Chapter 1

Time moves on and on.

Tattered, frigid muscles moved from the safe, clean, unbearable heat of the nocturn winds, bursting from the seams like popping eyes, dilating in the night.

Here, running pines against his cracked pads, nearly scraping away the skin in his fleet.

And here, under necessitous provisions, the tom felt his fading lights vanish, and famished he laid in the haunt, applying himself to the fallen leaves beneath a sclera-like willow, one that existed in every folktale; the laboring place.

It is an anger inside him, steadfast as his body rejuvenates.

He thought he no longer could feel as such, the compression of these feelings gone so long ago, almost nostalgic, a wound, never fully healed.

It was a horrifying turn of fate, if can to be argued.

His fur, matted like a growing moss over his dry flesh, sprung out a gray shield as the moonlight willow cast its gently swaying reflection upon him, now the only evidence of his place here.

Otherwise, he may have believed himself to be a ghost.

The moon was bright, the air encompassed all, even the dark greenery was warm, only growing further as it absorbed his body heat, and yet, deep between his veins, somewhere during that inner flow of blood, it had been lost.

His body was warm, but he was so cold, so cold.

The next arising of the sun was soon to become, and shots of demystifying light would stream down, always in the same pattern, save from the wind-blown shadows cast down from the canopies.

The reflection would be gone; his grace would be lifted from his aching spirit, ripped with force, if not by one, then by another, and another.

What grace did he have?

The lucid dream sank away, and the tom wrestled to his paws, his body moving slower than his mind told it to.

Blisters, strung up in pine needles, hurt so that his breath remained panting despite the slothly pace he wisely tread.

He had run for so long, through brambles and bristles, longing in the sweet specks of a rare mist, that time which always seemed lost once the sky cleared.

If met in a moment, just a glimpse, all the crowds would cheer, all praise would be delivered in beautifully long-winded prayer, grandiose but with how much really to say?

Words were only such.

So now the tom, the willow tree long agone, tore out acre and inch, the same to his blindsided eyes.

Do the eyes see, or does the mind?

His pelt resonated the scents of lilac and old dust, like a memory, infused with the leaves of the lingering willow.

The earth beneath him sank into itself as he walked, letting water rush through his toes, carrying with it scraps of life, the living and the otherwise forgotten.

The splash reached his ringing ears before he could feel his tears meet the stream, and his eyes go momentarily black, succumbed by a swash of generic dwellers of the underearth.

The tom picked himself up quickly, but could only stare down at the small ripples left by his quickly draining face, and suddenly, somewhere, like the echo of a mountainside, a voice cried out tentatively, caught in the sight just as much as he was,

"As?" A flicker ran up and down throughout his skin, his heartbeat rhythm instantly crooked.

Aspenpaw lifted his gaze from his muddied paws and dripping tears.

The killer's eyes illuminated around in the darkness in search of the voice that called his shortened name, the name he heard called in his nightmares, his birth-given soul name discarded when his mind was aged enough to recognize that he had all he needed.

The silhouette, still, awaited Aspenpaw's answer with absolute silence.

This scene had played out already, and Aspenpaw was more than familiar with the quiet, rough voice,

"Rustheart," He whispered, nearly tearing his voice apart in his strain to address the loving tom.

And 'loving' was the word to describe him, always trying in vain to show some hope and love to this world.

But here, in these moments between the two, even Rustheart broke down from what made him who he was.

It wasn't a coldness that penetrated their meetings, but there was a darkness that hung above them as they exchanged sights, words, and company.

But none of those things came now.

The eyes were black, the throats were dry, the bodies were in petulant rebellion against what will there was to compliment each other.

Even the wind seemed to split and break to shoot its blows in differing directions, their scents never meeting one another.

The only understanding of the other's presence now came from the recognition of those two names, words more powerful than most, petrifying in just the utterance,

"Please," Aspenpaw whispered, too dull for any more than to be dragged away in the wind,

"Please!" He bawled and bayed to the moon, waiting on an old promise, a miracle,

"Please," An echo, shouldered by the disparate voice, closer than before.

Aspenpaw looked down again at the fuzzy outlines which created a marsh beneath him, and he saw, clearer than anything his vision allowed him, a reflection in a stream of light, maimed in the branches of the trees.

