Chapter 3

The fortunate sing when the forests refuse to listen.

His paws were set sturdy.

Aspenpaw cleared the sight of tree after tree all along the same static path.

The day was turning by the time he reached a new vision.

A twoleg town of some sort that stretched out over the distance.

Aspenpaw knew this couldn't be the city, and he questioned if he had gone the wrong way, but continued forward nonetheless.

Suddenly, a swash of grass folded over his digits and a bumblebee landed right beside on a lily.

He was off the trail and down by a river. As he walked, Aspenpaw occasionally dipped his paw in the rushing water, to feel it clog in his skin and stick his fur against it.

It was at least nice to finally be in green-leaf.

From his distraction, Aspenpaw was caught off guard when the river ended, sprinkling out into a pitiful stream, just a line of water the size of a paw, and then disappearing into the earth as the ground rose into a mound.

Here was the twoleg town, smelling of smoke and mold.

The Thunderpath closest to Aspenpaw was broken to such a point that he couldn't possibly imagine a monster running over it.

The side paths were the same way, and looking up, it seemed like just about everything had decayed.

Aspenpaw couldn't hear anything but the chirping of some unfamiliar bird.

This place was dead, he concluded.

Not a single sign of life could be caught by his eyes, and still he kept off the Thunderpath, wary nonetheless of hidden danger.

There was a peaceful nature to the abandoned nests, strange safety in a broken world.

His head twisted around, admiring the place.

Here the symmetry that was present in the other twoleg town was nonexistent, and it allowed Aspenpaw to appreciate the creations before him.

A scream pierced the air, the first sharp sound he had heard since he left in the morning.

Something had leaped onto Aspenpaw's back and was digging its claws into his sides.

Aspenpaw quickly fell over, throwing the attacker between the ground and his weight, which stunned them enough for him to get away momentarily and get on even ground.

His attacker was a cat, a tom, who immediately tried to jump at him once he was standing again.

But without the aspect of surprise, the tom was a terrible fighting, flailing his paws nearly randomly.

Aspenpaw quickly knocked him over and cut his hind leg when he tried to push out at him.

Aspenpaw pinned the tom to the rough ground, a hole where his head lay.

His attacker was hardly older than eight or nine moons, and didn't have a single scar or scratch on him.

This must have been his first battle.

Aspenpaw couldn't imagine that he would have gotten away unharmed from another.

The tom at first refused to look him in the eyes, as if waiting for Aspenpaw to do something.

He looked frustrated with himself. Aspenpaw was angry with shock,

"Why did you do that?" He yelled at the cat, unafraid of being heard.

Fear flashed in the tom's eyes,

"Y-You-" He started, but didn't finish before closing his mouth.

Aspenpaw laid off his paws, walking back and allowing the tom to stand.

Now that he wasn't under such an immediate threat, the hazel colored cat finished his sentence, "Y-You're on my land," Aspenpaw was perplexed and upset,

"This is your land?" He shouted out mockingly at the empty dystopia.

The tom bristled under his thick pelt, his eyes manually narrowing and hardening for a false sense of intimidation,

"Don't you dare insult my empire! I am a domin and will not be treated with such disdain!"

Aspenpaw's immediate reaction was to blow up his fur with even rising anger, but when he realized what he was doing, he quickly curbed himself and tried to make his fur lay flat again, though it wouldn't fully fold and tuck into his skin.

This kind of anger wouldn't help him on this journey, he knew,

"What are you talking about?" He asked, an edge in his voice yet, but keeping his volume down,

"Are you an outsider?" The tom asked.

Aspenpaw nodded,

"Figures," He continued, cocky through his obvious fear, "I am a domin, hailing from a great and powerful family. My father is Mer, war general in service to Jean. I am on my designated journey now to find servi and continue my paternal lineage,"

The rehearsed words came out flat, as if he was paying more attention to speaking the exact correct monologue than to his tone and delivery.

Aspenpaw droned on the words.

This cat's father was working under Jean, the leader of the city, and that word, 'servi' had been used when Corrina was talking about enslaved she-cats.

