[TB] STARLIGHT -- Prologue (Patreon)

<< INDEX || Allegiances || Prologue || Chapter 1 || From the Beginning >>

Redtail’s ears twitched. His paws were sore, a feeling he hadn’t known since he walked the winding forest trails of the living world. This Great Journey from forest to lake had been long and hard, for the living as well as the dead – saying goodbye to one’s home was never easy, and, for once, the cats of StarClan were following their living kin to their new destination, rather than the other way around. One did not exist without the other, after all.

Now, they had both made it. The Clans were resting beside the lake and StarClan had taken their first pawsteps into what was to be their new hunting grounds.

“New” was a strange way to put it, Redtail thought. For though this place was new, there was no doubt about it, he was met with the queerest sensation of having been here before. As he scanned his starry Clanmates he was certain he wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

Like any good warrior his first instinct was to test the air with his nose and tongue. Redtail scented prey aplenty, along with the sweet air of greenleaf and the warmth of eternal growth. Beneath it all was a frosty scent that tickled his tongue, one that had existed in StarClan but seemed much fresher, wilder, here.

The sights matched the scents – endless rolling greenery, thick forests whose leafy treetops touched the stars, bubbling springs of water and the ethereal glitter of the afterlife. It felt right, being here. Redtail shook out his pelt of any hidden misgivings. Every bend in the grass, every glimmer of starlight, every tug of the breeze in his whiskers had pointed he and the others to this place, like they had guided the living Clans.

This was where they were meant to be.

His Clanmates seemed to loosen up, too; they spread out, sniffing this, marking that, clumping up in excited groups to chatter about this new place. Redtail spotted a pair of starry kittens chasing after a butterfly, and he purred – even spirit-kits could instantly adapt!

Redtail felt content to simply watch his Clanmates explore, until he saw a dappled pelt head into a clump of ferns. Tail up, Redtail got to his paws and followed, not bothering one bit to hide his movement from his quarry.

Spottedleaf caught him the moment he pushed into the ferns. She bopped his muzzle with her dainty little paw and scoffed, “Brother! What are you following me for?”

“Just curious,” Redtail admitted, ignoring the faint sting on his nose. “You don’t often sneak off like this.”

Spottedleaf rolled her eyes. “I sensed something further in,” she explained. “Come on, want to find it with me?”

Redtail nodded and followed Spottedleaf as she began to pick her way through the thick forest. He’d never claimed to understand a single thing about medicine cats, not in life or in death. When they were apprentices, Spottedleaf had tried training as a warrior, but StarClan’s call was too strong, according to their medicine cat, and she was apprenticed to him as soon as possible.

As a medicine cat, Spottedleaf had been calm and attentive, very popular among ThunderClan at the time, lauded as one of their best medicine cats in recent memory. Redtail had had no reason to doubt the claims – after all, he’d lain in her nests more than once for a wound or sickness and had never felt like he hadn’t been taken care of.

There was a pang of sorrow as he wondered how his sister had reacted to his murder. She hadn’t been there, not when he was killed by Bluestar nor when his spirit had ascended to StarClan. Redtail had tried to make up for it by guiding his sister’s spirit to StarClan when her time came, cut down in battle by a dark-hearted warrior far, far too soon.

“Have you heard anything from Eaglebreeze?”

His sister’s voice cut through Redtail’s thoughts. “No,” he admitted, another pang of sorrow in his heart. “Not since he left us.”

Spottedleaf paused, perched on a flat stone. She looked back at him, amber eyes flickering with sorrow. “He’ll come back,” she promised, her tone quiet. “I’m sure of it.”

Redtail brushed his forehead against her jaw. “I hope so,” he breathed.

The thought of Eaglebreeze had made his chest feel tight. The WindClan spirit had taken off in his own direction before StarClan’s journey to this land. What Eaglebreeze had gone off to do was very important, at least to he and Redtail, and Redtail had to hold hope in his heart that his mate would find him in the end. They had spent too much of their lives apart from one another for their starry love to end so abruptly.

“What’re we looking for?” Redtail asked, trying to push those thoughts aside. He looked around – there was no trail here, and overgrowth of ferns and bushes clogged the base of every tree until the two cats were practically swimming in primal greenery. He spied what looked like an opening up ahead, but it was Spottedleaf’s direction he was following, so he looked to his sister.

