Chapter 2
Little birds born in the drowning water.
Nostalgia has been the death of every new generation.
It has shouldered change and persecuted love.
Aspenpaw found himself dying somewhere, damnation digging at his flanks.
His eyes had lost their color, and the filthy earth caved in like apocalypse, and the loner was given leave from his body, if only for a few, sweet moments.
Aspenpaw was tired, weary of these thought-dreams and miserable on his paws.
Ironically, the only thing that had brought his attention to this exhaustion was a break in the monotony of his so-far journey.
A structure stood ahead of him, where the tall grass broke off and gorse took over the land.
With the blue sky of evening falling away as the sun began to dip, Aspenpaw hoped to find shelter in the place before him.
As he neared and his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out the conglomerate.
It was a twoleg creation, that much was undoubtable, made of mostly metals, seeming to have been simply tossed away like bones, some sort of untended graveyard.
He hoped, at least, that it was untended to, as he wasn't able to face danger in his current condition.
The closer that Aspenpaw approached, the slower his movements became, cautious of the unfamiliar.
He stopped altogether and simply watched the unmoving structure, waiting for any sign of life that could warn him against entering.
A burst of pain on the back of his head suddenly shifted his thoughts.
Before he could react properly, there were claws pressed against his throat.
A she-cat stood above him, though she was too shrouded by the sun to make out many details besides what he could feel.
Two of his legs were pinned down with two of hers, one of his front and one of his back on opposite sides,
"What're y-" She began to interrogate him in a makeshift gruff voice, but was cut off by a companion who Aspenpaw hadn't realized was there until now,
"Oi, oi, you aren't supposed to talk to them, remember?" The cat who had him pinned didn't say anything or even move to acknowledge the input, but didn't try to ask Aspenpaw anything else, instead slowly leaning off of him and ordering,
"Get up!" Aspenpaw did as he was told without complaint.
He wouldn't be able to fight his way out of this, nor could he run, so he just walked with the two she-cats as they guided him in the direction of the metal graveyard.
His head was ringing, so much so that he nearly lost his footing, and almost plummeted onto a sharp sheet poking out just at the entrance of the graveyard.
He was filled with anxiety looking in.
Metal stuck out just about everywhere, a landscape unnaturally molded to shed blood.
Though they were careful, his attackers didn't seem to have much trouble getting through, it was pushing Aspenpaw along that gave them hardship.
Every step that the tired loner placed he was filled with an image in his mind where his paw slipped away from where he had intended it and fell against a cutting stone.
But it was a short ways from beginning to end, and soon, with one cat hanging behind him, the other padded up to the biggest mound of scrap metal and called into it quietly.
No more than a couple of seconds passed before part of the wall was moved aside, revealing a calico cat, who, on seeing Aspenpaw, disappeared for a moment.
Aspenpaw was growing more and more worried the longer he had to stand in one place.
The cat returned, following another, a tan she-cat with pool-blue eyes.
She stood like a leader, head high while looking down on the situation with her eyes void of any strong emotion.
She struck a glance at the cat who had whispered into the mound, and she began relaying information, "We found this tom watching our camp just by the ash tree. He seems to be alone," The leader called her bluff,
"You didn't really check that out, did you? Don't call just to impress me, Ich,"
"I'm sorry," Ich lowered her head, and Aspenpaw turned to see the other cat, whose gaze refused to meet the leaders,
"Ich, go and round up two cats and re-patrol the area. Remember the mistakes that they make, and especially the ones that you make,"
"Yes, Corrina," Ich disappeared into the mound, but was soon followed out again by the brown she-cat who had answered the entrance, and another.
Corrina moved forward, intimidating Aspenpaw with just the sound of her confident paw steps over the metal earth,
"What have you with our camp? You aren't much of a Domin if this is all you can do,"
"Huh?" Aspenpaw was confused, and admittedly too nervous to voice much other than just a mumble.
