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i
“Goldpaw, are you sure this is a good idea?” Morningpaw asks quietly, hopping over a fallen log. His gaze quickly turns up to face his companion, whose golden pelt shone in the moonlight. “I’m starting- I’m starting to get second thoughts ya’know?”
The sharp, blinding smell of dog and twolegs assault his nose. He wishes the scent wasn’t that strong and that dogs didn’t smell like the fresh kill pile in Greenleaf. Ducking low to walk through one of the brambles, Morningpaw holds his breath. To see how long he can, maybe. He doesn’t know why.
“Stop being a coward, Ran-Ran. Besides! This is our chance!” Goldpaw stops, lifts his head to look Morningpaw in the eyes. “You want to be a warrior, don’t you? We can prove ourselves by driving the dogs out, then Sunstar will realize we’re better than- better than, than Hazelspring.”
Morningpaw thinks for a moment. He does want to become a warrior, despite how frightening the idea was to him. He wanted to be a warrior, the idea of protecting his family, the idea of getting to be the brave one in battles, the glory- it was all too tempting for him. He liked the idea, becoming a warrior. Every apprentice did, but him even more so. Being the runt of his litter didn’t really help either, it seemed like he had to work twice as hard to prove himself all the time. All because he was a little smaller than the others when he was a kit.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do want to become a warrior....” he trails off, then shakes his head. “Let’s go, don’t- don’t want to keep the dogs waiting, do we?”
Goldpaw laughs a laugh that would scare off half the prey in the forest. “Now that's the spirit!”
Morningpaw, suddenly feeling much more confident than before, scrambles over the boulder that his friend was standing on. He pushes himself to his paws, looking out over what Goldpaw was gazing over with alert ears and a stiff tail.
Snake Logs; otherwise known as Logsted.
His claws unsheathe, ready for a battle. One that he’ll return from victorious, his best friend at his side.
He’s sure of it.
(Is he though?)
ii
The dogs are bigger than Morningpaw expected.
They are giants, looming giants, with slobbering jaws and matted pelts. With jagged chipped claws and visible muscles underneath skin. Dirt and grime stain their fur, the faint smell of dead rabbit is drowned by the rancid scent. Blood covers their muzzles in a thin layer of fine silk.
Morningpaw gulps, scanning around for a possible escape. There is none, dogs block off at all angles. The best place being a tall tree with branches low and wide enough to boost them up if needed. Hopefully, it won't come to that. Hopefully, he and Goldpaw will finish the night successful. Morningpaw looks over to Goldpaw expectantly, for a quick idea what to do. A tail signal, a few words, stars, maybe even a look of encouragement. But no, Morningpaw doesn’t get that. Instead, he sees fear in the others' blue eyes. He’s reminded that through all the bravado and confidence, Goldpaw is still an apprentice too.
The sounds of growling and barely comprehensible words coming from the creatures surrounding them break Goldpaw out of his spell and only further make Morningpaw want to disappear.
“Pack,” the dog’s whisper.
“Kill,” the dog’s whisper.
If Morningpaw wasn’t so sure of himself, he would say some of the dogs looked sad and pitying. If he didn't know any better, he would go as far to say that he heard some say “sorry.”
Morningpaw feels Goldpaw move beside him, long golden fur reflecting. The golden tom crouches down into a fighting stance. Morningpaw does the same and follows lead. It’s the same stance Sootsong taught them.
The dogs continue to growl.
“Pack,” they whisper.
“Kill,” they whisper, but louder.
Morningpaw shivers, waiting for Goldpaw to take the lead, as he always does. The apprentice beside him shakes himself, grins and unsheathes his claws.
Morningpaw leaps with him.
And makes the worst decision of his life.
Morningpaw remembers the fight vividly, unlike most things.
He remembers snarling, barking, and yowling. He remembers the sticky blood in his fur, and he remembers desperately hanging on to the low branch of a tree. He remembers jaws, horrible jaws, and the guttural sound of speaking dogs. He remembers lying there, expecting to bleed out but never dying. He remembers seeing the blurred outline of Goldpaw, the apprentice's coat no longer gold but red. He remembers crawling over on injured paws and laying his chin on the other apprentice, in some hope that they’ll make it. Morningpaw expects to die, but he doesn’t.
