Sasha leaves. Hawkpaw almost does, too.
“What if something happens to her?” Hawkpaw asks when the sun and Sasha vanish behind the horizon. “I thought she cared about us. About our family.”
“She does,” Mothpaw mews, willing the fur on her spine to settle. When she blinks, Tadpole’s face materializes in the darkness, joined by Sasha’s despondent expression as she walks away from her children. “That's why she wants us to stay. It’s good for us here.”
“Why can’t she stay, too?” A stray shadow falls over his face, and Hawkpaw sits, ducking his head.
Her tail twitches, restless. The question loops in her mind, happy to have someone else bring up the object of her rumination. Why not? Didn’t it matter that they stayed safe together?
The barn had not been that place. Even before everything went wrong, Sasha never seemed relaxed. Before sunrise, she prowled the exits like the lynxes from her stories, head down, nose lifted. After sunset, she sat at the entrance to the barn, claws unsheathed, eyes thin slits. Nothing passed her, and any creature who dared to consider it would regret it.
She had done the same in RiverClan camp, too. Her paws always fidgeted when boxed beneath the eyes of a Clan member, no matter the harshness (or lack thereof) in their gaze. At the river, she studied the rushing water in relative quiet, allowing Feathertail to teach Hawk and Moth how to swim in the shallows. But aside from that, Sasha paused constantly, looked over her shoulder at the cats who were supposed to protect her, expecting fangs in her back whenever she had managed to relax.
“It must not be good for her the same way it is for us,” she guesses.
Hawkpaw frowns, unconvinced.
“We can’t leave now. It’s too late. We’d be asking for trouble,” she points out. “If the morning comes and it’s still as bad as it is right now, we’ll think about it.”
He sniffs, shifts among the reeds uncomfortably, but remains silent. Mothpaw sighs, presses against him, and waits for sleep to come.
For a few long, stretching moments, nothing occurs. The darkness behind her eyelids opens an invisible maw, and she walks in without a glance behind her, leaving only the faint rushing of water in her ears and the smell of fish and her brother in her nose. Sometimes, she hears someone else moving in camp, but it happens so far away that it may as well not be happening at all.
The emptiness and the gloom, though, wriggle into her pelt and heart, watering the seeds of doubt that Hawkpaw planted. Maybe it was foolish to assume that they could belong somewhere without their mother. Perhaps they were wanderers like Sasha. Perhaps that incessant restlessness thrummed in her veins, too, and it would poke its ugly head up when she believed she had settled in.
And then Moth opens her eyes, and something is there.
In front of her, rolling fields intersect with thickets and forests. Rivers travel through marshland, snaking around moors and swamps and then toward the tall trees. Everything glows a pale blue, like the entire world exists underwater, frozen in time, but nothing seems dead. Far from it. Birds sing melodies to each other in the not-so-far distance, and doe trailed by smaller fawns hop through bushes, eyes reflecting the hundreds of stars overhead.
The brilliance makes her eyes ache, but no matter where she looks, the luminescence remains. Each blade of grass blazes with starlight, and every leaf soaks up the white gleam, shimmering a silvery cyan rather than a rich emerald. Nothing here has seen the sun in a long, long time, but that seems to matter very little.
Something touches her flank, and though alarm flares in her body, Mothpaw stays. Somehow—she doesn’t know how—she knows nothing can hurt her here. She could walk off a cliff, and the clouds would simply carry her down, placing her gently at the turquoise grass.
“Hello,” the figure at her side says. She smells of herbs and water, and though Mothpaw can see the grass through her starry white-and-black pelt, she does not shake, and she does not look away.
“Hi,” she answers.
“You aren’t Mudfur’s apprentice, are you?” The she-cat asks, nudging her too-pink nose into Mothpaw’s shoulder like they already know each other. “We’ve not met at the Moonstone yet.”
Mudfur? Mothpaw opens her mouth to say No, Mistyfoot’s my mentor but she blinks instead, and the entire image disappears, replaced with the shadows of the apprentice’s den. Her brother sleeps quietly to her left, and there is no semi-transparent she-cat in many, many treelengths.
The sweet scent of herbs lingers in her nose all night.
———
In mid newleaf, when the fish’s young grow large enough to catch, Leopardstar pulls Mistyfoot, Mothpaw, and Hawkpaw on a patrol. She doesn’t say anything about checking their progress, but she doesn’t have to, a phenomenon not uncommon to the RiverClan leader. Despite her often-guarded expression and sparse interaction in camp, Leopardstar had clear intentions to usher the Clan into an era of greatness never before seen, and skilled warriors only constituted a portion of her plan.
Mothpaw sways to avoid casting a shadow over the river, gaze trained on the surface. She waits, and realization sparks soon after. Not on top, she reminds herself and refocuses her attention on anything below the surface.
One of Mistyfoot’s first lessons about catching fish centered on the idea of hunting prey. Other Clans, like WindClan and ThunderClan, could snag a rabbit roaming out of its burrow or spring into a tree to kill a robin looking for seeds on the forest floor. But RiverClan did not have such a luxury; the fish would never willingly venture onto the surface or close enough to let the sunlight touch its scales. Hunting fish came with the implicit knowledge that she would have to memorize where it slept, lived, fed, and escaped. It was not enough to watch the thing wriggle through the shadows of the water—she would have to take it from its home.
Something swishes on one of the oft used currents. Her paw cleaves into the water, slashes and grips, and she withdraws, tossing a shimmering fish onto the shoreline. It flops uselessly, gaping, until her teeth meet its throat.
Mistyfoot gives a congratulatory purr, and Hawkpaw copies her not long after. His fish gleams golden, fins transparent against the mud below.
“Your warrior names will come easy,” Leopardstar says over their shoulders, and Mothpaw’s pelt warms even though clouds cover the sun.
Both apprentices stand, fish in jaws, and incline their skulls to the spotted leader. Not every cat in the Clan treats her with such dignified respect, mostly due to established connections, but neither Mothpaw or Hawkpaw have forgotten their heritage.
“We won’t stop giving RiverClan our best,” Hawkpaw promises. “We’re going to prove ourselves as many times as it takes.”
Before Mothpaw can add anything, though, the leader’s lips twitch into a tiny smile, almost amused (maybe not; her expressions move so little that reading them is tougher than the meat of a stale frog). “You both are very worthy of being here.” Her long tail sways behind her, and she turns to face the water. “Come. We have borders to check.”
Leopardstar gazes out into the river, chin lifted, tall, chiseled, like a mottled brown clifface. With practiced elegance, she springs into the water and moves not against but with the current.
Mistyfoot, also riverside, smiles, not with her mouth but with her eyes, where light dances in cool blue depths. “She won’t say it,” the deputy mews, “but you’re invaluable members of the Clan. And not just because you get new nesting material for the elders.”
Pride swells in Mothpaw’s chest, and for the first time, her warmth belongs to her, too. Often her regard for RiverClan exists far away from herself and Hawkpaw. She revels in the fullness of the prey pile but does not recognize her contribution; she praises patrols for keeping the territory safe and forgets waking up at dawn to prowl the borders. This time, though, Leopardstar—who is RiverClan, more than any other cat in the forest—includes her, and not because she pities a mother and her two kits.
There is no sun, but the rest of the day retains a hazy brilliance, and the stars fight through the clouds to twinkle the whole night.
———
When the Clan cheers her and Hawkfrost’s name, she can look around and name every single cat. Once, it had seemed impossible to memorize that many titles, names, assign them to faces and personalities.
She knows now. It wasn’t hard to learn.
———
It was probably just a one time thing. Mothwing stares at the healer’s den from across the camp as the sun rises.
