Recap: A rebel scout group was caught by PureClan and dispatched in camp. Cariad's moral objection was… resolved by Sunfeather. Morningstar, however, was royally pissed. Embershade is now also harbouring certain suspicions about Cariad and his city connections…
Please forgive my see-sawing timelines. Assume that everyone is caught up except for Khia because she's a pain in my ass.
He treads carefully in camp. If he was cautious before, he is now doubly so, as though walking on a wire. One wrong step seems to beckon bloodshed and violence. He hangs out on the fringes, watching all of them- the PureClan monsters, the beasts of the forest, the scourges of the land- with cold eyes and a quickened pulse. Everyone is culpable; no one is innocent, or clean, or without reproach. He hates them all, and he's reminded, more strongly than ever, of why the city's cause must succeed. Why the stakes are so high. Triumph is more than a matter of ego now.
Cariad is almost surprised at the progression of time: the sun rises and sets with a blind, impassive face, and the days pass by with little consequence. The blood stains even wash away in the rain. It seems absurd to him. He wonders if it really even happened: was it one of his nightmares after all? Did he conjure it up himself? Could he blame his imagination, and nothing else? No. The looks he begins to receive, daily, are testament to the slaughter and its actuality. They're a mixed bag; some regard him with embarrassment, or unsurety, or outright hatred. Most are malevolent, as though, had he stuck around any longer, he would have found himself the next designated target of their rage. Maybe he was supposed to be.
Sunfeather has little patience for his wariness. "You've lived here for months, Voletooth. Withdrawing now only serves to remind them you're different."
"Good," Cariad replies, sounding dangerously vengeful. "I'd hate for them to forget."
His pair fixes him with an irate look. The dark spot in his heart- the hatred he reserves for the Clanners- even has room for her.
"Come back to the fold," she says, with finality. And she leaves him to sulk.
He doesn't see Strongclaw for days, either. Maybe the older tom feels guilty. It's only right he should. Cariad feels guilty too. Guilt is too soft, too weak a word for what really consumes him. It's shame, a deep, unbidden shame. Here, it's merely the price of survival.
But time passes, and he quashes the shame down, shoves it into strict mental compartments. He will do what it takes, to survive.
Strongclaw comes back to camp and makes no mention of the mass murder that took place. They begin to sit together again, a tidy trio, though a heavy undercurrent lingers under their conversations. It's Cariad: his hate, his anger. It's almost tangible. But without friends in this place, he has nothing at all.
He's not sure what he's waiting for. At the same time, he knows what's coming, what he's been anticipating for so long. Sometimes, he refuses to think the words. Sedition has its own scent, so he keeps himself clean. In an effort to look compliant, malleable, even, he does small chores befitting of a warrior. One such thing is hunting, a subtle and delicate art he is yet to master. He's an ill fit for this role, but he has to try anyway. Sunfeather has given up on trying to teach him, but smiles wearily at his efforts, like an indulgent parent.
"Hunting and fighting aren't so different," she tells him, repeatedly. "It's all just killing."
The thought makes him queasy. It's a true statement, of course- death is death. The scales of it, the significance of it, seems off, but who is he to prioritize one life over another? Even if that life is a mouse, or a vole, or a badger? He can justify death, of course, but he can't applaud it. Death for warriors, however, is a whole vocation. And Sunfeather, for all her shortcomings as a Clanner, is still a warrior. Every last inch of her.
Perhaps he has the chance- to hunt, to kill, to deal death like he ought to- and lets it go. Perhaps he sees the mouse in the undergrowth or the bird in the trees and chooses to let it be. To refuse to feed the monsters that house him isn't a conscious choice, but he follows it with unerring loyalty. He fails to serve them; a devout kind of failure, a pious one. There is no reprimand. There's nothing more they can do to him.
Cariad likes to think they're powerless, even though he knows they are not. Keeping them small, even in his mind, seems to curb their threat.
"What are you afraid of?" Sunfeather asks, sardonic. "A little death?"
He tells her no, more than once. He is looking forward to it.
Strongclaw hears this irreverent exchange and looks sour. Maybe he is the one afraid of death. But Cariad thinks, privately, that Strongclaw has weathered more death than he can handle, and is quietly waiting for his own.
The only one untouched by death, it seems, is Morningstar. Perhaps 'untouched' is an inequitable term: she wades amongst it, embraces it with loving arms. She is its agent, or else it is merely hers. It causes her no grief. She doesn't wear a mask, like most of the cats he lives amongst. It's plain on her face. She keeps no discernable secrets. Most of the Clan walks softly around her now, as if she is volatile. Cariad doesn't know any version of her but this one: wild, vague, and menacing. The anxiety must be strangling the Clan. They've never met a threat they couldn't kill.