Through this though, there was an aggravation nipping at his muddy paws.
He was starting to get upset with whatever misunderstanding was going on and just wanted to get some sleep, have some chance at escape from his constant self-induced plagues.
Corrina had paused, obviously expecting Aspenpaw to say more, but when he didn't, she turned to the other she-cat, who was still stood behind him,
"You go with them, Aray. Stay by Ich,"
"Of course, yes, Corrina," Aspenpaw didn't turn around to follow her shape as it vanished, just hearing the clatter of metals and then near silence in comparison as she landed on solid ground,
"What's your name, tom?" Corrina shifted his attention away,
"Aspenpaw," He answered slowly, sounding it out like he didn't quite trust her with this information,
"You're a clanner?" She asked with slight surprise and curiosity. Aspenpaw recoiled, his paws slipping back ever so minutely and his eyes folding down,
"Y-Yeah," Aspenpaw scolded himself for stuttering. He couldn't let his emotions get the better of him.
Flashes of life in Riverclan perpetrated his thoughts.
He tried to block it out, but he couldn't stop himself from seeing the apprentices' den, its surrounding moss barrier like a splinter between one world and another, and the Medicine Cat Den, where his brother worked for every waking moment, no matter if or not there was any task to do,
"From where do you hail?" Corrina spoke, but it barely sunk in,
"Riverclan," Aspenpaw whispered,
"How should you expect me to believe you? Is there any evidence that you've have? Any connections that I may know of?" Aspenpaw, understanding the importance of the situation, snapped back to reality as he came up with an answer,
"Loneheart went to the city, I know, a while ago," Corrina thought for a moment,
"Lonepaw then, I presume?" Aspenpaw just nodded, shocked at her recognition, "What is your relation to him?" She asked him next,
"I, I," Aspenpaw paused, "I don't know," He looked up to her with a glint in his eye, as if she might be able to help, but he was only met with another thoughtful look,
"You must be close then,"
"Y-Y, Yeah," A strange moment passed silently along. He felt like he had given so much information to this stranger, and the looks in her eyes flashed with understanding of who he was,
"Well, are you coming inside then?" This last question took Aspenpaw off guard.
Corrina had moved aside. The entrance of the mound was still open, and inviting to Aspenpaw's current state.
The questioning had momentarily made him forget of his drowsiness, but now it came back in full waves, and Aspenpaw slipped taking his first step forward.
Luckily, Corrina caught him and guided him against her for the rest of the way inside.
There was a smell inside, like scorched bone and dry fir leaves.
The den was a near perfect circle, the entrance sloped up so that Aspenpaw could see the entire room at once when coming in.
There were a few cracks in the tall ceiling letting light in, but not large enough for more than a leg to find its way in.
Getting down to the ground, there was moss set up and hanging around the perimeter to give the illusion of a real den, and the thing that Aspenpaw found the most alluring about the entire setup was that the ground was actually just that.
There wasn't a single piece of metal sticking out from the earth.
Nests lined the walls in a semi-circle on the left side of the den, closest to the only entrance.
There were four cats inside, all she-cats.
Immediately a hostility beckoned him in and threatened to draw out the same from Aspenpaw, but he held himself back, and Corrina eased some of the tension by proclaiming, "This is one of Red's children, don't treat 'em with such behavior,"
Faces turned away, their expressions hardly changing, but Corrina paid it no mind.
Aspenpaw had no idea what she meant, or who 'Red' was, assuming that it must be someone in relation to Loneheart.
