Chapter 7
The song the mystic sings, branded with heavy steps and a hard heart.
Aspenpaw woke up to the sensation of a paw jerking swiftly across his back, shaking him from sleep.
The dream was still clear in his mind, and Aspenpaw was infuriated and disoriented by every situation presenting itself to him,
"You're still in the commune, As, it was just a dream," Jingo was still beside him shrouded in complete darkness,
"I know!" Aspenpaw snapped back,
"Don't take me on like that, As, calm yourself," Aspenpaw could still see his father, his eyes, perfectly blue, lying eyes.
He breathed deeply, closing his eyes and feeling Acornpaw's tail on his back, not Jingo's,
"Thanks," He said quickly, still with a hardened edge, and not really regretting his comment yet,
"What's got you all pissed?" Jingo asked, lowering herself to his level, but Aspenpaw turned away,
"Dream,"
"I've got that much, but you're still distressed, so there's certainly something botherin' you,"
"I don't need to tell you about that,"
"But would it make you feel better to?"
"No," Aspenpaw was adamant in his statement, and Jingo backed down without an answer, instead, she changed the subject,
"Apollo's goin' to question you in the morning, you know. You should be thinkin' about what you're going to tell her; you can't ride off me for your whole time 'ere,"
"That's the leader?"
"Yes, and I'll introduce you to Roco at some point too. She's the most knowledgeable cat about herbs here, so I ought to think she'll be takin' care of you,"
"Okay," Aspenpaw was still thinking about the dream.
He had never felt so much anger for his father before, or so much longing for him.
But what struck him just as much, was Acornpaw.
They had been having so much fun, it was something that Aspenpaw had forgotten about.
After their father left, in whatever capacity he did, though it seemed obvious to Aspenpaw that he had defected from the clan, he and Acornpaw's private times were very few.
If anything, they would usually eat together with hardly a word passing between them aside from, "Hello," and "Goodbye,"
She died soon after, and with no one else, the brothers took to each other again, except now, they didn't play, they just talked underneath the stars and the moon.
It was around then as well that Aspenpaw lost his faith in Starclan.
They would throw away whole nights speaking of misunderstood philosophical musings, the relationships between the clans, trying to make sense of their clanmates, but Aspenpaw would never open up, not anymore, and Acornpaw had followed that path as well.
There must have been an emotional misunderstanding between them.
Aspenpaw was just coming up with excuses disguised as some sort of attempt at understanding why he did what he did.
Their relationship always evolved through some external factor, and that hurt Aspenpaw more than anything.
He had never been honest with his brother, and Acornpaw had never been honest with them.
So now? What were they to each other now?
He didn't know; he wouldn't ever be able to.
Aspenpaw woke up with an undeserved feeling in his head.
It felt like he hadn't slept at all, and yet was still shot violently into consciousness.
Light shone dimly from somewhere, but he couldn't tell where that was.
Jingo was still beside him, asleep now, thankfully.
It would be better to be alone right now.
His throat was incredibly sore, and his chest still heaved in pain, but the disorientation of the fever was fading, slowly, but it felt good to focus on something positive for once.
Aspenpaw stretched out his neck, feeling the muscle tension pull and constrict against his flesh, and his stiff bones cracked as he yawned and pushed out, careful not to graze Jingo as he did.
The air was still, as it had been in the other base.
It felt wrong to be in such a large open space, at least, compared to the dens in Riverclan, without there being so much as a breeze to knock the strands of fur on his pelt from one side to another.
It was all very disquieting, like an empty dream, or one too full to be able to focus on anything.
There was a great mystery in the anatomy of this room.
It had been built for a purpose beyond storing the cats who lived here now, a short rise surrounded the wall just above the floor, encompassing the entire room, and a fixture dangling from the roof, both without any seemingly useful purpose.
Aspenpaw didn't want to get up, but he didn't want to go back to sleep, compromising to lay and think with his eyes open and his head resting tilted on the hardly cushioned flooring.
He couldn't enjoy sleep like he was supposed to.
For all the time that he had spent on the run, most of his days were made up of sleep, trying to forget the real world.
These were never comfortable days, and he could only ever really close his eyes when his fear of being caught was overpowered and mitigated by the fear and hate and regret of his own actions.
