Chapter 4
The wind cries, so as to care.
Aspenpaw didn't wake when the morning came; he hadn't been able to sleep for hours by that point.
His eyes were glazed over with a coat of tears.
It had thundered just a few moments ago, so Aspenpaw lifted himself up, wanting to get to the city before it rained too heavily.
The dark clouds seemed to be far away, though he couldn't see very well.
Though the sky was shallowly lit up, there wasn't a trace of yellow, hidden away from the haze.
He would have gone alone if it hadn't been for the night terrors that plagued his waking mind.
He needed some company, even if it was from a cat who hardly understood anything about the world.
The uprooted twoleg den protruded out from its center with scraps of misshapen wood strewn about the grass patch between Aspenpaw and Di.
There were large holes smashed in throughout its walls that looked like the tunnels that termites bore into fallen branches, except here it seemed like it was something far larger.
Aspenpaw swallowed his doubts and crept towards the open entranceway, part of the wall cut out and swung in, hanging on rusted hinges only halfway serving the use of keeping it in place.
There were two rooms inside that Aspenpaw could see when he walked in, the one that he found himself in at entering, and one off to the left side halfway up that only existed due to a couple of extra walls and another piece of entrance-wood.
Where the massive holes from the outside countered, there laid sharp shards of a clear metal on the ground.
Di was asleep near the center of the main room on a makeshift nest, a soft flooring against the hard wood which made up the den.
Taking his steps carefully, Aspenpaw approached, the strange, smooth texture of shaved wood slippery beneath him.
It was like ice, was the closest comparison he could make to anything he had come across before.
With one paw, Aspenpaw prodded the smaller tom.
The touch of his thin fur sent a shiver through his veins.
He felt like Acornpaw, or perhaps, Aspenpaw only remembered him that way, another distorted memory that never seemed to fall in line with any others.
He couldn't barely remember his brother's face, only the visage of him that he saw in his mind, "Hm?" Di mumbled out,
"Come on, it's time to go, if you're still going to keep with me,"
"Huh? It's, hardly morning,"
"It's going to storm. I'm moving now, regardless," Though he tried to act stoic, it was just a gambit to try and convince Di to stay,
"Fine," Di resolved himself and pushed out his front legs in a stretch.
Aspenpaw turned around wordlessly and walked to the entrance, much more comfortable under the undisturbed sky.
Even if there was a haze overtaking it, it was better than the roof of the twoleg den.
It was nearly a stereotype of Riverclan cats to comment about how they couldn't understand living in the thick forest with trees above every spot like in Shadowclan and Thunderclan, but Aspenpaw found himself with that same mindset.
It was horrifying to be under the mercy of such fragile towers.
He sat on the grass, his back away from the den, staring off into the sky.
It was a special time, when the day and night converged so beautifully that it was impossible to separate them.
There was no sun, no moon, and no stars, just the dark gray sky and the nearly black clouds in the distance which bolstered the coming of a million waves into the dry earth, the drink of life.
Aspenpaw always wondered how the water coagulated in such a way that it could rain so heavily down to the world, how the clouds came to possess the liquid, and how it varied how much of it there was when it finally came down.
Stumbling heavy paw steps behind him announced the sleepy Di to the scene.
Aspenpaw started walking as soon as Di caught up, not letting the tom see his sleep-deprived eyes,
"It really is stormy over there," Di commented, pausing to admire the darkness slowly dancing towards them,
"How long will it be until we're in the city?"
"I, uh, I don't know," This must have been Di's first time away from home.
Aspenpaw just wished he could have found somebody better to stick to.
Even after exploding at him the day before over Aspenpaw's supposed lying about she-cats, the tom kept walking with him and refused to even suggest that he would leave.
He did really seem to be afraid in this big world, having never lived without guidance before.
Aspenpaw only stopped for a couple of seconds to let Di have a moment, but continued on without a word, flinching as he felt he was being too hard on the young tom, but he didn't want to get caught out in the storm.
Those were always Aspenpaw's favorite days before, when the wind would rock his very heart and the rain would completely deafen his surroundings.
Acornpaw always said that he could never enjoy it; there were too many opportunities for cats to get hurt or lost or swept away in a raging tide.
