A/N: Enjoy :)

Visiting Mother Gana

I tugged on the sleeves of my jacket as I walked farther and farther in the barren, empty land. I was shivering more as the wooden shack became more and more clear in the distance. That's what kept me shivering, not the cold wind. That wooden shack made me think of Mother Gana. It made me think of the first time she put her ice-cold, bony hand on my shoulder. My mind fast forward to the night Storm bucked me off and left me in front of her here. That was the night I was cursed. The night when all this began. The old me would've slapped myself just at the thought of me coming here. But I had too many questions left unanswered, and I think it might be safer if I get them answered now.

Closer and closer I walked the house. Nothing changed about it. It still made you shiver when you looked at it. The strawberry bushes that lied neatly in front of it were still there. And that tree with the ten beautiful white flowers on it was still sitting on the side. Except now it only had nine white flowers.

Movement came from the side of the house. Mother Gana walked out with a worn-out shrug on her shoulders, wrapping it around her upper body like a blanket. An old rusty watering tin was clutched in her and she tipped it over to feed her strawberry bushes.

Strange. Looking at her now, one might think she was just an average old lady. I wish I could just think that. But I've seen and heard too much to know that's far from true.

I took a deep breath, and walked up to the house. Mother Gana was still bent over watering the plants. I stopped about two feet away from her.

"I knew you would come back," she said.

I choked on air. How could she tell I was standing right here?

As if reading my thoughts, she turned around. "I could sense your presence from twenty feet."

For some reason, that didn't surprise me.

Mother Gana finished watering her plants. She put the watering tin down on the porch. There was an old blanket on the far end of it. She sat down on it, crossed-legged. Then she patted the empty space next to her, gesturing for me to come sit.

I remained were I was, my feet rooted to the ground.

Mother Gana smiled. "I swear on my form I won't harm you. You know what that is now, right?"

I walked slowly up to the porch and sat down on the blanket. Mother Gana did some hand movement. A tray with a teapot and two small teacups appeared in front of us.

Mother Gana poured the tea in the small cups. She picked one and handed it to me. I was hesitant to take it, but I accepted it anyway. I sipped the tea. To my surprise, it was sweet. It tasted really sweet. Like a liquid candy. I began drinking it like someone starved me for months. I drank and drank and drank until there was no more tea in the cup.

Mother Gana poured me another cup. "I can see you like it a lot."

I nodded and I took another gulp. "It's delicious. What is it?"

"It's strawberry tea," she said taking a sip from her own cup.

I looked at her. "Strawberry tea?"

She nodded. "Yes. I grow the strawberry here." She extended her arm towards the strawberry bushes lined up in front of the house. "All I do is add a little of the strawberry juice into the tea. Regular old tea is dull and blank. However mixing it with the strawberries adds sweetness to it." She looked at me with those black eyes. They were suddenly soft, like a grandmother's. "Even the most bitterest thing, can be turned sweet."

I finished drinking my strawberry tea, and put the empty cup on the tray. Finally I just said it. "Why did you turn me into a cat?"

Mother Gana looked at me. Her eyes were filled amusement, which finally showed on her face when a small smile appeared. "I knew eventually your mind would soon clutter with questions. You must have so many questions you don't know where to begin."

"That's where you're wrong," I said. "I do know where to start, and I've already said it, but I'll say it again. Why did you turn me into a cat?"

Mother Gana put down her tea cup. She leaned back against the wall of her house, staring out at the gray afternoon. "To answer that question, I must first answer many others."

I crossed my arms over my chest as the wind grew more bitter.

"Child," she said. "You must understand that you are not like other girls."

"That's what Tigerstar said," I said under my breath.

"Ah, so you've met him?"

"Unfortunately," I said with a roll of my eyes.

She pulled her shrug tighter. "He's a fool. Anyone who follows him is a fool as well."

"How did it all start," I asked. "Go on, tell me. I got four hours until sunset."