God knows they could all do with a healthy dose of fear. It might help their sanity if they have any left.
"This is not the Clan I was born into," Strongclaw says, watching Redsong flinch away from Morningstar, as Thornstreak averts his eyes. His tone is ambiguous.
"I suppose that Clan would never suffer a Tainted in their midst," Cariad says, devoid of amusement.
"No," Strongclaw replies. "You'd be long dead. Morningstar would've killed you herself."
"She doesn't always do her own handiwork," Sunfeather says, chipping in, as though reminding her brother of something he's forgotten. His expression turns quickly, alarmingly bitter.
Cariad often wonders what they allude to when they talk like this. They come painstakingly close to breaching some unvoiced topic, some unspeakable historic blight. He'd ask, but he's not sure if they'll allow him an answer. Perhaps its something so truly condemning he'd be forced to turn from them, from the Clan entirely. Maybe they're protecting themselves, or him.
The next day Sunfeather goes hunting with Ashflower. They seem- if he can bear to associate the very word with PureClan- friendly. The other she-cat is, at least, more tolerable than some of her ilk. She isn't one of Dawnshadow's cronies, a fact that can only be counted as a positive. Still, another fact remains: she's a murderer, and nothing can absolve her of that.
When Sunfeather leaves, he knows she'll be gone for hours. She often feels lumbered with baby-sitting duty, keeping an appraising eye not only on Cariad, but wayward Strongclaw too. Cariad decides to leave too, though he doubts he'll have a successful hunting venture. Let them wait, and hope. He'll be glad to disappoint them once again.
His stroll through the forest in directionless, unguided. He's often thought of escape, but he thinks Morningstar will somehow predict it, and kill him before he can manage it. After all, she's omnipotent. Now, he chooses to walk among the trees for the sheer and mild thrill of it. Trees are almost a rarity in the city; they have no place in its cold streets, clinically fake and composed. The rebels will at least like the scenery, when they arrive. It's likely the one bearable thing about this place. Cariad can imagine it in ten, twenty years time; PureClan, like a stain, will fade from the land. The malevolence of the place will die with them, and leave it clean. Soon it will be an ordinary forest, benign and unremarkable. Just a place. He likes the thought of it.
But the forest still has eyes, so he keeps moving, looking appropriately disinterested, unoccupied. He's already a figure of intrigue; it will do Cariad no good to be caught wandering the forest with an ominous smile on his face.
Ears alert, eyes forward, he makes a pretense of concentration. He eyes a thrush as it alights on a bush before him, but it's gone before he can even think about making it a meal. He probably couldn't if he tried. The bush shudders in its wake, shedding moths and insects with alacrity. He snaps at them idly but it's without malice. He doesn't waste it on things so small.
Overhead, as if in seismic echo, leaves wrest free from branches and filter, elegantly, through the canopy. One lands on his head. Positively, he thinks without caring, ornamental. Cariad shakes it off and moves on, but more rain softly down behind him. Autumn has arrived in a most vitriolic manner. Its presence was mild, cautious in the city; here, the forest is open and vulnerable, and the season has a predatory touch. Cariad wonders if the cold weather fells Clanners, or if they are impervious to such weaknesses. For a moment, amused, he imagines Morningstar brought low by a common cold or hobbled by infection. It could happen, he reasons, in a perfect world, or one very nearly like it.
Cariad walks in accompaniment of creaking branches, though there's little wind. This deep in the forest, there's hardly a breeze stirring. Even so, he feels like tumbleweed, or a particularly buoyant bit of lint: thrown into the eddies and riptides of the wind, borne on the whim of Aeolus. But this is nothing new. He's been subject to the ordains of others since birth. A pawn. Maybe soon he will take his power back into his own paws.
The creaking of the branches, and the gentle rain of autumnal leaves, has stopped. New sounds arise in the undergrowth; the sound of steps and passage, the heave of uncertain breath. Cariad pauses.
He's still not confident they won't try to ambush him in the woods, to dispatch him in the highest mode of secrecy the forest can afford.
He turns, hackles stiff, and makes out a patch of white and cream bobbing its way through the undergrowth, obscured in part by leaves and the dirt it bears. He squints for a moment longer, but he relaxes (as much as he can in the belly of the beast, in the hellscape of their design). It's only Strongclaw. He may be one of them, and strange and sad to boot, but he poses very little danger.
Though, Cariad thinks, remembering, there's power in him. I felt it when he shoved me from camp.
