Last one! :)
Please review and please vote on the poll on my profile. Nightcloud? Feathertail? Leafpool? Personally, I'm going to have to say Purdy is the best bet ;)
Anyway.
Leafpool:
I remember the shine in his eyes as he lifted me from the quarry wall into his sky. The amber glint as he said he loved me. I wanted to fall into his golden eyes like into a pile of leaves, to swim in his love and never return to the shore.
We met secretly between the borders. Neither loyal to ThunderClan or WindClan, neither willing to let go of this forbidden romance. I needed him like I needed to breathe.
So we ran away. There was nothing to it: We couldn't be together, but we had to be together. Like a law of nature; perhaps magnetism, or gravity.
Those nights that we spent traveling, under the moon, were of love and doubt. Half of the time I would curl up by his side with no fear, other times I would pace for hours as I thought of how much my Clan might need me. What if a kit or an elder was sick? What if Firestar, my father, had lost another life? What if he needed me to decipher a prophecy? My mind broiled with worries of what could be going wrong. Foxes, whitecough, and kitbirth took over my dreams.
He could sense my anxiety. He knew the guilt I felt, and he tried to help. But finally, when the worries had taken over the love we should have been feeling, he told me to go home.
Not exactly in those words. But he wanted to see me happy. He loved me, and he knew running away would make me only more uneasy. So we had to go back.
And in tune with my fears, I came home to a camp being ravaged my badgers. I watched my nightmares play out before me, and his love was only an echo in my head. He was the past. I had to put my duties before him. Why did StarClan choose this route for me? Perhaps it was to test me. They tested me well, I must say.
We met a few more times, but our hearts were not in it. He had sent me back because I loved my Clan more than I loved him. He had let me go because he loved me; he wanted to see me happy.
Then I was bearing kits, and I needed him more than ever. He had Nightcloud as a mate, so it was impossible to meet him, and impossible to tell him the truth. I suspected reality would tear him apart – knowing that he had committed the ultimate act of disloyalty. But as painful as I thought it would be for him, it was worse for me.
Everyday as I held those kits inside, I was holding a heavy secret, like I had swallowed a burning branch. As a medicine cat, if I were to have kits I could no longer continue my obligations. Wasn't that the whole reason I came back? If I had wanted to quit my responsibilities, I would have continued to run away with him in the hills.
I arranged a trade-off with Squirrelflight. She would take my kits. My sister loved me, I was sure, and I used this against her. These kits would be no different from the kits she would have one day with Brambleclaw, I assured her. She would be saving me.
They were born in the dead of winter. We had to carry them back through the snow, the gray one, the golden one, and the black one.
Only one thought ran through my mind that night- What exactly was I giving up?
What was I leaving behind? Like the legend of Bluestar, I had sacrificed my kits and my mate for my duties. Had I lost something? And in the back of my mind, I worried that StarClan would want to punish me for what I had done. But why?
StarClan managed to do just so. Hollyleaf told the entire Gathering of my betrayal, and I was shamed forever. I had to resign my post as medicine cat, I was excluded from the royalties I had once shared with the others, and I was ignored. At first, I thought I would have my sister to talk to, but she proved distant as the mountains. I guess that was understandable, seeing that my plans had ruined her relationship with her mate and with her pseudo-kits.
So I ended up entirely alone, because of our forbidden love.
-And now he is dying.
I heard the rumor last Gathering; that many cats in WindClan had taken up whitecough, him being one of them. As a former medicine cat, I know that it wouldn't be long before the sickness turns to greencough. From there, he will be gone.
Will he go to StarClan? If I still was able to connect with them, I would ask Spottedleaf. Maybe she would tell me in her gentle mew that he and I would be happy forever in the starry sky.
But I know that Feathertail waits for him in the sky. If by chance she has found another mate, he will wait for me, won't he? Or is he angry with me. I remember his eyes when he was told that the Three were his kits. They burned with amber flames, and I fled from the fire. I couldn't face him.
I'm on the WindClan border now, lifting my nose over the border. As if I could smell that he was dead. But in truth, I'm waiting for a patrol. I wait in the tall weeds often, hoping that they'll talk to me. And in the back of my heart, I know that I'm waiting for him. Him to come around the hill, loping through the grass, with promises of eternity and love. To meet me here one more time.
A dark shape pads towards me.
"I thought I'd find you here," says Nightcloud. Her eyes are pieces of glass green jade. She opens her mouth and says the two words I told myself I would never hear: "He's dead."
She doesn't blink or let her voice waver with this statement. She's been frozen into ice after many long years of her mate's coldness.
But I can't help but let out a wail, because I'm still alive and warm and loved and broken. She regards me like a piece of foxdung, and I know she hates me for loving him. But after all this time, I still... I... No.
She turns and walks away. I don't watch her go. I'm not seeing anything but my white paws and my Clan land laid out before me, and the forest has never been so empty. The path
In StarClan, he'll end up with Feathertail or Nightcloud. But I won't be there for him. I have my own life to live, a new life to start. A life without him. I love him, but he'll be happier with one of them.
Why? I lay down in the grass and ask myself, Why?
Because sometimes, if you love him, you let him go.
Aww. Nobody ends up with him.
They all love him though. (Maybe in his dream world he would go a'pimpin' and make himself a little foursome. ;)P Yow.)
This was supposed to be the last chapter, but I was thinking of making an extra one (perhaps showing what Crowfeather thinks about all of this)... Thoughts? Should I?