Mother Gana let out a small laugh. "Well child, I will tell you only what you need to know tonight. No more. You're not ready yet. Is that clear?"

My confusion was only rising as I nodded my head.

"Spirits," she began, "lived in their world-the Spirit World. We lived there for millions of centuries. We ourselves were created from magical pieces of matter that joined together into one. Some Spirits were made from pieces of other Spirits that gave some of their powers to make other Spirits." She looked down at her flexed hand. "I was made from another Spirit, then I too gave away some of my powers to help create a new Spirits." Mother Gana looked at me. "You saw her. The night you came to the meeting of StarClan and the Spirits. She was the young pretty one, Adora."

My eyes widened. "You helped to create her?"

She nodded. "But enough with that, you'll learn more about it another day. For now I have a story to tell you."

I sat up straight, listening carefully.

"Time passed, twice the amount of time that earth existed, in the Spirit World. A couple of Spirits and myself thought that perhaps we shouldn't be the only ones living in such loveliness. So, with the help of the other Spirits, we created a world, a world parallel to ours. Since our world was called Hearth, we decided to call our newfound world Earth.

"After we created our world, nature began to take over, creating types of plants first, then eventually simple animals, then finally complex animals, such as the dinosaurs. We loved it. Our world was at peace. The balance of nature was kept in place. We loved it so much, sometimes we the Spirits would go down there and visit the place ourselves. Sometimes we would live there for a few years or so."

"Did you live with the dinosaurs?" I asked.

She nodded. "For a small amount of time?"

"Define small."

"Oh about . . ." She thought for a second. "Fifty years."

My eyes widened. "How is fifty years a small amount of time?"

Mother Gana laughed. "Child, a Spirit is immortal. We have all the time in the world. So fifty years is in fact a small amount of time."

I guess that that made sense. Wow, imagine being immortal? How cool would that be? I wouldn't have to worry about wasting my life because I had all the time in the world.

"However," Mother Gana continued. "The dinosaurs proved to be poor leading organisms. It was always a competition with them. The famous tyrannosaurus-rex tried to take over all the dinosaurs, and pretty soon other typed of carnivores tried to become the alpha dinosaur. There were battles being fought and the herbivores were being wiped out. Us Spirits decided to do away with the dinosaurs all together. So a bunch of us went down and caused a great famine in the lands. Eventually, all the dinosaurs died out.

"We let other typed of organisms lived. They grew, and changed as the years went by. Over those years, we Spirits were deciding on what type of new organism to create. But before we could even take any action, evolution had taken place, and cavemen started walking the earth.

"At first, our thought was to do away with these new type of species. But we soon developed a sense of sympathy for these creatures. They were extremely caring towards each other. They worked hard, respect nature, and cared for life in general. We allowed them to live. But as always, all good things must come to an end." She sighed.

"What happened?" I asked.

Mother Gana rubbed her eyes. "The Neolithic Revolution. Soon, some of these cavemen began to learn new skills that they used for their own benefit. They wanted to become the supreme organism, getting rid of anyone who got in their way. They started doing away with nature, seeing some of the threats they served. They started to hunt and enslave animals because many of them had skills that outmatched that of man. Even women they started to downcast because they were in fact stronger than a man would ever be."

She looked down at me. I looked down at knees, hugging myself.

Mother Gana chuckled. "You see what I mean? You've probably grown up believing a girl doesn't have much power?"

That was true. Many times was I turned down from playing games because I was girl. I cried whenever that happened. "That's the punishment of being a woman," my mother would simply say.

Mother Gana placed a wrinkled brown hand on mine. "Don't listen to anything anyone says about women. Women are one of the strongest creatures I've seen in this world. They bear the pain of childbirth. They can handle more heartbreak that could shred a heart to pieces. They are highly skilled in food and medicine. Yet others try to put them down as weak."

