Snowpaw Log 2
I was there when we drove Tigerclan from Windclan's home. I was there to see what Tigerstar did to that Windclan apprentice, and it sickens me. It sickens me that no one was able to act, all too scared by Tigerstar's posturing and size. It's almost funny that the only one that did was the one not allowed to fight. Sparky is different than any cat I know. I could probably say the same for Blair as well.
I have noticed a feeling that has been growing within me the longer I have been back in Thunderclan. It is not a pleasant feeling. I may have been born Thunderclan, but it doesn't feel the same as when I was a kit. I train as an apprentice now, but I don't really have friends here. Don't get me wrong. The other apprentices try, but we just don't click. I don't even feel a particularly strong connection to my mentor. She teaches me well, but I just don't feel any sense of kinship with her. Not like Sparky and Blair.
My world is very much different than any other apprentice's. Every other apprentice longs for the day they receive their warrior name. Me, not so much. It isn't even because of fear of what being a warrior entails. No. It is the oath of fealty that bugs me the most. Can I even really call myself Thunderclan when I know there are others I serve with higher power? I mean, I serve ESRAI first because what they are doing will benefit all the clans.
Just speaking it out loud, it is becoming clearer to me. The day that hawk grabbed me, my world changed. The kit who simply knew of Thunderclan died that day. I took his place. Under my insistence, they took me back here to my birthplace, but I've come to realize it isn't my home. I watch the other apprentices enthuse about the prey they've caught and the battles they want to fight, but that's not what I'm interested in. What I enjoyed were my chats with Blair and Sparky, where we'd view the various other people's lives and try and empathize. I miss being able to watch videos of the other clans' comings and goings, discussing how similar and yet different we are. I miss getting excited for their victories and failures, and then watching the same thing again from another's perspective. I miss Sparky's slightly whirring voice as he excitedly chattered about something I thought common and small that he thought meant a world of difference. I miss his analytical nature that easily peters out into an emotional goofball. I miss his enthusiasm to greet every day with a sharp sense of interest, taking everything in. I still get the company of Blair every once and a while, and I get that taste of the place I once was. Blair is plenty different than Sparky, but I can still feel the fascination she feels when she talks to me and Thunderclan. Even as an adult, she still wants to learn.
Listening back to what I just said, I realize I miss Sparky the most. He was the one who saved me from the hawk. Even when he couldn't understand me, he took careful care of me. He helped me to acclimate to his world and even gave me the gift of hearing again. I think the part I liked the most was that he wanted to learn from me. I may have just been a kit, but he still looked to me to better himself, the project, and my world. He took interest in what I said, no matter how mundane. He'd ask my thoughts on things, even if he knew them far better than I. He never chastised me for having specific thoughts or asking questions. He took them all seriously, addressing my thoughts and even trying to figure out where my thoughts originated from. Blair is somewhat similar to Sparky. She listens to me and sometimes takes interest, but sometimes she, just like many cats here in Thundercla, dismisses my thoughts as just kittish.
That's my biggest gripe with being here. I am an apprentice, meant to learn. I look to the adults here, and there's just this level of apathy. They don't care to know or learn anymore. They've become set in their ways, unmoving and unchanging. If I asked one of them what they thought Windclan was like, they'd always say some variation of they're fast, flighty, and somehow always put in some kind of jab to claim Thunderclan is superior by all means. If I asked about Tigerclan, they'd always go on about the evil of Tigerstar for killing a deputy and what he did to the clan, never mentioning the toxic nature of forcing two largely stubborn and incongruous clans to operate under one ruler. They don't care about the cats of Shadowclan and Riverclan. They only care about how Tigerstar breaks the code. It's somewhat sickening to hear those around me talk that way. They've given up all instincts of right and wrong in trade for a vague code that half the time they'd discard on a whim. They're fiercely loyal to their clan alone.
Sparky, Blair, and the rest of ESRAI are different. While we have rules, they don't dictate how we need to act. Instead, we rely upon our own sensibilities and moral code to decide how to act. When Tigerstar held that apprentice down and tried to kill him, I got to witness the true nature of many of the cats here I thought honorable. Any one of us could have acted, charged Tigerstar down and tried to take him down, but no one did. I saw how they looked upon the pinned apprentice. There was not a care in their eyes. Why would they care? The apprentice wasn't Thunderclan. To them, he was an other, a being that while intelligent was not worth the effort to preserve. Windclan may have been forced not to act, but the warriors of Thunderclan I saw chose not to act. It was only at Firestar's order that we even bothered to rescue Windclan at all.
Despite everything, I do not begrudge Thunderclan for how it behaves. They act how they were taught to. Me, I don't really fit in anymore. I was by Sparky's side when he joined us in the clans. Even when training under Bluestar, he never lost his compassion for others, be it Thunderclan or other clan. That's why I strive to be like him. I want to care for others and empathize with them. Thunderclan has taught me how to survive and fight, but there's more that I desire. I want to heal like Sparky. I want to travel and learn. I think I'll let Firestar know my revelation, that I find myself not as Thunderclan, but rather as a member of Sparky's research team and, if I can term it as such, his clan.