your patrol. You gave a look of frosty stone to express your irritation, when other cats laughed at a joke I meant for you. Slowly, frost chilled over my soul. I'm sure you noticed. I was sluggish and snappy. Many times, I'd looked at the lake with longing. But after all my desperation and crying dampened, after I'd settled a reasonable relation with Raybright, after I felt content for once, you came to me. And you apologized. It seemed like a cruel joke, and I wanted to claw you, hurt you like you did to me for so long.

Then the truth came out, just as you had from the river. But I didn't forgive, I didn't want to help you as you cried for mercy and acceptance, pleaded for my understanding. Not as I had when you first came a small bundle.

It was then I realized that as a kitten, I had been innocent and gullible. I would not fall for your tricks. Those days had been shattered long ago when you betrayed me. So as I screamed and ranted madly, I could not stop even at your sad frown.

You had let Raybright command you, let him have you hurt me mentally and physically. You mated his sister without a second doubt when he told you to, and you did it, knowing it would hurt me.

Nothing was left for me, my mate was false and sinister, and you had broken me further than I could heal from. You know my last thoughts as bubbles drifted up towards the soothing distant beam of the sun? They were that I had loved you. But that love had, too, been shattered.

I watched from the skies as my limp body rolled up on the bank, like flotsam.