Things will go back to the way they were. Mistyfoot will put her on dawn patrol, she will stalk the borders, mark them, gaze off into the moors, return to the river to fish. She will be a warrior today, and a warrior tomorrow, and the day after that, until her fur grays and she retires to the elder’s den in a well-deserved, well-made nest, many moons down the line.
Mothwing stands, shakes out her sleek pelt, and pads to her deputy, where a small group of cats semicircle around the gray-blue she-cat.
“Mosspelt, Blackclaw,” Mistyfoot says, and both warriors’ ears twitch. “Up for hunting?”
“Certainly,” Blackclaw mews, sliding toward the camp’s exit, and Mothwing shifts to stand where he had been. Mistyfoot’s gaze catches on her.
“Oh, Mothwing.” She dips her head almost conspiratorially toward Mothwing, as if sharing a secret. “Mudfur said you were off patrols today.”
Surprise flashes like lightning through her frame and it must show on her face, too, because Mistyfoot’s maw flicks into an amused smile, the warmth flitting behind her eyes. “He said you learned herbs quite intuitively,” she mews. “He’s got a few more he wants to tell you about.”
“I-” Mothwing stammers. Mudfur offered the same praise to her yesterday, but—he wants to have the day with her? Again? To teach her more? Even being near the medic feels like sitting beside the water, absorbing every droplet of moisture it has to offer, but her presence specifically requested there… something like honor feathers in her chest, or maybe it is fear, all jumbled up by the quick beat of her heart in her ears.
“Go on,” Mistyfoot encourages, bumping her head against Mothwing’s shoulder affectionately. “I wouldn’t send my apprentice somewhere dangerous. Don’t overthink it.”
Mothwing searches her gaze for anything and only finds the sun’s warmth in Mistyfoot’s deep blue eyes. She ducks her head, ears flattening in deference. “Thank you, Mistyfoot.”
“Don’t keep him waiting,” she jests before Mothwing trots off to the healer’s den, feeling like an apprentice before a lesson all over again.
———
“I want to do more for them. I deserve to prove that. I know I can do more for them,” Hawkfrost mews, fur dripping as he emerges from the river. “They took us in when we were nothing.”
Mothwing thinks, I was never nothing. “I’m sure Leopardstar recognizes your ambition,” she responds, pawing a fish over to her brother. He takes it between his teeth, eyes sharp.
“You say it like it’s a bad thing and you’re planning to be the next medic.”
“That’s not because I want power,” she answers, ears twitching—somewhat true. Ignoring the respect that comes with such a position would be short-sighted but she appreciates the practical knowledge behind the rank. Having the ability to help, to heal, to fix and save, that’s what matters.
Hawkfrost does not reply. Water runs over rocks, thrumming and low, and somewhere overhead, clouds move into thick clumps, heavy with rain. “I know you’re worried that Mudfur won’t accept you without a sign from StarClan.”
His words pull on a very thin web wrapped around her heart. She thinks for a moment that it is going to break, but it remains, only quickening her breath. “You would be, too.”
“Maybe,” he says, “but I wouldn’t worry too much. He doesn’t have another option, and besides, you’re almost as skilled as he is when it comes to healing.”
Mothwing rolls her eyes. “You’re just saying that.”
He smiles, and she remembers all at once that she is older than him. Hawkfrost looks like her little brother again after following her or Tadpole around all day, or maybe after intentionally making life difficult for Sasha in an attempt to elicit a laugh from one of his siblings. His brows lift a little, and the fish struggles to stay in his maw when he grins lopsidedly.
“Maybe.”
Mothwing swats at him.
———
The moment will live forever in her head, gilded. Mudfur informs her that StarClan sent a sign, that they approve of her taking a new path, and she almost tackles him, overwhelmed by the sheer joy bursting in her chest, throat, paws, stomach, fiercer than any fear or pain. Nothing and no one will take it away from her. She will be RiverClan’s next healer, selected by ancestors that deemed her worthy enough to carry on a long, long legacy.
“I put the moth wing there,” Hawkfrost mews, and the gold shimmer around her breaks into hundreds of pieces.
It cracks in her expression, too, because his brows furrow with something like confusion, murky and dark like someone had dumped mud into an otherwise clear pond. “What?” His ears flatten. “You know you deserve that position and not just because some dead cats say so.”
She will be RiverClan’s next healer. Mudfur thinks StarClan approves of her. “They didn’t send a sign?” Mothwing asks.
“No, Mothwing, StarClan didn’t do anything,” he says, tone thinning with impatience. “StarClan’s blessing only matters to cats who live in the past. We’re the future, Mothwing, and StarClan doesn’t need to approve of us to change the world.” Hawkfrost shrugs, too careless, too dismissive, and it does not seem like him.
Mothwing looks up, searching for a twinkling star that will tell her StarClan really does watch over her and every other Clanmate, that she is just like the other RiverClan cats, but nothing happens. The sky stills overhead, and the breeze even calms to a leisurely skip at her side.
He nudges her, and his shoulder feels sharper than normal, like the muscles underneath have grown or shifted in the past quarter moons. Mothwing jolts instinctively away, face dropping, and his visage rushes on like the river not far away, tumbling and sliding to get to wherever he wants to be.
“I thought you would be happy.”
“I am,” Mothwing reassures him, and that faint spark of warmth lights in her chest again, so bright that she chases it, even as the sensation fades away into crystals of ice. “I just thought…”
“Good.” Hawkfrost leaves no room for argument. “I promise it’ll be good for us. I wouldn’t do this without a plan.”
Mothwing keeps looking up. She trusts him and whatever his plan is, despite his lack of sleep, despite his bizarre scratches. But every night before she sleeps in her new nest, she stares at the infinite darkness and waits for a star to wink at her. When she sleeps, and if she dreams, she searches for the blue-eyed cat from her apprenticeship. StarClan sends the rain, sky, sun, every piece of prey, even the wind; she places it in whatever she can, praying for a meaning.
There is nothing else she can do—she doesn’t know what else to do. She cannot ask her mentor, and she cannot tell Mistyfoot, and she cannot speak to Leopardstar, and her brother only insists that she’s overreacting, that StarClan shouldn’t matter that much anyway. That she’ll see when she goes to the half moon meeting.
———
Mothwing touches her nose to the Moonstone and waits for a visitor.
Presumably, Brambleberry (or maybe Crookedstar) will spy her at the Moonstone and pull her into a dream. She dreads missing the moment that the hazy, starry world of StarClan unfolds around her, so she does not sleep. Her eyes close, but she can hear Littlecloud breathing a couple foxlengths away, and an owl calls outside of Mothermouth.
Eventually, sleep arrives, so unceremoniously that she misses it entirely.
When she opens her eyes, brilliant morning light crawls toward her and Mudfur, trying and failing to touch the Moonstone. Mothwing blinks once, twice, waiting for the image to shift, but nothing happens, and instead, Mudfur stretches to her right, tail sweeping across the cool stone. His face gives nothing away, but she still tries to read the slight crinkle between his brows, the droop of his ears to his skull.
“Welcome to being a medicine cat,” Leafpaw purrs, and Mothwing jolts in surprise, eyes switching to spy the ThunderClan healer joined by Mudfur and Cinderpelt, both amused.
“Not so bad, was it?” Mudfur questions.
“It was wonderful!” She exclaims, because maybe they can tell—every other cat received StarClan’s blessing, saw a vision, spoke to someone with stars in their pelt. Maybe they can see that she is not like them. In that case, she must convince them otherwise. What could I have possibly seen in a dream? “I got to see Hawkfrost leading a patrol, and-”
Leafpaw’s gaze catches her attention, and she stops, waiting for the ThunderClan she-cat to expose her as a fraud, but her face only softens with a small smile. Mothwing’s ears go hot, and her brain works desperately to determine her mistake. Sharing too much? Too little? Sharing at all? Was she supposed to have seen someone else? A former leader or healer?
