Allegiances
Thunderclan
Leader
Barkstar - jet black tom, with brown hind paws
Deputy
Thunderclaw - brown tom with a long scar from his muzzle to his belly
Medicine Cat
Berryflight - white she-cat with gray hairs beginning to show themselves
Warriors
Snowflight - tabby she-cat with an odd gray patterning on her front legs
Briereyes - golden she-cat with only one working yellow eye
Stonefoot - light gray tom, has a limp on one paw
Scornheart - black tom with gray stripes
Firepelt - orange she-cat
Dewstorm - small gray tom
Yarrowleaf - yellow tabby she-cat with a black patch on one paw
Yellowsky - yellow tabby tom
Loneheart - light gray tom with green eyes and white paws
Queens
Coldstone - dark gray she-cat with dull claws
Elders
Clawpelt - dark gray tom who lost feeling in his tail
Brambletail - brown and black she-cat with slight hearing problems
Shadowclan
Leader
Greenstar - black tom with green eyes
Deputy
Blacktail - gray tom with a black tail
Medicine Cat
Tornclaw - light gray she-cat with a limp
Medicine Cat Apprentice
Pheasantheart - calico she-cat
Warriors
Blackfoot - white she-cat
Flowereye - calico she-cat
Darkoak - black tom with abnormally long claws on his hind legs
Foxshade - brown she-cat with hazel eyes
Silvereye - gray tom who is blind in one eye
Heavypuddle - gray she-cat with one ear ripped off
Stumpyleaf - brown tom with hazel eyes
Seedbrook - small tortoiseshell tom
Ravenfall - pale tom with a scar on his chest in the shape of a cat's face
Thawfire - brown she-cat
Doewing - tabby she-cat
Apprentices
Antpaw - small black tom
Rustpaw - black tom with green eyes
Pinepaw - brown-tabby tom with blue eyes
Hazepaw - tabby tom with blue eyes
Queens
Fernscar - black and brown she-cat
Elders
Nimblerain - calico she-cat
Riverclan
Leader
Stormstar - light gray tom with many battle scars
Deputy
Ravensea - blue-gray she-cat with unusually sharp teeth
Medicine Cat
Whitestem - pure white tom with amber eyes
Warriors
Sootnose - white tom with amber eyes
Otterfern - calico she-cat with a scarred paw
Rapidwind - calico she-cat with hazel eyes
Foxspot - brown-red tom with a scar on his paw that makes it hurt to walk
Slateleg - gray tom with a slash going from his chest to both his paws
Haredust - gray she-cat with one hazel eye and one green eye
Apprentices
Flypaw - small light gray she-cat
Sootpaw - tall light gray she-cat
Queens
Browntree - calico she-cat with four kits
Windclan
Leader
Dawnstar - short black and brown she-cat with claw marks under one eye
Deputy
Waspwing - pale she-cat with a thick pelt that attracts dust
Medicine Cat
Sandwatch - gray tom with blue eyes, the oldest cat in the clans
Warriors
Brownfire - dark brown tom with several missing teeth
Cedernose - gray she-cat with amber eyes
Tawnyspot - pale she-cat who prefers to call herself "Tawnyspots"
Flameheart - black and brown tom with blue eyes
Apprentices
Gorsepaw - brown tabby with a hearing impairment in one ear
Ashpaw - brown tabby she-cat with amber eyes
Sandpaw - completely deaf brown tabby she-cat
Elders
Darkpuddle - relatively young tom that retired early
Cats Outside the Clans
Red - loner she-cat with one blind eye
Corrina - tan she-cat, leader of a refugee camp
Prologue
The shattered day; the cracks, the screams
Nightfall, cold and powerful, crept across the forest. Chilled winds blew from tree to tree, as the final red leaves clung to their hosts.
The grass swayed endlessly, the only spots of plant life to remain once the north winds had secured its clutch on the world.
Night scroungers raced through tunnels beneath the earth, unseen by any other creature, desperately preparing for the worst of the four seasons.
Many of them would not survive.
Too much desperation and they would be picked off by a larger animal, cat or fox or dog. Too little desperation and they would simply shrivel up in their hunger, a fate undoubtedly worse.
But what he felt for most of all, that wanderer in the night, were those who would fall to disease brought by the cold season.
Of all the struggles of death, to rot away from the inside out, to leave only the maggots and earthworms to give a warm greeting, that seemed like the worst end that life brought about.
The stars remained in the sky, their gradual journey witnessed by all and yet watched by so few.
They hadn't the need to worry of hunger, of cold, of disease, of fear, of death, only instead did they watch, taunting the eyes with their beauty, from the first breath of birth to the cold shock of death.
Into this scene passed the wanderer, as boundless as the wind, tearing through the forest, knowing every step.
This night, as every, he found himself plagued with thoughts and apparitions of his past.
