Over the time of unfaltering repeated thoughts that plagued the norm of my otherwise familiar life, I had made a habit of keeping these inquisitions as silent echoes, only to be heard in the active chamber of unusual, rehashed curiosities. However, the farther I strayed from the consistent, circular path of Clan life, the more it baffled me that no one seemed to take notice. I had kept my plights secretive, yes, but I found it almost troubling that they couldn't detect even the slightest trace of disturbance in my life.
All along, I had assumed the idea of a more complicated purpose would be arduous in their mindsets. Perhaps, that theory had been, and still remains correct, but the contradicting hypothesis came to me after a perplexing discovery.
One would think that those who surround you, and nourish you are the ones that know you better than anybody else in the world. That's what I had subconsciously thought for the duration of my young life, up until enduring a peculiar, unfathomable experience that has since twisted that unstudied supposition into another one of my repeated speculations. Now that my journey has begun, I've found myself more frequently insinuating aberrant and bizarre questions into my own thinking process. Some of these have originated from nothing but the restless activity of my mind, and others have been inspired by near unbelievable encounters and experiences that I otherwise probably would have never thought up.
With that said, the idea that I have introduced is now heavily doubted.
As the last few whispers of leafbare ebbed away into the coming of the warmer seasons, I happened upon a lush, unknown territory of tall trees and foliage that I'd never before seen. Musky, obscure scents were carried through the wind, dominating the last traces of crisp air among the forest. The area seemed remote, and uninhabited by challengers that might want to face me, so I carried through without a second thought.
Most who denounce others and contemplate attacks and strategies in order to overthrow balance and equality around them do so for the purpose of being feared. To then poise the question of why they want to be feared is a much more complex and solid matter. You must understand the subject of interrogatory, its mannerisms, its surrounding environment, its colleges and family. The results will be different for everybody, as everybody has different priorities and aspirations.
This had been my current inquisition as I walked along the winding of trees of the forest. While my questions have never derived at any fairly consistent rate, or at any specific place and time, I did find that usually, but not always did they arise as I explored a new setting. I had finally decided to put that idea to rest for the moment and focus on my new surroundings.
The ground under my paws was rich, and copious in life. I could feel it just by the way my pads sounded as they made contact with the grass. In congruency with the land above it, I could sense that everything in my path heard, and touched, and understood. This forest was of empathy and concern. Of generosity and tolerance. The ground made it its duty to feel soft and comfortable, so that at any moment, it would be prepared to support me if I were to take rest any time. Then there were the trees, which creaked with acknowledgement as I passed by. The newly birthed leaves rustled, emanating emotions of composed excitement. The wind worked in coherence, calmly, courteously reminding the foliage of my presence, so that it too could greet and address me with a permissive wave of its growing leaves, dewed by a soft mist that floated through the trees.
I dipped my head, as if these life forms were of my own kind. In the forest of my Clan, the ground, the trees, the foliage, it all ignored the inhabitance of the warriors, and thus, the warriors ignored the forest. Everything had gone stale in our eyes. Even I admit that I had forgotten the significance of the land that sheltered us. It hadn't been special in our eyes. It hadn't been worthy of our attention, just as we hadn't been exemplary enough for its appreciation. Mutually, we were invisible.
This is something that I had been looking for, something that went beyond the dull circle of Clan life. This was one small example of many, and as I watched the forest I walked through, I began to feel more and more eager to see what lied ahead. My pace quickened to a walk, to a trot, to a run. I burst through the mist. My inhibitions disappeared.
Eventually, I came to the precipice of a deep ravine. Gazing down, I saw how the foundation of the forest descended into a valley of shadowed land. Above me, the trees had more densely packed together, and despite the young Newleaf, the mane of the towering trunks grew thick and green, like the delicate season had been skipped over to reach the peak of Greenleaf. The sunlight that had followed me under the trees was blocked out, unwelcome in the ravine far below it. The mist itself had augmented into a congested fog.
I began to feel irritated, wanting so badly to explore the depths of this land, to feel its kind and benevolent acknowledgment in every place I tread. I would find a way down there.