When every healer shakes the sleep from their pelts and offers well wishes, Barkface streaks ahead of the group, disappearing over the moors. Mothwing darts ahead, too, unable to shake her own inadequacy; the dark failure chases after her, nipping at her paws, tugging on her tail.
She walks in silence for a while, mind churning away at infinite possibilities.
“Mudfur,” she asks, “do you always speak with StarClan?”
His whiskers twitch. “Not every time,” he answers. “But certainly after receiving their blessing.”
Her brows dip.
“Why? Someone spoke to you, did they not?” Mudfur’s gaze slides toward her, and she plasters a neutral expression on her features before he can see the disappointment. “Did you only see visions?”
“No,” she lies again, “I saw… um, Brambleberry. She was your mentor, right? With blue eyes?”
Mudfur chuckles, nodding. “Good. Leopardstar will be pleased.”
Mothwing keeps quiet, guilt souring the relief churning in her stomach. He did not know, but only because she had predicted the right answer, not because she actually had the knowledge. It reminded her of battle strategizing; inferring the actions of the enemy and basing an attack off of what-ifs rather than gathering certain facts.
Maybe next time will be different, she thinks, because it may have been a mistake. Above all else, Mothwing believes the best of her ancestors—perhaps a different Clan needed StarClan’s presence more than she had. Perhaps they knew already of her dedication and decided that a proper introduction could wait. Perhaps this was a test. Would she abandon her ancestors at the first sign of difficulty or cling to their sides, even with no Clan blood in her veins?
Determination narrows her eyes against the sunrise and bounds ahead of Mudfur.
———
Mothwing never sees StarClan again.
She tries. She searches for signs in everything, checks the corners of every den for a blurry but starry figure, stalks the territory in the evenings when she thinks she could see a shining form, but no one appears.
The following half moon meeting goes worse. She resolves not to fall asleep—maybe Brambleberry couldn’t reach her because she had been sleeping and not properly introduced yet?—and so she stares at the Moonstone all night. Not once does she hear the brooks or birdsong from her apprenticeship, and when dawn creeps into the endless night, Mothwing shuts her eyes tightly against tears and prying eyes.
She does not dream of them, and it is a relatively quiet afternoon when she first has the thought.
What if StarClan was never there in the first place?
Her eyes snap around the den, as if afraid that someone could hear her. The question settles in her mind, twisting long, thick vines into her brain and heart, even as she tries to bat it away. What an awful thing to think.
(It keeps coming back.)
———
A rush of pawsteps sounds.
“WindClan tried to take this from us!” Hawkfrost’s cry rings out like a strike of lightning. “I was hunting near the border and I watched an apprentice stalk it, even though it was on our side!”
Mothwing’s not close to the entrance to the healer’s den, but her ears are well attuned to the sound of her brother’s voice. She meanders to the entrance, where Mudfur already sits, tail curled neatly over his paws.
Hawkfrost bristles in the center of camp, and at his paws lays a bloody mouse in a semicircle of blood. A small group of other cats gather around him, some inspecting the mouse, others muttering among themselves.
“We cannot let them get away with this,” Hawkfrost hisses, and his claws curve into the dirt below.
“Of course not,” Blackclaw agrees, whiskers twitching. “Was that all they took?”
“I’m sure they were taking more,” he growls.
“Do you have proof, though?” Mistyfoot speaks as she steps out from behind him, eyes trained carefully on the little mouse. “Looking over the border and walking over the border are different.”
When Hawkfrost turns, Mothwing catches his gaze for a moment, and something cold like snow melt runs down her spine. When she blinks, it is still him, icy blue eyes and dark brown pelt over a well built figure.
“I know they were,” Hawkfrost snaps, and his tone ruffles with heat. “I smelled them over the borders, too, walking around like they owned the place!”
Mistyfoot leans back as if scorched by his complaints and ducks her head. “I’ll tell Leopardstar,” she starts.
“I can tell Leopardstar,” he flares.
The deputy lifts a brow at him but says nothing. Mothwing narrows her eyes as Hawkfrost takes the mouse again and stalks off toward the camp exit, presumably awaiting the spotted leader’s return. He smolders the entire way, and if Mothwing didn’t know any better she’d think his pelt aflame, smoking and singed, just moments away from falling away from his skin underneath.
Hawkfrost was not uncommonly angry. His temper had never been particularly easy to control but his frustration presented identically every time: freezing cold. Mothwing had learned a long time ago that he would rather shut himself out than indulge in the vexation. It was one of Sasha’s traits, Mothwing thought, passed down to him in larger quantities than perhaps expected.
Quantities so large and so obvious, in fact, that his warrior name even referenced it. Leopardstar would never say it but everyone who knew him knew that “frost” was not just a reference to his crystal-sharp claws and teeth.
But the warrior at the edge of the camp retained none of that cool anger.
Hawkfrost’s rage, this time, spikes into plumes of fire, scorching the ground around him, threatening the safety of not just himself but any poor bystander. His tail whips back and forth, a warning to any passerby to stay away, and before he turns, Mothwing thinks she sees orange flames in his eyes, usually so cold and dark and deep, now lit up with miniature suns of anger.
Mudfur hums as he stands, drawing her attention away, slowly stretching a single leg forward before withdrawing it close to his frame. “He seemed…”
“Upset,” she fills in, and her mentor’s ear flicks noncommittally. Her stomach twists.
“Are you going to talk to him?” Mudfur asks.
Yes, she almost says, and in her mind, she walks up to him and catches fire when she gets close to him. His gaze reduces her to ash, to nothing, and the breeze picks up her remains and throws her into the sky.
“Maybe when he’s cooled off,” she responds instead.
———
Leafpaw always seemed to be thinking.
At first, Mothwing decides it’s because of the circ*mstances in which they typically interact. Half moon meetings provide healers with scraps of insight into their futures; not reflecting upon said knowledge would be stranger than the opposite, she guesses, and Gatherings don’t afford a lot of time for chit-chat, especially not with prey ducking into dens to avoid cooler breezes. No one wants to stay out in the cold for longer than they have to.
But even when Mudfur and Cinderpelt talk during Gatherings, when Barkface and Littlecloud join the group and create their tight knit circle, none of them look quite like Leafpaw. She stares off into the middle distance like she’s calculating, determining, trying to peel away the trees and leaves and water and investigate what lies beneath.
She mentions it one time, when ThunderClan arrives after RiverClan to Fourtrees. Overhead, the moon rises in a cloudless sky, rotund and shiny, casting the grass in a bizarre, almost otherworldly, glow, like the entire area exists far, far underwater, away from any glancing rays of sunlight.
“What’re you thinking about?” Mothwing asks, nudging Leafpaw. They occasionally mingle in the crowd, but with just two Clans present, Mothwing doesn’t see a need to go re-meet all of Leafpaw’s Clanmates. She knows the important ones, anyway.
Leafpaw waves her tail. “Regular stuff.”
“Herb stores?” She guesses, and Leafpaw shrugs noncommittally. Mothwing’s brows dip; she doesn’t want to poke the bear, but worry stirs slowly in her gut the more time goes on. “Not enough herbs in ThunderClan? I’d be happy to get some over to you and Cinderpelt. I’m sure Mudfur wouldn’t mind.”
“ Prophecies. StarClan. The forest is… suffering, a bit.”
Oh. Her mind sets up its walls, closing itself off to curiosity, to the wonders that have never entered her head, but she nods anyway, despite the odd jerkiness of the motion. Hopefully Leafpaw doesn’t notice.
“It’s just a lot,” Leafpaw sighs, ducking her head as if having trouble holding herself upright.
“I know,” Mothwing mews, “I’m sure you’re doing fine. And you can always rely on Cinderpelt, right? You don’t have to do it all by yourself.”
Leafpaw shrugs a second time, tension coiled in her shoulders. “I guess.”
