The Sunlapse (A Light in the Mist AU/rewrite)

XXXII

Song of the Chapter:
Yume Nikki - The End

The moon beamed down like a lonely streetlight onto the woods, a paragon in the oil-black sky. Shadows rolled past like stalking wolves, and the nightly chill rattled the few leaves blooming from the darkened branches and tousling with Bristlefrost's long pelt, but the splashing shores of the lakewaters were the only sound she cared to listen to in this nightfall.

Luna had made her trek around their dark world so many times since the blaze, and yet her light was still sick. The chaos that had devastated every soul to exist here was no more, but death still filled the starless skies. The same death that had taken so many cats that she'd love, the death that made her mad to even think of. Bristlefrost knew it'd always be there, and that they'd never see that wary light again now that the other realms had been abolished. 

Could any cat ever trust her again? Ivypool could barely even look at her after her experience with the Place of no Stars. Fernsong had been silent since she killed his sister. Thiftear had done nothing but fear her ever since she learned she'd killed Flipclaw. Squirrelstar was always too busy with leader duties to have some personal emotional talks with her. It'd been easier to talk with Shadowsight ever since Squirrelstar had proposed to make Cross-Clan relationships within the code again, but he was too busy dealing with his own grief to help with her's and-

She was alone.

Bristlefrost stared through the desolate campsite  to see her family sitting in the sombre shadows. But yet, they did not show any grief or longing at her absence, they just chatted as normal. Bristlefrost turned away and departed into the night. 

Dark thorns and ebony mud filled the drapery of gloom. The moon's gaze on this sleeping forest was careless, and so she only wandered beside the glimmering waves. It was so strange, how this torturous grief could turn the abode Bristlefrost had known since she was born into a silent, black labyrinth. 

Bristlefrost kept wandering. She didn't look back or cry, she just wandered. She'd stricken her claws through the souls of such innocent cats, she'd let the stars and their negative fall into the void, and it was all for nothing. She knew she had to leave. 

A familiar voice called her name and struck her with the realization that she'd wandered into ShadowClan's part of the woods. She inched closer to the lake, until the dark waves were ready to swallow her paws whole. Ice-cold liquid soaked her from the splashes but she had to hide herself. 

"Bristlefrost?" a voice sounded from the tangled trees. Shadowsight leaped from the black mass of pines, his silhouette stumbling down until he stood with her on the moonlit sand. "What are you doing here?"

"Look, I won't be here long," she hissed. 

"But why are you here?" he asked. 

"I'm leaving the Clans," Bristlefrost replied. 

"And going where? Back into the wilderness to find another magic flower?" Shadowsight asked.

"I don't know. To a place where I can't hurt anyone ever again," she meowed.

"But Mapleshade is gone, isn't she?"

Bristlefrost's mouth sealed shut. Suddenly every word she could utter about the plight in her mind was just a dagger sliding up her throat. She didn't know why, but she could always feel her. She could feel the dark presence tainting her reality, she could feel the evil in her heart battling to take her over again, she could hear her whispering that vengeance was coming for her every day. That's how the she-cat knew it was time for her to run, so she turned away from him and continued to gallop through the labyrinth.

"Hey! Wait!" he hissed. She skidded and spun around, anger surging through her form and making her stand up like a beast in the darkness with malicious talons rooted in the earth.

"GO!" she snarled. Suddenly the revelation surged through her mind. She was right. Mapleshade was here. 

Shadowsight stumbled back, as though she'd just stabbed deep into his heart and he was rapidly losing balance in his shock. A cold feeling filled her stomach, her gut sinking in dread. Bristlefrost took a deep breath and let her claws root deeper into the earth, not in anger, but fear. 

"There you are!"

 Her head whipped to one side and stared at where the voice had come from. Ivypool, benighted, bounded out towards her. Fernsong and Thriftear stepped out and looked at her as well. "Where were you?" Thriftear asked. 

"I was trying to run away," she blurted out. "I was scared I'd hurt you again."

"Bristlefrost," Shadowsight sighed. "Mapleshade is dead. You saw her disappear. If you feel like she's still here, it's just your fear speaking."

"But what about those cats I killed? They're not coming back, are they?" 

"Nobody comes back from the dead. But it's not a reason to despair," Fernsong meowed. "Everyone has to go eventually. There is no miracle cure to grief, no magic remedy. But we all have to let things be sometimes, we just have to come to terms with the fact that they are gone and find the happiness in what you have without them."

Tears began to fill her eyes. She looked away and stared at the paling sky on the horizon, feeling the night air begin to warm around her as morning approached. Suddenly, ever since Rootspring's death, she felt a momentary glimmer of hope. It suffocated quickly. But it was there.

Thiftear stepped forward and pressed herself against her. Ivypool laid her head on her shoulder, Fernsong wrapped his tail around her, and Shadowsight buried his head in her chest. Bristlefrost felt that flicker of hope spark again. Her happiness hadn't come suddenly, but she was no longer blind to the road to healing.

"We'll always be there," Thriftear meowed.