Chapter 76: Dream Guide
You know, dream walking is a fascinating skill. It has a strange set of restrictions bound entirely by the dreamer's knowledge and perceptions. I say this because I had been experimenting with the skill. At first, it was just a means to converse with Crookedstar and Scourge in a way Starclan couldn't track, but the boundaries and undetectability of it was giving me ideas. After all, I had located the kit bound to Starclan's prophecy. I couldn't have him grow up to be just Starclan's puppet. He needed to grow his own morals and stubbornness necessary to make the needed changes. He'd also need a bit of preemptive training and baiting to want to go to the forest in the first place. All of this I planned to provide.
Let me tell you, kit dreams are infinitely harder to change than a grown cat's. The foremost reason is that kits don't have the experience or knowledge of things well enough for me to just create out of the blue. I had to work within what they know and expand outward to attempt to create some things I knew were already real. They weren't real to the kit yet, so just creating one was impossible.
I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. I managed to sneak into the prophecy kit's dream. When I entered, I found I did not actually have a physical form. I mean, why would I? The kit did not know me or of cats like me. What I actually looked like was a completely foreign concept. In a way, I accepted this state of being. It wouldn't do for the kit to remember me. Starclan might do something drastic if they knew what I was doing. Anyways, I still needed something to symbolize my presence without it actually being something me. It needed to be something the kit could latch onto to know I was there. There wasn't as many options as one would think. Just filtering out common sights and smells the kit knew limited me to near nothing. I almost gave up when I got lucky. There was a distinct smell the kit knew and I also knew. It was mint. Mint would be the scent the kit would smell when I was present.
Raising the kit was going to be a long project. The kit simply wasn't interested in the forest… yet. Their world was already to big since those twoleg dens have so many closed off areas and tall things the kit had never climbed. The kit couldn't conceive of exploring the forest since their own home had too much to explore already. The best I could do was egg the kit on to explore those areas in their waking hours. I knew the kit would get in some kinds of trouble in his waking hours, but I didn't have a very large timeframe. On an aside, I did witness the kit destroy his home's mint plant and roll in it, likely wanting reality to be like his dreams. Soon after, there was no mint plant in the kit's home. That scent now belonged distinctly to me.
Watching the kit's life gave me methods of teaching. While I could not create a mouse, the twolegs had a thing that was a facsimile of a mouse. It was the wrong scent and color, but I could use it to convey the idea. I used the kit's fake mouse in his dreams to confer the idea of hunting. The kit didn't quite get it at first, just believing it was a game of chase, but his instincts eventually came out. I actually watched with bated breath as the kit stalked up to the fake mouse and pounced. It lacked all forms of grace, but the kit got the idea. I was strangely proud.
Eventually, the kit was let out of the twoleg's den. He could see the forest past the fence. He knew the feeling of grass on his paws. He knew the feeling of hunting. It was just putting those pieces together that proved to be my test. Rusty, the prophecy kit, ended up providing me more material to work with over time. He made a friend, a flighty tom kit names Smudge. That kit was kittypet through and through, but from him and the few other cats Rusty saw, he actually developed the concept of a cat. Now, the build range and color range were severely limited, but I could work with it.
I crafted for myself a form. It was a tad bit basic and lacked detail. It was also a bit pudgy given that it was based off the cats Rusty knew who were kittypets. Regardless, I had a cat form. I couldn't make all my colorations and patches, so I went for something simple. I was red like a fox. It was somewhat reminiscent of Rusty's own colors. With this form, I walked the tree line, knowing eventually Rusty would see me. That was all it took to bait Rusty's curiosity. He now knew, or wanted to be a cat out in the woods. Why? Because the dream cat that smelled of mint was out there. It wasn't a good or honorable reason, but it was a foundation. Rusty now knew his end goal, even if he didn't know why.
Sometimes I'd hang out somewhere Rusty would not see to try and create some more accurate facsimiles to real things. It was a slow and somewhat infuriating process, but it was worth it. I made a pretty real mouse for Rusty to hunt, a few simple birds, and a rabbit. They didn't more or act perfectly, but they were good for the practice.
Sometimes I'd provide demonstrations for Rusty I'd show him how to stalk and pounce. I couldn't actually talk him through it, but he could watch. I don't think he remembered me after he slept, but I could tell he was learning. In the waking world, he'd practice the skills I taught him. Admittedly, dreams are not a good teaching tool. Most of it is forgotten by the time the dreamer wakes, but not all of it. Rusty was actually fairly passable for a kit. Given he wasn't raised by the clans, the fact that he could do so much off the faint memories a dream provides was impressive. Unfortunately, skill wasn't all I needed to teach.
I had to make some nightmares. These weren't run of the mill nightmares. I needed to make Rusty think. I made moral dilemmas. Was it cruel to force a kit to make such hard choices? Probably. At least they had no bearing in reality. These nightmares served a purpose. When Rusty was given a choice, I rewarded choices that he did for the purpose of helping more cats. Ones that hurt more cats, I usually had devolve into something worse as even the good he tried to get would get snatched away. Sometimes I let him be selfish. The point was to teach him to think out actions and their consequences. These were set in dreams, so they only really gave the kit a framework, but a framework was all I wanted to make anyways. The kit had to make his own moral code.
Honestly, I felt so proud of the kit. I'd miss him when he finally left to join the clans. I couldn't always be by his side. I could only hope what I taught would serve him well.