Mothwing wishes she could say something wiser on the subject. When a Clanmate comes to her, asking for help, she returns with a poultice or a collection of herbs that will assuage their pain. Leafpaw does the same, and Mothwing cannot offer any salve, not in the same way she can assist others.
Her knowledge widens into irreversible gaps when it comes to StarClan. Mothwing knows what should be there; healers of her Clan who have discussed the future of RiverClan or the territories, or leaders with warnings of war or famine, often spoken in quick, somewhat tangled phrases. It would be her job to unravel the meaning from them.
(She thinks so, anyway.)
Even that split-second dream she had as an apprentice blurs into her memory nowadays. Half the time she thinks it might’ve been an illusion or the product of an overactive mind. That there were no rolling fields of stars, no cats with pinpricks of light in their pelt, no moonlight bouncing off endless rivers and marshes, stretching into the far, far distance.
She leans and gives Leafpaw’s cheek a comforting lick, and the she-cat’s shoulders relax as if Mothwing had brushed her worries away. Maybe she had. Maybe Mothwing did not need the herbs to support her.
———
Mothwing looks up. “Again?” She frowns. “Do you have thorns in your nest?”
Hawkfrost sits in front of her, leveling her with an unimpressed glance. “Practice before I sleep.”
“You’re asking for an infection if you’re sleeping with open wounds.”
“You’re always asleep when I check,” he grunts, presenting his shoulder where three scratches adorn the flesh beneath his dark fur.
“I’m not sure about that,” she mutters, using a paw to crush marigold into a yellow paste and chewing a leaf of dock. Hawkfrost does not flinch when she smears the mixture into his cuts but does not refute her claim, either, only stays silent.
The quiet wets her fur, leaving her damp and uncomfortable. She feels like she ought to say something—maybe about WindClan, or the prey, or the fact that the clovers on the forest floor across the river do not spring up as healthily as they used to.
Do you believe in StarClan? almost comes out of her mouth when Mudfur’s voice interrupts her. “We’ll need some more dock,” the healer says, very obviously holding back a yawn.
“We’ll get some,” Mothwing reassures, gaze wandering toward her mentor, still cloaked in shadow. His graying muzzle parts into a light smile when he spots her utilizing his talents—a curious concept, she supposes. Should he be happy that he could retire soon, that his skills will not be forgotten underground, or resent his lost youth, his inability to do it on his own?
When she turns to tell Hawkfrost to be careful—because she can treat him if they only have the herbs they need, and marigold does not always grow well by the river—his tail whisks away back into the clearing.
No see you later. Not even a goodbye.
———
“Mudfur not feeling well?” Littlecloud asks, eyes clouding with concern. His fur clings tight to his bones, struggling to stay attached to his flesh.
Mothwing shakes her head as the healers pick their way toward the Moonstone, trying to ignore the scent of dying rabbits in the air. “He’s resting right now. He said he didn’t want to aggravate his pain.”
It is bad. Mudfur always wants to visit StarClan. Littlecloud seems to recognize this, dipping his head respectfully and deeply, as if to nudge health his way.
“I’m sure he’ll be alright,” Leafpaw murmurs, running a comforting tail over her spine.
“StarClan watch over him,” Cinderpelt mews, and Barkface hums assent as the group trots into Mothermouth.
Mothwing pretends like it doesn’t bother her. StarClan will look at her sleeping and then look away. She will receive no news on disputes over prey, no helpful advice for her ailing mentor. Her return to camp will be plain and dishonest. No, Mudfur, she will say, if he even has the energy to ask, no dreams.
How can she do that?
They don’t even know what his illness is. Mudfur complains of pain, headaches, and something akin to a high fever, but all the herbs that should vanquish his symptoms don’t.
Still, when she closes her eyes after touching her nose to the Moonstone, she hopes, and she hopes, and she hopes.
Her eyes open. For a split second, blinding light covers her vision, and a thrill of excitement thrums in her veins.
And then the light evaporates, and in its place is her brother, walking beside the river. A single scratch runs down his flank, and even with a poultice laid atop it, blood still leaks from the injury. He growls, and it echoes across the camp, hits invisible objects and walls and resurfaces louder than before. Each icey eye deepens into an endless azure abyss.
Perhaps a different healer would take this as a sign. Any sort of dream at the Moonstone would certainly be a prophecy or omen of some sort, right?
Mothwing knows better. There is no sparkle or charm to her visions at the Moonstone, no difference from her daily dreams. She knows what a prophecy is supposed to be.
This is not it.
———
The night before the Clans leave the territories for good, Mudfur dies, and RiverClan decides that when he is buried, they will go, too. They could not depart without knowing that their beloved healer was gone; to abandon him in his final moments would rip the soul out of the Clan.
His death yanks Mothwing’s heart out of her chest anyway, replacing it with a heavy, dark ball of grief more potent than her most profound sadnesses. Perhaps if her life had been different, she would have known it from Tigerstar’s absence, or if Tadpole had come to the Clans and died later in the river. It trickles a bit into her paws, and it reminds her of the itching sensation in her mittens when her mother had split from the Clan.
She sits alone. Mudfur should be at her side, or maybe Hawkfrost, but one rests underground, surrounded by dirt and moss, and the other stalks around camp, making preparations for the journey. Maybe Sasha should be there, or maybe Leafpaw should still be in RiverClan camp instead of returning to her parents and sister back in ThunderClan.
A shadow moves by her side, and Mothwing turns to spy Leopardstar’s sleek form seating itself beside her. The leader keeps her distance, but not in a frosty or unwelcoming way.
“He’ll watch over you from StarClan,” she says, a single ear twitching, as if trying to pick up the sound of monsters destroying territory all over the forest.
Her mouth dries. No, he won’t. He’ll never give me a prophecy, or an omen, or warn me about anything. I will never see him again. She cannot bring herself to respond, and not just because Mudfur is her mentor, but also because Mudfur is Leopardstar’s father.
“All of StarClan will follow us wherever we end up.” Leopardstar exudes confidence, like she knows everything she’s saying is true, or perhaps like she herself is making it fact by stating it aloud in such a way. “They are our ancestors. Our family.”
“Not mine,” Mothwing mutters, because who knows where her family is? For all she knows, she and Hawkfrost are the final remaining vestiges of the family. Sasha’s body could be rotting out in the wilderness somewhere. She would have no idea.
Leopardstar’s brow arches. “Perhaps not by blood,” she acquiesces, “but your family nonetheless.” A moment of quiet. “Unless you wish to leave those who raised you?”
A tiny spark of guilt tickles her throat, stronger than the faint irritation that leaks into her chest. She hasn’t thought like that in a long, long time, and certainly not in front of her leader. “My mother raised me,” Mothwing corrects Leopardstar, tactful to keep her voice even. “But RiverClan did teach me how to live.”
The leader gives a satisfied hum. “You will make a fine healer, Mothwing.” Leopardstar stands, and the muscles beneath her fine fur ripple in the moonlight. She inclines her head to her only healer. “Sleep well.”
“Thank you,” Mothwing mews as Leopardstar walks off, chin lifted.
She wonders what the leader would do if she knew about her relationship to StarClan (or lack thereof). Exile her, maybe, or demand she train an apprentice immediately to remedy the spirituality missing in the Clan. Perhaps she would mourn her father’s death even more than she already had.
Mothwing’s eyes wander up. Clouds cover the infinite black of night.
———
“Come home,” Sasha urges, blue eyes wide. She looks less like their mother and more like a kit, pleading with a parent to stay by their side, or perhaps an apprentice requesting their mentor’s presence where it is not quite appropriate.
Mothwing’s excitement, a bubbling, warm thing, like a brook dappled by greenleaf’s pleasantest day, fades. She glances at her brother, and his expression, previously intrigued, scowls into a fiery frustration.