He stays alive and he breathes and breathes and never once does he take a final breath. Life flows through his body when it should not, his heartbeat slow but there and the light fading but then bursting again. As if someone was powering him, wishing him to keep going.
He collapses to his paws but stays there anyway, barely clinging on to the living world.
And then it fades to black.
Morningpaw is sure he’s dead.
But then he wakes up.
He opens his eyes to darkness and light, the uncomfortable feel of cobwebs and sticky flower juice. Morningpaw knows where he is. He recognizes the smell of herbs and Firflames dusky scent.
He can see Sunstar right in front of him, the flurry figures of Corvidheart and Hazelspring beside the leader. Words come out of Morningpaws mouth that are not his own, he's there but he is not in control of his own body.
"Pack," he says.
"Kill," he screams.
Then he's weak again, but in control.
Morningpaw opens his eyes, then closes them again, for he cannot find himself to stay awake. Not when he is so very tired and not when he feels like he’ll collapse at the slightest wind. Sleeping pulls him into her grasp, pulling him underwater to her domain. Muffling his world and giving him peace, Sleep is a peaceful god. One that easily gives pity.
The Stars are not so much so; because that day, Morningpaw dreams.
He’s in a place where the sky expands on forever, where Silverpelt is closer than it’s ever been and there’s nothing but sprawling plains and forests and rivers. Where everything smells good and it’s like prey is everywhere.
Morningpaw can touch the stars.
But he is not truly there.
“Hello.” A warped familiar voice speaks.
Morningpaw twirls around, seeing the face of his fellow apprentice. His best friend. With golden fur, blue eyes, and the best intentions. But he’s different. Goldpaw is different. Morningpaws companion through life isn’t the same. Glowing ichor runs infinitely down his fur, obscuring his eyes and burning the grass below. Goldpaw glows and it only makes him more golden, he glows and glows and glows even more. Stars swaddle his injuries, and he smiles.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Ran-Ran,” the golden apprentice smiles. “But here I am."
Morningpaw blinks, the air filling his open mouth. He shakes his head. “What do you mean?”
Goldpaw looks at him sadly, nothing reminiscent of the reckless, obnoxious, lovable cat Morningpaw knows. His tails flicks and his gaze locks with Mornings and stays. “You really don’t know, have you? You really haven’t put the pieces together? Guess even in the in-between you're still not lucid enough to realize I’m not there.”
Morningpaw narrows his eyes, fur prickling. “I don’t believe you’re who you look like. Because- because well Goldpaw is in the nest next to me, probably healing and getting the coolest battle scar ever. You’re just a fake, a fraud.”
A dry laugh escapes from the cat of molten gold. “Correction: you’re just dumb. Or in denial. But you’re definitely lucid.”
Morningpaw squeezes his eyes shut. “What- just tell me what you mean!”
Goldpaw steps forward, then he’s walking. He stops just tail-lengths before Morningpaw. He lifts a paw, holding it against nothing. Then he moved it head forward, nose touching solid air. A breathy sigh escapes the other apprentice.
“I’m sorry, Morningpaw."
A yellow paw print hangs in the air where Goldpaw once stood, grass singed by golden blood.
Morningpaw wakes up again.
iii
“Morningpaw! Morningpaw is okay, just calm down!”
Morningpaw is panicking.
He can’t breathe. Air isn’t entering his lungs; he lunges for it in the form of gasps. His own breaths escape through his paws. He can’t see. Darkness goes on forever, stretching into infinity. He cannot make sense of his own mind, its running in circles and tangling itself like string. He cannot keep up with his thoughts, he catches on to the tail end, but they never begin. He scrambles around, searching for semblance of reality because he cannot tell whether he is dreaming or whether this is truth. There’s softness under his stomach, but he doesn’t know if that’s something made up from his own fears or the crushing coldness of life.
He cannot tell where he is.
His senses are running away in the bellies of monsters and he cannot run fast enough to catch up.
He’s drowning in blind madness and he can’t find a hold to drag himself back up with.
“Morningpaw, breath.”
He wants to, he really does, but he can’t.
He can’t breathe.
Not when his throat is torn out and not with metaphorical water pulling him under.
“-paw, breath. Stop, breath in, wait for two. Out for four.”
Desperately, Morningpaw claws his way through layers of hardened clay to hold on to that. He latches onto it, stops his flailing then takes in a long shaky breath.
“One, two. Out.”
