A stillness came over Frostpaw as she realized what she had done. Her breathe caught in her throat. Unable to hold the feelings in any longer, she turned away and began crashing away from Fourtrees. She tried to bury her thoughts in the spasmodic rhythm of her paws beating the earth, but an image of Shadefur lying dead scorched itself in her mind. She didn't know where she was running, just that she was running. Away from her fallen mentor, away from her family back at camp, away from everyone back at camp, running from the very world she knew.
Towards a destiny that she never asked for.
Sheer emotion drove her on. Her paws ate up the ground beneath her, everything rushing by her in a blurry mess. Just like heart beat like a caged beast, and her muscles screamed for her to stop. Shadefur is dead. He's dead and it's your fault.
Her body gave way and she fell to the ground. Tendrils of blackness curled around her vision. Frostpaw closed her eyes.
…
There was a weight on her chest.
"Aah!" A sudden sharp pain caused Frostpaw to snap awake, startling the scrawny rat that had been biting her tail. It darted behind a filthy black tower.
Her was head thumping its own beat, and her body ached. Groaning, she pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around. The ground beneath her was hard and solid, and she was surrounded by red trees wound tightly together. The black towers were everywhere, and her nose wrinkled with an overwhelming stench in the air.
She was in Twolegplace.
Glancing behind her, she saw the familiar forest that she had lived in her whole life. She rubbed her head, trying to remember what had happened, and then she noticed that her paw pads were ragged and torn. There was blood trailing into the forest.
"No," she whispered. She remembered. The mass murder, Shadefur's death, her insane dash. Her legs shook and she lay down.
She remained still as the sun slowly peeked above the horizon, nearing dawn. The prophecy never explained where to look for the cure. How was she supposed to find it? There was no hope. The disease was spreading at that very moment; it wouldn't be long before everyone succumbed to it.
No hope.
A salty, unpleasant smell dispatched itself from the other scents. She looked down at her paws and saw a fish the size of her tail tip. It reeked, and it was fish, but the sight of it caused her stomach to rumble loudly. She ate it quickly, the bones cracking in her teeth. It was a rock in her throat, and she found herself wondering how RiverClan could stand it.
She didn't question how the fish got there. Her hunger had awakened, and she was craving more. Frostpaw finally stood up. Her sore muscles remembered their journey, but her stomach didn't care. She followed her nose, trying to distinguish anything edible. Was there live prey in Twolegplace? The forest behind her hovered at the edge of her vision like a ghost. She couldn't face it; she had left that life now.
She had a cure to find.
Her nose told her that the black towers contained food. She tried scrambling to the top of one, but the sides were too slippery and she tumbled back down with a thump. As she attempted the feat a second time, a rasping voice rang out.
"You hungry, darling?" A shaggy red she-cat with thick fur and piercing amber eyes approached her. Her fur was patchy and adorned with scars.
Frostpaw hesitated, not sure how she wanted her to respond. "Erm, yes?" She ducked her head.
The red cat chuckled. "You look new here, dear," she said, her raspy voice now caked with honey. Then her eyes narrowed. "This is my alley. Now scram."
Frostpaw knew better than to make her wait. She darted around the cat and hovered at the edge of the "alley". In front of her Twoleg dens and Thunderpaths seemed to stretch on endlessly. She glanced back. The red cat stood watching her.
"As for being hungry," she called after her. "You better get used to it."
…
Frostpaw scurried out of the alley. The rising sun cast its light upon the waking world. A bird sang from a tall thin tree, its melody tormenting her. It was too high to reach, and she was never good at hunting anyway.
She ran underneath away from the bird and into the shadowed safety of a bush, dodging Twolegs as she hurried by. The enclosed space was felt comforting to her.
"Okay," she breathed. She had some things to figure out. Under her breath, Frostpaw recited the prophecy to herself in the pieces in which she had memorized it.
"Wave of darkness…seize the Clans and turn them against each other. There will be slaughter, there will be rage, there will be grief, there will be insanity. This is the Plague."
She stopped. She had seen slaughter, rage, grief, and insanity with her own eyes and heart. Frostpaw shuddered, trying not to bring up memories, but she couldn't help it. Was it really not that long ago that she had seen her trusted Clan deputy mercilessly slay all in her path? The blood, the cries of pain and grief...it was horrifying.
Looking down, she saw that her claws were dug firmly into the dirt. She carefully unsheathed her claws, shaking. It was good that she had given him the deathberries. Better a quiet death than a life of cold-blooded slaughter. It was okay. He wanted that quiet death. It didn't matter, but still, there was that knowledge at the edge her conscious, buzzing like a bothersome fly, reminding her constantly that...
She had killed him.
Frostpaw moved on quickly. "Beyond the territories of the Clans, hidden within the unlikeliest of places, lays a single herb…It is pure and unique, and knows its destiny…The Thundering Cat of Medicine must find it before the Plague consumes the Clans."
"Pure and unique, and knows its destiny," she repeated, trying to grasp the meaning of the words. How could an herb know its own destiny? She shook her head in confusion.
But it was definitely beyond the Clans, so there was no going back now. And in the unlikeliest of places? How was she supposed to find this thing?
Frostpaw snorted in frustration and crawled out from under the bush. She had to keep moving forward.
…
That night, she lay cold and starving in another alley, having found nothing but a scrap of dirty meat on the ground. Her breath billowed out in clouds underneath her nose, and her stomach was growling with such intensity that it seemed to have a life of its own.
She was so emerged in her own thoughts that it took a long time for the smell to reach her nose. Another fish lay at her paws.
It tasted even better than the first.
Sorry about how short this chapter is. I've been trying to get back into updating more often, so bear with me!