Ugh...I am SO sorry for how long this took. Right now, my personal life is extremely hectic - I have three simultaneous projects going on in school, state-wide standard tests to take in three subjects, irritating homework loads, plus I've been trying to help my friend write a story. And I've discovered how much I love the TV show
Lost, so I've been procrastinating to catch up on all the seasons. XD
So...here's Chapter 13. Its title has been changed. You get to find out their warrior names in this chapter! THANKS so much to all my supporters and reviewers!
---
Chapter 13
Thunder
I had waited moons for them to come. Three moons after we had parted by the Moonpool, they came back to our woods to visit us again. One moon later, only Sunpaw had come with Shadowflicker and Icepath, bearing news of their ascension to warriors. And then there stretched a gap when only my brother or Icepath would come, and they were hiding something in Sunpaw’s mischievous way. When they finally came again, I could feel them from afar, following the Moonpool stream to where it began in our woods.“Where are we going?” Meowed Sparklepaw. “And isn’t this
WindClan’s territory?”
“Yes, it’s WindClan’s territory, and you’ll find out,” replied Sunheart evasively. “Though, according to my calculations, we left the border a minute ago. We’re not in Clan territory anymore at all.”
“You didn’t even
tell her where we’re taking them? Really, Sunheart,” growled Moonpelt. She shepherded her two kits in front of her. They were four moons old now, and capable of walking about on their own, but they were wide-eyed and cautious, even with three warriors and an apprentice.
“What’s Eaglepaw like?” Asked Flickerkit. His sister, Breezekit, flicked her tail to his side.
“Shh! You said you wouldn’t ask her that!”
“Eaglepaw?” Demanded Sparklepaw, swinging around to face her father. Sunheart shrugged. “We’re going to see
Eaglepaw?”
“I don’t believe you, Sunheart,” meowed Icepath, fixing Sunheart with her usual critical blue stare. “She’s your only daughter, and so much like you—”
“She looks like both of them, though,” Moonpelt added. “She’s gotten that black from Brightsnow, who got it from Dawninglight, who got it from Reedwhisker…”
“Yes,” purred Icepath. “And little Breezekit looks just like her father too. Nice dark fur. Flickerkit’s the odd one—where on earth did the brown come from? He looks like Eaglepaw. Then again, he could have gotten the trait from your father, Moonpelt. Gorsethorn has brown fur.”
“Speaking of Gorsethorn, where is he?” Asked Sunheart. “And Tigerflame.”
“They went to negotiate with ShadowClan,” replied Sparklepaw. “Remember?”
“How do you know that and I don’t?” He demanded.
“Why didn’t you tell me we were going to see Eaglepaw?” She countered.
Moonpelt, and Icepath laughed together. “Come on, it’s not much further,” the silver she-cat encouraged Breezekit and Flickerkit. “See the stream? Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing shiny golden trees. Can you look out for them?”
“Too late—there they are.” Sunheart increased his pace, Sparklepaw padding quickly alongside him, their yellow pelts almost identical in the mottled half-light.
---
In the cavern hidden by ferns, the Fire flickered softly in the stone basin, its light catching on the clefts of the colored stone.
I opened my eyes.
Silver eyes.
“Crystalpaw,” I whispered, nosing her face. She lay beside me on the cavern floor in our nest of forever-fresh mosses. She shifted, then blinked open her own stormcloud eyes.
“They’re close,” she mewed. “Let’s go.” She stretched out her limbs and rose up elegantly, shaking the scraps of grass from her white-flame fur. I jumped up beside her, following her to the cavern opening. She broke into a gentle run, tracing the familiar path beside the twisting stream to the edge of our woods. I heard excited voices, and could spy the bright pelt of Sunheart from here. Crystalpaw halted where the immortal grass ended and the mortal grass began, but playfully reached out with her tail and touched a few blades, making them shimmer into everlasting life.
“Even after moons,” she meowed, “I still love to do that.”
“You can show the kits that,” I whispered, my eyes trained on the little group approaching. I could now see that it was not only Sunheart, Moonpelt, and Icepath.
Crystalpaw’s head shot up. “Kits?” She asked sharply. “
Kits?” Her gaze swiveled to the group, and she let out a delighted gasp.
“Three of them—no, two, one’s older. He or she looks just like Sunheart, and I’m guessing that the other two are either Moonpelt’s or Icepath’s.”
“So that’s why they’ve been avoiding us for a while,” I mused. We’d been alone for a long while, and I missed the company of my family. Every day I thought of Flickerpaw’s maddening isolation, with only the flighty spirit of Rainpaw to talk and listen to sometimes.
