Chappie #13 is up, woot! We're back at Leafpool's POV. Also, my email-sender-thing isn't working, so I can't get private messages through my username here right now. I can still get reviews though (hint hint hint). Anyway, if you wanna contact me, do it directly to my email address (in my profile). Thanx!

Leafpool scraped at the pile of cobwebs. Her limbs seemed heavier, her hopes lower lately. It didn't make sense to her. Feathertail had given her approval of her and Crowfeather. Half the trouble between them was gone. So why did she feel ten times worse?

Because it's my fault now, she thought bitterly. My fault that we're not together.

I'm a medicine cat! Some part of her answered. I can't break the codes!

Why does it matter? Feathertail wouldn't have come to me if StarClan didn't approve!

But she didn't know if that was true. Just because Feathertail approved didn't mean that it was right. Besides, they came from different Clans. On top of being a medicine cat, Leafpool could be killed for treason if she pursued Crowfeather. And the same could happen to him.

But that look in his eyes, the night on the border...what had he been about to tell her, before the rouges had attacked? He had agreed with her when she had said that she couldn't do anything. But would he agree, too, if she said she was for it?

On the bright side, the rouges had not been scented in their territory again, though a patrol had tracked them across the WindClan border.

"Well, that means they're WindClan's problem now," Cloudtail pointed out, his tail curling up in satisfaction.

Firestar shot him a disapproving look, and Sandstorm twitched her whiskers in agreement with her mate. "That's just what Onestar needs, at the beginning of his leadership," she commented sourly, looking uncharicteristically sympathetic for the WindClan cats. "Trouble with rouges."

ShadowClan, too, had kept out of ThunderClan land. Part of that was probably because of the obsessive patrols around that area. The ShadowClan scent marks in ThunderClan territory had been covered up with their own scent, and the borders themselves were reinforced. Firestar was satisfied, as was most of the Clan. Squirrelflight too. And Brambleclaw. Her sister had made up with her old friend. Leafpool was happy for them, and she kept a careful watch on the fragile but growing connection in between them, making sure that Squirrelflight didn't let it break again. But seeing them together drove cold claws into her heart. The thoughts and feelings Squirrelflight had for Brambleclaw hit Leafpool as if they were her own, only for her, they were for a different cat. Smaller than Brambleclaw, leaner, with blue eyes and a short dark, dark pelt...

The days trundled on in this manner, as the moon wore down in the sky. Finally came the day when it would rise perfectly in half when the night came, and it was time for Leafpool and Cinderpelt to visit StarClan at the Moonpool.

They met the other medicine cats at dawn at the edge of ThunderClan territory. It was a new sensation for Leafpool and Cinderpelt to have the sacred place on the edge of their own territory, seperated only by wild lands and not another Clan's territory. In turn, it was new for Barkface to have to travel through ThunderClan to get to them, and he arrived late, Icepaw tagging along behind. The young apprentice's eyes were wide and dancing with excitement.

"Will I see StarClan?" he kept asking, his tail waving in the air. "Will they speak to me? Will there be a ceremony, like with other apprentices?"

Mothwing rolled her eyes, but Leafpool shared his excitement. "Yes, there will," she told him. "It will be wonderful, I promise you."

As they trekked, Mothwing fell into step beside her at the back of the group. The golden tabby was watching Icepaw. "He's foolish," she snorted, and Leafpool was reminded forcibly of her cold, disdainful mother, Sasha.

"Don't you remember being that excited?" Leafpool asked. She narrowed her eyes teasingly. "I remember your first trip to the Moonstone. You weren't in the best shape either. 'Leafpaw, Leafpaw, test me on herbs!'"

Mothwing took a good-natured swipe at her. "Well, I didn't know what to expect," she admitted. "But now I do. There's nothing to fear."

Leafpool tipped her head to one side. She felt her paw pads prickle as she recalled Mothwing's terrible secret- she did not believe in StarClan, nor in the signs and dreams that they sent medicine cats and Clan leaders. Leafpool had given up trying to convince her otherwise, though it troubled her greatly that her friend was a medicine cat-part of whom's job it was to interpret signs from their warrior anscestors- and still didn't believe. "Do you get dreams?" she asked in an undertone, her gaze flickering to the other medicine cats ahead. "At the Moonpool, I mean."

Mothwing twitched her ears. "Yes," she admitted. "But they don't make much sense. They're like flashes, flashes of things that could have happened. Or that will happen. Or may never happen. See, you can't even tell! How helpful can they be?"

"So you never speak to the cats of StarClan?" Leafpool wondered. "You've never seen them?"

Mothwing's eyes, huge and troubled, were fixated on the ground as she shook her head in dessent. Leafpool leaped over a stone on the ground, and she planned her next question carefully. "Mothwing," she asked slowly, "Do you ever...have you ever...thought that they might be asking too much of us?"

"Who?" Mothwing asked.

"StarClan."

"Oh, don't start that again, Leafpool. I've told you, I don't-"

"No, that's not what I mean," Leafpool interrupted. "I mean, do you ever think that there are too many rules for medicine cats? We have our own dens, our own codes, we can't have kits...or...or mates..."

She broke off and looked at Mothwing, waiting for an answer. The RiverClan cat had slowed down a bit. "I never really thought about it," she remarked. "There's so much to learn as a medicine cat- more than there was as a warrior. I always thought that I had too much going on for something like a mate." She turned to look at Leafpool. "Or do you feel differently?"

