The Shifting Winds

It was midmorning by the time Mintwhisker reached Windclan territory. She had spent the day before in Riverclan, trying to ignore the glares of the warriors and the voices that started as soon as she entered the Medicine Cat den. The kits' voices always carried farthest, and her keen ears could pick up their questions through the woven den walls. "Mama! Is that-"
She wasn't there for diplomacy. Two days ago, an apprentice in Windclan had been found on his back by the dawn patrol. His symptoms were strange, but they matched one other instance- previously, the only recorded case: Sootpaw, a Riverclan apprentice. Moons ago, the young tom had fallen inexplicably ill. In the beginning, the apprentice was able to lead a relatively normal life, although he occasionally lapsed into fits without much warning or reason. Over time, Sootpaw's health began to deteriorate, and despite trying every herb they had, Goldeneye and Fallowlight were unable to find a cure. The disease had eventually claimed his life.
Mintwhisker was determined to not let that happen to Aspenpaw.

The sun shone steadily overhead, but Windclan's territory was occasionally cast into shadow by thin, wispy clouds ushered by the breeze. The wind itself was highly irregular, changing from weak to deafening in an instant. More than once, the small Medicine Cat had been nearly blown over, and had only managed to stay on her paws thanks to the rigorous training she'd gone through as an apprentice- something that most Skyclan cats had to endure. Balance training was just a fact of life for the tree-dwelling cats. If one wasn't completely comfortable balancing in the trees, they weren't likely to last long in Skyclan.
Mintwhisker clutched her herbs tightly. The wind seemed to usher her up a small, daisy-spotted hill. When she reached the top, she was greeted with the sight of a familiar sprawling camp, filled to the brim with bustling warriors and scampering apprentices. Nodding to the patrol that had escorted her, she made her way down the grassy slope and ducked quickly into the Medicine Cat den.

"Aspenpaw," She sat by the young tom's side, her murky green eyes scanning his body, assessing the damage. There were several scratches- most likely caused by the convulsions -but overall, he seemed to be perfectly healthy. "I understand you hit your head while in the mountains. Can you show me where? Are there any symptoms you're experiencing?" She knew the gist of what had happened, but she wanted to be sure that she got the full story. Besides, it was always better to hear from the patients themselves.

Aspenpaw has not moved from his position, except to eat, in the two days since he was struck by a fall. His first one. It was assumed to be his first of many. indeed, he had contracted the falling sickness. He supposed that in the end, StarClan spared no one. Aspenpaw had assumed, like an idiot, that Finchstar would visit more than once, but he was unreachable. Brookclover was dead. Aspenpaw silently wished it were him. Though Briarpaw tried to give him herbs, he refused them. No cat who walked in and out phased him or stirred him. He simply laid on his side, legs outstretched, completely motionless. He watched an ant crawl around in front of his face sometimes. Once or twice, he cursed it all for not killing him. He knew he should've hunted near the gorge. If he had gone there, he might've fallen over right into the river below. He cursed Brookclover for stripping away his only friend of any life. He cursed Finchstar for abandoning him.

Mintwhisker's presence didn't exactly make him leap to attention. He kept his back to her.  For the first time in two days, his ear twitched. A smile dripping with bitterness crossed his face. "Unless you're carrying deathberries, I think you have the wrong guy," he said sweetly. "You didn't see what happened to me. No cat should be expected to carry on after that. I've never seen the looks of horror I saw on the faces of the cats who found me in my life." Deciding to amuse her for a while, he flipped over to face her, but did not sit up. "I can't believe they imported me a medicine cat from halfway across he forest. Is it that bad?" he asked with a comedic air, "But yes, Mintwhisker. The dog clocked me square in the face. He shook it off and I got the falling sickness. I've been walking a little kooky for a while now, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you what happened two nights ago. My brain is on fire. The cruel irony is that the dog was the one who got crushed by an avalanche. You should've seen it. Some good cats were in the thick of it. They went out in a blaze of glory."

His head lifted a little. "I was never a good warrior, but I was finally getting the hang of it. I had a chance to be useful, and I blew it. So, I digress... the deathberries?" Even in deep pain, his dark humor prevailed, if not became exaggerated. He laughed at his own jokes and let his head fall once more.

