It's been four months since I've updated.
*Screams and hides.
I'm so sorry! Life has been hectic and gotten in the way, and argh! Too busy studying for this and that, running around in circles panicking...yeah. I promise updating will be relatively consistent from now on, since summer is coming, and woo, no school!
RiverClanner: Thanks, and I'm sorry that it's basically been dormant for the past few months!
Aspenshadow didn't deserve to be a warrior.
The grey and white she-cat sighed, staring out into the forest. Closing her dark blue eyes, she sat back, curling her tail over her paws as she imagined the river.
She had hesitated.
What kind of warrior hesitates when they knew they could save their clanmate?
Silverpaw might not have noticed, but Aspenshadow could not make herself forget the feeling of sheer terror, the moment when she had wanted to just let the kit die. It wasn't as if she didn't know how to swim.
A sharp pain flashed in her chest. Aspenshadow wanted to crumple, to curl over and call out for help. But who would help her?
The only kin she had left in the world, her brother. But she didn't deserve him, didn't deserve his forgiveness after what had happened.
Because, after all, Aspenshadow was the one who had killed their mother.
Aspenshadow stood up, looking back toward the silent camp. She took a running start, leaping over and onto highrock.
It was a farfetched dream, but someday she wished to be up here, head held high, watching over her clanmates proudly as the sun rose to a new dawn.
But what kind of leader isn't willing to save a kit just because of a mousebrained past event?
Aspenshadow's shoulders slumped, and she sprang down. The dark grey and white she-cat winced as she almost landed on Ravenstrike's white-tipped tail.
Not a cat was awake in camp. Duskpelt had crouched at the side of his former mentor's body, nose nuzzling her dark fur, until he went back to the den.
Darkblaze refused to even look at his mate's motionless shape. The black and ginger tom was broken, utterly broken, opting to stay in the nursery with his kits.
The kits.
They still didn't understand, understand why their mother wouldn't wake up, wouldn't stir and comfort them, didn't understand why their mother was out in the cold night air all by herself. It was heartwrenching, their confused mews turning into wails as their emotionless father herded them back into the nursery, blocking their mother from site. Blood still reeked in the camp, a dank scent that would probably haunt their nightmares for the rest of their lives.
And Birchheart.
Aspenshadow glanced down at the sandy grey she-cat in pity. A small trickle of dried blood dabbled at the corner of her lips, her eyes closed for all and forever.
She had heard that Birchheart's mate and son died in a freak accident, crushed by a tree felled by a leaf-bare storm. Of course, this had happened before Aspenshadow was even born, but it was obvious the effects it had left on the grey queen.
The look in her eyes that was always present. Longing, confusion, sadness, anger, all locked in one gaze.
It was as if…as if Birchheart thought it was her fault.
Aspenshadow cast the thought from her mind. She turned away, trotting out of the gorse tunnel and scaling the ravine. She sat at the same level as the treetops, a view where she could see the entire camp without having to turn her head.
Stars swam above her, a dizzying river of brightness that made it hard for Aspenshadow to open her eyes.
A river…
Her past came flooding back.
Aspenshadow's eyes hardened, turning into the sharp chips of dark flint her father's had been. Unsheathing her claws, a snarl shaped onto her face, ears pinning flat against her head.
Her mother had been RiverClan, a drypaw, unable to fit in with her birth clan. So she had run away as a kit, nearly drowning in the river before reaching ThunderClan. Swiftstar took the poor kit without even thinking.
What Aspenshadow could remember about her were her warm golden eyes, her sleek white pelt with delicate tabby markings around her eyes.
Blackfrost and her looked more like their father.
She had clearly inherited many of her mother's RiverClan attributes, their love of water seemingly skipping a generation and passed onto Aspenshadow. Aspenshadow was a strong swimmer from the very start, her downy kit fur able to repel the water that ran in rivulets down her pelt.
And had she loved it, the sensation of gliding weightlessly, of splashing through the stream, darting through bushes dripping with dew and moisture.
Her brother was more ThunderClan, a leaner build with shorter fur for slipping through the trees. But he wasn't completely like a typical forest warrior. His fur was slightly longer than most of ThunderClan's, with a compact, fluffy tail that would act as a rudder while swimming.