I searched, but my mind couldn't focus on the objective. It kept wandering away from task, as if trying to escape the situation at hand. I felt…tired, helpless…lonely, sad.
After StarClan knows how long, I sat, my legs too exhausted to carry me. It was like the many tree-lengths I had run to make it there had finally caught up with me. My eyelids fell heavily over my dull and solemn eyelids. What had happened? So quickly, I declined from a determined, ecstatic cat to someone who was hopeless. The forest had suddenly stopped encouraging me, and stood around in a sullen quiet. I could feel it staring down at me, its sympathies stifled, its emotions dry.
And suddenly, I heard whispers…
"Poor cat, poor, poor, poor little cat."
"Poor."
"The forest is always the same. Blink once, it abandons you."
"After bringing you so very far? Tsk…"
I opened my eyes and raised my head. Searching around the branches and through the bushes and tall grasses, I found nothing but what had always been there. Were these voices in my head? Had I gone mad? My fur stood on end.
"Sh…sh…relax, poor cat. You've been through so much. Relax…relax…"
I looked around again. These whispers, they echoed coldly in my mind, and yet, I couldn't help but feel that they were real. They fluttered rhythmically in the wind, created wind, stood apart from the rest of the forest around me, something that wasn't natural, something unconnected to the trees, and the ground, and the foliage.
"We will help you. We will save you…"
And then, a figure glided towards me, a silhouette in the mist. Its movements were graceful, smooth, and elegant. Without disturbing the forest around, it walked closer and closer, until our noses were practically touching. It looked like a cat, breathed like a cat, gazed like a cat, into my own petrified stare.
"Do not fear."
Another figure slid into sight, moving to stand beside the one that stood before me, then a third, a fourth, a fifth. Soon there were ten figures in front of me, gazing at me with interest.
"Do not fear."
Their words were emitted in unison, icy and emotionless, yet so very convincing. My sadness slipped away just as quickly as it had come. I stared back at them, feeling empowered again, feeling well-rested, strong, courageous. I spoke.
"Who are you?"
They said nothing, didn't even blink. A moment passed by, and then another, and soon, we were all standing in a stretch of silence, complicated by the many lives that breathed there. They stared into my eyes. I could feel their look getting colder, more intense, more fascinated. But I could not decipher their otherwise blank, emotionless expressions. Gazing back, I forgot what I had asked them, and I wasn't startled when they started to speak again. I noticed that their mouths didn't move.
"We were like you."
"We used to aimlessly wander…"
"Searching for something…"
"Searching for everything…"
"Without knowing what, or where, or why…"
Why? That was my own thought, floating behind the barrier that kept us apart. I was of question, them of answer. I knew that now, but again it soared off, and I didn't watch as it escaped between the leaves up above.
Again, they spoke. "You need not travel any longer. All you could ever ask for lies here. You will understand. You will not have to hide your troubled epiphanies, your endless questions. Here, you shall be welcomed."
I closed my mouth ajar after realizing that I was gaping at their words. How did they know?
And once again, the thought left me, just as quickly as it had come.
"You can be one of us. You can betray the world around you that with its darkness has blocked the light of truth."
"Your family, your friends, the forest…have all abandoned you. They pretended they had the ability to understand your most intricate thoughts, see into your mind. Little did they know in actuality. What a shame."
"Shame."
"Only we can understand. Only we can see into your mind."
"And we see so much."
I watched in curiosity as they glided towards the edge of the ravine, gazing down in peculiar interest. Their eyes flashed with a million memories, flickering with wonder, fear, joy, sorrow, darkness in a matter of heart beats. There was a nagging urge to stand beside them, as one of them, and even as I flanked their untouchable pelts at the precipice, I couldn't, at least not yet.
They noticed my hesitance, and began exchanging an agglomeration of mrrows and tsks. Impatient, and embarrassed I hissed, "Well, what do I do?"
They all silenced, and looked at me.
I wanted…I needed to be one of them. They knew my every thought. They knew everything I desired, that I wanted something more than the unsympathetic, tedious, interminable land around me. We all had known that there had to be something out there, no matter what, no matter where, no matter –
Why? The thought again.
