Ashleap's Fall

Introduction

This is our land. It calls to us from the peaks of the mountains that stand watch like valiant warriors all the way down to the dormant moors that rustle in the night breeze when the breeze blows over them. This is the place where rivers cascade down from mountains like tears of joy; where trees hold each other in wooden embraces, standing strong against the endless relent of time.

Above all, this is our home. We alone know the tunnels that run like veins under its surface. We are the ones who cry over the waterfall, we hunt among the golden stalks of wheat in the wheatfield, we take the lives of its prey, and we lay our fallen ones to nourish the land that nourishes us.

We waged war across these landscapes once, we made our families here, and we kept secrets that were told only to the wind upon our final breath.

However, this old generation is fading away. Endless lifetimes have passed since this land was tread beneath my paws, and even the kin of my heart has watched his bloodline run dry. The old DragonClan is only alive in spirit.

Some say it would take lifetimes for us to explore this land, potentially dozens in a place where lives are short but stories are long. Only I could piece together the shards of past lives that cling to the pelts of the cats here like burrs, but now that I am gone, no one has seen like that for a long time.

My story is a long one, but it is not the one I come to you to tell. I come to tell the story of another kit who rose from the depths of a catastrophe and bore my curse.

I give it to you as a gift, so that if only for a short time, you may run with us through these forests.

I know I would give anything to roam them again.