“We’re leaving,” Hawkfrost answers.
———
“She said come home,” Mothwing says later, when the natural gloom of nighttime bites into day. Hawkfrost sits to her right, head on a precise swivel to keep watch for any danger during the journey.
“She doesn’t know anything about home,” Hawkfrost snaps, flames emerging from his lips. “She left us.”
Some part of her agrees. Sasha looked family in the face and turned away from it, slinking off to be alone among the shadows of a constantly-moving lifestyle. The image of Moth, young and abandoned, lays there in her chest, clawing, waiting for her mother to come back. She never does.
But life is never quite that easy, Mothwing supposes. If home was not RiverClan’s territory, how could Sasha have stayed between the reeds and the water? It was the same way that the barn was not really home, even if it contained her family. Could she have remained between those tall, wooden walls if Hawk and Sasha asked her?
An ear twitches. A bird calls in the distance, alarmed, and if Mothwing strains, she can hear wings and feathers flapping.
———
Every medic stands in a circle, discussing the next plan of action. Should they leave moss out and hope rainwater soaks into it? If the problem originated in the ground and not the water, the moss would have to stay on flat rocks to avoid contamination. Leafpaw nods, hums her sympathy, speculates on the nature of the contagion, but says nothing about what she knows.
The relief drowns Mothwing. She cannot believe Leafpaw kept her secret, even in the face of worry from every other healer around the lake. Warm wool fills up her throat, a little damp from affection.
Mothwing hardly remembers telling Leafpaw about her relationship with StarClan. One moment, she did not know; the next, she did, as if she always had, and she had just decided to speak it aloud. Mothwing gets around to the moth’s wing, too, when Leafpaw is Leafpool and the Moonpool offers her no refuge.
(Mothwing hoped, more than anything, that the lake would be different. Maybe there would be a new StarClan here, a StarClan to connect with her, or a StarClan that forgave her and her brother for whatever they’d done to scorn them. Perhaps Mudfur would send a message to his daughter or apprentice.
They do not. No one visits her. The void of her dreams stretches ever deeper, knowing that there may have once been a chance, and knowing still that such a chance faded like dew under the sun.)
Even that does not dissuade Leafpool. She seems surprised, certainly, and Mothwing cannot blame her for that, but the medic tells no one and willingly transfers information to her from whoever wishes to offer them.
“Thank you, Leafpool,” Mothwing meows, when she lets Leafpool stay in her den for the night. After reaching the Thunderpath in the pitch black of night, Mothwing couldn't bear to send Leafpool back to ThunderClan alone, especially considering that they had barely settled into the new territories. Perhaps she should have asked Mistyfoot to escort the tabby healer, but Leafpool nor Mothwing saw no problem with staying over. Besides, what was Leopardstar going to do? Medics existed outside of the typical code, and Mothwing was the Clan’s only attachment to StarClan (she thinks this, sometimes, and it makes her laugh) and healing as a concept.
Leafpool’s ears prick up from the nest beside her. Thankfully, RiverClan’s apprentices ensure the den is well-kept, replenishing old nests with reeds and moss, woven together in careful braids. The medic’s den never had just one single nest in it; anyone could fall ill at any time. Or, in this case, any visitor could stop by whenever they pleased.
“For what?” Leafpool’s amber eyes gleam like two silver sand dollars.
Mothwing considers the question. There are a lot of things to thank the ThunderClan cat for. “You’ve done a lot for me over the moons,” she offers instead.
She hears rather than sees Leafpool roll her eyes. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not,” Mothwing says, and she lets a slight flintiness enter her tone so that Leafpool pays attention. It works; Leafpool tilts her head to get a better look at the RiverClan cat across from her. “I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better cat to be by my side after Mudfur died.”
Leafpool shakes her head. “We’re Clans apart, Mothwing.”
“Clan borders,” Mothwing points out, “have never bothered me.”
She’s talking about Sasha; she’s talking about heritage, about Leafpool’s father, about the fantasy of “warrior blood” in “warrior veins,” when in reality all there’s ever been is the dedication of cats to one another.
Leafpool knows. She always knows. “Well, then, you’re welcome,” she mews in response, and a faint purr tinges her voice. “You’re good to be around, Mothwing.”
Mothwing’s pelt warms.
———
Mothwing feels like she’s missing something.
Only one cat in the entirety of RiverClan catches greencough. Someone falling ill isn’t unheard of, obviously, but a contagious disease only settling in the lungs of one cat? She has never heard of it before. Sometimes she studies Heavystep from her place beside the herb stores and tries to recall exactly what Mudfur told her about greencough, if it affected the eyes, the nose, the mouth, too, not just the lungs.
She ought to be grateful, and to some extent, she is. A greencough outbreak would be devastating for the Clan, especially considering that it puts her, the Clan’s sole medic, at highest risk. Perhaps they would have to move cats to a different location in the territory to prevent spread of disease.
It doesn’t matter, though, because Heavystep still coughs, and there is not a single sprig of catmint in the entire den.
The strangest part is that she can see the herb in her mind, she can see exactly where it is supposed to be. Above the chickweed, below the few oak leaves that Leafpool lended her, and tied together with a single reed—that is where the catmint should be. But none rests there. The spot just stares back at her, blank.
Mothwing asks Mistyfoot to send out patrols to check for catmint. They return with nothing. She requests a lookout while she scouts different parts of the territory. She finds no catmint. She considers talking to Leafpool, even hangs at the borders a few times, but cannot run into the other she-cat, cannot catch her for a second to get even one half leaf of catmint.
Sometimes, when she sleeps dreamlessly, she wonders if this is when she should see StarClan. Perhaps, illuminated in starlight, her vision would focus slowly on wherever the herb was, and she could wake up knowing that Heavystep’s life was saved.
No dream arrives.
“Hawkfrost,” she says one evening when twilight’s hue reaches across camp, “I don’t think Heavystep will make it.”
Hawkfrost’s ear twitches. He hears her, but his eyes follow various cats meandering camp. Mistyfoot shares tongues with Blackclaw in the shade; Dawnflower and Pebblekit, nearly apprentice aged, bat a mossball back and forth; Brook and Stormfur lay in a golden ray of twilight, smiling, pleased.
His eyes catch, settle, narrow, and stones click and slide into place behind his expression.
She says, with a smidge of firmness, “Hawkfrost.”
“Sh,” he hushes her, and his shoulders hunch as he stares at the two warriors, stalking them without moving a single muscle. Despite the growing cold around the lake, Hawkfrost’s pelt runs oddly warm next to her, another thing that has changed about the brother she knew.
Mothwing stands and relinquishes herself to the healer’s den, but before she disappears into the sweet-smelling area, she pauses and peers over her shoulder, momentarily blinded by the setting sun.
Hawkfrost sits motionless, outlined in peach light.
———
Willowpaw nudges a needlike stalk toward Mothwing. “Here,” she mews, “Mosspelt found some rosemary for us.”
“That’s very kind of her.” Mothwing’s tail twitches as she returns the herb to its place among the stores, making sure that Willowpaw can see where it belongs, too. “I didn’t know you two were so close.”
“She never told me who my father was, and my next closest kin is Dawnflower.” Willowpaw shrugs, seemingly unbothered. “I think she’s glad I was her only kit in this litter.”
Mothwing laughs, bubbly. “Raising more than one kit on her own would’ve been difficult. Pairs of kits, trios even, get into all kinds of trouble.”
Hawk trips Tadpole on his way out of the barn and giggles for the next three hours; Moth and Tadpole circle a butterfly until Hawk comes by and swats it out of the sky; the trio settles into a little pile and tosses bits of hay back and forth; Sasha gives them each a gentle lick on the forehead before night falls.
Willowpaw stretches beside her, a brief yawn parting her jaws.