He breaths out, relieved as the water recedes from his lungs and blurry shapes come into view.
He coughs, blinks, and mumbles a thank you.
“No problem,” Hazelspring says with a smile.
Hazelspring being there beside him surprises Morningpaw. They aren’t friends, at least not anymore. They stopped being friends when Sunstar decided the younger was better than everyone else in their apprentice group. But Morningpaw remembers when they were still friends, not that long ago. He remembers laughing and training together with the other tom. He remembers him and Goldpaw—stars, Goldpaw, where is he? Morningpaw doesn’t know where Goldpaw is; that frightens him. Hazelspring is the second-best option, until… until Goldpaw comes back.
Goldpaw isn’t going to come back.
Morningpaw knows this.
But he doesn’t believe it.
“You okay?” Hazelspring asks, tail wrapping around his own paws. “I mean, you’re uh… obviously not okay, physically I mean, I’m asking in the mental sense. Since no other cat around here seems to know what that means.”
Morningpaw chuckles. “Yeah. I’m- I’m fine. Just a bit, thrown off. Everything is weird, and blurry, and I’m in the medicine den for some reason—”
He cuts himself off. Why was he in the medicine den actually?
He tries to search around in his mind to figure it out, but his mind seems to be an everchanging labyrinth of emptiness. He knows there’s something there, a faint feeling, an abstract picture forming in his mind.
He tries to remember why he’s here.
He can’t remember.
“Why am I in here? And—and why is everything so different? I—I can’t remember why I’m in here…”
Hazelspring looks at him with what seems is pity, though Morningpaw can’t make it out through his blurry sight. However, he can feel it. He can feel the eyes boring into him, carving him out and searching him inside out. He doesn’t like it; he doesn’t like it at all.
His companion is about to say something, he knows it. From the way the air changes and soft pop of lips parting, but his acquaintance doesn’t get a chance to talk. When Firflame pads in—Morningpaw only knows it Firflame because the cats’ scent is impossible the miss, and neither are the disgruntled toms lopsided pawsteps—the den silences.
“Hazelspring it about time—oh,” Firflame cuts himself of. “He’s awake.”
Firflame stays still, then sighs and pads forward. “C’mon Hazelspring, you can leave now. Besides, Corvidheart wants to see you.”
Morningpaw doesn’t want Hazelspring to leave, which is strange. Under any normal circumstance, he would love to get out of the cats’ presence.
(Ignoring how he would have loved to talk to the former apprentice just moons earlier.)
Hazelspring shifts besides Morningpaw, then there’s emptiness beside him. The other cat mumbles a quick goodbye, before he’s no longer there. A white blob, one that he assumes is Firflame because no other cat is in the medicine den with him anymore, approaches.
“Halfface—”
Morningpaw jerks up. “Huh?”
Firflame stays quiet.
It’s funny, how we always expect there to be noises buzzing in our ears. An eternal chatter that never ends, comfort surrounding you in the darkest of times. It’s very few times when the buzzing stops. When everything stills. When the mice stop chittering in the undergrowth. When the earth seems to freeze, leaving only you, your thoughts, and the ever-crushing silence.
Morningpaw is experiencing this for the first time.
“He didn’t tell you, did he?”
Morningpaw shakes his head, confused.
“I’ll be blunt with you kid, since there’s no use sugarcoating it.” Firflame states with a firm voice. “You did something stupid and reckless, now you’re here. You became a warrior, yes,” the medicine cat scribbles something into the dirt. “But at what cost?”
Morningpaw thinks, a questioning thrill escaping him.
Firflame swipes the dirt with his paw, turning away from Morningpaw. “Your sight will clear up within a quarter-moon.”
Morningpaw is alone again; left to wonder to himself with a fractured mind.
iv
Things go both dizzying fast and painfully slow after that.
The days in the medicine den go by slow. Morningpaw—technically Halfface, but Morningpaw doesn’t like that name. He hates it, actually.
He spends the quarter-moons in the medicine den thinking, he thinks about what Firflame meant. He thinks about possibilities and what ifs, and above all he tries to make sense of the world around him. He’s barely gotten out of a mess of his own denial when life becomes all the more confusing. He holds a paw to his sightless eye; he helps out Firflame and wonders if this will be his fate. Cursed to be a warrior in all but action.
Those days go by slow.