She shook her head in sadness. A cool wind blew, blowing our hair to the side. I tucked my loose strands of hair behind my ear. "Humans are worse than the dinosaurs, aren't they?" I looked deep into her black eyes.

Mother Gana let out a sigh, the kind of sigh that people let out when they don't really know what to say or do.

"We thought, considering how much knowledge they had," Mother Gana explained. "That the humans would learn to cooperate with each other. But they turned out to be selfish, not wanting to share any of their newfound skills or knowledge with anyone. That's why you humans have so many different languages. You want to keep everything you know to yourself."

I listened to her words. In a way, it sort of made sense. Mama always speaks Hindi with me when she has something important to say and there are people around. I asked her why she does that once. "Because they don't need to know our business," she said with a scowl. Perhaps we humans really are selfish.

Mother Gana continued on. "It finally was decided that we the Spirits needed to destroy you humans. We crossed into this world and there was a battle that raged between humans and Spirits. Of course we won, no being could ever defeat a Spirit, but when we looked upon your pitiful faces, we decided to give you humans a second chance. For quite some time, all was well in this world."

"Then?" I prompted.

"Then evil came into the world."

"How?"

"Spirits and humans do actually share one common interest: Greed for power. Some Spirits saw how power-hungry some humans were and decided to take advantage of it. Now not all humans were like this, just one weed in the bunch. But still, one weed can destroy a whole garden. These new evil Spirits went down and manipulated the power-hungry humans into getting more power."

"How did the evil Spirits get their power from the humans?" I asked.

"Simple. They killed them. Once the human had reached the maximum of their power, the evil Spirits would quickly do away with them, then all the human's power would go to them, making them twice as strong. Jani, don't you notice how every evil dictator in history always dies?"

I gasped. "Yes I do. And right when they're at-"

"-they're strongest, exactly. Josef Stalin died with the Soviet Union was at its' strongest. Ivan the Terrible died later after Russia had become a medieval empire. Mussolini was killed during his reign. Even Al Capone-though he wasn't a dictator, he still a lot of mobs and committed a lot of crimes-was caught and died in prison."

"What about Hitler?" I asked. "He wasn't at his strongest when he killed himself. Germany was falling."

"Ah!" Mother Gana held up a finger. "That was all the evil Spirits doing. Once they saw how much power Hitler had gotten from Germany, they began to fear that he would fear be too strong for even them. So they began to destroy Germany, causing them to lose battles, even helping Germany's enemies win. Anything to get that power. Though, even with Germany weakened, Hitler still had a lot of power, still too much for them to take all at one. So they began to drain his power. Little a time they were sucking him dry of his power. Draining his power is the reason why Hitler committed suicide. The evil Spirits had drained him so much, his soul no longer felt the will to live.

"That was quite a masterpiece that Hitler. We Spirits never thought evil could truly gain so much power. In the past, many battles reigned between evil and us. Most of the time we won."

"What do you mean most of the time?" I was puzzled. How could they let evil win? Good always wins over evil right?

Mother Gana let out an exhausted sigh. "Sometimes evil was too strong from us. Like I said, there are many humans who are power-hungry. You see Jani, evil doesn't control them, it simply influences them. What they do is of their own free will, evil doesn't mind-just as long as they get the power. Humans have a type of force field around them Jani, that protects them against the influence of evil. We Spirits created it after the battled we fought against the humans. However, some force fields are more weak than others, and that's how evil is able to manipulate them."

She looked down kindly at me. "That's why I called people like Stalin and Hitler fools. Because they were weak and manipulated by evil easily." A smile formed on her face. "Then there are humans like you Jani. Very strong humans. You're tempted into evil, but something deep in your soul keeps you from following it. And you Jani are the strongest human I've seen."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"That evil's fool Tigerstar tempted you. And you said no. Even after showing you what you could do, you still refused. I'm proud of you Jani. You're no fool like him."