It was blind luck that got him through those days, and looking back, Aspenpaw was only surprised that he hadn't completely spent all of his emotions there.
He was a murderer. It still felt surreal in his mind. He was everything that the cats in the stories his father told were.
So mesmerized by his thoughts and memories, Aspenpaw tried to bring his attention back to something positive, but in the process, noticed a cat by the wall where one of the tunnels had been unnaturally graphed.
Though it was still dark in the early morning, Aspenpaw could recognize, halfway at least, that it was the same cat who had met him and Jingo at the entrance; Apollo, the commune leader, if he remembered correctly.
She stood and flicked her short tail beckoningly, as if she, as well, didn't want to wake the sleeping she-cat beside Aspenpaw with a verbal command.
He rose to his weary paws, this long trip taking a great toll to his tendons and muscles.
Apollo slipped through the darkness, her white pelt flashing between shadows, never visible in her entirety, and Aspenpaw followed distantly behind.
He trailed her outside, where the morning was more viewable, glaucous light streaming in thin lines through the smooth ash of the setting night.
There was no sun, no moon, no stars, no clouds; the sky was empty now,
"Right. Where do you come from, and where are you going?" The sound of Apollo's voice was one of the few that drifted through the air, and yet Aspenpaw knew that it would never be as quiet here as it could be in the forest.
Sitting still, there was often the illusion of deafness, and sometimes, even the cicadas stopped chirping,
"I'm from the forest," He responded, "I don't know where I'm going,"
"Don't try to play games with me, kit,"
"I won't," As it seemed she always was, Apollo spoke fast and without nuance.
It was a tension that Aspenpaw invited, also not wishing to drag out such diplomatic interrogations.
She didn't seem very happy with Aspenpaw's last remark though, and asked another question, "Why are you here?"
"I'm sick,"
"What's your plan when you recover? You won't be staying here,"
"I wouldn't try to. I just want to get moving again," He really wasn't sure what his plans were.
He did want to stay, if not in this commune then in another, and help with their battles, but he was sure he would just end up somewhere far away.
He would always be running away,
"What do you know of the climate here?"
"Corrina told me about Jean, and some other faction, or something, and she told me what happens to she-cats here, and what you all are doing,"
"What details do you have to say about any of my questions?"
"The forest I come from is where the four clans live, but I'm not a part of them," He emphasized, trying to give away enough information to make Apollo trust him, while trying not to really tell her who she was,
"I'm traveling because I want to help somebody. I know that the cats fighting against Jean are some breakaway group or something, and I know that not a single cat in this city trusts me,"
"Jingo seems to," Apollo whispered the first extraneous comment of either of their communications so far, and then she asked,
"Do you think you are able to help here?" The question gave Aspenpaw a small pause, an opening of weakness in this spar, but he recovered and answered,
"I would like to be given the chance to try,"
"What do you know of war and diminishment?"
"I grew up with cats who talked constantly about war coming, and I know that many toms thought that she-cats had no place in those talks,"
He thought of Ravensea, the Riverclan deputy, how she was constantly shafted by Stormstar and his closest compatriots.
It was a mystery to him how she even got that role to begin with,
"Your own thoughts?"
"War hurts she-cats as much as it does toms, it's the same as any threat,"
"Go back to your nest," Aspenpaw almost sent her a nod, but as Apollo's eyes burned into his, he simply turned his heels and slunk back through the barrier into the commune.
He had no idea what Apollo thought of him, or what any of her decisions regarding him would be, but he relished in the thought that she didn't know much of him either, or at least, he felt like he had hid himself well.
He didn't have the time to worry about that right now, because although the idea of going back to sleep revolted him, Aspenpaw's body was failing on him, and nearly as soon as he reached the rough ferns and sticky fluff beside Jingo's resting form, his eyes shut.
He didn't even feel himself land on the ground before he was out.
"Come on, Roco, he's not gonna wake up, you're fine!"
"Can't we just wait for that Jingo to get back? Or Rese? I really don't like this," Aspenpaw awoke to the sound of those two voices, only half registering in his head as anything to pay attention to,
"Roco, I'm right next to you, nothing bad is gonna happen to you,"
"But what about you? What if it hurts you?"
Aspenpaw wondered how the cat, Roco, expected him to not wake up with her nervous shouting.