There's a moral to be found in that: all Clanners are a threat, even the ones who express sadness or pity. Even the ones who are his friends.
"You wouldn't attack an old man, would you?" Strongclaw says, emerging from the shrubbery at last. His shoulders are hunched and he almost seems to be wheezing; Cariad realises, simultaneously, that he does look old, and that his own claws are still out, as though in readiness for a fight. He stands down immediately, though he wonders if, in Strongclaw's eyes, the damage has already been done.
"No," Cariad replies, after missing a beat. "Of course not."
The other tom straightens and stretches his spine with a series of small, yet disturbing, bodily pops.
"Hmm," he grunts. "Disappointing."
Cariad stares in wary anticipation. Strongclaw often has tangents - for the fun of it, it seems - and he can never predict their direction. Strongclaw only fuels his curiosity by stepping closer (no longer looking quite so hobbled or timeworn) with the spark of conspiracy in his eyes.
"I've stagnated for long enough, Cariad."
"Stagnated?"
He snorts. "Rotted, withered away, forced myself into disuse. It must end. I need to be better."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Cariad asks, feeling grossly underqualified.
"Spar with me!" Strongclaw says, attempting a tone of rousing joviality. "Beat me up, if you will. If you dare."
Cariad considers for a moment. The itch to stretch his muscles, to return to his top fighting form, is a strong one.
"I think we could both benefit from training," Strongclaw adds, as though his argument needed to be any more convincing. The inspired gleam in his eyes is persuasion enough.
Cariad grins. "Think you can handle it?"
They upend themselves in the wide and sandy area reserved for apprentices and their training. No one is around, mostly because there's only a few apprentices yet to graduate. There are kits that seem almost ready to leave the nursery, but Cariad would be kidding himself if he pretended to know anything specific about the Clan's system of operations. He's in no hurry to learn.
"I'll go easy on you, old man," Cariad says. He does not want to injure Strongclaw, and have to be the one to explain to Morningstar just how her son got broken.
"Obliged," Strongclaw replies, sounding anything but.
The two begin to move around each other in vulturine circles. Cariad lists his opponent's potential weaknesses or flaws; he is, clearly, unfit; he has old scars that could be exploited; he has not fought anyone for a long time, and maybe he barely remembers how.
Cariad expects to win.
They spar in earnest: they box each other over the head, kick at ribs and flanks, flip and roll in the sand. Strongclaw fights relentlessly. Cariad is only mildly rusty, far fitter than the other tom, and knows he must last long enough to tire him out. But it's a struggle.
Strongclaw's recessive strength ends their bout with him, surprisingly, on top, pinning Cariad's face to the soft ground. He's breathing hard, and shaking. He can't seem to speak.
Cariad feels afraid for one long, dazed moment.
As though moving with seized muscles, Strongclaw steps away, strange and wooden. Cariad sits up, brushing sand with his fur, only daring to look at his friend after a moment of silence. He's shrunken, folded inwards, still as carved ice. Cold leeches from his skin. Then, like a cloud burning away before the sun, the moment seems to pass. Strongclaw grows tall before his eyes, upright and unfolded in a manner Cariad's never known him to possess. The haggard resemblance to his Clan's elders fades with absolution. His face is suddenly a strangers: full of regret and repentance, stitched together with open resolve.
"I… needed to do that," Strongclaw says. His voice stumbles over the edges of the words.
Cariad loosens his shoulders. He can't think of anything to say.
"I'd like to keep training," Strongclaw continues, in earnest, "if that's what you want."
"Sure."
Strongclaw looks him in the eye at last. "I didn't beguile you into a sparring match just to beat and humiliate you. I didn't know if I could beat you."
"Well," Cariad says. "Now you know."
Strongclaw doesn't look sorry. "Thank you."
There is more silence, low and heavy, asphyxiating.
"If that's all-" Cariad begins to say.
"No." Strongclaw rolls his eyes, a motion Cariad only catches in his peripheral vision. He has his sights set firmly on the exit. "I had to get something out of my system. There, it's gone. That won't happen again. We need to train now. We need to be prepared."
"Prepared," Cariad scoffs, but his friend is nodding. "For what?" A chill runs through him, though - what does Strongclaw know? What could he suspect?
"For the rest of our lives."
And he looks so serious: Cariad can't mock him, or leave now.
"Besides, we can pass our time together doing something productive," he adds cheerily. "Instead of sitting on our asses in camp judging lesser cats."
