Chapter 10

Her breath flows across your sleeping neck like dark, scavenging ants.

It was a painful step up to the elevated stone flooring of the city from the safe grasses which had slowly withered in sperse as the two cats neared the rumbling echo of screeching monsters through towerlines.

Aspenpaw's paws were blistered, and it felt like walking on blackthorn.

He hadn't said anything yet about it, muscling through and trying to absorb the pain like a disease and kill it from the inside.

Despite how much he tried to convince himself, the pain wasn't easing.

Deya hadn't spoken a word since earlier, and Aspenpaw had only coughed mildly since that same point.

Still, the silence hadn't bothered him at all.

The ambient musings of this foreign land were still fascinating to him.

Acornpaw had used to listen to those tinnitus sounds when the land was dead,

"Can we rest for a minute?" Aspenpaw hardly raised his voice above a whisper, but he still stopped expectantly, caught between wanting to stop the pain and not wishing to appear weak.

Deya looked back with a puzzled look on her face, as if she hadn't quite heard him,

"You wanna stop?"

Aspenpaw nodded, "Okay, I don't think we'll go too far in anyway, but I do want to take you up and let you see all that too,"

The narrow-way, that space caught between two outreaching giants, was brighter than Aspenpaw would have preferred it.

He couldn't hide his face here.

The two cats sat against the wall, as if trying to blend in. As he understood it, any confrontation here was one to be avoided.

Aspenpaw raised a paw to his head and dragged his tongue across the tender skin, nearly producing tears the further his saliva sank down.

He caught Deya shooting a glance at him when he wasn't supposed to be looking.

Aspenpaw assumed that she was feeling guilty over making him walk for so long on cracked pads.

He hated being given sympathy as if he were a kit, and tried to create a dialogue,

"Who's your brother?" Deya looked surprised and a bit bewildered by Aspenpaw's inquiry.

She hadn't meant to mention it before, that was obvious, but Aspenpaw was interested in how the siblings could survive together in the city.

What he had expected to hear was shot down once Deya found the words,

"Oh, he's long gone now. Buried him near where we were goin',"

Aspenpaw put his paw down, and tried to give a small nod of respect in her direction, not knowing what else to do. It seemed immature to clean his wounds now, so he kept his paws down and asked another question, projecting his own answer in his mind,

"What was he like?" Deya smiled strange, her lips contorting around her nearest scars,

"I don't know, he was, kind and considerate. It's been a long time, I don't remember it all that well," Aspenpaw couldn't imagine that.

It was horrifying to think that so many days could pass where until he couldn't remember Acornpaw anymore.

He didn't give a response, afraid of what he might let slip out if he did, so after a few more short moments, Deya stood and asked, "You ready to keep goin'?"

"Yeah,"

The air was humid though they were masked in the shadows of the lifeless buildings around them.

They had come a long way from the commune to the center city, and Aspenpaw was really feeling it.

He almost thanked Starclan when Deya finally stopped, but then he saw what she was looking at.

On the side of a wall, there was a stepping path going up, very similar to the one that Aspenpaw had climbed when he escaped from the camp that Jingo lived at.

Looking up at them now, he felt an airiness in his lower chest, like it had been hollowed out, and there was a sudden pain in his dry throat,

"We can just head up for a few minutes, then I think we should start heading back," Deya jumped up to the encaged path, making space by climbing up the first flight.

Aspenpaw taunted himself in his mind.

There was no reason for why he should be hesitating, and he forced himself to spring up and grab hold of the unstable bearing.

As he pulled himself up, his stomach collapsed.

Deya waited patiently on the level above for him, but as Aspenpaw began climbing to join her, he saw the ground.

It was so far beneath him, and it moved like a river, changing course so rapidly that Aspenpaw felt that if he rejoined himself to it, he would be swept away.

He imagined falling from this spot, and how it may take a minute for him to hit the ground.

For a moment, he saw his body, every bone crushed and with blood seeping out in waves, laying flat on the jagged ground.

