I got three reviews on the first part, and I am honestly very grateful for that. Back in 2013, I published an outrageous, poorly-written fan fiction called Trapped in Ice that at this time has nearly 900 reviews. In spite of it being quite terrible, it was one of the most popular Warriors fan fictions at the time. I could go into all the reasons that it was so well-received, which would end in a long, unnecessary rant about cliche, convention, and angst, but my point is that I don't expect this to be nearly as praised. Sometimes it feels like reviews are a lot to ask from people, so I appreciate everyone who takes the time to share their thoughts with me. It really means a lot. Enjoy the next installment on this story.

Part II

Icepaw went to sleep over the next few nights extremely wary of returning to the darkness. He would remain awake far later than Dawnpaw's eventual arrival in the den. Close to sunrise, he would finally nod off out of sheer exhaustion, his dreams a muddy and confusing mess of images that gave no coherent storyline, not even a memory.

He was returning to the fresh-kill pile one morning after hunting with his mentor, when the medicine cat, an overweight but handsome light brown tabby named Adderstripe for his serpent-like markings, glanced attentively in his direction.

"Icepaw, good morning," he greeted politely.

After Icepaw dropped his rather thin squirrel on the pile, he greeted him back. "Hello, Adderstripe, how do you do?"

"Better than you it appears." The medicine cat looked Icepaw over from head to claws, and under his watch, Icepaw felt insecure. "Are you unwell?"

"What makes you think that?" asked Icepaw innocently. "I'm perfectly fine."

Adderstripe gave him a slight knowing smile. "Dawnpaw says you don't sleep."

Upon hearing her name, Icepaw rolled his eyes and muttered, "She worries too much about every little thing. I'm okay. I just have trouble sleeping."

"She does indeed care much about her Clanmates. If sleep is what you need, you can come by my den later today and get some poppy seeds. They should put you right out," Adderstripe said.

Icepaw smiled at the tabby. He really did like Adderstripe, but the thought of falling into deep sleep with the help of the medication made him feel uneasy. What if he found himself alone in the darkness again? What if he met that strange spirit? What if he didn't?

The medicine cat was walking off with a mouse in his jaws, and Icepaw ran to catch up with him. "Adderstripe, wait! I have a question."

He mumbled around the prey, eyes lit with interest, "Of course, Icepaw, what is it?"

The pale gray apprentice slowed to a stop and stared blankly at Adderstripe for a long time, uncertain how to phrase his curiosity. Should he even ask? Maybe this matter was best kept a secret. It had been days since his strange encounter after all. His mouth was parted, but no words were coming out. They were trapped somewhere between his throat and his tongue.

"What's the problem?" Adderstripe prompted, dropping the mouse between his large brown paws. "If it's something you're embarrassed by, we can talk in my den."

"No, it's fine. It's just...complicated." Icepaw shuffled his forepaw in the dirt. "Okay, so, do you ever go to sleep, and then have really weird dreams that don't feel like dreams, but you know it's not something about StarClan?"

Adderstripe narrowed his eyes at the question, his head cocked slightly back. He searched Icepaw's blue eyes for a moment and then replied, "Well, that's fascinating." He cleared his throat and messed a little with the mouse below him. "I would have to say, no. In fact, I don't often dream about StarClan unless I'm at the Moonpool. Lucky for me, I never had to be a medicine cat that receives all kinds of cryptic omens in my sleep night after night, a burden that the historical healers of ThunderClan's past have surely had to bear." His eyes flicked back and forth, and he looked to be staring through Icepaw into another time or place. "I have never been anywhere in my dreams that weren't in my head or StarClan, to answer your question. Now, have you?"

Icepaw inhaled sharply, completely unsure of what Adderstripe would make of his recollection of that night. He looked past the medicine cat into his den, and saw a flash of light golden fur moving about in the shadows. No, none of this was possible. "No, Adderstripe. I just had a really, really bizarre dream the other night. That's all."

"You could tell me about it."

"No. I'm good."

Adderstripe blinked slowly, his eyes glowing with curiosity and suspicion, but after a moment, his face lit up with a polite parting smile and he took his mouse back to the medicine den. Icepaw watched him disappear. Adderstripe had always been an especially considerate and respectful tom, never too insistent towards cats that wanted to keep their secrets. Icepaw would have loved to establish a closer friendship with the light brown tabby, but something else always held him back, and he never knew if that something had a name or if it came from deep inside. Icepaw felt a slight pull at his heart whenever he looked toward the medicine den or watched either Adderstripe or Dawnpaw in action. He remembered the wondrous account of StarClan, or the misery of trudging through his warrior training, or the proud faces of his older siblings when he watched them being made warriors from just beyond the nursery. And just as softly as his heart would tug, it would then push back, cornering him in an enclosure of loneliness.

It was this same night that Icepaw neglected to take Adderstripe's poppy seeds, but was so overcome with exhaustion anyway, that it took him no time to fall asleep and find himself back in that dreadful darkness. In spite of knowing that she wouldn't come, he called his mother's name again at the astronomical chance that StarClan really was glimmering somewhere in the unmeasurable distance. His voice cracked with desperation and kit-like fear. Why wouldn't she come? Why couldn't she hear him?

At some point, after it felt like hours had gone by, and he had spent all the power in his lungs to wail brokenly into the nothingness, Icepaw grew angry, a lump of intense warmth settling in his belly. His ears were hot and his tail lashed. Was he not a cat of ThunderClan? Did he not believe in StarClan despite all they had taken away from him? And yet, they had the negligence, or the audacity to let him scream at no one and look at nothing and feel everything but safe and happy? His blue eyes burned with tears. He choked on his despair and waited for the return.