"Tell me, what must I do?"
"Our home," they said, "is the ravine. It shall soon also be your home."
"The trial is simple."
"Simple."
"Yes, very simple."
"Tell me!" I was beginning to feel sick. The need for answers was attacking my every nerve, as if expecting to find it within my exhausted, aching bones. My thoughts were not my own. They belonged to the cats in front of me as they watched, scavenging inside my pounding head. Their cool glares were like sharpened, jagged stones piercing into my own wild gaze and digging at the emotion. They knew me better than anyone else I'd ever met, and in that moment, I couldn't decide the origins of the nature of my desperation, whether it was for knowledge or for an escape, and escape from their horrible stares. "Speak!"
They didn't have to. Together as one, the gelidity of their stares was lifted off of me. There was an enormous pressure lifted from my trembling body, and the pain left there was just as excruciating if not even more so. My desperation grew.
Their gaze landed at the shadowed base of the ravine. Realization struck like the blow of an enemy.
Who were these cats?
But that was as far as it all went. I couldn't stand it any longer. This agony was stronger than anything I had ever felt in battle, than any wound ever inflicted. I looked down. There was no other way than to jump. There was no other way to end the anguish.
A paw step forward, than another.
I would escape the fear. I would become one of them. I would know what, where…
Why?
Why…
I don't know what it was about the recurring thought, but every time it amenably and independently pounded within my mind, a slab of pain was lifted from my shoulders and made me hesitate another heartbeat.
Their voices were sharp as lions' claws, gouging into the thought like a tooth would a mouse. Their voices were pain. They were pain. "You don't have to be alone. Your journey of self-identity does not have to be of lugubrious solitude." There it was again, the cold unison of their words as one, in a high-pitched, low-pitched echoing chorus. I noticed the breath in their words, shaky and moist. Cool like the mist that blanketed the forest. Of the mist that blanketed the forest.
And I needed to escape, but how? The forest would not encourage me. The mist would asphyxiate me.
The mist. It was poison. These cats. They were poison. And they wouldn't be if I jumped.
"You are one of us. You search for what we have. What, where, why…"
Why? It was now a scream in my head fading into a dull silence again and again before it was reaffirmed. A question of endless and astronomical meaning, with answers of the infinite, and yet, I knew this question like my own two forepaws.
My entire life had been a circular whirlwind of familiarity. A repetitive life within a repetitive lifetime, within a repetitive generation within a repetitive eternity, forever and always following the same blueprint of purpose and destiny, to a point where there was no longer purpose, or destiny. Why? was another small yet massive concern that I knew all too well. However, Why? wasn't repetitive. It changed with every moment of the day, and with every heartbeat it is emitted. I knew everything about Why? no matter how eternally intricate it would continuously grow to be.
I had what the others didn't. I had purpose. I knew why.
They had all jumped because they had nothing. They knew nothing. They didn't bother to look within themselves to understand. I looked within myself every day. I had a new question everywhere I went, every time I woke up to a new sunrise. I knew I had to be meant for something more. More than Clan life, more than eternity as a forever lost and desperate object of the mist's fury.
"I won't jump," I told them.
"You must."
"I won't."
And I turned. The exhaustion of my every bone and muscle hardly fazed me as I ran. I ignored the forest like the forest had always ignored me. It was the mist it had been tending to, the mist that it had encouraged, and no matter how much the mist urged my return, I let Why? shriek. I left, and didn't turn back.
It wasn't safe there, more so a deathtrap designed for any indolent soul foolish enough to enter and partake in their influence.
Most who denounce others and contemplate attacks and strategies in order to overthrow balance and equality around them do so for the purpose of being feared. To then poise the question of why they want to be feared is a much more complex and solid matter. You must understand the subject of interrogatory, its mannerisms, its surrounding environment, its colleges and family. The results will be different for everybody, as everybody has different priorities and aspirations.
True enough, but sometimes they just don't want to feel empty. They crave a meaning behind their reason for existence.
A/N: Credit for this chapter and special thanks goes out to Reminiscent Lullaby, so if you enjoyed this work be sure to go out and pay her page and stories a visit.