It was that sad spirit, a frightened young shadow cut from the heartwood and draining away like sap.

Acornpaw was before him, the ultimate consequence for all that Aspenpaw had done.

And yet, more than that, he had just been a cat, his brother, more there for him than he was for himself sometimes.

Aspenpaw couldn't see him, not really, he was just looking through the darkness to a dull marsh, but his memory lingered on like in the way that a fire destroys the soil on which all life grows.

If he focused, really hard, he could still see every feature, tell the difference between every hair on his face.

It only got harder and harder to track the days that moved by so quick and painful, and so he had come to a crossing, a depth that he had decided to jump into, and it seemed immature to hide it now, not with the future rolling on faster and faster, so Aspenpaw spoke the words which hurt more than anything,

"I'm leaving," Cold were the words, a body hanging from a misshapen branch,

"I'm never coming back here," The validity of this second phrase was questioned more by Aspenpaw.

He did want to come back, if only for a short time, but he knew it was an insurmountable task.

The silence was deafening and overpowering for quite a number of seconds.

There was something hidden there, which only became present as Rustheart opened his mouth,

"You weren't goin' to tell me, were you, man?" It was an accusation, dulled by surprise, but layered so deep with hurt that Aspenpaw was afraid the dirt where he stood would collapse into itself and spill over.

There were excuses to make, if it be some other day where the wind blew one way, and where time conformed with its laws, but that wasn't tonight,

"No," He whispered, feeling a tear fall on his tongue as he opened his mouth to speak.

There was no fanfare to his delivery.

The walls between Aspenpaw and his former friend had grown too high.

Neither of them were sad for the present, for this sober farewell, but they cried for what had been long since lost, those days of adolescence, where they still should be, those times when words could be exchanged with vigor and humor.

They weren't strangers to each other, even now, and that's what hurt the most.

Aspenpaw lifted his head to a sharp crash running through to the middle of his ears, and he suddenly learned that Rustheart was closer than he'd thought, "Nobody's comin', man. I don' think there're any scraps of life where we are,"

Aspenpaw still listened closely, and he slowly swung his head around, straining to catch a glimpse of Rustheart, but after a few moments withered away, his eyes waved shut as another question was accorded, "Will you be 'ere when I die?"

Aspenpaw didn't have to contemplate that one for very long, not if he was resigned to honesty,

"No," The word left his throat so much quieter than before, so silent that even Aspenpaw couldn't hear it, but Rustheart seemed to understand nonetheless,

"We can still start again, one day, man, after we've lived an' died countless times over,"

"Do I deserve to live?" Silence,

"You don't deserve to, but you must," Silence,

"Goodbye, Rustheart,"

"Goodbye, As. I hope, I hope the sun still rises where you go,"

The dawn was rising.

Aspenpaw was nearly out of the forest territories, and all that he had come across besides trees and bushes since he saw Rustheart was the fresh scent of a patrol gone by in the area, despite what Rustheart had said.

The robins were chirping about, marking the waking of just about every other creature in the land.

Aspenpaw had run much of the way, but had slowed to just a jog by the time the sun reared along the canopy-line to jeer at the dark gray cat.

The only aim he had now was to find a way out of this treacherous forest.

He was too tired to think of much else.

His tail dragged behind him, leaving behind a snake-trail directly to the wanted murderer.

The title still held a naivety to it, as if he still couldn't believe that it could be applied to him.

Aspenpaw had lived in a dream for so long now, but it was sour and rotten.

The thing that had sunk its way into his mind was the realization that Acornpaw was dead.

Understanding that was what made him decide to leave.

He had a mission now, a self-employed honory of everything that had happened in these past moons, to help who he could how he could with no reward.

There was a break between the trees. They were ending, and in their place there stood a crooked stone wall, unnaturally even.

Aspenpaw ran out the last stretch of his strength as he burst over the barrier and into a flat field, landing mostly on his side and staying there as he gathered his breath.

He had broken out.

The place where every bit of joy he had ever felt occurred, but also where each stab of pain had struck.

That was where he had first fallen in love with the world.

That was where he had killed the closest relation he had ever had.

That was where their mother had died.