Frostcreek fell in love with a handsome ThunderClan tom, with eyes such an intense blue that they could only be said as the colour of a clear leaf-fall sky. The beautiful she-cat and the courageous tom, a match made in StarClan. Frostheart and Breezewing, dynamic duo. They loved each other so deeply, had two strong kits.
It was perfect family, a happy family. A caring mother, a proud father, what else in the world could Aspenshadow possibly want?
But the truth is not always how it appears.
Breezewing left Aspenshadow's mother for another she-cat when she was five moons old.
Frostcreek had tried, tried so hard to make up to her kits for their separation. She talked to the both of them, still kits, more, having to take the role of both parents in a time when being just one was hard enough.
Blackfrost did not accept it. Silence, a bitterness clouding his clear eyes that should not have been possible for one his age. And he blocked her out, he blocked them out at every turn, retreating into the husks of a shell and peering out into the dark. He had only ever wanted to be a good warrior, a good apprentice, and he focused himself completely into becoming just that. Channeling his pain into training, before he had even become an apprentice, watching mentors train with their wards, hidden from sight by the budding leaves of newleaf.
Frostcreek took Aspenshadow out of camp, letting her play in the river. They'd walk along the shoreside, silent, and Aspenshadow preferred it that way. The peaceful calm, the rush of the river and the rustling of reeds. Some part of her, deep inside, some part that was stupid and unfair, and was outraged by the inequality of it all, blamed Frostcreek, for her part in only that she did not protest her mate abandoning her and the family in pursuit of another.
The glimpses of her father, with his newfound mate, a pure ThunderClan cat, made Aspenshadow want to wretch. Blackfrost fared no better, for in his eyes, Breezewing had destroyed the family that he had cherished.
He was their father no more.
And so Aspenshadow hated being in camp, hated traces of her father, the stolen purrs and darting sideways glances passed between him and that ThunderClan she-cat. While Blackfrost spent his days on the outskirts of camp, channelling his hatred into determination to succeed, to become a better warrior than his father and to prove his worth, Aspenshadow was by the river, walking along the smooth pebbles, gazing out over the river, wondering if she did not truly belong in ThunderClan, and wishing with her all her heart that her mother had never joined the clan, that she had instead been born in the clan where she felt as though she was meant to be.
Aspenshadow swallowed back a sob.
Frostcreek's death had been her fault.
It had been a heavy rain, a newleaf flood. It was far too dangerous to take their routine stroll, but she had insisted, pestered and begged until her mother, with exasperation and doting in her eyes, had finally agreed.
Shuffling her paws, Aspenshadow tucked her chin into the fur of her chest, the pains of memories and the past surging back, flooding her heart in a wave of regret and despair. How she wished she had the sense to listen for once, to wait another day. For if she had, her mother would have lived to see it.
It was the tide that had caught them off-guard. One moment, it had been her on the shore, entranced by the rolling and churning of the waves, the pounding bubbles against rocks and smash of water on boulders. And the next, she was caught in it, out of paw's reach from her mother, her dear mother, tossed about like a leaf in the wind. Frostcreek had never learned how to swim properly; it had been a miracle in itself that she had made the crossing to ThunderClan territory when she had been a kit.
She remembered screaming over the rush of water, and Frostcreek trapped in a whirlpool made by the river's torrents, just out of reach. Circling and circling, fighting against the current, trying to find a break in the relentless surge to reach her, kicking out with her hind legs. Her mother's pelt, dirtied by blood and mud and drenched from being bashed against boulders and sharp bits of debris. Her head disappeared under once, and bobbed back up after moments that seemed to last for eternity. And then again, only the pause between the gurgle of beneath and bursting back up lengthening.
She didn't surface the third time.
They said that it wasn't her fault, there had been nothing she could have done, that she had been too young, the river too strong, and there had been no chance of Frostcreek's recovery. But Aspenshadow replayed the scene in her mind a thousand times, with every what if and variance in events ending with the possibility of Frostcreek emerging alive. Moons of turning with a hope to every shadow cast over her, that Frostcreek would somehow emerge unscathed, tell her that it was alright, that she was alive and she was back, that it had been but a dream. That Breezewing was still her father, Blackfrost still her bubbly, energetic brother, and they were still a perfect family.
Aspenshadow sighed softly, looking up to Silverpelt once more. Mother? Are you watching over me from above?
She hoped that Breezewing, in death, was somewhere where he could not continue to break her mother's heart.