Crystalpaw poked my flank with her tail-tip gently. “Do you regret making them live away from us?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “I wish every day that they could come live here, in our woods, where Flickerpaw used to be.”
“Where he used to be,” she repeated quietly, sighing. “Let’s go back to wait for them.”
We returned to the cavern, and I let my tail drag along the walls of colored stone. The Fire lived in its basin still, ever-changing, yet always the same.
Crystalpaw crouched down behind the basin, shifting around in the collection of little things we’d found in our woods over the moons. There were many beautiful little pebbles she’d found washed up in the stream, a perfectly preserved oak leaf, a whole butterfly, a feather she’d transformed into one of immortal, glossy black, and, of course, the single flower with petals like fire.
As I waited near the entrance, I thought I heard a voice.
“Sky song, sky song
Capture us in your glorious blue…”
“Where he used to be,” I whispered to myself.
---
Sunheart’s ears pricked up in excitement. He had waited a long time to visit his brother again. And this time, he was bringing Sparklepaw, who smiled as she walked, eager to see this long-lost family member.
“It’s so beautiful!” Gasped Breezekit for the thousandth time. Flickerkit looked around passively, except when a stray leaf crossed his path on a gust of soft wind, and he chased it forward a few tail-lengths before it fell to the ground.
“Are we almost there?” Sparklepaw asked impatiently.
“No,” her father growled back. “We’ve still got over twenty fox-lengths to go.”
Flickerkit and Breezekit squealed audibly, stumbling forward around Moonpelt’s legs. Icepath even quickened her pace.
“I remember all of this so well,” Moonpelt meowed. “Where’s that accursed tree I fell out of…?”
“Passed it already,” Sunheart informed her.
“Well, I hope Eaglepaw’s left that one mortal. It can die, for all I care.”
“Is that it?” Sparklepaw meowed sharply, halting and pointing with her tail at a shadow among a fern-covered slope.
“Yes!” Replied Icepath. She trotted forward and stuck her head down into the hole in the earth. “Crystalpaw? Eaglepaw? Are you there?”
Laughter erupted from inside the cavern, and two brilliant shapes shot out of it, white and brown. Sunheart heard Sparklepaw gasp—they were, after all, no larger than she was herself.
“Eaglepaw! Crystalpaw!” Moonpelt cried, grinning happily and rushing forward to touch noses with each in turn. Sunheart did the same, cuffing Eaglepaw on the shoulder.
“It’s so good to see you all again!” Crystalpaw was bursting with affection, her gaze trained on the kits and apprentice, all of whom were staring, openmouthed, at the two of them.
“Oh…” Crystalpaw’s eyes lit up. “
Kits! Who…?”
Sparklepaw fluffed out her fur. Sunheart meowed, “This is my daughter, Sparklepaw.”
“And these two,” Moonpelt added, sweeping her tail around her two kits and drawing them close to her, “are mine. Their names are Breezekit…and Flickerkit.”
---
It was my turn to stare. The little brown tom-kit blinked up at me with startlingly blue eyes. The resemblance was extraordinary.
“Who’s their father?” I asked Moonpelt. She ducked her head, embarrassed.
“Grayshadow. Remember him? Morninglight’s son?”
“Course I do, as Graypaw. And Sparklepaw’s mother is…?” I inquired Sunheart.
“Brightsnow,” he answered without batting an eye. I gaped at him.
“No way.”
“You bet. She’s actually really nice. Matured a bit since apprenticeship.” Sunheart looked immensely pleased with himself. “And I love her to pieces.”
“You seriously freak me out sometimes,” Sparklepaw informed him. Crystalpaw laughed.
“You aren’t the only one,” she agreed.
My eyes couldn’t keep themselves from straying towards Flickerkit, Moonpelt’s son. He blinked back at me with wide blue eyes.
It was a little bit disturbing.
Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I thought that I felt something sweep past me from behind, circling around to look at the kit, and there was a glint of blue in the hazy golden air.
Where he used to be. Flickerpaw was still here, in the place he had been trapped in for so long. I knew he wasn’t here constantly, but he still came. He and Rainpaw were off in the skies, riding unknown stars to places unfathomable.
“Can we go inside?” Asked Sparklepaw, flicking her tail in the direction of the cavern.
“Of course,” meowed Crystalpaw.
“Since when have
you ever asked permission to go somewhere?” Sunheart’s ears flicked back and forth, and he chuckled in amusement.
