This Is What We Know ✔️

xii. starclan soothsayer

WARNING: slight gore

chapter twelve;
starclan soothsayer

h e r o n p a w

Where was he? The last time the tom cat had been west of the river, there was a meadow where his paws touched. The grass, he remembered, had always been long enough to hide the stalking forms of cats, making it plentiful for an apprentice's first hunt. He nearly recalled his own first hunt there, and how Sabledusk was proud of the rabbit he brought back to camp with him.

The thought of Sabledusk being proud of him now made his stomach tumble with disgust and embarrassment.

But the meadow wasn't here. There was no prey hiding in burrows or among the long, dry grass. There was no mentor with a paw on their apprentice's flank, encouraging them to try again. In its place stood a single looming redwood with thick, flat branches that hung close enough to jump from one to the other. They spiraled upwards, and Heronpaw noted a single hole in the trunk where the branches stopped.

Around him, there were only pines, the kind of trees not so common to the clan's reign. Though, after recounting the history lessons Poppyfang had taught him, Heronpaw recognized them as something terrifying: this was the ancestors' home. A great pine forest with a single redwood in the middle marked its territory before the great flood that killed the trees and left the prey scampering for a drier home. Then the divide, where half the clan fled for a new home and the rest stayed, only to be dragged into the rising water, only to be seen in StarClan's ranks as its greatest council.

Tentatively, Heronpaw ascended the branches of the redwood, remembering its name as The Red Sky. When he reached the hole and peaked inside, it was dark like an oriole's wing, not giving a hint of light. Yet the apprentice was compelled by the warmth emitting from it, and he stepped inside.

What a silly mistake it was.

The light from the outside world vanished once he his tail grazed it for the last time, and the ground seemed to fall away from under him. When he landed, the impact sent jolts of pain and electricity up his paws.

"You're supposed to bend your legs when you fall," a honeyed voice cooed, a slight laugh tinged in her voice. Despite its sweetness, the fur on the back of Heronpaw's neck stood up. "It prevents you from feeling like your joints are decaying."

What an odd statement. Decaying? He was very much alive... right? Sabledusk hadn't murdered him. Heronpaw thought he ought to at least remember that part.

Before he could say a thing questioning the voice, she made herself known in the most horrifying way possible. At first glance, the voice appeared as a simple white molly with glazed blue eyes and a soft pink scar running down her chest. At second glance, a glitch in his narrative, she was so much more. Her ears were torn and blood flowed steadily down the sides, her eyes were blue, blank, and were missing an iris in the center. She didn't just look blind, she looked as though she was trapped in a void.

Worst of all, sharp, jagged stones protruded from her chest along the path of her scar, and droplets of blood splattered them. Heronpaw trailed his eyes back up to her face, finding himself trapped suddenly in her gaze.

"Poor tom cat, you've had a hard life, haven't you?" Her kind words were not so with the venom dripping from every syllable, mocking and jeering at his shaken form. He wanted to defend himself, make a noise of anger, anything, but her eyes swirled and he grew distracted. He could see... himself. Growing, as a kit, then apprentice. He could see and hear the fights between Poppyfang and Yarrowstar erupting as him and his siblings scurried closer to their mother for warmth and milk.

Then, he watched as Larkkit and Ravenkit grew sick with the fever that swept their den. He watched as Ravenkit succumbed to his conqueror. He watched as he was appointed to Sabledusk, who looked proud of him then, there, and never again.

For the moons following, Heronpaw watched on as this StarClan soothsayer made him relive the moments that had haunted his steps since he was born.