He wondered what other secrets the small tom had. Leading him straight forward, Corrina stopped in front of a nest, the farthest from the entrance, "You'll sleep here in my nest, why don't you? You're already lookin' dead and I haven't the means to get a burial going tonight,"
"But I-I can't do that," Aspenpaw softly cursed himself for stuttering again, "You need to sleep too," He offered, feeling undeserving of taking what wasn't his,
"You are my guest, Aspenpaw. It would be wrong of me to devoid you of the services you need,"
"I can sleep anywhere though, I'm tired enough! Also, call me As, please," His words slurred, though he was sure of them,
"As, I cannot allow you to rest here in any other way than in my nest," She smiled cunningly at her ultimatum, and Aspenpaw was forced to back down and nodded his head, nearly falling asleep the instant his stomach touched moss,
"Thank you," He mumbled, though he couldn't catch a reply before the lights in his eyes dimmed, and sleep finally overtook his body.
The night didn't protect him, and neither did safety.
It was the first time for moons that he was able to sleep without worry, but the relief never came, not even in his blank dreams.
Aspenpaw opened his eyes without pain, but not with much else either.
It seemed that he was one of the last ones up, as, after his eyes adjusted to the direct stream of light that was hitting him through the roof, he saw only one other cat besides him sleeping in the den.
The same brown cat from the previous night was keeping watch by the entrance, the sliding rock closed.
Corrina was there, sharing a vole with the cat that Aspenpaw recognized as Aray.
She didn't notice him at first, and Aspenpaw squeezed his eyes shut, feeling them burn and holding in that feeling for a moment.
He heard paw steps approaching and knew that Corrina was coming towards him.
Aspenpaw opened his eyes and saw her standing above him, though she quickly lowered herself to his lying position, "Good sleep?"
"Fine,"
"Any dreams?"
"No," She pulled her head away to get a full look at the tom,
"The day is yours, As, how d'you intend it?" Aspenpaw hadn't really had time to think about that yet,
"I'll probably just, move on,"
"Ya headed for the city?"
"Well, I guess that's a place to start,"
"And I'm sure that's the best you can say about it," Aspenpaw's attention was drawn instantly,
"Is there something bad about it?" He asked. Corrina met his eyes, as shocked as he was intrigued,
"Don't they have any stories about it where you're from?"
"My, I was never told any," Corrina was perplexed,
"So, you don't know what we do here then?" Aspenpaw felt exactly the same way,
"What?" Corrina sighed and smiled softly before standing up and bounding over to the small fresh-kill pile, returning a second later with a pair of mice dangling in her jaws. She dropped them in front of him,
"I'd rather tell you everything here an' now so ya don't get pushed around by anyone else that you meet. Get eatin', cause this'll take a little while,"
"Okay," He confirmed his attention and bent down to take a bite out of the freshly caught creature,
"Let's start with some names and some structural details that you ought to be 'ware of. The city is run by toms, through and through. If you've got a voice in the city, that's meaning you're a tom," Aspenpaw was immediately confused,
"What do you mean?" He knew that there could be strife between different groups of cats for such things, but this sounded more extreme than anything he had seen in the clans,
"She-cats are slaves, As. That's all there is to it. There ain't no shyin' away from it, and there's no use in saying a bunch of fancy words to lighten the blow. She-cats aren't living creatures in the eyes of the structures there," She gave him space to think, but Aspenpaw couldn't come up with anything to say to that. He was entirely dumbfounded,
"I take it things aren't like that in the clans,"
"No," Corrina smiled, genuinely, but sadly so,
"From birth to death, including every step in between, we're set to fulfill every request, or order, rather. Unto sickness, unto heartache, unto grief we're forced to live a life below even the rats that dwell in the floorboards,"
"Why-Why-" Aspenpaw couldn't finish his thought completely at first,
"If you've got the chance to take advantage of someone without repercussion, most'll that it without a single thought, even if it means the pain of someone else to do it, though they sweep that away with the same talks of superior blood, destiny, and divine retribution that you can find nearly anywhere you journey to,"
"Why don't they fight back?"