“There’s a first time for everything,” the black and gold she-cat retorted. She ducked down and slid into the cavern, emitting a gasp of astonishment and awe. I quickly followed her down, grinning at her expression.
“Great StarClan!” She exclaimed, padding over to the Fire and its basin. “What’s this? Is it the Fire?
The Fire?”
“I see you’ve told them about us,” I meowed to Icepath, who had entered behind me, and she nodded, her eyes shining.
“We figured they were old enough. They won’t tell anyone.”
“You’re certain?”
“Well, not really, but they know what’ll happen to them if they
do tell anyone…”
My eyes widened. Crystalpaw, overhearing, burst into more laughter, echoing around the crystalline cavern. Flickerkit and Breezekit were leaping at the walls, their tiny claws extended, making white scratch marks in the stone.
“Ha!” Breezekit shouted. “I can jump higher than you!” The little silver-furred she-kit gave a mighty leap and dragged a claw pattern that rose higher than the previous ones.
“No you can’t!” Flickerkit countered.
“They’re great,” I whispered to Moonpelt, who gave me a small smile.
“They don’t really understand anything about you and Crystalpaw yet. They aren’t old enough. They just think you’re a totally normal uncle or something.” Moonpelt sighed, running her nose along her silver shoulder fur. I touched my tail-tip to her side, and she looked back up at me.
“I wish everything could be normal too,” I told her. “But one day we’ll all be together again, whether in this life or the next.”
Her head dropped with a sigh.
“How’s your leg been?” I asked, changing the subject.
She looked at me pointedly. “Absolutely fine. It hasn’t bothered me in moons, Eaglepaw, you know that.”
I sighed, chuckling a little bit. “It’s funny to see
you looking down on
me now. I’m barely larger than Sunheart’s daughter…Sparklepaw, right?”
“Yep, she’s Sparklepaw.” Sunheart had appeared behind me. I turned around, back to the present, watching Moonpelt’s kits tussling with each other in a pool of Firelight and Crystalpaw chatting animatedly with the black and gold she-cat. Icepath saw the three of us standing together and padded over from her place by the opening to talk to the two she-cats, leaving us alone.
Silently, we all looked around at each other. I could almost see the two of them as apprentices once again—Moonpaw and her sensibility, Sunpaw and his mischief. The three kits of a pair of heroes who had saved the Clans, part of the bloodline of Silverpool and Hawkwing.
“Eaglepaw,” Moonpelt meowed tentatively, “you remember Rainpaw?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, turning my gaze to her again. “Why?”
“I…well…I wondered if you and Crystalpaw still ever hear her. Her songs, I mean.”
I nodded my head. “Sometimes.”
“And…Flickerpaw?”
I paused. “Once or twice.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good,” she meowed absentmindedly.
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Just…curious.”
“Come on, Moonpelt,” Sunheart meowed. “You were always a terrible liar.”
She sniffed exasperatedly, twitching her whiskers. “Fine. On the day that Breezekit and Flickerkit were born, at sunset, I thought I heard Rainpaw singing outside the nursery. Grayshadow had gone to talk to Lionpelt for a bit, and I was alone with them. Brightsnow and Sparklepaw—she was a kit too at the time—were sleeping, and my kits were too. That’s when I heard the voice. It sounded like Rainpaw.”
“Really?” I murmured. It was a rhetorical question, more for me than for my sister.
Suddenly one of the kits gave a little shriek. Moonpelt whirled around, but it was only Breezekit, who was standing below the opening in the ground that connected the cavern and the sky.
“It’s raining!” She cried in delight, spinning around in the open space, laughing as raindrops splashed through the hole around her. Flickerkit joined in, batting at the falling water with his little paws.
Laughing, Icepath ran over to them and picked Breezekit up by the scruff of her neck and lifted the dark gray kit out of the cavern. Moonpelt shot across the stone ground and scooped up Flickerkit, bunching her legs beneath her and leaping out after him. Sunheart and Sparklepaw were after them in a flash.
Crystalpaw and I exchanged a brief glance, then left the Fire’s cavern and emerged into the open air. The winds had picked up, whistling amongst the immortal trees, warm and damp with rain. The thousands and thousands of droplets cascaded down from the sky in veils of shimmering gray and white and the reflected gold of our forest. I reached out with a paw and caught a few, and they shattered into little slivers of moonlight against my fur.
The two kits were whirling dizzyingly around, screaming in delight as they raced along the side of the Moonpool’s stream, scattering the copper and bronze pebbles and rolling around in the wet grass. Sparklepaw’s black and gold pelt was flattened to her sides with the downpour, as was Sunheart’s solid yellow fur. As I watched, Sunheart threw back his head and let out a yowl of victory.