He presumed that this was the Medicine Cat that they had here, or something akin to one,
"He looks nearly dead, I don't think he'll be much a match for your flailing," The other joked.
Aspenpaw laid completely still, keeping his eyelids shut and making sure his ears weren't pricked.
He didn't know what exactly would happen next, but he did feel like something bad would happen if he showed any signs of life.
Both of the she-cats stepped forward bit by bit, arguing along the way until they seemed to be directly over Aspenpaw's body.
He nearly actually fell back asleep keeping his eyes locked for so long, but the touch of a paw on his back invigorated him, sending cold shivers through all his skin,
"Just put your paw on him, nothing's happenin'," The unnamed she-cat whispered to her friend now that they were close,
"I have to tell Apollo I can't do this!" The yelling involuntarily pricked up Aspenpaw's ears, which garnered a short shout from Roco, and the sound of retreating paw steps from the both of them.
Knowing that his appearance had been ruined, Aspenpaw lifted his head up and opened his eyes to see the two she-cats huddled in the corner.
As the second cat was trying to comfort her, Roco looked past and saw Aspenpaw moving, before shoving her face into her friend's slick pelt.
She looked back too, but never stopped whispering kind words into Roco's ear. Aspenpaw had never seen a cat so distraught over an unmoving patient before, and felt bad, knowing something about him being a tom was setting her off.
A she-cat came rushing in from outside, alarmed by the shouting, "What's goin' on?" She howled, a sliding crack in her voice.
The cat seemed to be nearly the size of the combined two that she stood over now, trying to see what the problem was.
Her eyes, as Aspenpaw could see them from so far away, were one in the same with her pelt, a deep amber.
Roco looked up in recognition and tried to explain herself frantically,
"Rese! I was, I, Apollo sent me to look at the tom that came in yester-yes'r'day, but I, it woke up and I couldn't do it! Rese, Rese, could-could you hold it down for me? I really d-don't want to disappoint Apollo!"
The large cat, Rese, backed away from Roco and appeared to have no interest in altruism however, and bit back, nearly literally with how close she got to Roco's face,
"What else do ye 'xpect she's gonna think, Maria?"
Though they were far away, Roco's flinch was so great that it nearly sent shivers through Aspenpaw's watching body,
"Yoer shrieking and squaling won't get ye any pity from me, and I ain't doin' somethin' jus' 'cause ye think the half-dead freak is gonna break yer skin! Stop actin' like a kit an' do yer job! That's what all the rest of us gotta do!"
Rese finished her rant and, after waiting a couple of seconds in the complete silence, returned to her place outside.
None of the cats in the room had stuck up for Roco as she was chewed out, and Aspenpaw immediately scolded himself for that, though he was aware that, if he was given another chance, he still probably would have sat back in shock and done nothing.
He could hear a soft sobbing from the other side of the room, and certainly couldn't blame her.
This was the first time that the other she-cat looked Aspenpaw in his eyes, only for a moment, then she rested her head on Roco's which was muffled in her chest fur.
She wrapped her tail around her and tried to guide her to the tunnel, away from all the hardship she was facing.
Aspenpaw wondered how forgiving Apollo would be.
Just as she put her paw up and rested it on the inbalanced stone opening, Roco broke away and allowed her eyes to stray away from skin and fur, landing instead on Aspenpaw.
Perhaps it was the sympathy that he tried to pour out in his expressions, or a determination to prove wrong what Rese had said, but she took a couple steps forward,
"You don't have to, Roco,"
"Aranyer," Roco turned her head around, but only enough to still keep one eye on Aspenpaw,
"Yes I do. Will you, will you stay with me for this?" It was more of a plea than a question, but Aranyer hesitantly nodded before marching up beside her friend.
Roco took a good few minutes to get ever closer, double-taking with her paw swaying in the air for every step as if she were trying to squash a mosquito.
With the excitement over, Aspenpaw's body started reeling.
His head felt like it was pulsing and his body was sore all over,
"I'm not going to do anything," He tried to reassure her, but it only exacerbated the situation, drawing out a yip from Roco and a bit of a backtrack.
Maybe he sounded a bit too aggressive, but Aspenpaw just wanted this to be over.
