**OLD** Valley Cats: Of Sky and Stone 1- Daughters and Darkness

Chapter Seven

 Twisterpaw blinked rapidly against the bitterly cold, still air. This was real pain, unlike any cold she had ever felt before. It wasn't all real, of course. She had been having weird dreams all night. But in the dense bluish fog there were no flying mice or talking snowflakes. There was only an eerie mist and a deafening silence, as far as the eye could see and as far as the ears could hear. But this was so real. It had to be a dream, though. Right?

 The lucid cold bore deeply into her fur. Twisterpaw stepped back in an effort to avoid the harsh prickling, only to find she couldn't feel her paws and tail. She could only watch in terrified fascination as the bluish, frozen-over grass shifted around her.

 She looked around frantically as she remembered a tale Stormsong loved to torment the kits with. The Frozen Forest, where evil cats went when they died. It was exactly like this- cold, creepy, lots of mist, and...

 Twisterpaw crouched low when she saw it: the outline of a tall and slender cat. She was frozen in panic, unsure whether to risk running away from whoever was approaching her. If she could miraculously unstick her paws from the permafrost without them falling off, she wouldn't make it a few steps before the strange cat would catch up to her.

 She flattened her ears and hissed as the mysterious stranger glided closer. His slender paws effortlessly brushed the grass before he stopped, barely a tail-length in front of her. His dark gray pelt reflected the sinister glow from above as he leaned over the apprentice, who hissed again.

 Twisterpaw dared to look up, but was met with a shock. "Crowpelt? Wha- why am I dreaming about you?" she fumbled over the echoes her voice set off. It sounded like many cats whispering from far away.

 The tom glared at her through his ghostly blue eyes. "This is no dream, Twisterpaw. Haven't you heard this story already?" he leaned closer, sending a fresh chill in her direction. "This is where evil cats go when they fall die, or..." he trailed off ominously.

 Twisterpaw shivered intensely, recalling the elders' chronicles. She felt a familiar spark of anger as she struggled furiously against the frozen mud that imprisoned her paws. "But I'm not evil. You know that, right? There's got to be some mistake." she growled, trying to shake off the icy grip climbing through her bones. The mud had already consumed her paws and was working on her legs as she struggled furiously. 

 A slight breeze agitated the pale grass, which brushed against her chest. In her fury, the apprentice bit at it. The frosted blades were bitter, bringing a new wave of cold that radiated to the tips of her ears.

 Crowpelt silently eyed her. "Oh, and by the way, anything that freezes and falls of in here, well, it freezes and falls off in real life." he warned.

 Twisterpaw's head shot up. "Really?" she said in a panic.

 Her mentor seemed to take amusement from her predicament. "Oh, who knows. Want to stick around and find out?" he said menacingly.

 Before the apprentice could say anything, she felt a sharp pressure on her nose. The edge of her vision wavered for a moment, but then returned to her nightmare.

Crowpelt stood back, tilting his head to the side. "Looks like you're waking up. I'm just gonna... go..." he turned on his heel and vanished into the mist. Twisterpaw froze in place, stunned. Did her mentor just leave her to die here? And why was her nose hurting so much?

 Her racing mind was smothered by a wave of confusion as her dream unfocused for a few moments. Was she waking up? Dying? Being thrown into another nightmare?

 Everything straightened out just as quickly as it had ripped apart, although Twisterpaw was only surrounded by darkness. Before she could even register where she was, her world crumbled in on itself and she fell into the unimaginably dark void.