Warriors AU: Sandstar's Quest

Chapter 8

"Wh-who are you?" Sandstar stammered. "What's your name?"

The strange cat looked at him blankly. "It's been so long since any cat spoke my name, I don't need it anymore." His eyes spoke to Sandstar of deep sadness; his voice ached with it so that Sandstar could hardly bear to listen.

"Do you come from Skyclan?" he asked, though he was almost sure what the answer would be.

The light brown tabby cat twitched his whiskers in surprise. "You know of Skyclan, then?"

"A little," Sandstar mewed. "I spoke with a warrior of Starclan. She told me that there were once five Clans in the forest, but Skyclan left when—"

"Left?" The Skyclan warrior's voice was full of contempt. "We didn't leave. The other Clans drove us out of the forest because they said there was no room for us anymore."

Sandstar stared at him. When he had spoken to Oakstar, she had let him believe that Skyclan had gone away of their own accord when the Twoleg monsters had invaded their territory. She never told him that the other Clans had driven them away. Surely the warrior code wouldn't allow it? Yet he couldn't suppress a nagging thought: wouldn't he want to give up any of Thunderclan's territory if another Clan had asked for it?

"Couldn't Starclan do anything to help you?" he asked.

"Starclan!" The Skyclan cat spat out the word, lashing his tail. "Starclan betrayed us. They allowed the other Clans to chase us out like rogues. When we left the forest, I vowed that I would never look to the stars again."

"A Clan without warrior ancestors?" Sandstar was bewildered.

"Our medicine cat still walked with them in dreams," the Skyclan cat told him. "And many of our warriors kept to the old ways. I never tried to stop them. They had lost their home; how could I take the warrior code away from them as well?"

The strange cat spoke as though he had been the leader of his Clan. But before Sandstar could ask him if this was true, the light brown tabby warrior straightened up and looked around. "Once we roamed over all this territory, patrolled our borders, and caught as much prey as we wanted. But then the Twolegs came." The throbbing note of sadness returned to his voice, raising every hair on Sandstar's pelt. "This was once our camp," he went on, indicating Dottie's garden with a sweep of his tail. "Where we are standing used to be the warriors' den. The Twoleg nest stands where our nursery was. Our apprentices' den was beneath ferns along the line of the fence, and under those bushes over there was where our elders slept." He sighed. "It was all so long ago..."

"Where is the Skyclan camp now?"

The light brown tabby cat stared at his paws. "Skyclan has no camp," he mewed quietly. "My Clan has broken apart and scattered."

Sandstar was puzzled. "Then there's no Skyclan anymore?"

The Skyclan warrior's neck fur bristled and he drew back his lips in the beginning of a snarl. "I did not say that. I said that our home has gone and my Clanmates have scattered. Some became rogues, and some went to live with Twolegs as kittypets. But Skyclan still lives, although the cats have forgotten their heritage and the warrior code."

Bewildered, Sandstar wondered how the other cats could insist Skyclan survived without any territory, if it had broken up and no cat knew the warrior code. What made a Clan if their home and heritage were gone?

"So why have you come to me?" he asked.

"Because you're the only cat who can help us," the warrior replied. He padded forward until he stood within a tail-length of Sandstar, and his faint, fugitive scent wreathed around the Thunderclan leader. "You must rebuild Skyclan before it is lost forever."