On slow days he talks with Firflame, Hazelspring and any other cat who would stop by. Corvidheart becomes a regular, trying but failing to enact a conversation. Sunstar passes every so often, but the leader seems to avoid the den rather than actively search it out. The kits and queen visit; the kits play with him and the queens interrogate him on what he’ll do now. When will he be useful again? Becoming a medicine cat is the best choice for you, dear. Do you think you’ll be able to even be a warrior? Isn’t that a bit too… ambitious?
It takes all Morningpaws composure to not snap.
Certain days go by quickly, so quick that Morningpaw can’t decipher them from one another. Days where there’s more to do than a simple thorn-in-paw. Days where he sticks close to Firflame when gathering herbs, days where he does something different from his normal. Days that just past in the blink of the eye for no reason, the rare days where Sootsong comes in. Brothers in all but blood; but Goldpaw was always Sootsongs real brother. Sometimes, Morningpaw gets the feeling he’s just a replacement, for Sootsong to deal with his own grief.
It doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy the older toms’ company; they were still brothers after all. Even if it wasn’t in blood, they grew up as brothers all the same.
Today is one of those mix of days.
He and Firflame are out, Morningpaw stopping to look at flowers. They’re not in the usual territory, they’ve past that a bit ago when they crossed the border.
A glimpse of blue makes him pause and backtrack. He turns, wobbling over to a patch of peculiar flowers. They were bluer than any he had seen in the moor so far, in a cupped shaped that was lighter on the inside. He looks up, seeing a whole field of them. Hesitantly, he nudges one of the heart shaped leaves.
“They’re magnificent, aren’t they?”
“They are.” Morningpaw replies. He glances up at his pseudo-mentor. “What are they?”
Firflame gives an amusing purr. “They’re morning glories. They only bloom in the morning, by the end of the day they’ve wilted.”
Morningpaw looks out at the field of morning glories, seeming so alive and jolly for something that’s going to be gone at moonrise.
“If that’s true then why are there field upon fields of them?” Morningpaw shakes himself a bit. “Why are they so breath-taking?”
Firflame sighs and sits beside him. The medicine cat holds a paw underneath the petals, he nicks the flower out the ground and lets it rest on his pads. He smiles—an act he rarely does.
“Halfface— Morningpaw, I think… I think you’ll find that the most breath-taking things can also be the most heartbreaking yet awe-spiring things you’ll ever come across. I think you’ll find that the outside doesn’t exactly dictate the true wonder, the true vastness and true capability of so called fragile, useless things.”
Morningpaw just hums, wrapping what was left of his tail around his paws.
+i
Morningpaw has been thinking; a thing he seems to do a lot these days.
Unlike most times of his thought however, he’s searching for a salvation. What Firflame said is plaguing his mind, which seems to be a trend for him. This time, though, he isn’t wallowing in self-pity and doubt. He’s thinking about different decisions he could do, things he could improve on, thing that, ultimately, would make him happy. For the first time, it seems, Morningpaw is thinking about himself.
He wants to become a warrior.
No injury is going to stop him from doing that.
That would have to wait however—as a new bout of sickness has been going around, and patrols have been coming back with traces of dog scent.
The mention of that makes him shiver, makes his mind whisper words he doesn’t remember being spoken.
“Pack.” It whispers.
“Kill.” It whispers.
“ Sorry.” It whispers, quieter than all the rest.
Flexing his claws, he sighs. The plants are taunting him. The plants: borage, marigold, heather. They seem to try and seal his fate, his name, what he’s going to be moons from now.
It’s only a matter of time before Sunstar gets fed up, a part of his conscious whispers.
You already know how to use us, might as well make yourself useful, the plants ‘say’.
He grits his teeth, narrowing his eyes at the plants.
I think you’ll find that the outside doesn’t exactly dictate the true wonder, the true vastness and true capability of so called fragile, useless things.
A fiery feeling flows through him, one that overcomes him. Its hopeful, of sorts, but also angry. Furious, even. His breath picks up, his fur prickles, his tail starts to swish.
Claws slice through plants and a breathless laugh escapes him.
And for the first time in a long time, Morningpaw thinks he can do it.
He’s ready, he’s ready and he’s going to prove he can do it.
“I am ready.” He whispers to himself smiling.
(A few days later, two cats, one black and white, the other brown and fluffy, are found laughing and play fighting like kits in Sandy Hallow.)