NB: This book, Firewalker, is the second in the Darkfighters trilogy. It occurs after the events of Skychasers, formally Falling Snow. You do not need to read Skychasers to understand the story here, but you may be interested in doing so anyway.
The other point; Twilightkit, the main character, has a mental condition that is very similar to paediatric schizophrenia. I have no personal experience with this disorder, so most of my information here comes from books and the Internet. If you see anything here that you know doesn't happen to schizophrenics, I would take it as a great favour if you would PM me so I can change it.

Moon of the Growing Frost, 6th Sun

She was clinging to the side of an icy slope.
Too high, too high, the wind laughed in her ears. You'll fall! You're going to fall and die!
She struggled, desperately sinking in her claws through the crust of ice. But there was nothing underneath for her to hold onto. She slid several cat-lengths down, and unwittingly the world beneath her paws drew her eyes.
A wave of dizziness and nausea assaulted her. The moors were so far away that they were almost invisible.
Too high! Get ready to fall!

A savage blast of wind raked its talons across her back, trying to dislodge her from the slope. She shrieked and clawed savagely at the slope. No use. She slipped further and her hind paws fell out into empty space.
Silly kit, the wind laughed. You climbed too high. You'll never survive the fall.
Instead of fear, anger flooded her veins, and Twilightkit suddenly let go.
The world flashed; sky, earth, sky, earth, sky, earth, earth, earth…
A heartbeat before her face crushed into the ground, Twilightkit woke up.

Her paws were slippery with sweat, and her pulse raced. The cool night air flowed through the mouth of the nursery den, and the moonlight shimmered. It spun shadows from the swaying leaves of the gorse bushes that sheltered her, and for a few moments she watched darkness dance across the silver walls.
Her eyes drifted across her sleeping nursery-mates; they breathed softly and deeply, lost in dreams. Their shadows, though, were never still, and they chased each other around the nursery, batting at invisible moss balls, laughing at jokes she couldn't hear.
The wind played with her ears. This wind was not the cruel, mocking blast of her dreams; it was gentle and kind. Look, Twilightkit, it said. By the entrance.

Twilightkit looked. A new shape formed by the mouth of the nursery den, and loped silently to her side.
She recognized it; it was the hare she'd eaten the previous sun. Hares were very hard to catch, as they were cunning and would often disguise their scent and lay false trails to fool hunters. Only the best LightningClan warriors could catch hares, and even then it was usually more a matter of luck than skill.
The hare was different, now, though. Instead of plain brown its fur swirled with beautiful colours of red and green, and its eyes were two shiny black stars in its head. Small white wings grew from its shoulders, and two dark growths sprouted from its head. The hare had a shadow, of course, daintily stepping by its side, and this shadow brushed its dark fur against her flank before joining the other shadows in their game.

"I had a dream," Twilightkit said quietly, so as not to disturb her nestmates.
"Things pass," came the hare's enigmatic reply.
"I was somewhere really high up, and the wind was laughing at me. I didn't want to die because it pushed me, so I let go. So the wind wouldn't win."
You cannot fight the wind, admonished the breeze gently.
The hare twitched his ears. "Life is not a game. Death is always a loss, whether you die due to your own actions or those of others."
"Will I ever stop dreaming of dying?"
"When you die—or perhaps when you start to live. I don't know." It pushed itself into her nest of moss and heather, curling up by her side. Its shadow looked up, briefly, before trotting over to lie next to its master.
Strangely comforted by this, Twilightkit settled down to her belly and closed her eyes. This time, she did not dream at all.