He was miserable,
"Could you, hold his jaws shut for me, Aranyer?" Aranyer gave a small nod and padded up to Aspenpaw, who was willing to do just about anything to get treatment,
"Sorry, tom, gotta do as the medic says," She wrapped her paws around his muzzle, and only then did Roco feel comfortable coming closer, and Aspenpaw tried to turn his eyes away from her so as to not intimidate her.
She cautiously reached out a paw and patted it nervously a few times on Aspenpaw's pelt.
Her pads were cold against his flesh, sending shivers up his aching spine.
She sniffed at his wound and peeled back the wraps that Jingo had applied the previous day.
She then checked his pads and listened to his breathing, all as fast as she could, before leaving a few herbs on the ground before him, presumably to eat, though she didn't give him instructions.
She then whipped back and tried to leave,
"Roco, come back," Aranyer interrupted her exit, "Come back here,"
She loosened her grip on Aspenpaw, and then let go, running over to somewhat roughly push Roco into returning to where Aspenpaw lay, "Just watch, Roco. Nothin's gonna happen,"
"Aranyer!" Roco started panicking as she was shoved near, "Let me go! I want to go!" Aspenpaw took the cue and bent down.
Roco suddenly swiped her unsheathed paw at him.
He ate the herbs that she had laid out on the ground, and sat up that his eyes were one with hers, "Thank you,"
"See?"
Roco ran, knocking Aranyer out of the way as she tried to brag and disappearing into the tunnel,
"Roco! I don't-" Aranyer started to call out but stopped midway through her sentence.
There was some guilt in her eyes, but also annoyance.
She didn't even look back at Aspenpaw before slowly entering the tunnel as well, to wherever it led.
Aspenpaw closed his eyes to try and mitigate his headache, and was half convinced that everything that had just happened was a feverish vision.
He was alone again, and thought of the dream he had in the night, the one of his father.
He hadn't died, Aspenpaw was sure of it. He had abandoned Riverclan, just as his son now did.
That spot by the river, like an engulfing meadow to his smaller form, laid desecrated in Aspenpaw's mind forever, and yet, when visions of Riverclan appeared to him, it was always one of the first things he saw, but he continued to block out any memories he had from there, perhaps leading to his dream acting as some sort of rebellion to his will.
It had been where they had aborted the rites and regulations of clan life and played in the field, bursting with love and communication, pouncing at little birds soaking in the reflective water and finding the words to swallow each other and make them feel how they really felt.
Even their mother joined them, when she was well enough.
It was shallow in those days, Aspenpaw and Acornpaw weren't old enough at that time to have the kind of angst they would later be encapsulated by, and though the guidance that their parents could therefore offload to them was limited, there was a wicked fondness in the simplest words,
"You'll never be lonely if you have hope," That was one that he repeated often, even after she had died.
It was so painful now to remember these things.
His anger was subsiding, but he was sure he would never understand what had happened to their lives.
He would never see his father again, wherever he was now.
Aspenpaw wished that he had bargained and begged for his mother to tell him, but he didn't have the capability to before she was gone, and he didn't know if he would even be able to now.
That openness that he had had before was gone, and he continued growing bitter.
He would, likewise, never know why his mother had to die, why her body failed on her, why she couldn't hold on for him.
Acornpaw, of course, came to mind next, and Aspenpaw shut him out, unable to confront his brother in the state he was in.
Instead, he repeated a line from Jingo's song in his head, "Take my soul, use it to soak up your misery, I don't need it no more,"
He'd become all that he had feared and hated, but he could still use what he had left to help somebody.
He was broken in two, but that meant he still had one half left.
These bursts of determination always came at the most ironic times.
Aspenpaw could hardly do anything more than quickly flex the muscles in his legs and shoulders and move his eyelids between their two designated endpoints.
Aspenpaw hardly even remembered where he was until he opened his eyes.
The dim lighting of this unprotected room was still intolerable to his pupils.
The white circles turned to red and purple snake-lines, taking a few seconds for Aspenpaw to blink away.
There was a she-cat laying down in the far corner of the room, left of where the corroded wall created their entrance.
Aspenpaw had never seen her before. His eyes plunged into hers and she eroded into him, their expressions painted dismally on the face of the other.