Her voice came like the blow of a tumbling stone, "You've come back."

There was not the least ring of surprise in her words, but there was fascination. His whole body tensed and he held his breath in preparation for her appearance. She was nowhere to be seen, but her voice sounded as though it spoken directly into his left ear.

"Why are you here?"

"I thought here was nothing," he whispered shakily

"I am nothing." She spoke very slowly, and could hear her voice drifting further away and then back closer to him. "Nothing, nothing."

"How is it that I hear you then?" he asked.

"Uncertain. I search for no one." She was there, in front of him, now a rather great distance away, but he still heard her as if she was right next to him. "You must look for me. Why do you look for me? No one looks for me. No one knows me."

Whatever fire of wrath had been within him moments before was gone now, replaced by the cold of dismay. Icepaw's head pounded with puzzlement and illness. "I just don't understand. If you're not here, if this really is all just nothing, how do you feel so...so…" Her eyes narrowed at him. "Real?"

"I am not real," she murmured darkly. "I was real."

Icepaw's ears pricked. "You were?"

"You should leave."

"Who were you? What happened?"

"You should leave."

"No!" he hissed. "I mean...I don't want to be here, but...you need to tell me what you are, what you used to be. I don't understand why I come here. Why I find myself supposedly amongst nothing. I know it's not about StarClan, but please, I want to know something."

Her white eyes glowered at him, narrowed at the mention of StarClan. "I want to know…" At first it sounded as though she was merely echoing his own words, as they came to him in the exact desperate tone in which he spoke them, but then her voice quieted.

Icepaw blinked at her, and tried to step closer, but his paws wouldn't move. They were frozen beneath him, and he didn't really know why. "You make me feel so hopeless," he whispered gently. "More hopeless than I feel when I am home. I...I've lost everything. Is this what that looks like in my head? Is this how loneliness appears when I remove it from my soul and stare into it? Nothing but a constant, mysterious reminder of how much I don't understand anything…"

He noticed her right in front of him. Her bright, stingingly cold white eyes were wide, looking into his directly, for what felt like the very first time since he had seen them. He strangely didn't feel their frigidity hardening his bones and biting his nerves like a million crystals of ice; rather, his blood warmed comfortably. His whole body relaxed. He held her stare bravely.

"You don't understand anything," she told him, her rough voice now smooth and cunning, as he imagined a snake would talk if it could say anything. "And yet...you know you do not."

"Do you know anything?" he asked her breathlessly.

"I know everything," she whispered, "But I cannot think it. It is the thinking that hurts. It is the knowing."

Icepaw watched as she turned away from him. A new light surrounded her, though it wasn't quite visible. It was an idea, an awareness that rippled through her fur as her body curved away from his, and passed along the waves her tail made as it lifted above his head. The jarring teleportation stopped, and her paws now carried her, and Icepaw could feel the stirring of conscious deliberation in the empty vacuum around them. He studied the way she staggered along an invisible path, an unusual mass that disregarded principle telling them they didn't belong here. Nothing belonged here. It was in the nothing that he could see everything that he never could when a breathing, bleeding world occupied space and time.

Her head wasn't totally turned from him. He could see the tiny flash of white at the corner of her face, and he had no way of knowing if she was looking back at him through that corner. Icepaw didn't know if it was a challenge, or if it was a warning, or if it was anything at all. She adopted a vulnerability, ironically as guard that now followed her every clumsy paw step. He could sense the movement of her spirit, trembling, pulsing, churning with intricacy and mystery. She continued to walk away from him.

Icepaw leaped forward, and he exclaimed, "I trust you."

She paused.

"And like I don't understand everything else," he went on, "I don't understand why. You are so bizarre, and dark, and frightening. And empty." He added the last word with caution, consciously infusing his tone with warmth and fascination. She stood completely still as though trying to melt away into the darkness. "You used to be someone. You've admitted it yourself. You know what this place is, and I think that deep down you know why I'm here. If it's you that I am searching for," he murmured, finding himself flanking her, "show me why."

The spirit had her head positioned so that it was tilted down, and slightly towards him. All of the sudden, he realized that he could hear her breathing, soft and steady, and wondered is she even really had to where they were.

Her voice came delicately, the roughness gone. "You are asking me to help you?" It was as though, for the first time since they met, she was finally seeing and speaking with clarity. Her cold white eyes were still as cold and as white as they had always been, but the rest of her face had seemed to shift. A certain weight had been lifted, a shadow removed, and he saw the essence of fondness, just the mere potential of it, twitching at the ends of her whiskers.

Icepaw nodded. "I am. If I am here, then I am here for a reason, and I cannot seek it out by myself." He exhaled when she finally turned towards him completely, broken from the frozen stance she had assumed many moments ago. "I trust you to help me."

There was a flash of recognition across her face, that traveled in the blink of an eye from the tip of her nose to the tops of her ears, and in its place was an expression of hesitation and disgust. "You should not," she growled.

"And why is that?" he asked. He moved with her as she attempted to slip right past him. Her fur was bristling aggressively, tail lashing with fear.

"You should go," she muttered.

He refused, "How could I? Why don't you-" he broke off with a started yelp as she vanished from his side and reappeared several fox lengths away, the faded light of a hardly visible aura, suddenly luminous as though it brightened with her anger and alarm.

"Go!" He gasped as she rose up in front of him, a horrifying distorted image as the very edges of his vision were yanked back beyond his perception of them. She seemed to surround him at every angle, and with a flash of bright red light, and the wail of a world coming to a screeching halt, the images burst into sudden blackness.

Icepaw woke to a more familiar darkness, that of a cold, moonless leafbare night.