Chapter 4
The wind cries, so as to care.
Aspenpaw didn't wake when the morning came; he hadn't been able to sleep for hours by that point.
His eyes were glazed over with a coat of tears.
It had thundered just a few moments ago, so Aspenpaw lifted himself up, wanting to get to the city before it rained too heavily.
The dark clouds seemed to be far away, though he couldn't see very well.
Though the sky was shallowly lit up, there wasn't a trace of yellow, hidden away from the haze.
He would have gone alone if it hadn't been for the night terrors that plagued his waking mind.
He needed some company, even if it was from a cat who hardly understood anything about the world.
The uprooted twoleg den protruded out from its center with scraps of misshapen wood strewn about the grass patch between Aspenpaw and Di.
There were large holes smashed in throughout its walls that looked like the tunnels that termites bore into fallen branches, except here it seemed like it was something far larger.
Aspenpaw swallowed his doubts and crept towards the open entranceway, part of the wall cut out and swung in, hanging on rusted hinges only halfway serving the use of keeping it in place.
There were two rooms inside that Aspenpaw could see when he walked in, the one that he found himself in at entering, and one off to the left side halfway up that only existed due to a couple of extra walls and another piece of entrance-wood.
Where the massive holes from the outside countered, there laid sharp shards of a clear metal on the ground.
Di was asleep near the center of the main room on a makeshift nest, a soft flooring against the hard wood which made up the den.
Taking his steps carefully, Aspenpaw approached, the strange, smooth texture of shaved wood slippery beneath him.
It was like ice, was the closest comparison he could make to anything he had come across before.
With one paw, Aspenpaw prodded the smaller tom.
The touch of his thin fur sent a shiver through his veins.
He felt like Acornpaw, or perhaps, Aspenpaw only remembered him that way, another distorted memory that never seemed to fall in line with any others.
He couldn't barely remember his brother's face, only the visage of him that he saw in his mind, "Hm?" Di mumbled out,
"Come on, it's time to go, if you're still going to keep with me,"
"Huh? It's, hardly morning,"
"It's going to storm. I'm moving now, regardless," Though he tried to act stoic, it was just a gambit to try and convince Di to stay,
"Fine," Di resolved himself and pushed out his front legs in a stretch.
Aspenpaw turned around wordlessly and walked to the entrance, much more comfortable under the undisturbed sky.
Even if there was a haze overtaking it, it was better than the roof of the twoleg den.
It was nearly a stereotype of Riverclan cats to comment about how they couldn't understand living in the thick forest with trees above every spot like in Shadowclan and Thunderclan, but Aspenpaw found himself with that same mindset.
It was horrifying to be under the mercy of such fragile towers.
He sat on the grass, his back away from the den, staring off into the sky.
It was a special time, when the day and night converged so beautifully that it was impossible to separate them.
There was no sun, no moon, and no stars, just the dark gray sky and the nearly black clouds in the distance which bolstered the coming of a million waves into the dry earth, the drink of life.
Aspenpaw always wondered how the water coagulated in such a way that it could rain so heavily down to the world, how the clouds came to possess the liquid, and how it varied how much of it there was when it finally came down.
Stumbling heavy paw steps behind him announced the sleepy Di to the scene.
Aspenpaw started walking as soon as Di caught up, not letting the tom see his sleep-deprived eyes,
"It really is stormy over there," Di commented, pausing to admire the darkness slowly dancing towards them,
"How long will it be until we're in the city?"
"I, uh, I don't know," This must have been Di's first time away from home.
Aspenpaw just wished he could have found somebody better to stick to.
Even after exploding at him the day before over Aspenpaw's supposed lying about she-cats, the tom kept walking with him and refused to even suggest that he would leave.
He did really seem to be afraid in this big world, having never lived without guidance before.
Aspenpaw only stopped for a couple of seconds to let Di have a moment, but continued on without a word, flinching as he felt he was being too hard on the young tom, but he didn't want to get caught out in the storm.
Those were always Aspenpaw's favorite days before, when the wind would rock his very heart and the rain would completely deafen his surroundings.
Acornpaw always said that he could never enjoy it; there were too many opportunities for cats to get hurt or lost or swept away in a raging tide.