Mintwhisker frowned, ignoring the tom's words, she began to poke and prod the tom's stomach, sides, and neck. "Tongue out," She muttered, peering into the apprentice's throat before stepping back with a nod. The tom was, medically speaking, perfectly healthy.
The tabby medicine cat cleared her throat. "Your body is healthy- I'm afraid that whatever is causing these seizures is inside your brain, not a disease as I had previously thought." The taupe she-cat paused. There was no easy way to break the news to Aspenpaw, but she knew that he'd responded especially poorly to Briarpaw's sweet, nurturing manner. Perhaps, if she chose another route... "However, that isn't necessarily good news. As far as I know, medicine cats have yet to discover a way to cure any injuries if they're inside your head."

She stood, looking down at the silver tabby with a hardened expression. He wouldn't be able to get back on his feet if he was treated like a kit because of his injury. The world wouldn't be kind to him unless he could show everyone that he was strong enough to survive in the forest. "I'm forcing you to retire." She announced. "It's not safe for you to be out of camp on your own, and it'll only hinder your clan if you were to be escorted by a warrior at all times. You could put both yourself and others in danger. You will remain here, in this den, until I can figure out a way to predict your seizures. Then, you will be moved to the Elder's den. Any time you need to visit the dirt place or have any need to leave the camp, you will be escorted by a warrior and Finchstar or Swiftstep. will be notified. Any questions?"

Aspenpaw's face melted with shock and horror, as if witnessing a sudden death... his own sudden and unjust death. Tears began to flood his eyes as the medicine cat took on a brutish expression. This was no delicate flower of a she-cat, and she was trying to bully him into submission. His change of mindset was rapid and violent as he pulled himself to his paws and his angled eyes narrowed furiously. He saw her as an intruder, a pest, swarming around his head and prodding at him. He was never one to speak badly about SkyClan, since they were usually quite solitary and minded their own way, but she began to look strikingly like a malicious, purebred, tree-climber.

"Don't you tell me what I will and will not do!" he hissed indignantly. He felt foolish and kitlike, throwing a temper tantrum, but it was no longer a matter of disrespect. "I don't care if you talk to dead cats in your free time, you don't even know me! You don't know WindClan! You've never seen me before in your life, and I'm not going to sit here on my haunches while you waltz in and tell me what I am not capable of doing!"

Hardened by the rules Mintwhisker had laid out for him, he began to pace across the ground in front of his assailant. He scrambled to gather his thoughts as they twisted around in his troubled and stubborn mind. "I'll jump in the gorge this afternoon before I rot in the Elder Den. Who sent a cat from halfway across the StarClan-forsaken woods to try and diagnose me? I'm not frail! Does Finchstar know about this? Wait till Finchstar..."

With the last word, his heart sank like a stone. Finchstar probably put her up to this. Finchstar was too weighed down with grief to do anything by himself, not even tell his own apprentice that his illness was too great for him to be a warrior. His own mentor was too mousehearted to say anything himself. He hadn't even visited, and now Aspenpaw knew why. Finchstar wasn't his mentor anymore. The tears fell in large drops, slowly down his cheeks. He turned away from Mintwhisker, hiding his pain. "Please." I would rather die than face Finchstar's disappointment for eight more lives.

OOC: Sorry for the late/short reply, I had to finish my final school paper!

Briarpaw watched as the two cats started to bicker. He began to look for a place to intervene, a look of worry coming to his face as Aspenpaw spat a retort in Mintwhisker's face. "You wouldn't need to become an elder," he said loudly, making sure that the angry young tom could hear him. Briarpaw continued once he had both of their attentions. "I've been meaning to take a journey to the Moonstone for a while..." He took a deep breath. "We could ask StarClan if you could become Mintwhisker's apprentice, since I don't have my name yet. You could be WindClan's newest Medicine Cat." And maybe if whiel we're there, I can ask if I can receive my full name... He added to himself. "You don't have to be useless."