Spottedleaf was staring at that opening, too. “We need to reconnect with the Clans, as soon as possible,” she said, taking off towards the brightness. Redtail scrambled to follow – Spottedleaf's pace had picked up.

“And you think you’ve sensed the way to do that?” Redtail guessed. He stumbled over a rock hidden beneath a berry bush and cursed himself. What was he, a bumbling apprentice? Quickly he got to his paws and pelted after Spottedleaf – she was several paces ahead now, moving with purpose.

“I think so,” she said as Redtail caught up to her.

Together they stood at the precipice of a fern-choked hollow. Redtail thought it looked like a giant cat had scooped out a huge section of forest with its paw, leaving a deep hole in its wake. At the bottom of that hole was a large, clear pool of water, the surface of which seemed to shimmer with starlight despite not accurately reflecting the cosmic world above them.

While Redtail found that odd, Spottedleaf was already making her way down to the water. With a start, Redtail followed his sister, his pawsteps careful – the path she had found spiraled around the edges of the hollow, but the hardened mud was obscured by overgrowth, which Redtail had to shoulder aside as firmly as he could.

The ground beneath his paws felt stranger the closer he got to the pool below. He felt like the earth itself was vibrating, humming with a power he did not understand – and, beyond that, he felt his paws slipping into pawprints that had to have been made ages upon ages ago, forever frozen into the once-muddy surface.

Redtail felt that strangeness again, the same sensation he had felt when he had laid his eyes on this new land. Who made these pawprints? He wondered. His paws slid almost perfectly into many of the tracks. Was it us, somehow?

“This is it,” Spottedleaf declared.

Redtail perched on the path and looked down at his sister. She was already by the water’s edge, lit by its queer blue light. Redtail’s spine rippled. He had never been one to frequent the Seeing Pool in the old hunting grounds – it held the same eerie feeling this one did. Though it was a one-way connection to the living world, Redtail had always had the strange feeling that he wasn’t the only one watching.

Above, the bushes rustled. Redtail’s claws slid out, instinct shooting through him to protect his sister in this vulnerable place – but as the massive, shaggy-furred gray she-cat emerged, Redtail’s claws retracted.

“Ah, you found it!” Yellowfang rasped, her dark orange eyes bright. “Good eye, Spottedleaf!”

Spottedleaf licked her paw, idly drawing it over her ear. “I just listened to the world around me, that’s all...”

Yellowfang didn’t comment. The old she-cat ambled her way down the path, forcing Redtail to the bottom of the hollow without so much as a hello. Redtail found that rather rude, but then again, Yellowfang had never been one for politeness, in ShadowClan, ThunderClan, or StarClan.

The old she-cat wasted no time – she touched her nose to the water’s surface, and the resounding ripples made the water glow bright from within. Redtail saw that light shoot up into the cosmos above in a flash that was gone as instantly as it had come, a dazzling blink of awareness that they had found the connection to the living world. The hollow was about to get even more crowded.

Redtail looked down again and saw that Yellowfang was already peering at the Clans – he recognized several shapes, all of them laying out in an unfamiliar landscape of grass and hills. Yellowfang lingered on two in particular – a very small black tom and a tortoiseshell she-cat whose black patches were like spots of night in a sunset. The two were curled close together, sleeping soundly. Yellowfang looked at them so fondly, as if they were her own flesh and blood.

Nightfrost and Shadepaw, Redtail thought. Curiosity prickled his pelt. Those two were the kits of Tinystar, the cat that Redtail had decided to watch over in death. He could see ThunderClan’s leader now, awake, staring out at the lake. He was murmuring to himself words that Redtail could not hear.

He’s talking to Sandstorm, Redtail guessed, his heart aching for his lost daughter.

As Tinystar was joined by his friend Graystripe, the view panned over the rest of the cats, as if counting each one to make sure they were all present. Yellowfang’s gaze lingered on one of the few bushes on the moorland, which sheltered Tallstar, WindClan’s current leader.

Redtail’s stomach clenched as he looked through the water. Tallstar was on the very edge of his last life, that was widely known, and as Yellowfang looked down at him, Redtail saw Tallstar’s eyes open and look up, right at the starry medicine cat.