Cariad shakes out his paws as blood flows properly back into them. He has energy to burn, and at least here, in the hollow, there's some kind of sanctity, a sort of privacy rarely afforded in the center of camp. No judging eyes. No unspoken death sentence, or the burden of the hatred of a people. There are worse places to be, and worse company to keep. Sunfeather might even be proud of him for doing something real. That - Sunfeather - is not a valid incentive, but he pictures her happiness anyway, and lets it sway him.
"What should we do next?" he asks. A concession. Another loss. One more, to heap on the stockpile.
"Teach me your city moves," Strongclaw suggests, and he does so, hesitantly.
He lectures him on how to fight in both broad and narrow environments, how to keep space around him, and the game in his paws. He elaborates on guerrilla tactics, like taking an enemy down while hiding. A coward's move, Strongclaw declared, being swept off his feet as Cariad hid between leaves and branches. He can believe what he likes. Next, Cariad perches on a pile of rocks and pretends to assault Strongclaw from a distance. It's almost fun.
"I've been to the city, you know," Strongclaw says. His whiskers twitch: there's more to his story, but he's not letting on.
Cariad says, "Well done." He has no accolade to give him: Strongclaw wasn't in the city taking in the local sights. He knows. He was raiding, stealing city cats from their homes to fuel PureClan's imaginary war.
"You were born there." It's not even a question, but Cariad nods as though he needs to provide an answer anyway. Common knowledge, now.
"Must be strange," Strongclaw says. "Starting off there, and ending up here. A real change of pace."
"It's different, yes."
Cariad wonders what tangent this is.
"You must have family wondering where you've gone." Strongclaw's voice is soft, and he keeps making statements, avoiding the uncertainty of a question. "Where you ended up, after all this time."
"A sister," Cariad reveals. "An aunt. A couple of cousins." The thought of Khia is strange to him now. He likes to keep the innocence of her memory far removed from this awful place. Even now, he refuses to associate any aspect of PureClan with his sister. She wouldn't like it that way, but remembering is hard. It makes him homesick in a pitiful kind of way.
"And no parents." He just seems to assume. "Raised by your aunt, I suppose. What's your sister like?"
Cariad tries not to think of her, even as he describes her. "She's tiny. We hardly look related at all. She looks very pretty, and delicate, but she's feisty, and she knows how to sneak around. I've no idea where she is, but I think our foster father has her under lock and key. She won't like that, though." He frowns. Now he is thinking of her, and now he can't stop.
The floodgate breaks open: where is she now? What has happened to her? Does she have Etch with her, and some friends? He's only worried about himself, and his survival, until this point. It's just struck him now that she lives in a world of danger too. A world apart. He can't even touch it.
"Your aunt. She has nothing to do with your sister?"
Finally, a question. Cariad can't even guess at the answer.
"The housing is very… segregated," Cariad says, slowly. There's no need for diplomacy but he wields it anyway, perhaps shielding his own self from the truth. "My aunt raised us as kits, but we were eventually moved into a… communal den." The warrior should, at least, understand this, the nature of shared space, the assemblage of a crowd that lives, breathes, and turns as one. "I can't say where Khia is now, but I'm sure Ru keeps her close. He does love her: he gave her her first nickname. Spots. She'll only let him call her that."
And then he thinks she may be fine; she has her father. Rhydderch is deeply, shamefully flawed, but he loves Khia in way he can never love his own children. Khia has not been relegated to the rank of chattel. She cannot be sold. As long as Ru breathes, she must be safe.
Cariad glances at Strongclaw: they are both stretching now, elongating their sore joints. Concentration furrows his brow.
"This Ru-" Strongclaw begins, distaste in his voice. Above their heads, a tree branch groans, in faintly surreptitious pain. They both fall silent, but there's no time to look up; the ferns on the edge of the hollow sway in the next moment, and a golden head glides between the fronds.
Morningstar, Cariad thinks, with a jolt, but he's wrong. The shade of gold is all wrong: too deep, too cold. Worse company has arrived.
"Hmm," Dawnshadow drawls, dragging out that one cruel syllable. The whole clearing seems darkened by her mere presence. "I wasn't looking for Tainted scum and yet I found it anyway."
"What are you, a magnet?" Strongclaw snaps. He comes to stand by Cariad's shoulder, though Cariad's not sure the two of them are a match for her.
Dawnshadow's triumphal march comes to a smooth halt mere feet away. She shrugs and clicks her jaw in tandem, unimpressed by his quip.
"What are we doing in the training arena?" Dawnshadow asks, imbuing that word with careful, indulgent inflection. "You might not be a real warrior-" she eyes Cariad with disgust and pauses for the complementary effect- "but you have, at least, the necessary breeding. For all it matters."