"Well," She trailed off, before coming to a conclusion, "I guess I've already gone too far to keep that from you, plus, you've got a connection to Red, so I don't think you'll be doing anything nasty with what I say,"
"Who is Red?" Aspenpaw interjected, but was shut down,
"Shh, let me speak 'bout your first question. That one shouldn't concern if you don't know the answer to it,"
Aspenpaw sat back, a little disappointed but nonetheless intrigued by what else Corrina would tell him, "Lots'a shes are coming together down below for just that sort of thing. It's been goin' on for a good few seasons now, with a few differin' cohorts, working mostly together, plotting the downfall of the current leadership. They been takin' advantage of the war going on over there as of late, which I 'spose you should also know about if you're really still headed that way,"
Aspenpaw nodded, mostly without thinking about it, but after the fact, he realized that he did want to go there, to try and help in some way.
Maybe this was why his paws had led him this way, "The current leadership is under a cat named Jean," Corrina explained, "Quite a tyrant, so much so that even some o' the toms don't want to fall under him, so they've formed a rebel group to rise up, lead under Charlie, and they've certainly been givin' it a good fight, I'll give 'em that, though I don't think they can really have any hopes of winning. But they've got just the same views on she-cats, so our groups up there are really caught right in the middle of two lightning bolts with only the shelter of a rotting log,"
"Isn't there anybody they can get to help?" Aspenpaw asked, thinking of the alliances that the clans would sometimes make when they were threatened,
"Nothing around here, I'm afraid. Closest cats around are you clanners, but they're nearly as bad with outsiders as the city dwellers are with shes," She looked him close in the eyes for a moment,
"If you're going up there, and need some help at any point, follow a trail of peonies and whisper into wherever it takes you. Tell them that the Setter sent you, I think more cats know the moniker than my real name. And if that fails, namedrop Red. Nobody'll refuse you then,"
"Thank you," Aspenpaw dipped his head with gratitude, even if he didn't understand everything that she had said.
He did have one more question though, "What do you do here?" If cats in the city would trust him by just naming her, she must be important,
"Well, I help to set up former servi to live on their own after escaping from that hell. I train them to fight and to hunt, and how to communicate with others and stand up for what they believe in, and then I send them off to try and make something with the time they're granted to have left,"
"T-Thank you," Aspenpaw muttered awkwardly. It felt strange to thank her for something that he wasn't yet personally involved in, but the words just slipped out, and he truly admired her for what she was doing,
"Thank you for listening all this time, As, now I suggest you get yourself up and outta this den for awhile. It gets awfully stuffy in here; ain't healthy for ya. Do inform me when you intend to leave however. It's always a sour feeling for a guest to depart unannounced,"
"Okay, I will," He confirmed, and Corrina gave him a smile, a much nicer one than before, which seemed to say that things were alright for the moment.
She left him where he was and padded back over to Aray, who had apparently been waiting there the entire time for her return to their conversation.
Aspenpaw took Corrnia's advice and stretched out his legs before burying the mice bones in the hard earth.
It certainly was harder to breathe in this den than it would be outside, so Aspenpaw made the move to get out.
He didn't want to be alone out there, but he certainly didn't want to ask anybody for company.
It always made him feel pathetic to beg for companionship, and usually ended up with him not being able to enjoy it; it always felt like he was forcing them to be with him.
Aspenpaw came to a stop at the entrance as the young she-cat guarding it, the same one from the day before, tried to strike up a conversation, "Hi! I'm Ophelia, at least, that's what my name is. Have you got one? A name?"
"Aspenpaw," The she-cat frowned, then her lip curled, just a single small crease of her mouth that manifested instinctually in Aspenpaw's brain as a threat.
His eyes widened, searching for movement, and his mouth opened, just slightly, in case of danger.
In reaction to Aspenpaw, Ophelia's pupils droned up so that she was seeing his whole body in the still moment.
Both of their claws were still sheathed, their hackles were laying flat, but there was paranoia in their eyes.
Aspenpaw dared not even flick his ear when an irritation grew there.
Their sights matched one another perfectly, dilated and wild, until Aspenpaw noticed something blocking his opponents view, a light welling.
