Thank you to gd and brokenpretzels for reviewing!
Chapter One
The white flakes fluttered in the breeze, twirling and dancing in the air before drifting to the ground.
"What is it?" the apprentice, Lightningpaw, asked, staring at the growing piles of white powder on the hard, stone-like ground.
"Snow." Ravenwing said, purring in amusement at the awed way she stared at the flakes. "It falls every leaf-bare."
"Where does it come from though?" she wondered, shivering as another snowflake landed on her nose.
"The same place as rain, I suppose. Up in the sky where Starclan is."
Starclan. The word sent an entirely different kind of shiver up her spine. She had heard many stories of the warrior ancestors that once guided the four clans and (supposedly) now watched over the small remainder of what was left of them.
"But I thought Starclan was only there at night!" Lightningpaw protested, shaking her ginger pelt to clear off the icy frost that had begun to form.
"Starclan is always there." Her mentor said patiently. "We just can't see them during the day."
"But how do you know?"
"Starclan is always watching over us."
"But how can you be sure?"
Ravenwing sighed and gave her a disapproving look, the same that he always used when she was asking too many questions.
"Sorry." Lightningpaw sighed. "It's all just so confusing!"
The world had seemed so simple when its boundaries didn't extend beyond the boundaries of the camp. She had only been an apprentice for five sunrises, and already it seemed as if the world were endless, filled with secrets and questions with no answers.
"You'll get the hang of it." Ravenwing promised. "Now, tell me what you can smell."
Lightningpaw screwed up her face in concentration and inhaled the brisk air. It was hard to smell anything over the rancid stench of monsters that clung to Twoleg place, but she didn't tell Ravenwing that. She didn't want to disappoint her mentor.
"I smell rats. And something else…" she wrinkled her nose at the strange scent.
"That would be a dog. But don't worry, those are all over the place; a lot of twolegs keep them in their nests, and the scent isn't fresh."
The fur on Lightningpaw's neck rose, despite Ravenwing's reassurance. She had heard stories from some of the warriors about a dog pack that had gotten loose in one of the clan territories once. She had had nightmares for almost an entire moon filled with snarling beasts.
"Anything else?" Ravenwing asked, oblivious to her discomfort.
Lightningpaw concentrated hard, parting her jaws and inhaling the scents around her. There was nothing really, the same stinking twoleg scents, the smell of smoke in the very distance, nothing unusual… A sudden gust of icy wind brought with it an unfamiliar scent. Lightningpaw froze, her eyes narrowing. Ravenwing visibly stiffened by her side.
"What's that?" Lightningpaw asked.
"Bloodclan." Ravenwing breathed.
The apprentice's eyes widened. Bloodclan was a legend of sorts in the nursery. The clan of rouges that had all but destroyed the original four. Scourge, the evil cat who had killed four clan leaders in one battle. The clan that had forced them into a scarce life in Twolegplace.
"Bloodclan." Lightningpaw growled, feeling the hatred that knotted in her stomach every time the evil clan was brought to mind. She knew it seemed almost irrational; technically she wasn't even clan born. She had never known any of the cats who had died in the battle, apart from stories; she had never even seen the original territories.
But she had seen the after affects on her clanmates, the regret and sorrow in their eyes, and that was enough.
"It's not fresh." Ravenwing mewed softly, misinterpreting her change in mood. "It must have just carried over from the moor. Nothing to worry about."
"Of course not." Lightningpaw said indignantly. She didn't want her mentor to think that she was frightened kit. Warriors weren't supposed to be afraid of their enemies. Especially when their enemies didn't even know of their existence.
The rivalry between Lionclan (that was what they called themselves, though Lightningpaw had heard Cloudtail and Ashwhisker many times commenting that technically they wouldn't qualify as a real clan) and Bloodclan was a complicated one, as Sandstorm, her foster mother had explained on one occasion. Lionclan hated Bloodclan; it was sort of part of their purpose for existing in the first place. The small resisting clan that was Lionclan was made up of the few survivors of the great war between Bloodclan and the original four forest clans that had united as one in a brave fight to protect their home. They had failed, and the survivors had either joined Bloodclan or fled to Twoleg place where, under the guidance of Ravenwing (Ravenpaw then) they learned to adapt to surviving among the hard stone and rancid stench of twolegs and their monsters.
At first, prey had been scarce, hardly ever found outside of the old barn on the edge of their territory, but as the seasons progressed, the clan learned to survive as one, hunting where they could and keeping to the shadows.