"Are you spying for mother, or are you conspiring to steal her job?" Strongclaw says. "Oh? No, it's both. I forget, you she-cats are always so proud of your multitasking abilities."
Dawnshadow's lip twitches, and he briefly sees one lone tooth, sharp and strangely clean against the darkness of her gums. She has a thick muzzle and a wide set stance: though not quite as tall as Cariad, she's nearly the same size. She's positively brutish for a queen. His pulse quickens, and in the face of her, it seems like a rational, reasonable response.
"I'm out making my own fun," Dawnshadow says. "Everything seems boring now, after all that excitement with that group of rogues. But you missed out, didn't you, Voletooth?" She tries a pout, but her lower lip can't protrude over her veritable row of fangs. Even so, the point is clear. "You missed out on… all of that fun."
"I was having my own fun," Cariad says coolly, matching the timbre of her voice.
"Scintillating as that sounds, I just can't bear the thought of you having to miss out on the festivities. My dear brother even helped out! So, I came to bring you my own special brand of hoopla."
Cariad can't help the sharp glance he shoots at Strongclaw, even at the expense of their united front. Helped out? The hell does that mean? His blue eyes seem to hold a warning, but the danger is already imminent, so that ship has sailed. Cariad forces himself to look away, but he will dissect those three small syllables later, and what it means for his relationship with Strongclaw.
"Hoopla?" asks Cariad. "Why, I'm flattered, but I already have a pair. Your sister, in fact."
It's as if he summoned her. Perhaps he did. Maybe she was already waiting in the wings, picking and choosing the perfect moment to enter, but her appearance seems magical nonetheless: the words are scarcely out of his mouth before she strolls into the clearing, loose-limbed and candidly relaxed. She gives them all a jaunty nod.
"Afternoon," she says, indifferent to the undercurrents of tension running through the hollow, hemmed explosively in from all sides.
"Sunfeather," Dawnshadow says, the name limp and sallow in her mouth. "No need to interrupt. Voletooth, I'm sure, is capable of handling himself. He wouldn't be alive today if he wasn't." She purrs, flinty and sharp.
"Ah." Sunfeather makes what seems to be a sympathetic face, but it seems all notions of sympathy have suddenly fled her. "I digress. We must meet Morningstar back in camp, before she runs off again."
Dawnshadow blinks, malevolently. "Our mother couldn't care less what-"
"Voletooth and I are expecting our first litter already," Sunfeather says blithely. "I assume she'd like to know."
"Everyone else has been so slow to start," Strongclaw adds, examining his claws. "Your lot have been warriors for moons. Where's the bunches of kittens you ought to be having? Bloodlust and lust are not the same thing, kiddo."
The big she-cat looses a breath, an almost-hiss. Imparting no rebuttal, she whips around and retreats, admitting, at last, some kind of defeat.
Cariad sighs. He's relieved to still have his head on his shoulders, not to mention keeping his intestines in all the right places. He turns to Sunfeather, whose veneer has finally cracked; her tail is barely, imperceptibly, twitching with the force of her concealed rage.
"Thank you," he says. "That was a genius idea. She was too shocked to even think of a comeback."
Sunfeather's head turns slowly, the way an owl's might swivel to sight prey. "An idea?" she asks. "A genius idea?"
"Yes…" says Cariad, after a moment of hesitation. "Quick-thinking."
"You're far too avaricious with your praise, Voletooth. It was your idea, too, if you recall? You played the leading role."
"I… don't?"
Sunfeather closes her eyes, looking pained, as though trying to push a peg through an ill-fitting hole. "It's not a lie."
The forest shrinks and warps around him: he has grown too big for its narrow confines, has breached the directives of his role. He's scared and happy and proud and disgusted. Cariad has conformed. Cariad has become one of them. Now, his children will be them. Now, he will have children.
"I have to go," says Sunfeather. "My constitution has become too delicate to deal with the depths of your fatuity."
Like a breath of wind, she departs: here and gone in a heartbeat. Cariad can't find the words to farewell her, or the ones to make her stay. Maybe those words don't exist at all.
"Congratulations," Strongclaw says, through a not-quite smile. "I assume your parents would be proud."
Cariad snaps, "Stop assuming." He doesn't really mean it, but it's something to say, something that doesn't acknowledge the conversation that has just been had or the news that has been forcefully, irrevocably spilled.
Maybe he can ignore it. Unlikelier things have been known to happen.
in which cariad is his daddy's son!
my lack of reviews has become my greatest sadness. i'd take a flame at this point. smh.
alsooo i only have to write 18 more chapters so... i should finish this story in like two more years! or six months. i haven't decided yet.