A voice called from somewhere far away, "Are you okay?"

Aspenpaw banged against the metal railing and felt the buzzing flood into his brain like a thunderous explosion.

He heard more rattling ebbing closer and closer before a pelt appeared beside him, and a paw on his side, pushing him back up.

Aspenpaw draped the back of his neck over the step-bar banister, and he closed his eyes.

He could vaguely hear her calling out.

He imagined that it was the middle of the night, cold, bitter, hopeless black.

It was leaf-bare, and the rivers were frozen, catching fish in a perpetual state until the warm winds blew their fins back to move.

He came to his senses with a paw in a pool of marsh. He raised up to see the frost bristling and popping like a steambath.

There wasn't a moon tonight, but the stars were as plentiful as grass stems in the stretched-out fields that seemed to whimper out only when the horizon bent and ceded to his ability to see further.

The paw was comfortably numb, drenched in quickly forming ice that glistened so bright, the only clue that he had that it still existed.

His body seemed just as frozen for movement, and the earth seemed to shorten him further and further, digging into the ground like sand.

Suddenly, a tail wrapped embracingly around his paw, avoidant to the touch, but adamant to send the message.

He couldn't see who it was, but he knew that it was his brother.

The dirt had driven him so far down that he was already laying on the dewy grass when the figure reached down to rest upon the swelling paw.

His brother's head came to nest by his neck, and the warmth of his body loaded into him, braving his ice and burrs.

Feeling began to return to his paw, and with it, pain returned as well.

He pulled away in fear and hurt, and the warmth that had been there was encompassed by freeze once again, but it didn't alleviate the pain.

His brother disappeared.

Aspenpaw opened his eyes.

His neck was cold, the rusty metal bar still pressed hard against his skin.

Wisps of smoke passed by between the sharp-edged buildings above head, so far from the starry night sky and the underpowering smell of wet grass,

"I'm okay," Aspenpaw whispered, finding his place against immediately, though certainly not without the dissociation he was reeling with, "I'm okay,"

"You sure?" Deya was still there, her presence reassuring in this moment.

She didn't look like she quite knew what to do, and Aspenpaw was sure that he reflected her expression perfectly.

Still, he nodded, and Deya helped him back to his paws, letting him lead the way this time in case he fell again.

It was a struggle with every step, but Aspenpaw didn't cave again.

He had found it helpful to watch the patterns in the clouds.

Somehow, though he felt so much fear looking down from where he stood, it seemed peaceful up in those white, unmistakable and undefinable shapes.

The rooftop was as wonderful as a blooming field when he reached it, security all he could want in this moment.

He remembered his small daydream with an aching in his neck.

It was so clear in its meaning, and yet Aspenpaw questioned it over and over, trying to find an answer that wouldn't be so painful to experience, "You should'a told me you didn't like heights before we started up. Di'iv's got the same problem,"

"I didn't know!" Aspenpaw nearly growled at the white she-cat, emotionally whipped.

He didn't know what had gone wrong.

It made him sick to think about climbing up those rattling steps, as if he was still up on that roof, his chest infected and his mind hardly able to function.

There weren't many heights in Riverclan territory, but even when he had gone to the gorge, the sharpest drop he had ever seen into the depths of raging waters and pointed stones still swabbed in blood from the last creature to have placed its paws wrong, he had never been afraid, not like he was now.

It just didn't make sense to him.

Deya ignored his last comment and tried to continue with her tour, "So, this is the safer way to get around, at least for us. Let's hop on over to a couple more an' I'll show you where our hideout base is, for if things go sour,"

Aspenpaw hobbled from his knees to his paws, and saw that he had unconsciously unsheathed his claws and started scraping the stone ground.

Deya padded across the plateau and leaped up onto the protective wall before disappearing from view.

Aspenpaw ran over, not fully having comprehended her last words, and looked down to see that she had jumped to the next building's roof.