I felt a smile on my face. That compliment made me felt proud for some reason. I can't explain why, but now I was happy I turned down Tigerstar.

"Oh speaking of that," I said quickly. "Can you tell me why I can shoot things from my."

Mother Gana took another breath.

"Uh oh," I said. "Another story?"

She nodded. "When evil not only began to work with humans but with animals tool, that's when Spirits began to cross over into this world. We came to protect you all. Some Spirits stayed in the Spirit World, where as many others came here. We took the form of anything we could find. Plants, animals, water, wind, rocks, even shadows. Few Spirits choose the shape of a human, which is risky because we're not accustomed to your ways, and humans are very superstitious. Even fewer Spirits choose the form of young, pretty humans. This is dangerous for us considering humans are attracted to beauty. But soon so did Spirits.

"There were very beautiful humans living on in this world, so beautiful that even Sprits were attracted to them. Soon, some Spirits mingled with humans and produced the most bizarre thing: Half-human, half-Spirit children.

"These half-Spirit children took the appearance of a human, but possessed all the powers of a Spirit. Though they had Spirit powers, they were not a full-Spirit, so they weren't immortal . . . physically."

I raised a brow. "Physically?"

"Their body ages and dies," Mother Gana said, "But their soul doesn't. Their soul gets reincarnated into another life. As they die, a child is born that carries their gifts and powers in them through of the soul of that half-Spirit."

I felt a tingle down my spine, and something in my stomach rumbled. The way I attacked Tigerstar and the others last night. How it seems I sense things others can't. The way I got into that Spirit meeting. How I heard those voices.

"I'm . . ." My mouth went dry.

Mother Gana nodded. "Yes Jani. You are a reincarnated half-Spirit."

I jumped up to my feet and started to walk back and forth of the porch. I placed my hands on my head. "No," I whispered to myself. "It's impossible."

"But it is." Mother Gana walked to me. She raised a hand, and I flinched, afraid some magic would be in use here. But instead she ran her fingers through my black hair, combing it sweetly.

"You are special," she said in a sweet voice, like a grandmother comforting her granddaughter. "I knew that first night you came to my house that you snuck to my house. Your power was so strong I could sense you from miles away."

"Then why did you place this curse on me?" I said and thought out loud.

"I places no curse on you Jani. I simply triggered your powers."

I stared in confusion.

"For starters the 'curse' I placed on you was a simple punishment I would've given to any human how misacts badly enough to be punished. A Spirit is allowed to curse a human in anyway, is forbidden to kill a human. Death is what feeds evil Spirits. They find on death, we feed on life. That's why murder is a popular sin. It's one of the only ways evil was can gain power.

"Now, half-Spirits can transform into another form-beside their human appearance. Apparently your form was a cat. Since you've never really used your powers before, they were simply 'turned off' in a way. That night I 'turned on' your powers, thus starting your transformation."

My knees felt weak. I sat back down on the blanket, hugging my knees to my chest. Me? A half-Spirit? All this time? So this wasn't a curse. It was simply who I was. All this time I've had these powers inside me, and I never knew it. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Mother Gana sat down next to me. "Half-Spirits were always ignored by the Spirits. We felt that with all that's happening, we have no time to train a half-Spirit. So we left them, leaving them to figure out their powers by themselves. However when I saw you I knew we could use you. You heard of the evil working in the Underworld haven't you?"

I was silent.

She laughed. "Don't try to hide it; I sensed your presence that night at the meeting. Yes you know. And you've been to the Underworld. That's good. Now you know what you're up against." She scratched her chin. "Now you must train yourself."

I felt my eyebrows shot up to my head. "Excuse me? Train myself?

"Yes," Mother Gana nodded.

I held up my hand. "Now wait a second. I'm already training to become a warrior. How am I suppose to train myself in something I have no idea how to do?"

"I will help you a little," she said. "Only when you most need it."

"And how will I know that?" I said, with a bit of sass.

