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One day I’ll be clan leader!
It’s a kit’s dream, almost every warrior apprentice wishes for it once.
But dreams aren’t real, aren’t viable, when her brother’s is torn apart, and he can twist any dream he wants.
We’ll be the best Warriors in the whole Clan!
And they try, and her brother does it almost perfectly, soaked in blood but without a scratch on his skin.
The Warrior Code is everything.
But it is a broken thing, cracking like thin ice, as her brother sneaks off with a friend he shouldn’t have, and her other brother breaks through dreams, and she helps a friend she shouldn’t have.
As the secrets tangle, dense and dark as brambles; and they are beyond cats, aren’t they? They are constellations commanding the stars in silverpelt, so are they beyond the code-?
And she’s never been comfortable, with that idea. That she is more.
even if she wants it.
even, as it turns out, she is not.
She cannot breathe, the air is thick with wet ash, though that isn’t what steals her away.
It’s a cat make of ash, fire in his eyes that may have just lit the whole forest. It’s the cat made of fire, even doused in the rain, voice more striking than the lightning as her words thunder.
‘They are not my kits.’
. . .And she is not Star-born, nor code-born, nor anything for that matter.
She is swept up with the smoke.
The Warrior Code must be followed.
It’s a lie, a mockery. She’s fallen into brambles that tear and snag, ripping her crow-dark fur out. The leaves hid thorns, which are now red with blood.
The Warrior Code means nothing as her red claws and teeth drag the body to the water; as she tears the mouse she wishes were her liars; as she scores the bark beneath her and yowls these things to the moon.
The stars mean even less as she enters the tunnel, the earth falling around her.
Her brothers are constellations, and she loves them. They deserved better.
And even if she is not the same as them, she did, too.
She breathes out as she lays in the dark, battered and bleeding, and wishes she could see the stars.