Things real and fake vanish unseen in his blue eyes, an endless wont, this path his to walk alone, "What does the night belong to?" He asked aloud, "Fear or regeneration? Hate or love?" No answer came but a gust of wind to blow back his fur. He stared up at that great light in the sky, its glow shrouding him like mist, the night free of clouds.
It appeared before him, a river of blood, distraction after distraction running through its waves, "Are your mysteries bound to stay unbroken?" He questioned, unperturbed by the destruction that lay before him, "What is war and peace to the night? What is love and hate?"
"Nothing. The night has no need for such things," A voice strung out, cold as the breeze and aged in speech though young in voice, "The night belongs solely to the wind and the rain,"
"I had hoped it wasn't so, but hope is fruitless when the sun sinks below the sky," From the shadows out walked a she-cat, looking like a spirit. She padded up to him and sat beside him, the moonlight illuminating the blind eye that lay on her face,
"And yet it's so beautiful, isn't it?" She said,
"Yes. When the day is so miserable, hate and war, loss after loss, the night brings a sad solace to our fears," Neither of them met the eyes of the other, instead both on the moon, that glow that held them each close, though through such different lives.
A quiet peace was borne through them, unworded trust, formed only by those caught in the web-strings of the night, "God how I wish; how I dream and pray,"
"What for?" The she-cat asked nonchalantly, settling herself onto the floor of the small mound that they stood on, "What does your heart desire? You, who tends the darkness and brisks through the woods," The tom gave a small laugh,
"Desire," He spat, "Who knows?" The she-cat turned her attention to him, her thoughtful eye trained on him with wonder for just a moment, though he returned not the gesture, the moon and the starry, starry night remaining the only shadows of his vision, "What I want, what I need, it all escapes me, and yet I keep praying, keep dreaming. For what I desire? Peace, war, love, hate, fantasy, reality, it's all the same to me in the end. I pray for my mother, though I fear she does not hear me, so long gone, taken away by the wind. I pray for the innocents, caught in all they are,"
He paused for only a brief moment, "I have a son," He said, capturing all the thoughts of the she-cat as she listened contently, "I pray for him, my final love. So young. God, do I pray for him! I've set him up on my own path, and God do I pray that he doesn't wander it,"
He paused, a moment longer than before, "I have no more personal desires," He said, "Except for what my body tells me, to eat, to sleep, to find whatever beauty is left to be found. And what of you? What is your desire? What is your fear?"
"How to begin with such a question. Perhaps I am bound by desire, such as most are, tied to its reigns to seek meaning in a meaningless world. My desire, my one, only wish, is to start over, the world, back at the beginning, whenever that may be," She replied, solemn in her truths, "My turn has passed, it's been just too long. I wait for death now, and yet it never comes for me, and so, in my time, I guide others to that end,"
"Does that make you evil?"
"Evil," She pondered for a moment, not in thought but in feeling, "What a word. Such a silly thing it is to claim right and wrong. What is evil? The antonym of good, of light, of love. What petty things. I am not evil; I have no malice in my heart. What I do I do for logic, a broken logic of chaos which guides every step we take, some of us are further down that path than others. Madness,"
"No," The tom argued, "Not madness. There is no such thing as madness. To claim madness is to claim an objective knowing of who we are, and what our places are. To be mad is to be abnormal from reality, strange, unwell, insane, but who can say, for certain, which is what, and who is which. There is no truth to reality, we live, and exist, as a dream,"
"Then I will ask again, what is evil? What is good? What is love? What is hate? It's all only nothing, meaningless words to sort the actions that we take. It's all only life and death, and even then, we only live or die because we believe we do,"
"God, to die, to return to objective nothing,"
"What God do you speak of?" She asked, her voice raised,
"One of my own, one which doesn't exist and could never exist, but I won't tell you about that, now isn't the time," They sat in silence a minute, each wandering over the others words, ideas that sounded so natural to the each of them but put into words which made it feel like a new thought.