She looked at me. "You'll hear it. I can get you any time I know you're not busy. We share that connection. You'll hear the call, I promise."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Can I just ask, what exactly are my powers?"

She shrugged. "Pretty much anything you can think of, but remember, make sure you use them for good, or evil will consume you."

I clicked my tongue. "So . . . I can punish people?"

"Well . . ." She seemed lost of words. "It's not really been done before, but I suppose you can try it-only if they've committed an offensive act."

I smiled. "Sweet!"

"And there are little advantages to being a half-Spirit as well. For starters, you'll never be tired. You'll hardly have the urge to sleep."

So that's why I'm never tired anymore! I nodded in satisfaction. "Alright, keep it coming."

"Like I said, you're powers can pretty much be used for anything. You can make things appear, controlling things with your mind, read people's minds, cast spells, anything. The most interesting part of being a half-Spirit is you can travel to and from spirit worlds."

I arched a brow. "I'm sorry, did you say worlds?"

She nodded. "Yes. Because you are half-mortal, you can travel to the spirit worlds of mortal, as well as our spirit world. You can even call spirits from other worlds."

My jaw dropped. "Really? I can do that?"

"Yes. We are the highest Spirits in all worlds. They have to obey us. Just don't call Spirits from the Underworld. They are quite the tricksters, and love to manipulate a half-Spirit when they see one."

I nodded. "So let's say I wanted to help . . . . I don't know?-A bunch of cats?"

Mother Gana laughed. "They've become like a family haven't they?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. But seriously, can I?"

She smiled. "It's all up to you darling." She looked out towards the direction of the lake. Then, with a puzzled look, she looked back at me. Then her eyes widened. Suddenly she burst out laughing.

I stared at her, just plain startled. "Um . . . what?"

She looked at me. "You steal don't know do you?"

I shook my head. "Come again?"

"You've known about these cats for awhile Jani."

I looked at her.

"Jani . . ." She put a hand on my shoulder. "Their reality is another soul's fantasy."

There goes those riddles I just love. Okay so let's see. Their reality, which is pretty much their life, is another soul's fantasy, another person's story. But who would listen to a story all about cats . . .

I gasped and my hands shot to my mouth. Mary! Mary read the Warriors books all the time! She dreamed about them, living off their stories. Those books. They . . . they were real this whole time! They were the stories of the clans! It was never some story for kids, it was . . . true!

"The books are real!" I squealed.

Mother Gana nodded. "A Spirit posses one of the authors who writes the stories. That's how they're so accurate. Jani, all the clan's secrets are in those books . . ."

She didn't need to say more. I looked into those black eyes. I sensed what she wanted me to do through our Spirits.

I quickly raced off the porch, but stopped midway down the road, then ran up to the porch again. I walked up to Mother Gana, and wrapped my arms around her. "Thank you," I said, then raced off again. Without even looking back, I knew she was smiling. I could sense it. I could sense a lot of things now.

It was a fifteen minute run from Mother Gana's house to Mary's house. Mary didn't live too far away from my house, a good ten minutes walk maybe.

I walked up her dirt pathway to her house. I knocked on their faded green front door (their doorbell was broken. Let's just say they weren't exactly the "keeping up with the Jones" type).

Mary answered the door thankfully. She smiled when she saw me. "Hi Jani, what's u-"

I grabbed her shoulders. "Mary!" I shook her as I spoke. "I need ever single Warriors book you own!"

A/N: Don't worry, those goosebumps will go away in a couple of minutes. So what do you guys think? Am I crazy or what? My parents said I breathed some sort of a toxic gas when I was born, so yeah, this is what happens. Alright now I want honest opinions. If you didn't like it that's fine, I'm a big girl I can handle it. But if you did like it that's awesome :) Warning, it may be a while until I update because I'm going on vacation in a couple of days. I'll try to see what I can do. Until then, REVIEW FOLKS!