"No, no," Leafpool mewed hastily. "I just was thinking about it."

Mothwing shrugged and walked ahead, but Leafpool stayed where she was for a bit, until Barkface called back and threatened to leave her here for the foxes to track. The she sprang ahead to her companions. They hadn't reached the Moonpool yet, but Leafpool's mind was already in the stars of Silverpelt.

&&&

Leafpool bent her head and lapped up a couple of drops from the Moonpool. Icepaw's acceptance ceremony rang through her head. The white apprentice had already taken his drink from the Moonpool and was crouched in a trance at the edge of the clearing. The other medicine cats were now taking their drinks as well, waiting for StarClan to show them what they must.

The water was cold and crisp, but it burned through Leafpool as if it were fire. Her eyes closed and she fell back, silver fuzz invading her senses until she could no longer see anything around her. Please StarClan, she thought woozily. Tell me what to do.

Her eyes snapped back open, and she got to her paws. She was on the island. The Great Oak stood tall and proud before her, its empty branches standing against the wind that blew while the bushes and smaller saplings behind it rattled violently. Leafpool kept her eyes on it, ignoring even the lake that glowed silver in the reflected light of the moon.

A cat stepped from the branches, young and beautiful. Spottedleaf's gaze was warm as she made her way over to Leafpool, her amber eyes glowing contrastingly golden brown against the uniform silver and black around her. Leafpool waited for her, tingling in anticipation. She meant to be calm, but the look in the other's gaze made her want to pour all her troubles out.

"How can he love me, Spottedleaf?" Leafpool blurted out. "And how can I love him?"

The stare of the former medicine cat was soft and warm, perhaps even reminiscent. "Love chooses the hearts that it will walk in," she mewed softly. "As much as many say it is so, you cannot control it."
"But I barely know Crowfeather!" Leafpool protested. "And I'm a medicine cat! And he's from WindClan! I couldn't have chosen worse if I tried!"

Spottedleaf let out a mrrow of laughter. "You do not choose who you love, Leafpool, and neither does StarClan. But we watch what lies ahead and what lies in your heart, and, when we can, we protect it."

Leafpool sighed deeply, wrapping her tail around herself. "What do I do?" she pleaded.

Spottedleaf looked away. "There is another that could explain this, better than I can," she mewed, gesturing at the Great Oak. Another cat was stirring there. This one was gray, with a broad face, and round orange eyes. There was an impertinant tilt to her head that made Leafpool feel uncertain, but there was something familiar about the cat. Finally she put it together.

"Yellowfang!" she whispered, almost in awe. How often had Cinderpelt told her tales of this medicine cat? And how many times had she said things like: "Yellowfang told me" or "You're lucky Yellowfang's not here. If she saw you doing that, you'd be missing your ears right now!"

But why was she here? Yellowfang had gone from ShadowClan to ThunderClan, but that did not put her in Leafpool's position. But there was empathy radiating from her as she took a place on Leafpool's other side, and the three medicine cats began to walk together.

"I know how you feel, Leafpool," Yellowfang meowed. "And not just from watching you. I have felt your pain myself."

"How?" Leafpool asked, keeping pace with them. She was a little confused. This was the first dream from StarClan that she had ever had where she truly spoke to the cats of StarClan, where she was free to ask questions that were answered, and she kept expecting the vision to fade away.

"I, too, once had a love," Yellowfang answered. "Raggedstar."

A former leader of ShadowClan, and the father of Brokentail, one of ShadowClan's most fearsome leaders! Leafpool almost gasped aloud. Certainly she stared as Yellowfang went on, "I loved him, even though I knew that I shouldn't have. And I had a kit."

"A kit?" Leafpool repeated, and something registered in her brain. "Brokentail?"

"Yes," Yellowfang admitted. "And proof of the wrath of StarClan is how he turned out. It was because of my breaking of the medicine cats' code that Brokentail was the way he was."

"So...so you're telling me that I should stay away from Crowfeather?" Leafpool mewed, her heart falling again.

"No, Leafpool. I haven't finished yet." Yellowfang meowed. "True, Brokentail did many terrible things. And in the end I killed him with my own supply of deathberries. But it is also true that, without Tigerstar's plotting with Brokentail, Firestar may have never been able to prove his treachery. He may have made himself leader of ThunderClan, if it hadn't been for that failed plot."

Leafpool stopped, utterly bewildered now. Yellowfang gazed at her, an enigma of thoughts and knowledge inside her wide orange eyes. "What I mean to tell you is that every situation has outcomes...good and bad. I still do not regret my love of Raggedstar- and, as you see now, StarClan has forgiven me for all I did wrong."

Leafpool was still confused. She hadn't solved anything yet. Somehow she had expected StarClan to have the answer to all her troubles, but she knew now that it wasn't true. Then Spottedleaf looked at her. "Leafpool," she meowed urgently, "Our time together is at it's end. But I must warn you that there is trouble prowling through the forest- trouble that lives outside your own mind."

The rouges! Leafpool guessed, but before she could even ask Spottedleaf and Yellowfang turned away, and they began to melt like the snow did with the first thaw. But Yellowfang called back to her, and she was not speaking of the danger that Spottedleaf had hinted at. "In the end," she meowed, "You shouldn't give a mouse's tail what is right, and what others say. It's a question of what you feel. And what do you answer to, Leafpool? Your will...or your heart?"

Whew, long chappie, I know! Hope you liked it, and, as always, reviews are good! Also, a big WOOT for the (brief)return of Yellowfang!