Woohoo, it's time for another chapter!
Thank you for 42 reviews!
Hissing Mist: He's not! But Hawkpaw hasn't looked at him enough to tell, and she's just guessing that he is (which is why she doesn't want to and just avoids everyone). Umm... it's Cinderpelt! It actually says so, LOL. And no, you'll see in this chapter there was nothing she could've done differently.
Flamewing: Aww, thank you so much! Here's your update :D
Sapphire-Glow: Thank you! Yeah, it is, you'll see :) but I'm glad too. I decided one of them needed to come back in these chapters to help her out, and the one who isn't in this chapter will show up soon enough again anyway. And, well... catching a break wouldn't make it too interesting of a story, though she gets somewhere close, sometime, eventually, I think...
LilacArtist: Thank you so much!
By the way, we get a snippet of a new POV for the first time at the end of this chapter, though it's super brief! Later on, there'll be full chapters from that POV, but for now, Hawkpaw's the focus, sort of. I hope you enjoy!
I don't own Warriors.
CHAPTER 7: THORNS
She should have stopped at the medicine den on her way out to inform Leopardwish and help her out with whatever condition Stormwhisker was in, but she didn't.
She should have turned when Oakpaw called after her, wide-eyed as ever, or at the very least, told some cat where she was going, but she didn't. How could she, when she herself didn't know?
She should have, most of all, watched where she was placing her paws instead of charging blindly through the undergrowth, because she stepped on a sizeable thorn and couldn't twist her small body enough to pull it out. Some medicine cat she was, if she couldn't pull out a simple thorn.
Of course, she didn't have the slightest intention of going back to camp. No, she had limped ahead, still as careless as before, paying no heed to the sharp jabs in her dark-furred paw that amplified with every step. It was nothing compared to what she had done. Compared to whom she had failed, and how painful it must have been to be too weak to struggle for another breath.
Now, as she sat by the edge of the lake beneath the last gleam of evenfall, she wondered what it must have been like to stop breathing.
She had given the little tortoiseshell hope when the sac had first slipped out of her mother, alive and gasping. Hope. Something the she-kit must have clung to when she had been dropped by her littermates, slick but not slick enough, a few licks short of successfully adhering to life.
She had given the new queen hope when she had successfully delivered the powerful tom on her own, despite the fact that he had been twisted and unwieldy inside the womb. The expecting she-cat sank her claws into that futile hope as fickle as the flimsy moss of the nest she grabbed at when she screeched and yowled and pushed two more bundles out of her.
She had given the entire clan hope when her mentor acknowledged her potential in front of the other cats and entrusted the fate of the swollen queen and her unborn kits to her paws. By nightfall, the two little scraps would be buried in shallow dips in the ground barely large enough for a full-grown warrior's paw, and she would always be the so-called medicine cat who couldn't deliver, not only to the queen and her mate, but to her mentor and everyone else.
Leopardwish. The name struck her like the thorn still embedded in her pad. What would she think of her now? Perhaps she'd be satisfied that her failed apprentice had run from the camp, out of her way and far from the paths of the other cats she could have accidentally killed in the future.
It was impossible for her to be a medicine cat now, regardless of how much her heart had sought such a destiny. The truth snarled in her face like a hostile ShadowClan warrior at a Gathering.
Tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever she had finally swallowed her pride—the same pride that had flowed like venomous confidence through her veins the moment the tom was born and clouded her care of the tortoiseshell she-kit immediately after—she would have to reveal her decision to Leopardwish and Cloudstar.
Icy water lapped at her white feet, and she lifted her bleeding forepaw away from the steady ripples of the lake. While the rush of waves battling each other over the moonlit surface was oddly soothing, like a rumbling purr, it was nothing like the silky water of the Moonpool that had felt and smelled and tasted like starlight itself, and she might have allowed herself to miss the presence of StarClan caressing her if she had the possibility of sensing it all again.
She had no place as a medicine cat.
Not anymore.
Someone brushed lightly against her, but she didn't turn to face whoever it was, even when the lake overwhelmed any faint scent she could pick up from the stranger. She was almost sure of her companion's identity, anyway, when the stars in the blue-black sky seemed to descend for the sheer purpose of swathing her numb muscles.
But before she could flatten her ears at Cinderpelt, she halted, studying the ripples in the black lake in a bout of confusion.
It wasn't the fluffy young StarClan medicine cat whose reflection wavered in the fuzzy water, and the eyes that peered up at her were slitted and orange rather than sweet and blue. Still, the recognition brought her no comfort, and neither did the rough, matted pelt that pressed against her flank, so she tucked her head into her chest and forced herself to look elsewhere.
"Ignoring me won't make me disappear."