The space between the two was only that of a cat outstretched, but as Aspenpaw looked down, unable to help himself, he felt his entire body turn inside out, and started retching at the sight.

Deya turned around to watch him struggle, and she tried to offer words of advice, calling through the heavy winds that blew unperturbed this high up, "Di'iv always says a prayer before she jumps! Don't know if that would help you!"

Aspenpaw refused to pray to Starclan, or to whatever else there was beyond the body, and instead, he closed his eyes, and whispered a single word,

"Please," He landed far before he expected to feel ground again, nearly sending his body into shock.

Deya back-tracked to meet his fall,

"You good?" Aspenpaw nodded, his throat too constricted to speak.

Suddenly, a screech split the air like a rockfall.

Deya raced over to find where the scree had fallen, and watched with transfixed eyes over the parapet, not yelling a word back to Aspenpaw, who was still gathering himself, a new pain accumulated in his side from the rough landing.

He shook the sand storm from his pelt and went to join the soldier at the cliffside.

It was perfectly morning, the sun a third of the way along its course.

Aspenpaw forced his head down again, expecting the same sickness he had felt before.

But now, there was a distraction which attracted Aspenpaw's full attention.

Down below, in the crosspath between two narrow-ways, a horde of cats were settling themselves in a semi-circle to watch the speaker, the origin of the call, who sat in the center above a motionless body.

The scene was a bitter reminder of the gatherings in the clans.

It was exactly alike in the way that the cats seemed to properly present themselves, posture the only thing on their minds in this moment.

Deya looked befuddled by the whole situation, and Aspenpaw certainly didn't know what was going on,

"What is this?" He asked in a whisper, though it would take a lot for the cats down below to hear them from up here with the thick wind.

Deya shifted her closest eye to him without moving her head at all,

"Those are Jean's cats. They're not supposed to be here,"

"Why not?" As Aspenpaw spoke he noticed heads poking out from the surrounding rooftop,

"Ignore them," Deya snapped, more serious than Aspenpaw had ever seen her.

He did as he was told and kept his eyes down to the gathered soldiers below, who all waited patiently for something to start.

Deya answered his question, "This is unclaimed land, this part of the city. That's why we're here. If they're holdin' a funeral here, they're claimin' it,"

"What's that mean for the commune?"

"I don't know. Let's just see what they have to say and then we gotta get back to Apollo. If you can't make it, you can sleep in an empty trailer and I'm sure Apollo will send somebody to come get you,"

"I can make it," Aspenpaw couldn't imagine spending a night in one of those cramped husks.

The tom who sat above the body let out another cry,

"Salvēte, mīlitēs magnī et līberī miseri!" Aspenpaw was taken aback by the sounds that came from the war-torn tom,

"What's going on?" He moved in closer to Deya, suddenly feeling unprepared to take on whatever danger may lay before them,

"That's the higher language," She responded bitterly, "All the generals know it, though I'm not sure if anybody else here does very well. Our spectator friends certainly don't," She referenced the growing mass of onlookers to the scene,

"Do you know what he said?"

"He's just saying greetings to the great soldiers and us poor kits," Deya's voice was so deep with irony that Aspenpaw had no idea if she actually knew what she was talking about,

"How do you know it?" He questioned her further,

"I wasn't chosen arbitrarily, uh, your name's As, yeah?" Aspenpaw nodded, though he wasn't sure that the message was received, "Apollo's very, meticulous,"

It seemed now that enough cats had gathered to satisfy the tom that Deya claimed to be a general, as he began speaking again in that foreign tongue,

"Ego tibi offerō cōram deōs est corpus mortuum dē Arii ducis!" Aspenpaw opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Deya seemed to predict this and translated for him,

"He just introduced the body to the gods. And I was right about 'em bein' a general,"

"Occīdīt multōs ex hostibus et apud vōs locum meruīt,"

"He killed many of Charlie's soldiers and has earned his place in the afterlife," Aspenpaw recognized that as the name of the rebel leader.