Suddenly, Ophelia swung forward. Aspenpaw bounced back. A stream of light blinded him and he fell back against the wall.
No pain was felt on his body, no wound had been cut.
Through the thick haze, an image was created.
Ophelia was turned away, her head.
In the corner of this tiny narrow-way where they could hardly both fit, she was slotted away, every trace of emotion hidden.
Her message was clear, however.
The stone block had been moved, allowing the sunlight to stream in, and forcing Aspenpaw out.
He cautioned a wary step, slow and meticulous. Clouds covered the sun for a moment and Aspenpaw took a solid look outside.
There were cracked shards and scraped chains, rusted racks and upturned holes.
Beyond that however, was that simple dirt path.
Only two ways to go.
Aspenpaw was halfway out when it came to his ears the sound of a hushed, harsh breathing, a sound that he knew very well.
He looked back.
Ophelia was buried deep into herself.
Aspenpaw began to feel choked up at the sight and sound that perpetrated his senses, and deeper.
He wanted to comfort her, to hold her against him, to help, but all he could do was hold his tail out to her, so little that only their fur touched.
Suddenly a great pressure was exerted and Aspenpaw was shoved outside.
The stone wall slammed so fast and with so much power that Aspenpaw was worried that the whole structure might collapse in on itself.
He could still hear the horrid sound, and realized all too soon that it was coming from his own throat.
He was in pain at his failure, and shook his head to try and throw away the quickly forming tears before he made an even worse realization.
Aspenpaw wasn't worried about Ophelia, he was worried about himself.
He ran as fast as he could through the graveyard until he reached sweet grass, and then picked up his pace for just a second, falling onto the dirt path that had brought him here.
Between the striped lines of dimly shaded color, the poetry of dirt, a voice, screaming in shadows, calls out like nightingales over the quarry, her trim, flapping feathers rolling through the air as a mountain crumbling to the sea.
One cry, unlike the other, pleading and cryptic, a waterfall of the eye overcomes his body.
One way back. One way through.
This extension holds every next choice.
Aspenpaw wanted to go home, home upturned, hurling over the bloodied grass, the stretch of his limbs.
There existed no place.
The air smelled of timber, and sadness. He opened the clutch of his reach, claws, raking through the earth like a fire to a grove.
Achingly the forsaken son, the evil one, sprawled his tendons and muscles, waning and waxing between two worlds.
He grasped to them both, wishing to split his body in half so that he may walk through each trench of that path.
A head, rattled and rotten and all in its glory, driven into perfect middle by choice.
In this moment, Aspenpaw ceased to exist. His body was only an afterthought of the deconstruction of his mind.
There was nothing.
There was nothing.
The salt in his mouth, tears, mixing with the molding of life itself, was his only sensation.
He was to choose life now, and he wondered if this was the forgotten moment of the first semblance of sentience, when the inkling of life is set on its path to become everything that it would.
It stemmed from a choice, if optimism is to be hoped and dreamed for.
And so now he had it again. But his memories, the consequences of his worst choices, they still haunted him in this unbecoming state.
Every choice he made still existed.
The past was all that can ever exist until the present moment is gone, and Aspenpaw had to come to the conclusion that none of this was what it seemed, what he hoped for.
He couldn't be reborn, couldn't be sheltered from what he had done.
He wasn't a new creature to wander this earth.
All this it was, was a choice between two directions on a dirt path.
And Aspenpaw made his decision.
The ground was wet where he had laid his face upon it, and his eyes winced with the pain of warmth protruding from the bounces of sunlight on every surface, but he was sure of something, which he hadn't truly been in a long time.
So Aspenpaw straightened himself out, and he watched down both directions of the endlessly path, and, unwilling to move from this spot, he waited for Corrina to step out from the den, so he could wish her farewell, and tell her that he was leaving for the city.
Until I write again,
-Gojira