At the time, Aspenpaw admired his brother for this, but now he looked back at it with a strange envy for the empathy that Acornpaw had, or at least presented, for the world and all the other cats in it.
Aspenpaw had never truly been sure if Acornpaw felt the things that he said he did, or if he only said them because he thought that that was how he was supposed to feel.
The wandering pair dragged their paws across the hard thunderpath, once again finding themselves in a space where danger should be expected, and yet, the world was empty, like the fantasies of a kit in a bundle of reeds, pretending that it was the end of the world.
Aspenpaw imagined that this was what the end would look like, barren paths no longer leading anywhere, splits in the earth leading all the way to the heart of the world, and one last encroaching storm to sweep it all away.
The city couldn't be more than a couple hours away at this point, and yet there wasn't a single sign of life around.
Thunder roared once again, far away and yet more powerful than any other sound that Aspenpaw had ever heard.
The wind had picked up, strong enough now to shake the loose bits and scraps still attached to the disjunctive foundations of the lines of nests.
He stopped, and he sat down, staring up at one such home, pounding like a beating heart, "Somebody must have lived here once, right?" He mumbled to himself,
"Huh?" Di sounded from behind him,
"Somebody's memories are in there," Aspenpaw tried to convince himself, staring down the broken creation, uncertain if it could ever host life in the same capacity as it once did, "Somebody's good and bad is still around, and all of the moments when nothing was happening. That can't fade away, right?"
"Are you okay, As?"
"Keep going," Aspenpaw breathed heavily, his eyes blurring with tears the longer he stared at his unanswered pleas, "I'll catch up with you in a minute,"
The wind tore down the old buildings, they could have never survived.
The storm was approaching, like a ravenous hound hunting in a dream.
Aspenpaw and Di had arrived at the outskirts of the city.
Here there was noise, and nearly nothing but.
The shrieks of monsters percolated through the sky.
Monsters. Sympathetic creatures, bound to life against their will.
It was wrong to call what the twolegs controlled 'monsters'.
They were only metal.
Aspenpaw didn't understand them in much way further than that, but it was easier to believe that than it was to believe that there was life in those painful shrieks.
Aspenpaw wasn't a monster, he was a murderer,
"I'll go alone from here," His decision rang out much longer than he intended it to, echoing in the whirling breeze around and around again.
Di didn't say anything at first, and Aspenpaw didn't shift his eyes to catch his reaction, "Thank you for coming with me," He added genuinely,
"Y-You-You're welcome!" Di was able to speak once he was given praise, "I-It was nice! Do you, really not n-need me? I can-ca-"
"No," Aspenpaw interrupted and shook his head, "I want to find my own way, Di, and you shouldn't get into any more danger," He looked back at the tom and said one more thing, "And one thing,"
Di pricked his ears,
"If you meet a she-cat out there, just, have a conversation with her. You'll learn a lot more there than you ever could from me,"
"Yeah, okay, yeah," Di agreed,
"Goodbye, Di,"
"Oh, already?"
"It'll start raining soon, I have to go, and so do you," Di nodded slowly and kept his head down as he spoke,
"Goodbye, As," Aspenpaw turned away.
He knew that Di wouldn't be the one to leave first, so he had to take initiative.
He just hoped that he would follow through with what he had asked.
Ahead of him was a massive tower, far larger than he had anticipated them to be.
It was entirely dark despite neighboring buildings hosting internal light throughout their large climb.
Aspenpaw run to a short wall, and with a single leap, he was in the city.
This was the space between two structures, dark and empty, and far past it where the buildings ended was a thunderpath, and even from here, there were more monsters on it than he thought he had ever seen in his life.
Turning to his right however, there was a tiny gap between the outside wall and the blackened tower that was sized perfectly for a cat.
Aspenpaw decided that this path would be safer to walk.
The smell of smoke and muck filled his nose, while his ears were subject only to the constant shrieking and movement of monsters, their bodies always vibrating with energy.
And then the rain fell. In an instant his senses were destroyed, distorted by such a volume that it was akin to how he imagined the first moments of death to be.
