This is the Unknown.
Those were the first words Stormspirit ever spoke to her, with his still, unmoving mouth, and he said them so nonchalantly that Dapplespirit almost felt like she didn't have to be scared. How wrong she was to think that for even a heartbeat.
For moons, Stormspirit trained her as his apprentice, and he taught her things she never would have imagined in her lifetime - if her lifetime was long enough. She was taking in so much unbelievable information and ideas that it came to her only when she earned her Messenger name that this land held secrets beyond the knowledge of even StarClan.
She watched upon the lives of many cats, and those cats did not just belong to the four forest Clans. She sat with Stormspirit, looking over members of Clans, of Tribes, of Twolegplaces, and underground tunnels. She went with Stormspirit everywhere as he met with warriors, kittypets, rogues, guiding them to their place in the universe of the afterlife. What she didn't know is that the cats without any belief of their warrior ancestors went to a place called the Spirit Isle. They never stayed long though.
"They are bound by no laws," Stormspirit would say. "There is no peace even there."
As the moons passed, she and Stormspirit would guide the dead cats to their places of their afterlife, and Dapplespirit was fed with the wisdom of the world beyond anything she or StarClan was capable of.
Stormspirit himself, her mentor and guide for the last several moons, was a gray tabby tom with green eyes and a silver aura around him that sparked with white hot lightning when he was angered. He was the current messenger before Dapplespirit took his place. His story ended the day his mate gave birth to his kits, and his death was brutal. While separted from a patrol in the Twolegplace after seeing signs that they had entered ShadowClan territory, he was cornered by a group of four filthy rogues and attacked.
According to him, they continued to slice apart his body several minutes after they had killed him. The rogues kept hos body and ShadowClan never heard from him again, while meanwhile his mate sat alone in the nursery with two small kits who would never see their father.
Once he had died, he had been brought to the Unknown by his mentor Willowspirit. He trained for moons to become the messenger, and it had been his duty to pass on his title to Dapplespirit.
"How do you choose your apprentice?" she asked, trying to hide the bitterness in her voice.
After several unclear and mysterious replies, Stormspirit finally told her.
"We choose the ones who have no destiny of their own."
For some reason, that statement made her realize...
Dapplespirit had earned her name a mere half moon ago. Stormspirit was allowing her to settle in to the flow of things, for in the beginning, she had told him she was not ready, but now, he wasn't going to help her any longer.
"This is your first official job as the Current Messenger," he told her suddenly one day, when they had been sitting in silence. Dapplespirit had felt it too - a dead cat, in waiting of being retrieved. "After this, you will be in your own"
She did not respond, just looked off into the distance. She felt it, who he was, where he came from. It was a ThunderClan tom, a new warrior, by the name of Lionfire. She tried to push it down, ignore it.
"Dapplespirit? He is waiting."
"Who are we do decide where a cat belongs?" she meowed suddenly, avoiding eye contact. "Do we know who he was, do we know his story? The meaning behind his death? Were we watching him when he fell victim to the end?"
"What do you mean?" Stormspirit asked.
"What if he does not belong where we say he shall go?" Dapplespirit questioned. "What if we lead him to the place that feels right at first, but he soon decides he does not want to be?" She unsheathed her claws. "Perhaps we know what his life has brought him, but we do not understand his deepest thoughts or secrets. Maybe our decisions now choke any freedom he has."
"...Freedom?" Stormspirit murmured, sounding puzzled. "Dapplespirit, my apprentice, what are you speaking of?"
"He was a Clancat cornered by the walls only open to one path, trapped with only one way out, and perhaps that one way led him to a place he does not belong." Dapplespirit tried to hide the anger that rose in her voice. She swallowed and continued. "What do we know? Do we really have such power to understand everything about every cat? What if we were blind this whole time by the truth? Is it fair for us, and only us to bring every cat their fate? Can they not choose for themselves?"
The gray tabby spoke sternly. "We exist for a reason, Dapplespirit, and you know it. If we did not need to be the guides of all cats, do you think we would be. This world lives on a line of balance and we are what keeps that line straight."
"Can we not give them a chance?"
"They have no chance!" he cried. "Not when they have reached their weakest point. It is our duty, and frankly, your duty that you take him to the place of his afterlife where he can find strength again."
"What if I refuse?" she asked, voice hollow.
He stared at her with those striking green eyes for several moments. "You wouldn't...you can't. Not after all that you have been through to reach this."
