This is freaky. There are exactly 900 words. Yay chapter 30! Also, if you like this story or any of my others, check out my new forum, Iceshadow of ShadowClan's forum all about my stories and updates. If I get posts I will make more topics. Thanks to Playing With Fire, your reviews especially inspire me - and its certainly refreshing to have someone that thinks I write deep things! It really means so much to me. Also Badgerclaw ThunderClan Warrior and Iceshadow911247, its reassuring to have reviewers that review after every chapter! Now I conclude my lengthy introduction :) This may make you cry, I have to warn you...

Chapter 30, Dawn Won't Come

Iceshadow stretched open her eyes in an effort to force herself into the air and out of the dreamy realm of sleep. She yawned and looked around the warriors den. Snakeclaw lay still beside her, and she padded out into the surprisingly warm camp.

Faint rays of sunlight glanced off of the slippery needles, and Iceshadow still felt the urge to grin at the old apprentice notion she still harboured. The floor is red. The small patches of sunlight reminded her of a coat of fur, a tabby pattern repeating across a whole.

As she remembered what had been, all she could do was drive her mind away from the worrying thoughts that came to her. In the times she was alone, the anxieties that plagued her took form in her thoughts. What did the prophecy mean? Was it all just a twisted mess, or was there some underlying meaning to life?

Before she became a ShadowClan warrior, none would have thought Iceshadow ever thought about life as a whole. None guessed the extent of her thoughts. She remembered a strange confidence she had when she was an apprentice, and the memory came back with a satisfying twitch.

Just because you don't understand me, doesn't mean there is nothing to understand. You don't know my thoughts, but I know and that's all that matters.

While it was a secluded, forlorn thought in some ways it did not bother Iceshadow to think of her angry apprentice days. Someday they would all understand - but then it came back again. Did she want them to understand her? There was some deep, dark secret buried in the depths of her mind that she didn't want anyone to know or understand? Iceshadow didn't want that thought, herself. She wished the secret had never been implanted, but now it was there it was staying.

"Iceshadow!" a familiar voice called out from above, the entry into camp.

"Snowblossom!" The energetic white shecat jumped from a fallen tree stump over patches of slick, green ivy to meet her sister. "What brings you here?"

"Iceshadow, its not good." Snowblossom for the first time lost her glad expression and her blue eyes were truly sad. "Its Wolfsong."

Iceshadow grinned, with the innocence she would never have again. "How is she?" she asked eagerly. It would be good to see Wolfsong at the next gathering; her old mentor had taught her more things than how to fight and hunt, and while ShadowClan had taught her things also, Wolfsong had been the mother Nightrose had never been. Nightrose had been distanced, distracted, and Iceshadow always felt like she had to hide her violence, her problems from Nightrose. Wolfsong had been there, someone to confide in and someone to trust. She loved her mentor.

"Oh Iceshadow," Snowblossom whispered. "She's dead."

To Snowblossom, to the group of cats which was slowly gathering around them, there was no pause between Snowblossom's news and Iceshadow's response.

But to Iceshadow, there was an eternity. An eternity of calm which there should not have been. An eternity to think of what had happened, and what she had lost. An eternity to think of all the things she hadn't said - an eternity of torture.

The forest stood still and the wind stopped. Anger surfaced, then the deadly calm, then fear. In an eternity of torture, her thoughts echoed clearly through a chasm of despair.

You can't be gone. You can't be gone. You can't be gone because you were everything, because you were better, because I never told you what you meant to me, because you were always there.

You can't leave me. How can you leave me? How can you do this to me? How can you make that haze come back again?

I loved you and you left me.

The thoughts stopped at she started to shake. Not an angry shaking, but a helpless, weak shaking. "She can't be dead."

"Iceshadow, I'm so sorry..." her voice broke.

"It's not true, it can't be true, she wouldn't leave me!" Iceshadow was defiant, even though her blue eyes were beginning to cloud and her voice was tight.

Snakeclaw, Silverheart, Moonshine, and Sleetflash were near her, offering reassurance with brushes of the fur and kind murmured words. She couldn't hear them. "How did it happen?"

"She... she died in a fight with a rogue. She died defending her Clan," Snowblossom managed.

Brave, loyal, Wolfsong would have willingly given her life for her Clan many times over. Somehow the fact that it had been noble, in a fair fight almost made it worse. It would have been better if she had been snatched away, if there had been no moment of calm. You were too good. Why?

"The darkest hour is always before dawn," Sleetflash said in a voice that was only meant for her.

Iceshadow turned to her with all the bitterness and sorrow she felt showing clearly in her eyes. "If she is dead no dawn will ever come."