His ears were caught in the deafening splash of a million raindrops at once, the stench of the city had been cleansed, and he was almost blind looking through the constant mirage.
This was retribution, to take something which he had loved so dearly, and to pelt him with it until it stung all across his body.
There was no cover, no place to hide, and so he just kept walking.
The ground was wet, the sky was clear.
The storm had come to pass, despite Aspenpaw's fears that it may last forever.
There was a howling harmony of monsters from the near to the distance, like they were in pain.
The city seemed at a standstill, yet Aspenpaw continued on.
He had walked for so long that he'd forgotten how long it really had been.
The ground was murky, like the bottom of a river, bits of crowfood in the current of rushing water, up halfway of his legs as he waded through.
Aspenpaw was in a demention of his habitat, disgusting slime and gunge sweeping across his fur and skin with every movement.
He paused for a moment.
He thought he heard somebody singing.
His brother.
It was just the swash of the water banging against the buildings, echoing up, up, up to the slipping clouds, they drifted like sap down the sides of the world in a comatose existence.
That's where he wanted to be, alone and afraid, but unharmed.
He wished to be free of consciousness, but he feared death like any form of life does.
He didn't want to live, and he didn't want to die.
There were faces before, like hot stones, claw marks embedded in them as cats tried to attach a grip.
Aspenpaw didn't believe they were real, until one of them, one of two, spoke,
"How long d'ya want to live, little tom? 'Cause if it's anythin' longer thanna minute, you had better turn that misshapen face o' yours and run as fast as those weak little legs'll take ya!" Aspenpaw snapped back to reality at the threat, taking a moment to come up with his response,
"I'm just passing by, if you wouldn't mind," There was an edge to his voice which he hadn't wanted to be there,
"Oh, well then why don' ya just come right this way!" The same tom in front of him taunted, standing still and waiting for Aspenpaw to make a move.
The other cat there was a young she-cat, though Aspenpaw was having a hard time discerning scents right now with the muck still flowing under him.
She didn't look very threatening, standing behind the tom,
"I'm just passing through, if you wouldn't mind," Aspenpaw emphasized, the same tone caught in his throat, a bit harsher this time.
The tom lowered himself and growled.
Aspenpaw suddenly swung a paw at the tom.
He struck him right across the cheek with a sheathed paw, just trying to scare the tom off.
The tom was caught entirely off guard, as if he didn't even know how to defend himself, and hit his head against the wall of the structure they were standing beside.
Aspenpaw was immediately horrified by his actions.
The she-cat rushed to her partner's side.
He looked like he would be okay, but the blood protruding from his head didn't give Aspenpaw any pleasant thoughts.
He took off running in the direction which he had intended to go the whole time, not even minding the flood water anymore.
He was scared, more than he ever had been, as if he were running for his life, and yet nobody was following.
He was completely alone.
The sides of the walls were slowly closing in.
The flood was over, and the sun shone meekly through the hazy clouds ahead.
Aspenpaw was lost inside his mind.
He hadn't been aware of his movements since the altercation earlier.
In his head he kept seeing his paw bolt out and strike the territorial tom.
He had been hostile to Aspenpaw, but to assault him in such a way was a terrible act.
He felt like a lowly creature of the night, making enemies of everybody and everything he came across, either that, or pushing them away.
Aspenpaw had always been an angry tom, and he had never had good control over his emotions.
He snapped at his clanmates, even at his brother, yet always felt justified for it.
It wasn't until he was completely alone with his emotions that he realized how terrible he had been to so many cats, even when they treated him so well.
But he had never struck anybody before, never been violent beyond his words when he was upset.
Except for once.
It felt like such a long time ago.
He was only a kit then, still more than three moons away from apprenticeship.
It was a cold morning, just during the beginning of leaf-bare.
There was frost, but not yet snow, and the surrounding river around camp still ran as expected.
He had woken up with his brother by his side, but nobody else.
His mother wasn't there, and there were no other queens in the den, as Birdnose was confined to the Medicine Cat Den, never being able to leave again.
The nest was as cold as rainfall, and Aspenpaw remembered a crackle in his front leg bones as he stretched, waking his brother.