"To reach what?" she meowed desperatley. "I have had no choice but to follow you down this path, striving to gain power I never asked for in the first place."
"You must guide Lionfire," growled Stormspirit. "It is your duty!"
"I will not allow this to be what I stand for," Dapplespirit hissed at him. "How can I let it be my destiny to be a worthless Messenger, telling cats where to go, what to do. They are limited enough by their code, by Tribe Law by anything that has led them off of the path they had wished to follow." A burning sensation made her blood seethe, as she spoke, and she began to feel types of fury she had never felt before. Rage that left her in pain, in legitimate pain. It hurt to look at him. It pierced her inside. "Why is it so wrong to knock down the walls?"
Stormspirit looked at her fiercely. He knew exactly what was happening. He knew what was behind the madness in her words, for moments like these had come up all through her training, but this was when she was breaking. "The world would be in chaos with no code, with no law. There would be no moral being, and nothing to keep peace between anything." He paused for a moment as he watched her flex her claws. "I am not a fool, Dapplespirit. I know exactly what this is about."
Dapplespirit hissed, her tortoiseshell fur standing on end. "Then you know why I strove to be so defiant of the warrior code. I would not let anything limit what I wanted my destiny to be. I would not allow my Clan or my ancestor decide for me what would become of my life. I would control it, and I would prove to them just how strong I was..." she trailed off. "But I failed."
"You are the reason for your own death," Stormspirit snarled deeply.
She glared at him and drew her lips back. "You stole me. You took me out of life I was beginning to gain control of and threw me into an new eternal existence that now defines me as a cat I do not want to be. It is not my job to watch over the lives of other cats. Nearly all of them will never see me, hear me, feel me there. You brought me into an immortal time of uselessness. I never asked to be here."
Dapplespirit lunged, her jaws opening for once in a couple moons and closing sharply around Stormspirit's ear. He fell back onto his back, and kicked at her belly with his hind paw, raking his claws down her pelt. She released his ear, unscathed, and fell back. Stormspirit slashed his claws over her neck as she tried to grip him again. Dapplespirit yowled, and shoved her former mentor away.
"Oh really?" sneered Stormspirit, as she stood. "Do you think I asked of this? What about Willowspirit, and Redspirit, and Wolfspirit? Do you think any of us 'asked' to be here?" He shoved his face into hers. "At least you have something," he spat. "You are lucky that you are Messenger. Given all those times that you have defied the warrior code, you would be in the Dark Forest, rotting and fading into nothing but a horrible memory, less - nothing."
Dapplespirit backed away and closed her eyes. "At least there, I could choose where to go."
Stormspirit stared. He had seen this of his tortoiseshell apprentice from day one. He knew she was never happy to be in the Unknown. It was as clear as the moon during a cloudless night. He had waited for her to come around, he had tried convincing the former messengers she would. He always knew something was off with her. It was in the way she spoke, and looked about. It was in her reaction when she saw how she changed, as she adopted her simple plain glow, that seemed to change in the light, as her mouth stopped moving when she spoke, as he eyes went empty and white, losing there blue shine. As she transformed, she was not happy, she was hateful of everything around her, but Stormspirit would not stop hoping.
His mistake, it seemed.
And he would not continue arguing. He should have known he would regret bringing code-breaker into the Unknown.
"You know what?" he growled at Dapplespirit, "Fine. You do not need to bring Lionfire to StarClan. In fact, you do not need to bring any cat anywhere. I'm done with you. You can go anywhere you wish. May I warn you, the Unknown is a large place. Don't get lost."
She spat in his direction, and turned away to go.
"I hope you realize the weight of your decision. There is no action, no word, no crime you can commit where there is no consequence."
Dapplespirit looked in his direction. "Speak to me not again. I shall forever walk alone."
And then she was gone, vanishing into the depths of the Unknown, the luminescent glow fading into the darkness that surrounded her.
Stormspirit sat by himself several moments after watching her go, at last, he whispered, barely audible for his own ears to catch. "Goodbye, Lonespirit."
So, this was my contest entry for Nightspirit. I hope you enjoyed it. Sorry if it was rushed. It's quite hard to fit a complex idea into a two-shot. :) Review, lovelies! I hope to be back on track soon!
And Nightspirit, I know that there were some elements I mentioned that are not actually canon in the world of Messengers. Hopefully I made them as subtle as possible.