Sunlight blazed through the walls of the nursery, burning her eyelids. Twilightkit winced as she stumbled to her paws. The hare neatly danced around her, avoiding her clumsy steps.
The brown tabby she-kit checked the remaining inhabitants. Dreamcloud was still deeply asleep, her tail resting gently across her heavily swollen belly. Her kits were due any day now, although the name of her mate remained a mystery. The only other cat in the den was her own foster-brother, the sleek-pelted Valiantkit, who slept much more lightly than the pregnant queen. Briefly Twilightkit considered waking him, but he was always a grump in the morning and would not thank her. She stepped carefully over their oblivious forms and emerged into the sunlight.
The sky was beautiful, for a leaf-bare day. It was as blue and spare as Silvertail's eyes, and just as Twilightkit had the thought she saw the queen detach herself from the throng at the fresh-kill pile. She gave her foster-kit a brief nod by way of greeting, and Twilightkit knew, with a twinge of sadness, that although Silvertail had grown to tolerate her, she would never truly be welcome in her den.

"Things pass," repeated the hare, softly.
Twilightkit's belly informed her of more important tasks than philosophizing with an impatient growl. She joined the small queue at the fresh-kill pile. Ordinarily a warrior would quickly throw a piece of fresh-kill her way as soon as he or she noticed her, but the proud ginger deputy, Burningfur, was nearby—and she would go out of her way to make Twilightkit suffer.
"Hello, small one," said Burningfur in her deep meow. "How are we today?"
Twilightkit could never understand how Burningfur always managed to turn what would be from any other cat's mouth a friendly greeting into an insult. It was something to do with her mocking tone.
She stepped up to the deputy boldly. "Do you want me to lie on my back so you can count my toes? I don't have all my teeth yet, I'm afraid. Better tell Rapidstar—that might be a sign of weakness."

Burningfur's eyes narrowed. "You are as impudent as ever, I see. A shame. I was hoping that overnight you might have gained some self-abnegation."
"You're doing it wrong, you know."
"Doing what?"
"Using big words to annoy me. Silvertail tries it all the time."
"Oh, yes," said Burningfur. "How is your foster mother? I do hope you don't act with your usual arrogance towards her, after her great kindness in taking you in."
"She's just fine. Actually, though, it's Rapidstar's fault I'm still around to piss you off. The only thing Silvertail did was lie on her back and get extra food. So I really don't get the whole owing business. Seems to me more like Silvertail's the one who should be owing me." Twilightkit stepped forwards to pick up a mouse from the pile, only to find Burningfur's tail barring her way. "What now?" she snapped.

"When your deputy is speaking, you do not leave until she gives you permission."
"Ah. Narrating our lives in the third person, are we? Well, Twilightkit told Burningfur that she's very hungry and not really in the mood for a lecture, so she'd like to eat now. She can eat and hear at the same time, though, if Burningfur's especially desperate for a listener."
The ginger she-cat bared her teeth ever-so-slightly, but her voice remained bland. "Twilightkit, what do you think will happen when you grow up?"
"I'll get bigger?"
"No, I mean socially. By the time you'll be almost ready to become a warrior—assuming there'll be a warrior willing to take you as an apprentice, which I'm not entirely sure about—who, exactly, do you think will be in charge?"

"Enlighten me."
"It will be me, Twilightkit. I'll be leading LightningClan then. Rapidstar is old, and on his sixth life. When you're a warrior, you can't disobey my orders. If I order you to stay in camp for the rest of your life, you'll have to do it. So…perhaps a little more respect would be in order."
"I'll show you respect when you've earned it," spat Twilightkit.
Burningfur opened her mouth to say something else, but a new voice interrupted her.
"Hey, Burningfur! I bet you're psyched about Dreamcloud's new kits, huh?"
It was Longkit, two moons older than Twilightkit and the son of two highly respected warriors within the Clan. Twilightkit might be fair game, but it was somewhat harder to bully Longkit and get away with it. He also knew her sore spots as well as Twilightkit did; everyone knew how desperate Burningfur was for kits of her own.

Faced by a two-pronged assault, the only option available was retreat. Snorting like an irritated badger, the deputy stalked away, neck fur bristling.
Longkit slid into place beside Twilightkit. "You're welcome," he said, cheerfully.
"Thank you, but I could have managed."
"Oh, of course you could have, but Burningfur seemed extra bitchy today, so I thought you could use the back-up. What was all that nonsense about her being Clan leader and crushing your future, anyway?"
"Don't know. Ambitious little rat-face—every time I think I know how bad she is, she goes off and surprises me."
Longkit chuckled. "She isn't that bad. You just always manage to wind her up, that's all."
"Hey, it takes two to start a fight."

