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Silverstream turns her head to watch Firestar go, the ghostly river flowing around her legs, dripping off of her whiskers as he fades from the dream.
Poor tom. Treated as a mouse tossed between some apprentices before they snap its neck.
This river fools her senses, its current and moisture just like any real one, but every cat learns the difference eventually. Every cat learns that their memories all interweave to mimic the world they left behind.
Like the dreams they walk in, it is insubstantial at its heart.
She wades out of the river, back onto its sandy banks, and smells Bluestar before she sees her, her whiskers and tail twitching as the former ThunderClan leader approaches.
“You did well.” She purrs, and Silverstream hates her for the calm look in her cornflower eyes, the self-satisfied lilt to her voice because she can tell from her discomfort that everything went according to plan.
She turns away from her so that Bluestar can’t see the disgust in her bared fangs, but the tenseness of her striped shoulders and her flattened ears will give her away all the same, she knows. She has to pretend at respect, even in a world where no one can punish her for disobeying.
She was once the pride of RiverClan, and despising Bluestar does not mean she is allowed to show blatant disrespect to someone once given nine lives.
She used to wonder what her father and Bluestar felt like, watching more and more parts of themselves take their place among the dead before losing their final lives and the last pieces of their souls left their bodies.
At this moment, she doesn’t wonder at all.
“Of course I did.” She replies, cool but courteous. Bluestar doesn’t demand she turn back to face her. Perhaps she doesn’t think it’s worth bothering.
Silverstream almost feels insulted.
“He’s such a loyal warrior. He’ll handle this excellently, I’m sure, now that he’s come to terms with it.”
The older she-cat’s fondness sounds vile to Silverstream, whose bitterness overflows in a torrent of silent accusations - loyal like Thrushpelt was, to let you use him? Loyal like Mosskit was when you let her die for the sake of your ambition? Loyal like Tigerstar, until he betrayed you? - but still, she stays silent.
Bluestar is Mistyfoot’s mother. If for no other reason, she should respect her for her best friend’s sake, her favorite cousin who she trusted above everyone. Because Bluestar too mothered half-Clan kits, mothered children she knew would have a difficult life if anyone ever knew the truth.
Stormpaw and Featherpaw never had that choice. Silverstream never had the choice to be there for them, to keep them safe, to raise them as her own.
It’s hard to look at Bluestar and not claw her to ribbons for what she so willingly gave up as if they were nothing but prey in a trade.
“You didn’t want him to go.” She replies quietly, sitting and wrapping her tail around her hindpaws. There’s no rocks to worry about; there are very few discomforts of the real world in StarClan, except in the memories of those who can’t let them go.
The old she-cat sniffs and pads around to face Silverstream again, imperious and straight-backed as she was in life, fixing the RiverClan queen with a gaze that Silverstream imagines she used on her old rival, Thistleclaw.
Such a strong leader, with the strength of being a leader wearing away all there was about being a cat.
“He will only continue to doubt and worry if he isn’t allowed…a Clan needs a strong leader, a leader who does not doubt himself or his ancestors. Imagine how things would crumble, Silverstream, if people knew the killer of Scourge no longer believed in us who guided him to his victory. If he loses his way, so do his Clanmates, and chaos will surely follow.”
Bluestar has spoken of how she sacrificed everything for her Clan on the word of a tom who Silverstream has met, and she pities for the madness that plagued him in life, causing him to badly misinterpret StarClan’s words. But she can’t entirely blame Goosefeather; he was as much prey to StarClan’s manipulations as Firestar is.
Silverstream believes in the greater good as much as anyone. Sometimes a cat must die to win a battle; sometimes a cat must suffer for the sake of their Clan, even if they doubt everything they hold dear.
That she can accept.
“So it’s all for ThunderClan, then? For the good of cats like Graystripe and Cinderpelt? You don’t think they can hold fast to their own belief even if Firestar doesn’t?”
Bluestar opens her silvered muzzle, but Silverstream presses on, leaning forward, fangs ever so slightly bared.
“What if he didn’t believe? Would you stop guiding him? Would you condemn him if other cats didn’t believe? Where’s the line, Bluestar? What do we do to keep their faith, when - “
“That is enough!”
She growls loudly enough to cut Silverstream off, and the younger warrior's face burns beneath her fur, her claws sinking into the sand in shame, defiance, and worry.
Still, she looks her dead in the eyes, blue eyes to blue, two generations of mothers.
“Silverstream.” Bluestar says, low and dangerous. “Crookedstar may have been your father, but I am not him, and I will not have you question me in this way. I may not be your leader, but I was the leader of ThunderClan, and I led my Clan through thick and thin long before you were born.
I lost my faith in my despair, and it was the darkest time of my entire life! I would never wish that on Firestar! He must stay true to his ancestors!”
Silverstream wants to say they’re not even his ancestors, that Firestar was born to a line of kittypets of soft lives and soft brains, but she can’t. Not when Bluestar loves him like her own son, loved him as much or more than she loved Mistyfoot and Stonefur.
More than Mosskit, dead before she reached her sixth moon.
Because of a prophecy. Because she looked at him and saw a legacy she couldn’t give her own children. Mistyfoot would only ever be deputy of RiverClan.
Because Bluestar had always loved one thing above all, and it wasn’t her kits.
“You suffered much, Bluestar, but Firestar is not you. His path is much different than the one you walked. You knew this from the moment you took him into your Clan.”
Bluestar’s hackles lower and she looks old, and tired, and how she must have when the waters of the gorge claimed her and she washed to shore, her last life taken by the depths Goosefeather had warned her of when she was only an apprentice.
“Firestar is the cat ThunderClan was promised long ago.” She says, tone neither warm nor hateful, neutral with an edge to it Silverstream can’t decipher. “StarClan chose him, and he must remain open to their wisdom to continue being that cat. Prophecies are fickle things.”
Was Bluestar ever disappointed that Goosefeather’s prophecy had not referred to her all along? That perhaps she had made choices that led to no ultimate greater good? That she had committed a crime against the code, against her daughter, for nothing?
Silverstream can never know how much regret lives behind those icy eyes, that commanding voice who led her Clan into battle against Silverstream’s own so many times.
“He will stay faithful.” She murmurs, knowing in one moment of clarity that it will come true. Her own prophecy of sorts, a single line of sealed fate.
“Then that is all that matters.” Bluestar says, and leaves the RiverClan warrior at last, her paw prints lingering in the sand as she walks away.
Silverstream’s gaze lingers on the water, sparkling with an eerie light that no real river would. It runs past her, far into the void of the sky where all of Silverpelt walk, and she thinks of where she was buried, how her kits visit it sometimes.
The silver tabby descends to earth, and looks up at the stars from her grave. Softly she goes into the RiverClan camp, even though no cat can hear, see, or scent her.
She weaves among her children’s nests in the apprentices den, not appearing in their dreams, but sending them love, sending them the knowledge that they are safe.
That while she fears for how StarClan will use them, the half-Clan children of ThunderClan’s deputy, she will not just bow to the ancestors’ wishes next time.
She is Silverstream of RiverClan, and death cannot keep her from duty.