At the time, Aspenpaw admired his brother for this, but now he looked back at it with a strange envy for the empathy that Acornpaw had, or at least presented, for the world and all the other cats in it.
Aspenpaw had never truly been sure if Acornpaw felt the things that he said he did, or if he only said them because he thought that that was how he was supposed to feel.
The wandering pair dragged their paws across the hard thunderpath, once again finding themselves in a space where danger should be expected, and yet, the world was empty, like the fantasies of a kit in a bundle of reeds, pretending that it was the end of the world.
Aspenpaw imagined that this was what the end would look like, barren paths no longer leading anywhere, splits in the earth leading all the way to the heart of the world, and one last encroaching storm to sweep it all away.
The city couldn't be more than a couple hours away at this point, and yet there wasn't a single sign of life around.
Thunder roared once again, far away and yet more powerful than any other sound that Aspenpaw had ever heard.
The wind had picked up, strong enough now to shake the loose bits and scraps still attached to the disjunctive foundations of the lines of nests.
He stopped, and he sat down, staring up at one such home, pounding like a beating heart, "Somebody must have lived here once, right?" He mumbled to himself,
"Huh?" Di sounded from behind him,
"Somebody's memories are in there," Aspenpaw tried to convince himself, staring down the broken creation, uncertain if it could ever host life in the same capacity as it once did, "Somebody's good and bad is still around, and all of the moments when nothing was happening. That can't fade away, right?"
"Are you okay, As?"
"Keep going," Aspenpaw breathed heavily, his eyes blurring with tears the longer he stared at his unanswered pleas, "I'll catch up with you in a minute,"
The wind tore down the old buildings, they could have never survived.
The storm was approaching, like a ravenous hound hunting in a dream.
Aspenpaw and Di had arrived at the outskirts of the city.
Here there was noise, and nearly nothing but.
The shrieks of monsters percolated through the sky.
Monsters. Sympathetic creatures, bound to life against their will.
It was wrong to call what the twolegs controlled 'monsters'.
They were only metal.
Aspenpaw didn't understand them in much way further than that, but it was easier to believe that than it was to believe that there was life in those painful shrieks.
Aspenpaw wasn't a monster, he was a murderer,
"I'll go alone from here," His decision rang out much longer than he intended it to, echoing in the whirling breeze around and around again.
Di didn't say anything at first, and Aspenpaw didn't shift his eyes to catch his reaction, "Thank you for coming with me," He added genuinely,
"Y-You-You're welcome!" Di was able to speak once he was given praise, "I-It was nice! Do you, really not n-need me? I can-ca-"
"No," Aspenpaw interrupted and shook his head, "I want to find my own way, Di, and you shouldn't get into any more danger," He looked back at the tom and said one more thing, "And one thing,"
Di pricked his ears,
"If you meet a she-cat out there, just, have a conversation with her. You'll learn a lot more there than you ever could from me,"
"Yeah, okay, yeah," Di agreed,
"Goodbye, Di,"
"Oh, already?"
"It'll start raining soon, I have to go, and so do you," Di nodded slowly and kept his head down as he spoke,
"Goodbye, As," Aspenpaw turned away.
He knew that Di wouldn't be the one to leave first, so he had to take initiative.
He just hoped that he would follow through with what he had asked.
Ahead of him was a massive tower, far larger than he had anticipated them to be.
It was entirely dark despite neighboring buildings hosting internal light throughout their large climb.
Aspenpaw run to a short wall, and with a single leap, he was in the city.
This was the space between two structures, dark and empty, and far past it where the buildings ended was a thunderpath, and even from here, there were more monsters on it than he thought he had ever seen in his life.
Turning to his right however, there was a tiny gap between the outside wall and the blackened tower that was sized perfectly for a cat.
Aspenpaw decided that this path would be safer to walk.
The smell of smoke and muck filled his nose, while his ears were subject only to the constant shrieking and movement of monsters, their bodies always vibrating with energy.
And then the rain fell. In an instant his senses were destroyed, distorted by such a volume that it was akin to how he imagined the first moments of death to be.
His ears were caught in the deafening splash of a million raindrops at once, the stench of the city had been cleansed, and he was almost blind looking through the constant mirage.
This was retribution, to take something which he had loved so dearly, and to pelt him with it until it stung all across his body.
There was no cover, no place to hide, and so he just kept walking.