Aspenpaw's lips moved to break the stale gaze, "What do you want?" He asked behind phlegm with a wheeze and a stifle, his voice deep in the understory, darkened further by the shade of a dainty canopy in the sweep,
"Just listening," The teases of white rose and wrinkled and slunk back into place around the teeming, gleaming red slits of her face as her lips moved to curate the words she meant to make him hear.
Aspenpaw didn't know what she'd be listening to in this dust-box, unless she was waiting for the sharp clouds of breath in his lopsided chest to tear no more air and she could sing his funeral dirge, his body thrown out in pieces to fly.
He wondered if the birds here even had a taste for the meat his life was formed around, "My breathing's not yours, go listen to someone else's croaking,"
The dismissal was met with a complete lack of acknowledgement for around four or five seconds, as if Aspenpaw hadn't even spoken them to begin with.
But she did respond after using those seconds to think, and though Aspenpaw had placed his excess weight down in the crux of his paws, he could still see from the edges of his vision, the she-cat, still looking on at him with that same look, a cautious smugness and an elsewise disinterest in his character,
"I used to listen to the music the birds sing," She said, "But I ought to prefer somethin' I can understand,"
Aspenpaw was confused by her cryptic saying, but that something feeling of having missed the meaning struck him like a splash of water in his eyes.
He realized that her words were very simple; he must have been humming as he was thinking of Jingo's song, and of his family.
Stupidity by brash misunderstanding; Aspenpaw felt that he propagated that idea, yet never admitted his fault to anyone, changing the subject or staying fully silent, which he did now, to his own shame,
"You can keep singin'," the she-cat told him, and Aspenpaw coughed,
"I would prefer if I could sleep now,"
"Well I ought to think you should learn to sleep with a few eyes checkin' you over,"
In truth, Aspenpaw didn't want to be left alone, but it hurt to talk, and it bled him out to even think of asking for company.
Aspenpaw was viscerally disturbed by the idea, and he couldn't beat the answers out of himself, whether he was afraid of cats, or if he believed that he didn't deserve their comfort, or because he knew how he had treated cats in the past for his own emotional stability.
Maybe he was just too estranged from everybody else he had ever come into contact with,
"Could you just leave?" He asked her, but the she-cat extended no limb to move.
Even her thin shadow on the wall hardly flickered in the windless atmosphere.
Her eyelight pelt slicked close against her skin, so that it seemed her cuts jutted out further than her fur did.
She looked to be thinking of something to say, some clever rebuke to justify her inaction.
Aspenpaw kept his eyes trained on her and watched as the starts of ideas configured the small movements of her mouth until one stuck and her vocal chords strummed, "You didn't finish your song; I'll go, but I don't want you to fall away before you do,"
It was a cheeky response, one that hardly addressed the situation, but Aspenpaw especially didn't appreciate the insinuation of his possible death.
He was sure he wouldn't die. He couldn't, not now,
"Ask Jingo about it then,"
"She's not around,"
"Where is she?"
"No idea," Now he turned his eyes away, rolling them up to see the patterns of scratches on the wall, the chopped slabs pressed, ground together, and the mechanisms of some conveniences that he could never use.
Identical grips on perfectly shaped boxes.
There was sand and gravel in mounds, and dust and cobwebs shielded the true color of any surface in the room.
Aspenpaw couldn't know what this place had been, whether a home, a meeting-place, or a place for storage, but he could tell that it had been many years since the last time a twoleg had stepped in here.
So he asked, so far removed from this world, "Did somebody live here?"
His words were absorbed into the walls and he was given empty space in his ear canals.
A foraging scavenger squawked with delight somewhere beyond the mortar, but no response was ever received.
Aspenpaw closed his eyes.
He didn't turn his head to see if she was still there.
No matter what he saw, it wouldn't satisfy him.
And so he slept, believing in any and all realities that could exist, and, despite the pain in his chest and in his mind, he was able to feel comforted by the soundless, endless sea in front of him.
He dreamed of his brother, a happy, painful, nostalgic memory, but one that he would never shove away.
A warm embrace stirred Aspenpaw from his slumber, a feeling extracted from his dreaming, rushing through his vessels and valves, a memory of lying together in a dahlia patch on the edge of the border.
A dark amber pelt stuck out to him immediately as he opened his eyes,
"H-Whow, y-you?" Aspenpaw tried to formulate a sentence without knowing at all what he wanted to say.