At last, he broke the windy air with a question, "You didn't give me an answer before; what is your fear?" The she-cat didn't respond at first, letting her answer build up inside her before she let it out,
"To fade away, I suppose. To be forgotten," She sighed, "What else could be so terrifying but to be nothing in hearts and minds? I have spent my life shedding blood, and nothing will stop me but my own heart laid before me. I don't do it for some greater purpose, some service to death, I do it because of fear. It seems to me, in my sleepwalking and living dreams, that if I kill enough, take away enough from their loved ones, that I will never be forgotten,"
"Why kill to be remembered? Only will they try to forget you, the misery you cause,"
"Oh, but they can't," The she-cat said, with a sly smile, amused by the thought, "Wounds that deep don't mend so quickly. The only way to be remembered is with pain; no matter how much they try to forget, they'll just keep hurting and hurting. But," She turned away, dull anguish and resignation filling her voice, "I will be forgotten. I know that. I know it more every day. One day, I'll be gone, the victims will be gone, the storytellers will be gone. All memory of me, erased. It'll happen to all of us I think, just, disappearing from all thought once and for all," A stiff silence filled the air, threatening to end their conversation, but the she-cat had one more thing to add, "It's beautiful, isn't it?" He wasn't quite sure what she was referring to until she continued, "The thing I desire is the same thing that I fear the most. Nothing. Such things are to come, I can tell, I'm sure you can too. So, tell me, what is it that you fear most?" Without hesitation, the tom responded,
"To be remembered. That's what I fear. A broken, shattered bit of life, I am. Memory of me will only lead others down my same path, one that no more should walk down. Death suits me most, and yet, always at the final cut, I stop. It is my own selfishness that keeps me alive, my want to see those around me grow, my son in particular. Every moment that I am alive I lead him further down that dark path, uncontrollable and unpredictable, and yet, with all my love for him, I can't find it in myself to leave him. I hope that my memory fades, such as you say it will,"
"Each of us wish for death in our own ways, I suppose," She stood up from her resting spot, and for another brief moment, the eyes of the two night wanderers met once more, "I think I had best been off then," She declared as she turned her gaze to the glowing moon, still shining bright against all that darkness that enveloped it.
She began to move away slowly, back to the depths of the woods where she had appeared, with only the sound of the wind to accompany her, along with a few parting words from the stranger other,
"Then I wish you good, wherever it is you may go next," She turned to speak a final dialogue,
"May God help you," Neither of them understood the others final words, not really, but with that last look, each disappeared from sight, as the night went black, and a new day began.
The morning came and went, and the wanderer began his trek home.
Stonefoot by name he stood, warrior of unmighty Thunderclan, who roamed the oak woods. Under the guidance of the midday sun, he walked through the forest, though in the light it felt unfamiliar, despite knowing each step as they came.
Everything looked wrong when he could see it in full. He decided to take a detour, which would probably keep him occupied for most of the rest of the day, and head to the river that marked the territories of Riverclan and Thunderclan.
He wasn't very close by; it was just a thought that popped into his head. He didn't even really like the water that much, despite going to see it all the time.
One day he would cross it.
His paws were cold, each bit of grass leaving its blemish on him, until he was shivering.
Beginning to run, he passed landmark after landmark, sometimes twice, and the sharp ends of the grass started leaving marks, creating a volley of holes, dark and bitter, across his hardened pads.
He suddenly found himself swimming.
He had forgotten how he got here.
He wasn't even completely sure if this was the right river.
Everything on land seemed to melt down and fold into something unrecognizable.
The water coursed through his pads, sinking into the holes and further, enveloping his blood and organs.
It felt warm, almost like sunlight.
A cold sensation on the top of his head made him look up.
He couldn't see where the water started anymore.
It was snowing.
The first snow of the season, right on his head.
The surface water froze almost instantly, forming new ground as ice above him.
Gravity seemed to shift as the unfrozen warm water continued to surge through his veins.
He felt himself falling, as if in a dream, yet there was no shock, no fear. It felt like he was flying, going down, or up, or wherever he was now.
It was a slow and tender ride, before he finally felt solid ground beneath him, yet now he was standing the wrong way around.
He walked the thin ice, exploring this new habitat, a dark abyss of water in every way that he could see.
Looking up from where he stood, he could see nothing but air bubbles as they sank deeper into what should have been the depths of the river.
Ice continued on the ground everywhere he went, even once he was past where the river ended, the underwater terrain remained the same, all indistinguishable from one step to the next.
Each time he pressed against the ground a new crack would be produced, following him as he journeyed across this wasteland.
After walking for such a time that he was sure if he resurfaced, he would be away from any form of recognizability, he came across just a single sunning rock, where light shone down to encapsulate it.
Weary from his long travels, he lay upon the warm surface, the heat from the water having had run out, and he felt content, just for a brief moment.
His weight on the rock produced cracks that ran through the icy ground, creating a pattern not unlike that of a snowflake, "Where my mind goes," He thought to himself, before starting to claw his way back to whichever surface was on the underside of the ice.
The ice broke easily, crashing him down only a small bit, where he was caught by a contrasting gravity that held him in place between these two worlds separated by ice.
They were the same in every way yet pushing constantly against each other.
No matter which way he tried to move, now he had broken the ice, he was stuck in a constant push-pull of the abstract rivers.
It was a cradling motion, and soon, finding nothing else to do, he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to overtake as it typically did.
But before another dream could rest between his eyes, he heard from far away, a scream knocked then silence.
It was a familiar sound, but he couldn't figure it out before his mind finally shut down and carried him away to whatever dream he would come to next.