Meanwhile, Bloodclan ruled the forest, enjoying the prey and territory that had supported the original clans for generations. As far as any of the Lionclan knew, Bloodclan had no idea of their existence, and had never seemed concerned enough to hunt down the small group of survivors that had fled the battle so many seasons ago.
Lionclan was, in essence an invisible clan. A clan that was hardly even a true clan.
"We should go." Ravenwing mewed suddenly, bringing Lightningpaw out of her thoughts. "It's getting late."
"Right." Lightningpaw said. For the first time she noticed that the sky was beginning to grow dark. A brief stab of disappointment flashed through her chest, but it disappeared as another gust of wind made her shiver. She had had enough cold for one day. "Should we go ahead and catch something on the way back?"
"No." Ravenwing shook his head. "I doubt that we'll find anything in this weather, and there is hardly anything to be caught on a nice day anyway. Besides, I think that Brackenstar will be sending a hunting patrol out to the barn tonight." Hunting patrols were more often sent out at night when there were less twolegs and monsters around.
Lightningpaw nodded and followed her mentor back toward home, staring down at the bold tracks her paws left in the freshly fallen snow. They dodged across thunderpaths, keeping low and moving fast. They skirted twoleg nests and sprinted through winding paths, the rancid smells and roaring sounds of monsters never far behind them.
As they rounded the last bend and the camp came into view, she paused imagining the ever distant moor land that seemed to stretch on forever. Beyond it, she knew was the forest, and the old territories. The former home of all the warriors of Starclan, and most of the warriors of what was now Lionclan. She turned and scrutinized the makeshift camp in front of her, an ancient abandoned twoleg nest that stood a little farther from all the others. The walls of the thing were beginning to crumble, and looked as if a strong wind would blow them right over. The roof was patched with holes. The place creaked at night, and stank of mold, but at least it kept the cold out and sheltered them from the weather and any wondering twolegs.
"What took you so long?" a voice demanded before Lightningpaw had even gotten three steps past the entrance.
Lightningpaw scowled mockingly and looked up at the young tom who had spoken, narrowing her eyes skeptically when she caught sight of the precarious way he was perched one of the high, oddly shaped wooden beam that spread from one end of the nest to the other.
"I was out patrolling with Ravenwing." She told him. "It started to snow."
"Snow?" the tom asked, cocking his head to the side in a comical way. "Oh, so that's the white stuff falling from the sky. I tried asking Russetfur about it while I was training, but she only glared at me and told me to 'focus more on battle moves and less on the weather.'"
Lightningpaw purred. "That sounds like Russetfur alright. Hey, what are you doing up there? Are you hoping that you'll sprout wings and fly?"
The tom got a thoughtful look on his face. "Well, if I did, then Brackenstar would have to change my name from Emberpaw to Flyingpaw!"
Lightningpaw rolled her eyes. "He wouldn't change your entire name mouse-brain! He'd just give you a weird warrior name."
"Like what? Emberflight? Emberbird? Emberfeather?"
"Embersky, Emberwing, Emberfall," Ligthningpaw chimed in.
"Emberfall?" Emberpaw gave her an odd look.
"You can try all you want to fly mouse-brain, but that doesn't mean you will actually succeed. The most you'll accomplish is falling and breaking your neck."
"Oh, will you two be quiet?" Cloudtail growled from somewhere close by. "Some of us have the dawn patrol and would like to get some sleep."
"Sorry," the two apprentices muttered, though neither really meant it. Sighing in exasperation, Lightningpaw carefully made the climb up next to Emberpaw.
"There, happy? Now, besides trying to fly, why are you up here?"
"Are you kidding?" Emberpaw gave her a surprised look. "You can see the entire camp from up here!"
"Yeah, if you don't fall and break your neck on the way up." Lightningpaw chastised him, though, she had to admit, he was right. You could see the entire camp.
Far below them she spotted the fresh kill pile, pitifully small with only a thrush and a skinny rat. It was a good thing that there were still plenty of mice around in the barn because they sure weren't getting prey from elsewhere. Off in the corner was the nursery, lined with hay and feathers. Across from it was the medicine cat's den, nothing more than two small nests in the opposite corner with a few small bundles of herbs stacked next to them. Then there was the warriors' den, a few scattered nests built under a small wooden platformmthat was suspenede by four rotting legs. The apprentices den was a large creavase in one of the rotting walls. And that left Brackenstar's den, a solitary nest separated from the rest of the nest by the remains of a crumbling sort of barrier that at one time might have dived the place into several large dens. In the middle of it all was the tallpile, a small pile of rubble from the decaying nest that Brackenstar stood on when he addressed the clan.
Lightningpaw knew from Sandstorm's stories that it was a poor imitation of a real camp (it was in a twoleg nest for Starclan's sake!) But it was all that they had to work with.
