Cursed Are the Meek

Softly does the candle flicker

Idleness was a tight fit for Pipsqueak: he was a creature of twitching and sudden movement, and despite the pervasive feebleness of his limbs by the third day of his bedridden recovery he was almost mad with boredom.

This did however grant him ample opportunity to ponder his circumstances. And ponder he did. Extensively.

Particularly, he tormented himself by reliving his last talk with Lone Star, and her decision. It weighed constant in his mind. A feeling of guilt gripped him when he thought of leaving the others in ignorance, but that was only a part of his worry.

That miserable trip through the desert after all had made him realise two fundamental things:

How truly distant the iterators were from one another

How fragile his mission truly was.

It would take but a simple infected wound, or an unexpected encounter with a red lizard or vulture or even just a bad fall for him to die and the dream of a better future where sentient creatures and iterators worked in concert to be forfeit.
He simply could not afford to be the only one to know.

But what else could he do? Other tribes would never accept an alliance Lone Star had refused. Hell, she was the first chieftain to ever give him the time of day at all instead of treating him like an animal; and the only to one to accept him as a member of her clan.

His throat tightened, and he shifted uneasily under his woolen blanket.
He imagined leaving his body, he imagined soaring above the whole of the Wastes like an Echo. He flew over Shoreline's murky waters and through the barren islands suspended high enough to graze clouds; he saw the Citadel's rank, knotted vegetation; the hungry bloated things prowling Five Pebble's viscera.

Lastly, he made himself go back. To a tree, a warm nest; loving faces, now forever lost to time.
Pipsqueak remembered: crackles of electricity buzzing through his fur, slick bark under his claws as he scrambled for purchase. His sister's eyes going wide, his father's extended paw reaching out as the current dragged his only son away.

Finally, Pispqueak he saw himself: a lost child stumbling through the ravaged corpse of an empire, destined to die in squalor only to be reborn and sift through the same miserable remains over and over and over again.
Until the rotting metal had permeated the very air, at least. Until the plants all choked and died. Until the whole planet was but a barren waste and the Void Sea, with its sweet promise of oblivion.

He saw all of it, and it finally hit him that he could not honor Lone Star's orders.

So he imagined all the Clan's dear faces: impulsive Red Wind, who'd been his first friend. The healer Long Wave, who'd patched him up more times than he could count and to whom he owed his life. Lone Star, his mentor, who had given him a home to come back to for the first time since he'd lost his family.

The young slugcat beheld them, and in his heart of hearts bid them all goodbye.