Mothwing knows what that means, and even though the air is chilly with ice, she’s not one to deny Willowpaw a break, especially not with how hard the pale tabby works. “Go on, go get something to eat.”
Her apprentice startles, then looks almost guilty, but she ducks her head. “Thank you, Mothwing!” She chirps, not unlike a bird or a chittering mouse, and scuttles out of the den, calling for her mother as she departs for the prey pile.
Sasha walks away in her mind, comes back, walks away again. Maybe in another life, Mothwing thinks.
———
Heavystep dies.
They prepare his body primarily with rosemary, gently dabbing it across his face, nose, ears, pawpads. When the Clan has mourned, and when Mothwing watches the sun rise after the vigil, they carry his figure to the riverside and dig into the soil. Mistyfoot’s claws clog with bits of dirt but she only stops when the grave is deep and cool.
Heavystep lays quietly under the mound of earth in the new lake territories. Mothwing hopes that he can meet Shadepelt in StarClan.
———
“You’ve never seen anyone?” Hawkfrost asks one evening when the two take a walk by the river. He has ‘plans’ to discuss, so he says, like he always says, and they cannot be in earshot of anyone else.
Mothwing sees Brambleberry in her mind’s eye, or perhaps she just remembers the memory of seeing the deceased healer. It doesn’t matter anyway; she knows what he’s asking. “No.”
“No one knows that?”
Leafpool, she thinks but keeps her mouth shut. If Leafpool told anyone, they know, too. Mothwing can’t say for sure, but she suspects the secret remains in Leafpool’s paws, cradled like a kit or a fragile herb.
“Just you.”
Hawkfrost’s ear twitches. “Good.” He remains quiet for a moment, then shrugs a little, the motion oddly jagged. “I still find it strange.”
“What?”
“That no one visits you.” He steps over a rock. “Even Father visits me.”
Mothwing nearly trips but her limbs lock in place instead. “What?” Her paws sink into the mud, wriggling between each toe, sticky like webs. “You see StarClan?”
Hawkfrost shakes his broad head. “No. I see him in a huge forest.”
What? The mud stays at her paws but it feels like it snakes up, drying and trapping her in place. All this time her brother’s been visited in dreams by their father? Maybe Mudfur should have taught him how to heal instead.
“He’s been advising me this whole time,” Hawkfrost says. “I thought you knew?”
“I didn’t,” she responds. The river rushes in her ears, louder than the wind, than her heartbeat, her thoughts. She tries to imagine her father but cannot conjure anything except for two piercing eyes, colorless. What color are his eyes? They flash a piercing blue, the same as Hawkfrost’s, then a softer amber-yellow, like hers.
“He has an ear in most Clans, so he can tell when it’s time for us to—” His voice halts, then raises in volume sharply, like a bird swerving up to avoid crashing into a tree. “Mothwing!”
She blinks herself back into her body and lets her legs move forward; her father’s gaze dissipates, replaced by the river to her right and her brother several foxlengths ahead of her. “Sorry.”
“Keep up,” Hawkfrost grunts, displeased, and keeps talking.
He mentions power more than once, says their father’s name a few times, pointedly picks his way around mud sinks. He keeps talking. His voice flattens into a thin stream of noise, and Mothwing just filters it out.
———
Leafpool has a lot to say. She apologizes over and over again for Heavystep, gives detailed instructions on where the catmint at the edge of the territory is, greets Willowpaw with a warm and friendly smile.
Mothwing finally catches a moment of silence when Willowpaw bids them farewell and roams the crowd.
“Leafpool,” she mews, lowering her tone, “do you get dreams from any place that’s not StarClan?”
The healer turns, surprise flickering across her face. “No.”
“Is that—a thing? That happens?”
Leafpool lifts a paw, taps it on the ground a few times, and then, as if understanding the joke, smiles a little, amusem*nt dancing through her eyes. “You’re describing regular dreams. Yes, I get regular dreams—”
“No,” she interrupts, frowning. How am I supposed to word this? “In a forest.”
The humor fades. “The Dark Forest?” Leafpool’s tone runs serious and cold like the river.
“The what?”
Leafpool’s brows lift sharply. “Mudfur never told you?”
It hits her that her mentor had never explained much of spirituality to her. When he realized she wasn’t receiving dreams, omens, or prophecies, StarClan faded out of conversation. He didn’t avoid the topic—certainly it had been mentioned in her presence, and omens had surely been discussed with her—but he never asked about her relationship to their ancestors, not since the confirmation of her acceptance by StarClan.
Did he know? Guess? A pang of grief thrums alongside her heart. “I suppose not,” she admits.
“The Place of No Stars,” Leafpool says, sitting down and curling her tail over her paws in the way that is just so distinctly Leafpool. “Ancestors who’ve committed great crimes against their Clan or the code go there. It’s the opposite of StarClan’s hunting grounds.”
Something sinks in her stomach; a rock, maybe, or heavy feelings she’s unsure of how to deal with.
Leafpool either notices the deflation of her mood or simply knows Mothwing better than she knows herself. “How did you hear about that place?” Leafpool questions, tipping her head.
Mothwing considers telling the truth. Perhaps Leafpool could get a StarClan cat in contact with her brother so that he didn’t have to listen to their father. Doubt sparks in her chest. I don’t even know how that works. Regular warriors didn’t receive visions, did they? Hawkfrost surely knew he was not in StarClan, right? If he knew of their father’s intentions then perhaps there was no way to pull him away from the shadowed place. Perhaps he had fallen into mud there long ago, legs stuck and paws crossed, his only options to suffocate under the muck or to give in.
Or perhaps he avoided the mud and walked straight in anyway.
“I… feel like I’m missing out on teaching Willowpaw anything about our ancestors. I see forests and rivers in regular dreams, and I guess I hoped one of them was… different.” It’s not completely untrue, but it’s not relevant, either. She knows which dreams are useless and which are omens, and she knows that she has never received a sign from StarClan.
“Oh, Mothwing,” Leafpool mews, bunting her head against Mothwing’s shoulder. “You’re a great healer even without StarClan. You’re teaching her all that you know, which is more than enough.”
Mothwing shrugs.
Leafpool sighs. “I think I may be able to help with teaching Willowpaw about StarClan, anyway.”
Her gaze switches to the other medic quicker than lightning. “Really?”
With an entire Clan to care for—and presumably an apprentice to look out for, too—it seemed like a lot of work, at least to Mothwing. But Leafpool just smiles and nods. “Of course.”
———
Sometimes, Mothwing still hopes for a sign.
She doesn’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she is still quite young, and she looks up to the stars for guidance like every other cat around the lake does, forgetting that she differs in the most basic and fundamental of ways. No one overhead intends to protect her the same way that they protect Leafpool, protect Willowpaw, even Leopardstar, who has Mudfur’s gaze at all times, she’s sure.
The stars do not twinkle back.
Sometimes, she catches them shining at Willowpaw. It is never a long or drawn out realization; they will sort herbs underneath the moonlight to make sure that the leaves do not wilt, and when her apprentice stretches, leans backward, head tilting up, the sky will darken, as if to focus on a single star or a smaller cluster, and she glows underneath the starlight. When she turns back to the herbs, Willowpaw seems content, pleased, despite a second having passed between the change in her emotion.
Someone is watching over her—multiple someones, even. Maybe Mudfur has an eye on Willowpaw, the apprentice of his apprentice who he cannot reach. Feathertail spoke to Leafpool recently; perhaps the silver she-cat was next to appear in Willowpaw’s dreams.
Mothwing has no idea. The stars feel so very far away.
———
“I don’t understand why you can’t just say something,” Mothwing says, and Hawkfrost’s expression sharpens, gains an edge that she has grown to recognize, even though it does not remind her of her brother.
“You’re the medic,” he repeats like that explains everything.