They had gone to the den entrance, afraid to leave on their own, instead at first just peering out into the view of camp.
Their mother was out there, her shining silver fur a perfect match to the bright, cloudy day.
Aspenpaw had rushed out into the clearing, afraid to be without her, but he stopped when she turned to see him.
There was a dull glint in her eyes, grief, but he didn't understand it at the time.
She started to pad towards the two kits, and Aspenpaw remembered feeling intensely afraid of her in this moment.
He knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't understand it, so the fear manifested as his mother.
But she didn't do anything to hurt him, she just laid down on the dirt and pulled her kits close against her body, and she whispered to them, "Daddy's gone. He's not coming back,"
She was hurting as she spoke to them, but he couldn't understand that.
He got angry.
He was afraid and upset.
He hit her, over and over again with his tiny paws, and she let him.
His brother was crying.
His mother was sick.
She was dying.
It was one of Aspenpaw's worst memories, and whenever his brother wasn't on his mind, it was her who haunted him.
His paws were still moving somewhere in the city.
He was so lost at this point that he had no reason to even try to figure out where he was in relation to anything.
The sky was opening up, small beams of light across the scenery, illuminating the way in the dark underbelly of the city.
The whole place stunk of crowfood and bile, spilling out from large containers knocked down by the time-limited rivers.
He could hear shouting from nearby, some dispute between twolegs, rough voices, like their throats had been whittled down over time.
Aspenpaw got up against the wall, dragging his tail across it as he trudged on, dodging the muck and debris left in the wake of the storm.
The ground was bumpy, a million little lines creating the path that he walked along, like hardened gravel.
The world was gray as his own fur, though it shone a bit with the sun uncovering the washout that he experienced a small while prior.
A bird flew across the clouds and landed on a wire, where Aspenpaw noticed several of the same animals perched.
They were larger than most birds in the clans, and their feathers nearly made them blend in completely with the dark sky if it wasn't for their sporadic movements, searching for food in this barren land.
He looked back down, unsure of where he was going, but in his peripheral vision, he spotted a ray of color flash to his eyes.
Purple. A color so rarely seen in the clans that if Aspenpaw had been asked to describe it, he wouldn't be able to come up with a single word.
There were these small flowers that grew alongside the grass in Windclan, dull purple petals and yellow pistils.
He had spent only a small amount of time there in the last couple of moons due to the lack of space to hide, and the reputation of speed that the Windclan cats had.
But he had taken small refuge in the foliage, flowers, and grasses of the forest territories.
Now he padded up to the anomaly.
There was no grass for this flower to grow in, so he immediately thought that it must have been of twoleg possession and thrown away, but as he got closer, he was able to determine its species.
It was a peony, the kind of flower that Corrina had told him to watch for if he needed shelter and help from one of the hidden she-cat bases.
Looking closer, he saw that it had been placed carefully, with its stem stuck in between the wall and a stack of crates that had been knocked down.
It had presumably been hidden before the storm, but was now out in the open with its shelter lying broken against the ground.
The head of the flower pointed in the direction across from Aspenpaw, and he anxiously began moving towards it, not knowing if it was the right thing to do or not.
The jags in the ground scraped against his sluggish pads as he dragged his paws along the narrow-way.
He turned the corner and walked, keeping his eyes peeled for further hints as to where he should go and what he should do.
There was something right to do, and something wrong.
He thought again about the tom who he had hurt on his way here, how he was no different from clan cats, from the cats that Aspenpaw loved.
That must have been the wrong thing to do, was invading on one of these bases the right or wrong thing to do?
He didn't think he could really help them with such a monumental task, though he wouldn't admit to himself that he was afraid.
He didn't have anywhere else to go however, and even if he thought he would only be a hindrance, his selfishness won out and he kept walking.
There was another peony after a while.
It had been hidden in the air, hanging from a porch of the neighboring twoleg building.
It pointed him ahead, and Aspenpaw listened to the going-ons of life in the city to dull his mind from finishing the thoughts in his head.
It was all incomprehensible, which was exactly what Aspenpaw wanted.
If he couldn't make sense of anything, he wouldn't be able to relate it back to anything that troubled him.