The tom stepped back and two cats moved up on either side of the corpse,

"Nunc prō tē sanguinem effundō," Deya turned her head for the first time and said,

"We don't have to stay for this,"

"What'd he say?" Another yowl split the air, and then several more.

Aspenpaw returned his attention to the scene below.

The two cats who had walked up as the tom was speaking were now wrestled in a mirage of blood and claws.

Deya didn't make any moves, which confused Aspenpaw, who was already in shock at the sights, but she clarified,

"You have to move first," Aspenpaw stumbled back as he heard a particularly painful screech, sounding more like the strife of grief than the strike of claws.

Once he moved, the two cats hurried quickly away from the conflict, Aspenpaw not even fearing as he jumped to the next building, his mind too caught up in what he had just seen.

By the time they made it a few steps down the platform, Aspenpaw was reeling, and he pressed up against Deya, shifting his weight unpredictably,

"Why'd they, do that?" He asked, needing a second to breathe before finishing the sentence. He could still hear it from here,

"Those of two of that dead cat's slaves, and they hafta fight until one of 'em is dead,"

"Why?"

"Well, because he has to go through Ra'in?" She explained as if it was an obvious fact, "How far away did you come from, As?" Aspenpaw hesitated, but remembered the story that he had told Apollo, and didn't want to stray away from it in case they cross-checked him,

"I come from the woods just outside the clans,"

"Do you not know of the Beyond Worlds there?"

"They have Starclan, I don't know what that is. But why do they have to die here?"

Conversing with Deya was helping Aspenpaw to ignore the feelings of disorientation and nausea, even when he had to look straight down to walk.

Deya looked at him with confusion and shock, a face that Aspenpaw had never seen in relation to Starclan.

It struck him that the only cat he had ever talked about the afterlife with was Acornpaw; he really knew nothing about how anybody else felt on the matter.

Deya composed herself and answered his question, "Well, when one of 'em dies," She enunciated as if talking to a kit, or shielding a deep disappointment, "They'll place 'er on top of that tom and let the blood seep into his pelt before they go off and bury him so that he'll be rejuvenated, strong, when he reaches the next world,"

"What happens to the slave, then?"

"Well, she'll hafta find 'er way like the rest of us. Plus, if you subscribe to their sect, she's already damned,"

There was a low passion in her voice which reminded Aspenpaw of the over-the-shoulder delegitimizing of different clans beliefs, be it the morality and truth behind certain stores or the power structure of Starclan and the cats who bore leadership there.

The steps stopped and Deya vanished from Aspenpaw's side.

It wasn't so bad here, the ground was close enough, but Aspenpaw didn't waste a second joining the white she-cat, finally feeling the solid, grainy ground again, "You sure that you don't wanna stay at the salvage yard for the night? I could catch you somethin' and you could sleep all this off,"

"No," Aspenpaw insisted, stronger than he had intended it to come out, "I can make it. You can go ahead if you want, I'll find the way back,"

"I've hea-No," Deya seemed to try to find a quip of some sort before simply denying Aspenpaw's suggestion curtly.

The stubborn duo started to wind through the narrow-ways, and Aspenpaw immediately discovered that he would certainly not be able to find his way back on his own.

Despite how tired and disturbed he was, it felt good just to have his paws where he knew where to put them, even if they were as sore as ever,

"What do you think's going to happen since they're here?" Aspenpaw had no idea how worried he should be about this development.

It was all as disorienting as being back up on that roof,

"Um, I mean, I don't like it, but that's what Apollo will tell us. They come by every once and a while, but yeah, I don't know if, or, how much, of an immediate threat they'll be,"

Deya seemed to have complete faith put in Apollo, and Aspenpaw hoped he would be able to do the same.

Suddenly, the jagged rocks subsided and Aspenpaw felt grass wrap away his paws.

The sun was bright above their heads,

"Are you scared?"

"A bit. I've no idea what to expect,"

"Neither do I,"

Until I write again,

-Gojira