“They trust you plenty.”
“I didn’t get you into this position for you to just walk all over my plans,” he hisses, and his frame pushes against hers, irritated. “This is good for us. I promise.”
She leans away. “Did Father tell you that, too?”
Anger breaks over his expression, like hundreds of tiny fireflies collecting to burst light into focus. Hawkfrost stares, and stares, and then stares some more, before stalking toward the exit, fur on his back bristling. “Fine. Talk to him yourself, then.”
Contempt coils in her stomach. Mothwing wants to snap at him more than anything, but she knows the glint in his eyes, and she knows that his teeth are sharp and tinged red. “I’ve told you,” she says, painstakingly slow to avoid any ire leaking into her tone, “that I can’t. He's not there.”
“He would never abandon us!” Hawkfrost flares.
The frustration pulls tighter, and the careful curation of her face splits a little. “They have never existed to me.”
“How dare you!” Hawkfrost scowls down at her over the bridge of his muzzle, like he is better, like he knows more just because someone talks to him while he sleeps, and she sits at the side of the Moonstone and then Moonpool every half moon and no one frequents her dreams. No one even bothers to pretend they want to speak to her. The stars twinkle and the stars glitter but they never comfort her.
Mothwing’s fur spikes, pushing her to her paws. “How dare you!” The words snap from her jaw before she can pull them back. “No cat has ever spoken to me when I’ve been asleep. Ever! It doesn’t matter where they come from! I can’t see them!”
She is thirteen moons old, and StarClan will not send a starry-furred healer to welcome her to the rank. She is fourteen moons old, and Mudfur knows not to ask about her dreams after the meeting. She is fifteen moons old, and she can only watch as the other medics whisper at a Gathering about the stars overhead.
“Stormfur and Brook haven’t done anything wrong,” she adds, still as fierce as before, teeth bared.
“Stormfur,” Hawkfrost spits, “threatens my position as deputy.”
“You want me to act like him and Brook as outsiders!”
“They are!”
“Then what are we?”
“Nothing like them!”
“Have you forgotten-”
Mothwing sees it happen before she feels it; a paw lifts and strikes, faster than blinking, like someone is riverside, catching fish. The pain sears indescribably bright, and warm blood runs down her cheek in a single rivulet.
Hawkfrost blazes in front of her, paw smudged crimson, eyes twin flames, and her pelt, muscles, flesh, all of it burns. All that remains of the healer is a golden pile of ashes, sparking.
———
Something ugly and tight churns in her chest, in her stomach, when the Gathering’s eyes move to her. Leopardstar should exile her and ensure she never steps even near the lake again.
Hawkfrost nods at her. She wishes he wouldn’t.Leafpool checks in after the Gathering. Her eyes catch everything, even the remnant of the argument between her and Hawkfrost—the medic wonders briefly if she recognizes its dying embers.
It does not matter. Mothwing cannot say a single word.
———
Willowpaw tips her head and Mothwing shakes hers.
“We argue sometimes,” she explains, “all siblings do.”
“Dawnflower and I never argue,” Willowpaw answers, producing a small poultice between her paws.
Mothwing laughs a little, stooping to peer at the mixture. “Good,” she praises, “and of course not. You’re not the same age.”
“Dawnflower never argues with Stormfur or Feathertail,” Willowpaw refutes again, adding some cobweb to the concoction. The liquidy mess smears between each strand of the web.
“That’s because Mosspelt is a very attentive mother,” she says, and she realizes the implication as soon as it is out of her mouth. She can’t find the strength to correct herself.
Willowpaw hums a little, setting the poultice aside and glancing back around the den, searching the shadows. It is quiet for a little, a soft and gentle thing, like a snowfall landing over hundreds of leaves, or ice taking portions of the river at a time to freeze so as to not startle every particle within the water. Outside, cats talk in camp, and pawsteps sound not infrequently.
Sunlight slides onto the lithe apprentice's frame. Her soft fur gleams under the golden glow. “Hawkfrost gets mad enough to hurt you?”
Mothwing does not want something like that percolating the Clan’s rumor streams. But is she supposed to lie to her apprentice? Willowpaw notices things that others do not in a way that reminds her of Mudfur; perhaps her mentor has given her some pointers in StarClan.
“Not often.”
Willowpaw shifts. “I would never hurt my family,” she says, and her tone strikes the air like a rock hits another: serious, sharp, meaningful.
“Me either,” Mothwing responds, a little softer.
Willowpaw is still very young. Mothwing is not a mother and will never be—that decision was made a long time ago, even before she became a healer and devoted her life to the health of her Clanmates—but she still finds herself peering over the apprentice’s head, looking toward her future, trying to find gnarled roots or hidden mud sinks.
Fate clouds over.
———
Tadpole cheers. “Come on, you two! You can do it!”
Moth stares up and up at the branch that her elder brother rests on—it seems moons and moons away from the ground. Tadpole, though, just smiles, leaning down and offering his mitten for either of his siblings to grab.
“It’s way too far,” Moth squeaks, taking a step backward. The ground remains solid beneath her, even though she’s pretty sure it could (or maybe should) be breaking into pieces. They have to stop doing stupid stuff when Sasha’s not around; their track record is less than pretty.
“It’s just a bush!” Tadpole exclaims. “Come on, it can’t be that bad. Here, Hawk, take my paw. I promise I won’t let anything happen!”
Hawk’s ears flatten, and his shoulders droop like a flower with no water. “Sasha might get mad at us,” he mews.
“Sasha will be fine,” he responds.
“That’s what you said about the twoleg nest,” Moth answers, expression scrunching. For as long as she lives, she will never forget the way that the group of cats emerged from the gloom; one after another, as if they were part of the darkness themselves.
Tadpole frowns, obviously failing to find something else to convince them with. In lieu of a good reason, he just pouts. “Please?”
Hawk shifts on both paws, and then he straightens his posture, looking up at his littermate. “I’ll do it.”
“Yay!” Tadpole leans forward again. “Okay, it’s really simple. All you have to do is bunch your legs up like those fluffy things Sasha talks about and then move up instead of forward. I’ll grab your paw so you won’t fall.”
Moth nudges her brother. “Don’t,” she warns. “Just wait for Sasha. Imagine what would happen if we got hurt.”
“You’re so boring,” Tadpole whines, and his yellow eyes pierce down from the slight shadow of the leaves around him.
Hawk turns back with wide eyes, frozen with indecision. Moth shakes her head. “Tadpole, you’re scaring him.”
“I just believe in you both! I’m not forcing you to do anything!” Hurt flickers across Tadpole’s face, clearer than the crystal-blue sky overhead, and guilt flushes her pelt, warm and uncomfortable.
“Mothwing.” Sasha’s voice sounds behind her, and she turns to spy her mother stepping through the bushes, large, hardly her mother at all. Who is Mothwing? Maybe it was a mistake? The kit opens her mouth to speak but something hits her flank first, all before her mother levels her with a serious look. “Wake up.”
It thunks harder, and when she opens her eyes, she is beside the Moonpool. Willowpaw lays at her side; the other healers remain asleep, sides rising and falling evenly.
“Right,” she whispers, blinking thrice in quick succession. The image stays the same.
Hawkfrost does not look like that anymore. His eyes never widen from their constant slits, critical and harsh; his fur spikes along his spine instead of remaining flat against his back. When had he last listened to her instead of insisting on his own correctness? No memory surfaces in her head.
Mothwing’s legs stand on their own. Sunshine peeks toward the Moonpool, as though it could warm the entire territory up just by touching the water ahead of them, still and calm.
———
At the Gathering, Leafpool puts her nose against Mothwing’s cheek.