Aspenpaw's eyes were wide awake now, and his breath was trapped entirely in his lungs.

It felt as if those were the only things that had ever happened before.

Everything else just seemed to disappear.

He stood up, placing his eyes on the twoleg nest that sat before the small field he found himself in.

His movements were sluggish, like a kit first taking their steps.

The air was thinner here, despite the open sky.

His paws seemed to know where to go, guiding him through a narrow passageway between the twoleg den and a cracked wall of white wood.

The dirt here felt so much filthier than back home; it seemed dead.

But he didn't need to worry about that texture beneath his paws for too long, as Aspenpaw stumbled onto a path of solid stone, his eyes fixing on the twolegplace in awe.

A monster sped past, causing him to shield his face in the closest wall, but it was gone in just a moment. Smoke was left in its trail, vanishing quickly into the sky.

Aspenpaw didn't dare to cross to the other side, despite the temptation in his paws.

He padded along the path, pressing his body fully against the wooden walls as he moved, and keeping his eyes on the symmetrical world that stood in reflection of him.

Instead of white, most of the wooden walls which seemed to guard the twoleg dens were brown on the other side.

Except for one.

In the midst of the drab world, Aspenpaw stopped suddenly.

His eyes were attached to a single one of the broken posts that made up the walls.

It was blacker than night, and emptier than blank eyes.

It hurt.

It hurt like a soul screaming for retribution.

Aspenpaw ran.

There was a pain there which he wasn't equipped to live through or to help.

It made him feel immediately pathetic as he slowed down, realizing that he had just failed his first challenge.

But he didn't let it demoralize him. His eyes were still shining, and that meant that he would keep going.

He breathed away the fear and the pain, and he let it blow away in the soft strips of wind and rain, which had just begun to drop to the earth, calmer than when the grass dances in the evening.

Up ahead, on the crosspatch of the sun and moon, the thunderpath ended.

There was no reason for it, it didn't lead anywhere, there wasn't anything there, it just stopped, and to the side, a smaller path, only distinguishable from its surroundings by the lack of greenery.

He knew this was the way to the city, but this didn't seem like a way that could be traveled by monsters.

Aspenpaw found himself quite enamored of this oddity, and was just relieved by the idea that he could be leaving the twolegplace.

Even here the robins still chirped.

A tremendous downpour had begun.

Hot, whipping rain shot down like a hurricane as Aspenpaw walked the dirt line, slowly mutating into a river of mud as the seconds passed.

Since the twolegplace, nothing in his surroundings had changed.

There were fields to his right, with grass too large to navigate through, and to his left was a tall fir forest which he may have taken cover under if not for the thorn bushes that reigned the tree-line, and the howl of some large creature that he had heard from somewhere in there.

And so when he weighed his options, Aspenpaw found that he would rather deal head-on with the rain than anything else.

At times it seemed like he wasn't moving at all.

Getting ahead was so hard, and it was in these moments of loneliness that the past found its way back into his unwilling mind.

Every step that he walked alone there was something tormenting him, truths that threatened to reveal themselves if he let his guard down, and so he felt into conversation, an ongoing argument in his head which he now found the voices to,

"I'm not a monster,"

"No, monsters are tragic. You are simply evil," He wasn't quite sure who the second speaker was supposed to embody.

He prayed not to hear the voice of his brother in his ears, and he dare not think of some of the others, and so he turned to an old spirit he had heard of in a story once, a cat as white as the sun, and wicked in every way that Aspenpaw could imagine,

"What right do you have to call me evil?"

"Because I am everything that that word means,"

"I won't be lectured by you!"

"But where I am different is that I don't exist. You do, and you've done so many-"

"Shut up!"

"This isn't real! My voice changes with every word you make me say! I'm not who your father told you about, not anymore,"

"No, you aren't,"

"No, you aren't"

"Please,"

Please.

Please.

And as Aspenpaw mindlessly moved his paws forward, unaware of the burning rain and the pools of mud, he continued to find words to fight himself with, new arguments playing their run out until he inevitably couldn't find a way to save himself.

There was a hope there however, though it may not have overpowered the pain, a hope of belief in something, and the hope that somewhere, along this endless muddy path, he would find company with whom to shelter out the storm.

Until I write again,

-Gojira