So his paws moved independently, coasting by past rubbish and debris left in the turbulence caused by the storm.
Every setting was the same, just a maze of open-air corridors, sometimes hiding a peony, egging him on to continue, until he reached a standstill.
A dead end.
The trail just ended with no obvious place to go from here.
Aspenpaw began to look around, trying to find something that he missed, but his reliance on his eyes had misguided him, as he hadn't heard when he was surrounded.
There were four cats behind him when he turned around, all she-cats.
Aspenpaw recoiled and backed nearly against the wall.
He was entirely cornered, "You're comin' with us, don't try an' fight," The second one from the right spoke, a calico behind her muddy fur,
"Corrina sent me!" Aspenpaw growled, though there was a bit of desperation in his voice staring down the odds against him.
When they didn't react, he recalled the pseudonym which Corrina had given him,
"The Setter!" He elaborated.
Expressions turned from cat to cat, though there was never a moment when one pair of eyes weren't on him.
The same she-cat spoke in a hiss, "If that be someone real and respectable, then I'll apologize, but we ain't takin' chances with a mite like you,"
Aspenpaw had been betrayed.
He had been led into a trap laid for his death.
He would have to fight his way out.
Aspenpaw wordlessly took a step forward, curling his lip and unsheathing his claws.
Immediately he was matched by the patrol, as the two cats on the outer sides stepped ahead, creating a semicircle to entrap Aspenpaw further.
Aspenpaw stepped back to counter this, but soon started running out of space.
He swiped out a couple of times, trying to ward them off from coming closer without success.
They were so close that Aspenpaw had to make his stand if he was to get away.
The furthest she-cat to the left made the mistake of tripping over a piece of debris, prompting Aspenpaw to take the chance and launch himself at her, aiming at her legs.
She toppled as he landed on her, but in an instant, moving far faster than him, the rest of the patrol was on him.
Aspenpaw felt a sensation burn through his entire body, and he backed away, right back to where he had been before.
The adrenaline that was pumping more and more blood into his veins caused him to not even realize that he had been hurt at first.
The she-cat regained her grounding and growled, reforming with the rest of the group as they continued to slowly close in.
Aspenpaw tried to hiss, but his throat was caught, and he hacked involuntarily instead.
The patrol stopped in their movements.
Something came up into his mouth, a dirty liquid, and he spat it out onto the deep gray jags of the path beneath him.
For a moment he didn't look down, too entirely involved in the fight to pay attention to anything else, but stillness filled the air, and there was a small change in the she-cats' eyes, Aspenpaw chanced a glance at the ground.
Blood.
There was a massive gash in his chest pouring the stuff out like a stream.
He couldn't even see his flesh behind the swampy discoloring.
It flowed from his chest to his legs, creating a puddle slowly running down the narrow-way.
Aspenpaw was completely frozen. He had never been hurt in a battle before.
He had never watched this much blood spill out from his own body.
His senses only picked up the drainage in his body.
He couldn't bring his eyes back up to meet with the faces of his enemies.
He could only fear the drops hitting the ground, and the remaining blood in his body pounding in his ears.
His smell and taste was overwhelmed by the salt and dirt and bitterness, his mouth filling and being emptied back into the lake he was creating at his paws.
The adrenaline began to fade, and Aspenpaw could suddenly feel the searing.
It was all he knew in that moment.
His paws slipped as they tried to move, and Aspenpaw stumbled backwards, banging against the wall and slinking into the corner, trying to escape from the blood.
But it followed where he went, step in step, his paws leaving perfect reflections in red every time he lifted and placed them down.
His eyes started to wile between puddles, engendering Aspenpaw's petrifying fear to the point where his body nearly gave out.
He sank into the sharp corner of the twoleg buildings, spitting and turning his head in to embrace blackness.
None of the she-cats had moved, and at this point, Aspenpaw didn't care anymore, he just wanted to be left alone, from them and from the red streams colliding over washing over his paws.
His mind started to go, and the last thing that Aspenpaw remembered before his body shut down, was the image in his head of Acornpaw in his final moments, spitting out the same blood waves that he now did.
Until I write again,
-Gojira