A picture of this society was drawn instantly in Aspenpaw's mind.

He scowled in disgust.

If he was back in the forest, he might have had something to say, some insult to hurl at the young tom, but with whispers in his head of statements once heard, some real and some just a dream, Aspenpaw found that he had lost that spark.

One voice got louder, a nipping at his skull, trying to dig out, and unintentionally, Aspenpaw spoke it into existence, "Where are you going to go when you die?" His voice had calmed as he had been so far away from the confrontation at that point,

"What?" The tom squealed as if he had been caught doing terribly wrong,

"What's your name?" Aspenpaw changed the subject in the fastest way he saw possible,

"D-Di," Aspenpaw still wasn't fully listening, trying to deter intrusive thoughts.

They were like a tumor, and just as such they seemed intent to kill him.

His mind was a gutter, getting always contaminated with the things he feared and hated the most about himself.

But he brought himself back momentarily, just enough to introduce himself, if only by nature,

"As," He didn't want to use his full name around these kinds of cats, "Now, keep to yourself, and stop causing cats pain," Aspenpaw ended the awkward conversation with a limp piece of advice, but he really just wanted to get out of there.

This wasn't the kind of company that he wanted with him. He turned away and began walking, but a padding behind him spoke of the tom coming up next to him,

"Where are you going?" Di asked,

"I don't want you here!" Aspenpaw couldn't stop himself from shouting, causing the smaller tom to back off and press his ears down to his skull,

"If you tell me where some shes are, I could take you anywhere. No one would give you trouble," He proposed.

Aspenpaw's brain was gnawing to get out,

"I don't want you here," He repeated in a growl, his headache getting worse by the second, "Stay away from all that," Aspenpaw again half-heartedly tried to drive Di away from his goal,

"You'll be killed if you try to hurt any she-cats," He continued moving even as Di continued to stop and start behind him, keeping a small distance between the two of them, "A she-cat can't kill a tom! It's their birthly punishment to never hurt their masters!"

"Have you ever met a she-cat?" Aspenpaw asked sarcastically, in awe of this ignorant culture that he had walked himself into, but ended up being more spot on than he expected,

"N-No, but I know enough about them!" Di tried to defend himself, but the damage there was done. Aspenpaw turned around, and then away, shock washing over him.

He thought in silence for a while. Perhaps this was his next trial.

This cat had been sheltered from reality for so long with no one to guide him back.

He wondered if Di had even ever been out in a rainstorm.

If he was left alone, Aspenpaw didn't think he would make it, not at all.

He had failed to connect to Ophelia, and every connection he had ever made prior had been destroyed by his own actions.

His mind blinked for a moment to that night, watching for a split second through the trees as cats rushed to try and help his brother.

He shook it away. The decision was made; he would try to show Di the reality of the world if he could, at least for a little while, "I'm going to the city,"

"I can show you around there!" Acornpaw didn't object, and allowed the blue-eyed tom to join beside his side.

He continued walking as soon as he caught up however, still rather uncomfortable at the situation,

"What do they, tell you about she-cats where you're from?" Di seemed caught off guard,

"Do you not have shes where you're from?" Aspenpaw looked over, so that his eyes were together with Di, neither of them watching their steps, even as they walked past cracks and holes on the thunderpath, which Aspenpaw didn't even realize he had been walking on until then.

He thought about what he could say to lighten the blow of telling this young cat that he had been lied to.

Di wasn't even much younger than Aspenpaw, and yet he seemed still like a kit,

"You've been misinformed about she-cats, Di,"

"What'r-What do you mean?"

"They're just cats, like you," Though Aspenpaw tried to be gentle, there was still an edge to his voice that he couldn't conceal,

"But-" Di tried to argue, "But they lost the fight against the toms in the ancient mountains!" Aspenpaw assumed that that was a piece of folklore to justify the crimes committed there,

"That's long in the past. She-cats are just cats now,"

"But they're evil! And manipulative!"

"Just cats,"

"Don't lie to me! My father told me that cats like you would try to lie to me!" Di suddenly exploded, his voice nearly shattering.