Yellowfang sighed sadly, and Spottedleaf murmured, “He’s not got much time left.”

Redtail sighed. Every cat died, eventually, but Tallstar had lived for so long, and had done so well leading WindClan. He hoped that the old cat would live to at least see his Clan settled in their new home.

“Neither do we, then,” Yellowfang declared, raising her head from the pool. Her nose was dotted with moisture from the water’s surface. “We may have found our side of the connection to the living world, but now they must find the other end down below – if they don’t... WindClan won’t be seeing another blessed leader. No Clan will.”

Spottedleaf’s eyes were serious as she nodded. “Our ability to communicate with the Clans will be very limited right now. We must begin our search immediately, and do everything we can to aid them.”

Redtail’s pelt prickled with unease. He hadn’t even really thought about being unable to communicate with the living cats. What would happen if they couldn’t find another Moonstone? It had to be a solvable problem – this side of the connection existed, that had to mean there was another end!

Yellowfang remained, but Spottedleaf seemed to take her own words to heart – she got to her paws and picked her way around the pool, her eyes lit with determination as the waters faded to their neutral blue color. Redtail, feeling very out of place, gratefully used this opportunity to follow his sister out of the hollow and back into the forest.

Deep in his ear fur he could hear cats moving through the trees, clearly all wanting to make their way to the new Seeing Pool to check on their loved ones. Redtail, however, hurried after Spottedleaf, who was charging through the forest and overgrowth with her head held high and tail stiff, the very picture of a cat on the lookout for something.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Redtail wondered.

“Not yet,” Spottedleaf admitted.

“Don’t you want to use the pool to search, though?”

Spottedleaf frowned. “There are other ways to feel the living world,” she responded. She paused in her stride in a glade of ferns lit purple by cosmic starshine. “Unfortunately, without the other side being open, we spirits cannot walk the living world’s paths, we can only guide their dreams.”

Redtail swallowed, sitting on his haunches beside his sister. Yet another thing he had taken for granted because cats from far before him had figured it out first!

“Not only that,” Spottedleaf went on, her eyes growing hard, “but we must be the one to lead the Clans to their connection. We cannot afford to leave it to the chance that they might do it. Who knows what that might do!”

Redtail’s belly went cold at the thought. “So, what do we do? How can I help?”

Spottedleaf’s tail touched his ear. “Just listen, and feel, and if there’s anything out of the ordinary, let me know.” Her gaze softened, almost an apology for being so serious before, and she raised her chin to the stars above. “The Clans have their own problems to deal with, establishing camps and boundaries as leafbare comes down from the mountains... this is our task.”

Redtail’s tail curled around his paws. “I don’t envy them,” he sighed. “One of the best things about StarClan is that there are no boundaries, and we live anywhere we like. There is no leafbare, no starvation, no-”

Spottedleaf gasped, a sharp sound that made Redtail stop talking and stare at his sister, concern flaring in his breast like a bird’s wings. The tortoiseshell she-cat's eyes had gone round and wide, the fur along her spine raised up straight.

“What is it?!” Redtail demanded, heart thudding in his ears.

Spottedleaf’s jaw shuddered. “A s-sign!” she gasped. Bringing her gaze down from the stars seemed to be a monumental task, as if she were fighting being frozen in place. Her gaze was far away, seeing something that Redtail could not, something she had brought down from the heavens.

She found her focus eventually, her slitted pupils meeting Redtail’s eyes. “Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red,” she gasped. “Before there is peace, the Omen must be fulfilled!”

The fur along Redtail’s spine lifted, cold drenching his body. His claws dug into the earth as he felt the words wash over him. He trembled. What does it mean? His mouth was too dry to ask.

Spottedleaf was trembling. “We need to hurry,” she said, her tone grave. “This can only mean that the Eclipse will soon be upon us. It began here, it will end here – that is why we were brought to this place, why the Clans were brought to the lake...”

Redtail’s gut tugged. “The Eclipse...? What are you talking about? What does this have to do with the lake?”

Spottedleaf looked at him as if he were a kit asking what a nursery was. She looked so different from her usual patient self, in fact, that for a moment, Redtail thought she might strike him with her claws.

“Come with me,” Spottedleaf breathed, getting to her paws. “There’s much to discuss...”