I began to feel the happiness swell inside me, roaring through my veins like the Fire, fluttering where my heartbeats should be. The rain was cool and bright and beautiful. Crystalpaw swirled over to my side, pressing her flank against my own and nuzzling her head into the space between my shoulder and my head.
“I love you,” she whispered to me.
Nearly overcome, I gasped when a crack of throaty thunder exploded against the cloud-strewn sky, causing the kits to shriek with frightened surprise. The trees still tossed and danced in the strong breezes.
“I know,” I murmured back to her, smiling when she looked up. Her silver eyes slightly reflected the shining rain.
As if on cue, a pulse of white light flashed for a heartbeat. And then there was the song.
“Rain song, rain song,
dance in the light of the tear-stained moon…”
Eagerly, Crystalpaw spun around, searching for the source. “Do you see them—or, her, Eaglepaw?”
My gaze traveled quickly around, weaving amongst Moonpelt, Sunheart, Icepath, Sparklepaw, and the kits. I caught no glimmer of spirit in the pale shadows. “Nope. But she is here.” I paused. “Back earlier, when I said how I thought about how I wished Flickerpaw was back here? ‘
Where he used to be’?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I was wrong. This isn’t where he
used to be…it’s where he is still.”
We were both looking at Flickerkit, who had climbed up on top of Moonpelt’s back.
Another thunder boom, and it almost drowned out another, softer sound, barely discernible through the noise of the storm…
“Rain song, rain song,
tell us a tale of life over doom.”
“Eaglepaw!” Shouted Sunheart, breaking through the trancelike sense of wonder that both Crystalpaw and I were hovering in. “Stop daydreaming! Sparklepaw wants to see the rest of the territory.”
“Okay!” Crystalpaw replied. “Stop pretending that you have
any sort of voice talent with your war cries and get down here.”
“I’m offended now, Crystaldog.”
“You’re so immature,” she retorted.
Sunheart gave her a dazzling grin. “Old habits die hard.” Looking over his shoulder, he called, “Hey! Moonpelt! Icepath! You coming?”
“Of course,” she answered, padding over with Flickerkit and Breezekit in tow. Icepath slipped into place with us, and I felt a swoop of memory and old, bittersweet fellowship.
“Hey, Eaglepaw?” Sparklepaw fell into step beside me as Icepath and Crystalpaw took the lead. “I have a question.”
“Yeah?”
“My father’s explained all about the Fire to me already. He told me the real story after I became an apprentice.”
“Are you sure it’s the real story?” I inquired, amused. “With Sunheart…you never know.”
“Well, it was at least pretty close,” she meowed. “But…you and Crystalpaw can transmit the Fire to the trees and grass and stuff without becoming normal again, but with another cat, it’ll take all your Fire away. Why doesn’t this happen to plants? You know…I touch this blade of grass, and it transfers its Fire to me?”
“It has something to do with the intelligence and complexity of cats versus blades of grass.”
“Oh.”
“But, theoretically, you probably have a little bit of Fire in you as well. Sunheart’s gotten a bit from me, which he probably passed on to you.”
“So almost everyone here has Fire in them,” she observed.
My gaze flickered around the group. Crystalpaw and Icepath were taking us on a route that would lead to a grove of golden birches with scarlet-edged leaves.
There they were, all around me once again, the old group that had traveled first to these woods when they were Flickerpaw’s prison, discovered the secret of the Moonpool stream, fought against ThunderClan for Crystalpaw, and had remained one force throughout everything that had happened.
Sunheart, the brilliant, golden as the sun and cleverer than any other cat in the four Clans.
Icepath, the compassionate, who loved unconditionally and would have given herself up to save a despairing tom-cat.
Flickerpaw, the obstinate, who fought against despair for a hundred years and had been freed.
Moonpelt, the sensible, the smart and reasoning she-cat with a pelt like starlight who had learned to love adventure.
Crystalpaw, the strong-willed, the ThunderClan traitor and bravest warrior who was not afraid of what she believed in.
“Yes indeed, Sparklepaw,” I meowed softly to her, the whirling rain tapping out a crescendo of song in these woods, the place I would live in till the Fire left me. “There is Fire within all of us.”
---
TIS NOT THE END!
Epilogue: The Ties That Bind Us is coming sometime soon, probably around the beginning of April. I won't make you wait over a month this time, I swear.
As for those who want to know how RiverClan reacted when they all returned, you find out via flashback in the epilogue.
Thanks again! <33
~Sunny
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