Aspenpaw swung around to confront him.

There were tears in his eyes, though he quickly hid his head looking down.

Aspenpaw was angry at Di's stubbornness, and upset at himself for not having the philosophical ability to explain his side, but he also felt sad for the misguided tom.

Aspenpaw wondered what he would do in his place, if he had been raised to believe that a group of cats was worse than another.

Would he be able to recognize reason?

But then he realized, with repulsive horror, that he had been raised that way.

He had grown up to hate rogues, with every other statement about them being how they were scoundrels and traitors, murderers and thieves, said by both the cats around him, and by Aspenpaw himself.

He had been young, but it still haunted him now as he reflected upon these poor memories.

Acornpaw had never been like that.

The pressure of hatred towards any cats outside of Riverclan, and especially outside of the clans at large, had never gotten to him, despite the fact that his mentor, Whitestem, had been a large proponent in spreading the paranoia.

Aspenpaw cried out in his head, conversely making a small, involuntary hum echo from his throat, which seemed to go unnoticed by Di.

He had to get Acornpaw out of his head.

No matter what he thought of, it would always seem him back to the brother who he had murdered without reason.

He had watched through the trees and cats' legs, Acornpaw's claws swiping out as his body spasmed, his life draining into the dark grass, as if he was being damned right in the middle of that crowd.

Aspenpaw shook his head so hard that it started pounding.

His headache was worsening by the minute.

Di said something, but Aspenpaw couldn't hear it over his own thoughts, which he tried to direct towards his unfinished confrontation.

It hadn't been until Aspenpaw went to his first gathering that he realized that the cats outside of Riverclan were just the same as they were in, loving and funny, fair and cruel, spoiled and fearful, and beautiful.

It was Rustheart who had shown him these things.

Aspenpaw longed for his old friends, but he had betrayed them, he would never see them again, and if he did, it would only be fair that they would slit his throat.

But there was one cat who he felt so much more attached to, but so distant from as well.

Loneheart.

He remembered one of the first times they really spoke to each other.

Aspenpaw had been a prisoner in Thunderclan camp, and Loneheart didn't seem to have many other cats to talk to, so they began a dialogue.

That was the day that Aspenpaw learned that Loneheart had been born a rogue.

He played it off at the time, and really tried to understand and feel for the strange looks that Loneheart would get from his clanmates, but something bubbled up in him, this deep-seeded hatred that had been placed in him from birth.

He knew at the time that it was wrong, but couldn't bring himself to look at his friend the same way.

But then Loneheart sacrificed himself for Aspenpaw, getting captured by Riverclan so that he could be traded back to his clan.

It had made him feel so guilty, and it still did, how he had had all of these terrible thoughts about this cat, and it had been unrequited.

It had taken Loneheart to give up his body and soul to cats who would only step all over it for Aspenpaw to realize that he was just a cat.

It was depressing to think that that was what it took for just one cat to think of somebody different as an equal.

Aspenpaw vowed that he would find a way to prove it to Di that She-cats were the same as him without some external selfless act to artificially convince him, or rather, just make him feel like he was in debt now.

The day ebbed away like sand in the wind.

The thunderpaths remained corrupted with ditches and splinters, and no living creature could be caught in these parts aside from the two traveling toms.

They spoke incrementally and briefly throughout, with Di always the one to spark the conversation, curious about Aspenpaw and his past, "Where do you come from?" He'd asked,

"Riverclan," Aspenpaw said bluntly,

"What's that?" Di's voiced had squealed uncontrollably and he turned away when Aspenpaw answered,

"It's one of the four clans in the forest, a couple days trip from here," He didn't want to be too descript, afraid to reveal much about the clans,

"Why'd you leave?" Aspenpaw remembered feeling a tingle run up from his spine, like he was at the mercy of a claw slowly rummaging through his fur,

"It only hurt to stay there," He had answered vaguely. Di hadn't seemed to understand,

"Was somebody trying to hurt you? What about your family, and your friends?"