In another life, both she-cats live in the same Clan. They grew up together, inseparable, and Mothwing befriends Squirrelflight, too, and all of Leafpool’s other friends in ThunderClan. Maybe they are healers together, working side by side until the sun blinks out into nothingness, or perhaps both vow to be the best warriors together, and they conquer the forest one step at a time, never unmatching their gait. They fight back to back in every battle; they tag team prey instead of hunting solo.
Hawkfrost stays meek for his whole life, or he simply does not exist at all. Tadpole and Squirrelflight become best friends. Firestar—or Leopardstar—names them all warriors simultaneously, in the happiest ceremony known to all the Clans. No cat can escape the warmth, the joy that radiates from those in the clearing, so delighted that they get to be warriors together. There is no point in the title, the celebration, the show-and-dance, if they are not there together.
And they are. Leafpool and Mothwing age and neither leave one another’s side. Their paws ache and crack; it does not matter, not when they stand as one. The Clan grows like a plant, gaining new stalks and sprouts where it should have wilted away into ash or dust or worse. Stars twinkle in their eyes at the end of every night, brighter than the sun, than two suns, than hundreds of suns all combined.
In this life, Mothwing smiles and nudges Leafpool back.
———
Mothwing is a highly skilled healer.
Everyone knows it. It is perhaps the title most often attached to her name; Mothwing, RiverClan’s talented medic. Illness cowers at her presence; infections refuse to even start when she touches a wound. Injuries seem to seal themselves up if just her eyes run over their jagged surfaces.
And yet Hawkfrost remains ill.
It’s the only way that Mothwing has been able to conceptualize what has happened; she knows no other terms for his experience. Perhaps “training in the Dark Forest with his father every night” fits better, but she has never seen the Dark Forest in the same way that she cannot see StarClan no matter how much she has prayed.
Once, she tried to will herself into that dingy and cold place (is it cold?). She went to sleep thinking only of shadowy thickets, spiny little bushes, streams with water so dark that the riverbed seemed invisible. If only she could be there, if only she could stand beside Hawkfrost and stand up to her father, maybe healing him would come easier, the same way it comes easy for every other cat in the Clan.
Mothwing wakes in a swath of gloom, and she jumps to her paws. The warmth that swirls in her chest fades when she realizes the moon hovers outside, and the river trickles outside of the healer’s den.
“Mothwing?” Willowpaw mumbles the word, bathed in silver moonlight breaking into the den.
“I’m sorry, Willowpaw,” she whispers back, still upright and staring at nothing like her brother or father will appear from the endless sky, “I thought I heard something. You can go back to sleep.”
She never wakes up in the Dark Forest. She dreams about how it used to be, in the barn with Sasha and Tadpole and Hawk, before his shoulders sharpened with muscles and scars that his father gave him. She dreams about how it will be, far in the future, so far that blurriness crowds the edges. No stars show themselves, though.
Not that she expects them to.
Life goes on. Hawkfrost’s anger multiplies, grows so large that he scorches the forest’s edge, that he boils the water of the rivers, that every cat of every Clan knows of his ire, some more intimately than others. Mothwing pores over her herbs in the meantime—sorts all the ones that assist even a little bit with soundness of mind, with sanity, with tranquility.
Chamomile. Ragweed’s pale yellow petals. Thyme.
Perhaps she should slip him a couple leaves, bury them in a fish and give it to him with a small smile. There is no guarantee that the plants will help but surely it is worth a try.
Maybe Mothwing does not want to.
———
“The Clan will want to know what happened,” Leopardstar points out.
“And?”
The leader turns, head tilting over her shoulder to look at her medic. Leopardstar’s eyes mimic two identical amber stones, unmoving, untouchable. “All we have is a great warrior with a neck wound.”
Mothwing’s brows lower, and something caustic and acidic sloshes in her chest, licking at her lungs, her throat. She has not eaten since finding out, but her mouth tastes bitter and sour, as if full of rot. “He died before I could heal him. There’s your explanation.”
“How he got the wound, Mothwing.”
“To say what really happened will sow distrust between RiverClan and ThunderClan unnecessarily,” Mothwing flares, and the heat in her words scorches her lips. It feels unlike her. It feels like Hawkfrost. She presses hard on the blaze in her, and its smoke billows up in huge, squishy clouds. “Brambleclaw is their deputy.”
“I’ve not forgotten,” Leopardstar snips, tail curling neatly over her paws. “Fine. You can lie to your Clanmates about your brother’s death.”
A cold chill rushes around her. The title hardly fits anymore. Hawkfrost has not been her brother in moons, maybe longer. Hawkfrost never would have called her useless, taunted her into helping his absurd goals of power, raked his claws down her shoulder knowing that she would bleed, chased the gold and the shine no matter its cost.
Her brother was the one who laughed at all of Tadpole’s jokes, who couldn’t jump onto branches of a bush because fear gripped him so tightly that he could hardly move. Who wasn’t sure if he could learn to swim, who didn’t know if he could impress Leopardstar enough to stay in the only place he maybe-could call home. Who missed their mother every night.
I think my brother has been dead for a very long time. She says to no one, stands up, and leaves the leader’s den.
———
Mothwing does not cry once. Mistyfoot notices but says nothing, only offering her prey, extra moss, and whatever herb she can find around the territory (burnet and sorrel). She watches Mothwing’s demeanor and assumes a wall has gone up in her chest, her heart, to prevent any emotion from leaking.
The wall is down, Mothwing thinks on more than one occasion. She leaves the medic’s den, and no one wants to plan to take over the Clans. She does not have to collect extra marigold and cobwebs for the injuries of a cat who does not even thank her.
Mistyfoot wakes her up when the sun rises. Rosemary wreaths around those resting for vigil, and Hawkfrost lies still, too still for a cat who was always moving, always talking.
“We’ll take him out into the territory.” Mistyfoot speaks smoothly, not unkindly, eyes trained on Mothwing as the medic stands slowly, gaze filtering away from the motionless tom. “Is there anywhere he’d prefer to be buried?”
“No,” Mothwing answers and sees Hawk in her head, eyes wide, reaching for Tadpole’s black paw among dozens of waves crashing over themselves. “Yes. By the water.”
———
Leafpool—gracious, intelligent Leafpool—smiles, and Mothwing thinks that perhaps the sun will come out again.
———
“Did you see Hollykit staring at us when we left?” Willowpaw asks, picking her way over a particularly gnarled root, bulging upward from the thick green grass below.
“The black kit by the nursery?”
“Yeah,” Willowpaw continues, avoiding a couple fallen blossoms from the trees above, “she had this amazed look in her eyes like we were the coolest thing she’d seen all day.”
Mothwing laughs. “I first decided to be a medic after I watched Mudfur save Blackclaw’s life.”
“Really?” Willowpaw barely avoids a hanging branch; it skims the tips of her ears but does not scratch. “I never knew.”
“You weren’t there, so I didn’t expect you to.”
Willowpaw rolls her eyes but chats for a little longer; about ThunderClan’s trees and leaf litter, about ThunderClan’s cozy little camp, about Firestar’s bright pelt, about Leafpool and her sister (and Brambleclaw). They pluck a few stalks of lavender by the border, and Mothwing offers to carry them, letting the smell surround her.
Overhead, the sky shines clear and blue, a lake flipped upside down. A breeze skips side-by-side with the duo, and somewhere in the not-so-far distance, the river continues its eternal tumble, knocking into rocks along the way, nudging pebbles to new homes on the riverbed.
“I think she’ll be Leafpool’s apprentice,” Willowpaw says when they approach camp. Something twinkles in her eyes; it reminds Mothwing of moonlight and stars, that endless glimmer she’s never understood. It is as if the apprentice is staring into the future, or perhaps the past, or maybe both at once, studying the way that the moon changes, the sun glitters, the stars blink and skewering meaning from that and that alone.
Pride soars in Mothwing’s chest. “I think so, too.”