A hard cough racked the sleep from his senses, and consciousness poured back into him.
The body had turned to look down on him, and Aspenpaw recognized her instantly as Rese,
"What are you doing?" He asked suspiciously.
He was cautious of her intentions after the headstrong performance she had given to insult Roco,
"Apollo asked me to watch ye durin' 'er leave,"
"Where is she? And where's Jingo?"
"I aen't answerin' that," Aspenpaw stood slowly and stretched, feeling much stronger than he had in the past couple of days or so,
"What time is it?"
"'Bout time to be gettin' sleep," Her responses were curt and sounded almost pre-rehearsed.
Aspenpaw looked to the entrance.
It was completely dark, of course, with the mass of metal keeping it hidden, with only the slightest blue hint radiating from the edges of the hole to announce its presence.
He turned back and took a look at his guard, who kept her eyes fixed upon some bit of dust or another, refusing to face the sick tom.
She had a lot of fluff, but it was obvious still that she was more than likely the best fighter that this commune had, so much bigger and naturally stronger than most opponents.
Despite this, Aspenpaw didn't feel intimidated by her, and the more he stared, the more his anger grew, until he finally spat out what he felt he should have in the moment, "Those were cruel things you said to that cat,"
His voice was deepened by his sickness, and his growl was far more unpredictable.
Rese swung around to him now, offended, but she took a moment to choose her response,
"I don't need to be hearin' ye sayin' that. She aen't doin' nothin' for no one,"
Surprisingly, she didn't seem very angry.
Aspenpaw had expected her to have as much of a short temper as he did, but she just seemed rather unpleasant, not entirely hostile,
"She did what she had to,"
"If ye'd been dyin', she wouldn't've hurried up,"
"If I'd been dyin', you would've been responsible too," Rese only looked him in the eyes when it was her turn to speak.
Her lips stayed uncurled, her breathing was calm, and her flat lay flat against her face, but her eyes pulsed like veins overflowing with blood,
"Don't pull ou' morals if ye don' care anythin' past it. You don' know her at all, an' ye don' know me at all," She was right, to some extent.
Aspenpaw was only doing this to make himself feel better, but he was sure that what he was saying was correct, and wouldn't back down from the argument,
"If that friend of hers hadn't been there, I might just be dying," He continued to defend Roco, though he knew nothing of her, and it would likely make no difference what he said now,
"That aen't 'er friend," Rese changed the topic, and didn't give Aspenpaw the room to cut in, "She jus' feels bad that no one else has taken 'er,"
Aspenpaw thought about it all for a moment.
He didn't know any of these cats, not at all.
He twisted his head over to the side of the room with the black splotch on the wall and completely forgot his artificial quest of whatever he was trying to do by playing morals with this stranger,
"Who's the white cat with all the scars on her face?" Rese turned to look at him, for the first time without speaking, and she seemed to be hiding her relief that the previous conversation was over,
"What, she spark yer interest?"
"I just want to know who I'm talking to here,"
"You never told me yer name," Rese pointed out,
"Do you care?" Rese ignored him,
"Didn' think she could muster up enough words to have a talk with, she's one of the shy ones. Name's Deya, an' don't let 'er fool ya, she don' know what she's fightin' fer, though I'm sure ye'd like to hear all my 'pinions on 'er,"
"I'd love to, but I'm awfully tired," Aspenpaw tried to place the name deep in his mind so he wouldn't have to ask again,
"Well then I guess I hafta let ye get back to dreamland, I wouldn't want to cause ye any pain,"
Once their sarcastic spat was over, Aspenpaw curled up and closed his eyes.
It felt like he had been awake for days on end.
So much had happened in just a few days.
Aspenpaw didn't know if he would be able to stay out here.
He had planned to try and join one of these communes when he recovered, but the more he learned about the city and the more cats he met, the more it felt like he was floating in the middle of a river sweeping him past logs he couldn't grasp his claws onto.
Maybe it would be best to be somewhere else where he would be able to really do something to help, but either way, he was far too much of a mess now to consider any plans past shifting his spine around to find the most comfortable position to rest his muscles, soothe his breathing, and escape from the waking world.
Until I write again,
-Gojira