"I don't have any family," Aspenpaw didn't make it any further in that conversation.

That had been the last thing that he had said up until this point.

They had taken to the side paths after Aspenpaw started to get paranoid.

The city was in view, and with it, a distant whirling, the sounds of life.

The buildings looked like mountains protruding over the horizon line.

It was an incredible feat, one which made Aspenpaw aware of just how small he was in this world.

He could never create something with so much majesty, and yet there were nearly a hundred of them, reaching up further to the stars than Aspenpaw would ever be.

It made him teary-eyed to think of. Aspenpaw didn't believe in Starclan, nor in any such afterlife.

He hadn't since he first became an apprentice, and with Acornpaw training to be a Medicine Cat, it didn't seem necessary for them both to have faith.

Acornpaw would have faith enough for him as well.

But to Aspenpaw, this life was all that there was, a brief divergence from the eternal emptiness which all souls experience in all time before and after life.

Aspenpaw felt his accomplishments could never be as grand as a single one of those tall buildings.

His life was wasting away, "Are we almost done walking?" Di complained from behind him.

Aspenpaw hadn't even realized how late it had gotten, the sky painted over in over and blotted with pink clouds,

"Yeah," He said, his voice far away as he continued to marvel at the shining city, a place which held so much pain, and yet, from afar, seemed as beautiful as a shining waterfall, "We can stop here for the night. Sleep wherever you want,"

Di didn't need to be encouraged further, as he instantly bolted off towards the nearest twoleg den.

It was abandoned, of course, but Aspenpaw certainly wouldn't be joining him there.

It was too foreign for him to trust, though he supposed that went for a lot of things which were stupid to refuse.

The smog of the city became visible the further that the sun sunk into its depths.

It was a starless night, and Aspenpaw slept alone on the small patch of grass outside the den that Di found home in, keeping his eyes on the thunderpath until his eyes filled with drowsiness and forced themselves shut.

This was the kind of night where Aspenpaw would seek out Rustheart or Loneheart to keep him company until the early morning.

He never realized until he was alone just how much loneliness hurt.

It was like he was flying through space, but when he got close to the stars, they would move away, faster than he could.

The friendship that he had had with Rustheart and Loneheart was gone, what had come in its place was just a mutual beneficial trade so that they wouldn't have to be so lonely when the night came.

He had used them.

After all, this loneliness had partially been caused by him, or at least, that was how he saw it, he didn't know if it was really true.

Aspenpaw would always disappear before the other woke, he was never able to sleep on any of those nights, but it was better than facing his dreams.

Rustheart would talk for hours on end, using Aspenpaw as a pair of ears for his worries and angers, but Aspenpaw loved every minute of it.

He could be completely in the moment when Rustheart was there, but he also worried for him.

Rustheart was no longer the cocky and boisterous cat that he had been only a few moons ago.

He was more thoughtful now, but with it, more cynical and anxious.

He had told Aspenpaw how he wished to rebel with the group of ragtags that they had been a part of.

Aspenpaw had begged to help, but he was turned down, and that had been the last time that he saw Rustheart until the night before yester.

It was different with Loneheart, a lot more strained.

The small gray tom didn't have much to say, and hardly seemed to understand the situations that he had been put into.

Tonight he had nobody, though he considered joining Di inside, just to know that somebody was sleeping near to him, but he couldn't bring himself to.

He didn't know how to make connections anymore, every interaction just seemed like it only split him apart further from everybody else.

Tomorrow he would enter the city, and he would try to forget.

Forget about Rustheart, forget about Loneheart, forget about the forest.

The only thing he needed to remember was Acornpaw.

He didn't want to, but Aspenpaw could never hope to live again if he tried to purge the memory of his only brother from his mind.

He was only here because of what he did to him, and he was only doing what he was for the same reasons.

Reason.

There had been no reason, even Aspenpaw didn't know, or perhaps, he couldn't admit it to himself.

But he certainly accused himself, as the moment that his eyes shut for the final time, the dreams came, and he couldn't escape them, not until the morning once again shone over that same unreachable horizon.