"What do you think the real camp was like?" Emberpaw asked suddenly, as if reading her mind.
"Which real camp? Riverclan, Shadowclan, Windclan, or Thunderclan?"
"Thunderclan of course. That's where my parents were born."
Lightningpaw nodded thoughtfully. "I don't know. I guess bigger, and better supplied. More cats and actual dens instead of just nests on the ground. Why don't you ask your dad?"
Emberpaw stiffened. "Oh, well, that's alright, it wasn't really a serious question."
Lightningpaw knew better though. She had grown up in the nursery with Emberpaw; his mother, Sandstorm had suckled her after she had been brought to the clan. The two had been best friends from the start, and she could read his emotions like Cinderpelt could read omens.
"Why don't you want to ask him?" she asked. "Ravenwing hardly ever gets mad; he won't yowl at you for asking questions like Russetfur does. I should know; I have him for a mentor."
Emberpaw shook his head. "It's nothing, just drop it."
Lightningpaw gave him a hard look, but didn't pursue the subject. Whatever was going on between Emberpaw and his father wasn't her business.
"Look!" she said suddenly, noticing a small, even hole in the top of the nest at their head level. The sky had now grown completely dark. "You can see Silverpelt from here!"
Emberpaw followed her gaze. "You can sort of see the moor too. It looks so big!"
Lightningpaw stared longingly at the small patch of land stretched out at the very top of the horizon, barely visible past all of the nests and confusing structures of Twolegplace. "I wonder what it was like for Windclan, living out in the open like that."
"Ugh, I wouldn't want to live like that! How would they stalk prey in the open?"
"They didn't stalk prey mouse-brain; they chased it down. And I think it would be nice to live on the moor. You can always see the stars there. All of the stars; Cinderpelt says that we can only see a small few from here in Twolegplace for some reason. There are many, many more out there."
Emberpaw snorted. "You can have the moor. I'd rather live under the trees any day."
"That's good," Lightningpaw teased, "because of that black pelt of yours, you'd be easily spotted in the open."
Emberpaw huffed indignantly. "Whatever. I'm going to bed, I have dawn patrol in the morning too, and I don't want to get scolded by Russetfur for being slow because I'm exhausted."
"Good night." Lightningpaw mewed. "Just make sure that you don't fall on your way down; I don't want to have to explain to Russetfur that her apprentice got himself killed while trying to fly."
Emberpaw shot her a sour look. "Hey! I made it up here didn't I? I can find my way safely back down." And with that he turned and walked away, his dark pelt barely visible in the half-light.
Lightingpaw rolled her eyes and turned to stare back out at sky.
Can you hear me Starclan? She asked mentally. Are you really there?If there was a response of any kind, Lightningpaw sure didn't notice it. That was okay though; sometimes you didn't need a response to know that someone was listening.
Countless stars twinkled back at her, countless warriors of Starclan, in addition to the many others that Cinderpelt claimed they couldn't see. How could that be possible? How was there room for them all up there? How could you tell which one was which?
She had spent many nights before, as a kit, imagining her father up there in the sky, his own star among countless others. Her father hadn't been a warrior for long, only two moons or so. He had joined Lionclan's ranks after his mate, Lightningpaw's mother, had died, and he was looking for help, looking for anyone that could look after the young kits he had been left with. He had brought Lightningpaw and her brother, Sage, to the abandoned nest in an effort to shelter them when he met the clan cats, who took all three of them in. Sandstorm and Tawnypelt (who had just recently kitted themselves) agreed to suckle her and her brother and their father began training. Sage died of illness shortly after they arrived, and her father was killed by a monster.
Lightningpaw couldn't remember either of them very well, so she didn't miss them much, but every now and then, when thoughts of Starclan crossed her mind, she couldn't help but wonder. Had they made it? Were they in Starclan? Could they see her now, a full fledge apprentice? And what of her mother? Where was she since she was not a clan cat?
The thoughts in Lightningpaw's head began to blur together as weariness began to close in. Her eyes began to droop shut, harder and harder to force open each time. One last glimpse of the moor penetrated her mind. The moor, Windclan's old territory. Beyond it, the other clan's old territories.
A light breeze brushed her fur, carrying with it the awful scent from before. The old territories were no more; the original clans were dead. All that the moor and the forests stood for now was a sign of Bloodclan's power, a memory of Scourge did.
Her last conscious thought before falling asleep was that, if Starclan was real why did they let horrible things happen?
Please let me know what you think. Since I already have several stories that I'm writing I won't continue this unless people like.