"That's true," Longkit said, and pulled a rabbit from the pile. "Want to share?"
It reminded Twilightkit of the beginning of their friendship. Being much older (in kit terms) than she was, they'd had very little interaction previously. One day, though, it had been time for Twilightkit to try her first solid food. She'd sauntered over to the fresh-kill pile and picked up a vole, only to have it being stolen from her jaws.
Longkit had swallowed the vole in about four gulps. "Too slow, mutant rogue spawn," he'd said.
She'd hit him. Hard. "Shut your stupid face, you thieving piece of rabbit droppings!"
He'd stared at her as though she'd grown another head, more shocked by her profanity than her blow. Then he'd begun to laugh, hard, before throwing another mouse to her.

Naturally, they'd been best friends ever since. But they were very different. Longkit was extraordinarily tall for his age; not large, exactly, but long-legged and slender-framed. He could stand nose -to-nose with a cat twice his age. He was the picture of his father, Greyfire, but he had his mother Fernleaf's clever yellow eyes. He'd admitted to Twilightkit that sometimes he felt smothered by the weight of his Clan's expectations for him. He was a nephew of Rapidstar through his father and distantly related to Moonpelt, the medicine cat, by his mother's stock. He felt freer with Twilightkit, whom nobody had any expectations of other than she wouldn't live to see newleaf.
Twilightkit looked for his shadow. It was always hardest to find them in the morning, when they were weakest, but Longkit's shadow had more power than most. There—just faintly she could make out the fine shape of its ears and head. The shadow winked at her.

The world flickered suddenly and began to glitter; Twilightkit twisted her neck in several directions to try and shake the worst of it off. The hare was nowhere to be seen, but its shadow perched in front of her, and as the sparkles danced across her eyes, she had the strangest sensation that it was trying to say something. That was not possible. Shadows did not speak.
Abruptly, interrupting Longkit—without knowing he was even talking—she climbed to her paws and walked away, her head swirling with colours. The wind plucked at her fretfully, but she climbed back into the nursery and the reassuring darkness. The shadow of the gorse den welcomed her, brushing one edge over her neck. Twilightkit rolled in her nest, back and forth, over and under, without really knowing why.
Something to do, she mused.

She felt the sensation that she always did when her 'moods', as Silvertail had described them, came upon her. In this, Twilightkit was actually grateful to the silver queen and her young son. If the Clan was aware of Twilightkit's periods of strangeness, they would think she was possessed by demons. They might even kill her themselves. But Silvertail had never told anyone, not even her mate, and she had sworn Valiantkit to silence. It was the only evidence that Twilightkit had that Silvertail cared about her. Valiantkit had the same proud aloofness of his mother, and few friends among the kits, so he found no difficulty in keeping her secret. In fact, as Twilightkit continued to convulse, she felt him place his paw gently on her neck.
The sensation strengthened. Twilightkit felt as though her life was merely the dream of someone else, and she wondered vaguely if they were enjoying it. Colour and shadows flashed across her eyes.

She'd known that she was different from other kits very early on. Most kits were able to speak within their first two weeks, but Twilightkit had remained mute until she was a month old. She could now speak as well (and better than some) as any kit in her Clan, but she still clearly had the memory of rocking back and forth in this very same nest, trying to force her meow into proper words.
And the shadows. She'd never spoken of them. And no-one had ever mentioned them to her.
The colours stopped flashing, and she lay in her nest quietly. The feeling of powerlessness faded, and Valiantkit licked her ear gently and left her alone, padding outside.
"You okay, Twilightkit?" mumbled Dreamcloud sleepily. "Are you sick?"
"StarClan knows," whispered Twilightkit, but Dreamcloud did not reply.