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The water was green by the shore and muddy.
The sunset moved Frostdawn, violet and indigo and streaked with pink petals, dusty clouds, the golden sun brilliant and blinding in its fight against dusk. A tender breeze stroked her whiskers, and she squinted tight against it, folding her ears to force out the lapping waves.
Underpaw was muck and cold, and clogged the feathery fur between her pads. She wanted to relish in, to feel a spark of inspiration and contentment. Her heart stirred lazily in her chest and then gave up.
The bitterness and anger melted away when she stood with RiverClan, circling her and yowling her new name, pressing their pelts to hers, washing her in their sharp, sweet scents, reclaiming her as their own. With the rage gone, she expected elation. It was there for that celebratory evening. She held her tail high and pranced around camp like she belonged. And then she retired to her nest, and woke up the next dawn, and found herself still surrounded by those clanmates who’d had to reclaim her.
She’d found herself unable to dredge up forgiveness- gritting her teeth, legs shaking, drowning under their kind and apologetic smiles, wrinkling her muzzle, and fighting the urge to dig her claws into her ears when they purred as she passed.
Why now? She didn’t need them now. She had herself. She had StarClan.
Being angry was motivation. Being wronged and mistrusted inspired every pawstep she’d taken since leaving the nursery. Now her steps were unsure, sinking into the cloying, reed-sprouting silt by the shore. She wanted to be angry, but it wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. She was tired.
Podlight had pressed his shoulder to her muzzle before she slipped into the stream, teasing her for abandoning the full-moon festivities they were planning. Cheery cries and excited chirping sang her farewell from camp.
And now she sat by the lakeshore, green and muddy.
Her chin quivered while she groomed her tail. You had to groom every single day. And then the next day, you had to do it again. Every day. Your clanmates wanted to help, but they hadn’t groomed you in a season, and you’d scarcely lived through four of those. It was a natural instinct to tend, soothe, and groom, and it made you feel like the sun crying out for mercy as the horizon swallowed him.
Mothwing was coming. Her scent was as familiar as Frostdawn’s own. She wasn’t the type to creep or tiptoe, and she approached confidently, churring a greeting. Frostdawn tensed more than she thought possible, unable to look over her shoulder or mew hello.
“Moping again?” Mothwing asked dryly.
Frostdawn thought she heard her own canines crack against each other. “Yes,” she snipped, tilting her chin up.
“You’re angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with any cat,” Frostdawn forced her tongue to work. “I’m just tired this evening.”
“Floatkit’s healing well,” Mothwing offered. Frostdawn’s paws itched to reach for the ugly, tingling scar beneath her chin. “She’ll be apprenticed alongside her littermates.”
“I’m thankful,” Frostdawn offered back. She liked that Mothwing didn’t talk about things- now, at least. Or maybe she hated it. She wasn’t sure what anything felt like.
“I,” Frostdawn said, as a full sentence.
“Certainly,” Mothwing agreed. She didn’t break Frostdawn’s view of the lake. Frostdawn hadn’t looked back, and Mothwing hadn’t come any closer.
“I want you to talk about your brother.”
“Which one?”
Frostdawn looked over her shoulder.
“I have two.”
Frostdawn didn’t say what she wanted to say: you had two.
“Tadpole drowned when we were kits. I wonder what his warrior name would have been.”
“Tadpole’s a mouthful of a prefix.”
Mothwing pretended not to laugh. “What is there to say about Hawkfrost? I can’t remember the shape of his muzzle.”
“Why did he lie to you?”
“You’ll have to learn to stop speculating.” Mothwing’s amber eyes took her in so earnestly she had to turn away and face the burning sun. “Kin means little- far less than clanborn cats believe it does. I have no kin in RiverClan, and I’ve lost nothing for it but pain. Hawkfrost lied to every cat; I wasn’t special.”
Frostdawn breathed slowly, trying to release the tangles in her muscles that kept her stock still in the marshy shallows. A gust of wind splashed water across her paws, rinsing the clay before it receded, and she sank deeper. Frostdawn was special. Hawkfrost and Curlfeather were nothing alike. Curlfeather loved her- she thought. “After he died, did you want to leave RiverClan? Did you have a mother?”
Mothwing snorted. “Did you want to leave RiverClan?” she countered.
“Never,” Frostdawn meowed fiercely, feeling it with every strand of fur on her pelt. Though it had often been a lie, it wasn’t now.
“Never,” Mothwing agreed. “I wouldn’t want a life without you, Frostdawn.”
Frostdawn felt her chest tighten and her eyes start to burn, and she raised a paw over her forehead to block the sun. Mothwing, carefully, with the patience of a trained warrior preparing to snatch a sturgeon that might turn them into prey if they weren’t undaunted, broke the distance between them and leaned against her apprentice. They traded sticky mud and fluffy typha between their gold and silver coats.
“I wanted to die.” I want to die. Her heart whispered. Sometimes. Maybe not right now. Those thoughts came and went like a minnow flashing between her paws, nonthreatening, but nothing worth catching either. A feeling struck her like a monster, hot and painful and inescapable. “I want my mother.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes I do,” she whined. “I want my mom. I do.”
“Curlfeather is dead. You have your clanmates.”
“I love them all so much. I want them to love me. They love what I’ve done.” Her voice was soft, trembling despite her weak effort to steady it. She wanted to see Curlfeather whole, pelt unripped and unstained, when she mingled with her clanmates.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I always do,” she mumbled. She deflated, panting. Her shoulders shook. Mothwing didn’t press closer, but she didn’t pull away.
“When does it…” she reached for the right words and couldn’t find anything. “Stop?”
Mothwing grunted. “It doesn’t.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Frostdawn mewed.
“I know,” Mothwing replied. “Will you be back in camp with us by moonhigh?”
“No.”
The water was green by the shore and muddy.