The she-cat's voice had the same gritty rasp that she remembered from their fiery interaction at the Moonpool, so StarClan or not, this presence was not a particularly welcome one. Plus, being reminded of the Moonpool once again made her irritable when she eventually turned to see the starry gray she-cat crouching beside her at the edge of the lake. "What do you want, Yellowfang?"
"Oh, don't worry," the she-cat hissed, "your dislike is completely mutual."
Despite the bleakness of her situation and the fact that she so badly wanted to pretend the ancient medicine cat wasn't there at all, dull curiosity decided she would play along. "That's a pity, considering you're the one who decided to pay me a visit. Were none of your other StarClan friends available tonight?"
Yellowfang swiped a paw at her ear, and despite the fact that her presence was barely a phantom, the cuff hurt more than she expected. "As a matter of fact, they were all busy plotting your demise."
"Right." She wanted to be amused at the ragged she-cat's blatant sarcasm. "And you didn't join in? Let me guess, you're here to tell me not to give up on being a medicine cat, and that everything will work out in the end."
"There, now you get the idea."
The lake water momentarily submerged her planted white forepaw, and the words suddenly caught in her throat. "Well, I don't want to. But you've done your part, thank you for that." Her voice came out bland and unemotional. "Though now that you're here, maybe you'd like to get the thorn out of my paw."
Sunrise-orange eyes shifted from her raised paw to her shadowed face. "I can't pull it out; I can only tell you how. But you already knew that."
"Are we still talking about thorns?"
With an unexpected chord of sympathy, the gray medicine cat rested her scarred muzzle against the top of the apprentice's head. "The choice to become a medicine cat is ultimately yours, but you should know that sometimes, StarClan just inevitably calls for cats, and there's nothing even the best medicine cat can do."
"Why would StarClan possibly need a couple of kits?" She spat the word StarClan like it was nightshade pulp. "I let my entire Clan down when I lost them for no reason."
"It was their time."
"I don't care!" She stopped her voice from rising to the wail pitch of the kits she hadn't saved. "You said we shape our own destinies! I could have saved that third kit, at the very least!"
Yellowfang shook her head, her flat features and snub nose stark and oddly alluring in the starlight. "No, you couldn't."
"I could have licked her harder. I knew she wasn't breathing right, I knew it, and I still let Cinderpelt tell me to set her aside."
"It's not Cinderpelt's fault."
"I didn't say it was." She pulled her tail around her paws, feeling the cold water seep into her fur. It was a strange thing to enjoy—she wasn't RiverClan, after all. "But it was someone's fault. I delivered her. I should have noticed."
The gray-furred she-cat narrowed her eyes. "You don't have to blame anyone. It's just a fact of being a medicine cat."
"What, that some are better than others?"
"No, that cats die!" she snapped, irritation flaring in her dark amber stare. "You were going to have to accept it sooner or later. But I suppose it would be tough to face it so young."
"You say that as if I'm still going to be a medicine cat."
"Aren't you?"
"Of course!" She mirrored the StarClan cat's derisive expression and lashed her tail. "Why don't I stay a medicine cat? Then maybe when I send all of ThunderClan into your ranks, you'll start reconsidering your decision and ask the opposite."
"You don't get to decide that. The kits were going to die whether you or Leopardwish or all of StarClan delivered them. It was their fate."
"It didn't have to be."
Even Yellowfang seemed at a loss for words.
Crouched beneath a bramble bush, Oakpaw watched his littermate from the stretch of sparse woods several fox-lengths from the lake. The moonshine was dappling her night-black pelt a silvery hue that marked her separately from the darker silhouettes of shrubs and weeds around her near the shore, and there was no teasing kink in her tail or earnest angle to her ears as she faced away from him, eerily solemn in her posture.
He had never seen her look older, even though they were still only a moon into apprenticeship. There was something different about her now, as if the youthful, witty she-cat born alongside him had padded into the nursery that morning and never come out, leaving Hawkpaw to walk away on her own.
Something stirred in the bushes beside him, and he spun around, tracking a near-invisible shadow whipping through the undergrowth before disappearing as if it had never been there at all.
Oakpaw shook his head to clear those strangely familiar green eyes from his mind and fastened his gaze upon Hawkpaw once again. She must have not noticed her shadow—well, shadows, if there really was another cat lurking out in the middle of the night—because she faced the lake unflinchingly, but not inanimately, occasionally swiping her tail back and forth and glancing to her left as if she were in deep conversation.
And maybe she was. He had already seen the dismay and lifelessness in her movements as she dragged her paws out of the gorse tunnel, so maybe she was asking StarClan for advice. That's what medicine cats did, right?
But a heartbeat later, she lowered her head sadly to stare at the water brushing up at her paws, and Oakpaw sighed.
He was going to miss her.
Thoughts on Oakpaw? I really want a strong littermate bond to develop between these two, at least at some point, and I figured I could start with this moment. Next chapter, we get back to camp (for Hawkpaw to get yelled at for staying out all night, LOL).
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