Mintwhisker's tail-tip twitched, tilting her head as she watched the young tom's reaction. "I don't have to know you." She said coolly. "I know that you'll be useless on a hunt and a burden during a battle. You simply can't become a warrior."
Her approach with Amberdawn had been almost the exact opposite. It made sense, Mintwhisker supposed, because the two cats were basically polar opposites. Amberdawn always reacted inward. Aspenpaw, on the other hand, was explosive in every sense of the word.
The taupe she-cat calmly waited for his outburst to end, suppressing a wince as the tom's shoulders began to shake. It took a massive amount of control to keep her face smooth and her paws still, but Mintwhisker wasn't a stranger to supression- she'd been forcing herself to not feel, to not care, ever since Tyr's death. She couldn't get emotionally attached (or be emotionally present) until she knew that the patient's life was no longer at risk.

Her notched ears twitched, and she turned her scarred face towards Briarpaw. Her apprentice? The she-cat turned back to Aspenpaw. "That is... a possibility." She said slowly. In reality, she'd considered making Aspenpaw her apprentice since before she left for Riverclan. As usual, Mintwhisker had turned to Amberdawn for advice- she hadn't received any kind of sign from Starclan, but the young tom didn't have any other options. Amberdawn, of course, had been all for it.
Mintwhisker wasn't worried about her first apprentice. She knew that the golden she-cat was more than capable of handling Skyclan in her absence. No, there was something about Aspenpaw that worried her, and the more he spoke to her, the more apparent it became. He was just like Sparrowpaw: they had the same cadence when they spoke, and the way they held themselves was nearly the exact same. Aspenpaw's jaw jutted out just as Sparrowpaw's had when she was being stubborn. Every time the tom moved it was like whiplash.

"I'll consider teaching you, Aspenpaw, but you must understand that my line of work isn't something that any cat can do. It takes a certain personality and seasons of work to even begin to earn your Medicine Cat name.
"I will not teach you if you refuse to learn- if you choose to become a Medicine Cat Apprentice simply because you have no other path to take, you won't last long." Her murky eyes flashed. She mustn't allow her paws to tremble yet... "That is, if you even want to be a Medicine Cat apprentice. It's a path that many cats don't wish to take."

Aspenpaw's heart stopped thumping in his chest when Briarpaw raised his voice. He suddenly cut in to offer a solution unheard of to him previously. He wasn't sure exactly what to feel. A voice in his head called the other tom crazy, but another voice told him to wait. With his eyes cast down, for the first time, his mind stopped buzzing. He had nothing to say. When Mintwhisker spoke, he met her gaze. She had a passion in her tone. This was her livelihood, everything she was and could be. The tom felt something stir within him, and the she-cat before him became a mirror. A cat who did her job well and was proud of it. Everything he wanted, but could never achieve. He wanted what she had found. He wanted to feel useful and proud.

He thought of how stupid it had all seemed when Finchstar had explained battles and territory to him all those moons ago, when he was simply Finchbreeze and everything was fine and the sun shined on their pelts. That smaller, more naive soul didn't understand it. So they kept to their own clans, but still managed to find a way to fight? With so little food in the forest, how was there any time to battle? Aspenpaw's mind buzzed for the first time that day. The things he dreamt of and pondered were bees in his chest and his ears, making him lightheaded. He liked the rush. Running the moors gave him no feeling comparable to the drumming from within. Finchstar sometimes called it "the game of wits."

The bees came back in the medicine den, and he understood that he never enjoyed being a warrior, deep in his gut. Seeing the pride of cats who spilled their blood for the moorland was more of a secondhand emotion for Aspenpaw. He always figured he was just lazy and stupid and a bad warrior for wanting to spend time with his clanmates and stroll the territory without thinking about rabbits and borders and enemies. It was tragic. Something was different now. Maybe it was StarClan knocking some sense into him, finally, but the apprentice didn't feel that being a medicine cat was his only option. His only option was retirement. Mintwhisker was merely a vessel by which he had a choice to make.

He had to choose to save himself. Aspenpaw swallowed hard and regarded his visitor. They were fundamentally different in every way, except one. They were both pulled by something, something that he didn't understand. Mintwhisker could have said no to Briarpaw, but she didn't.

With his outburst completely subsided, he became more serious. Sucking in a deep, trembling breath, he finally spoke. It had been many moments of silence. "Mintwhisker, I know we respect medicine cats for a reason. I know it's not easy. I know I will probably fail many times before I succeed, but, somehow..." His eyes flickered to the rolling moors, and highrocks far above them. "I feel like I've been meaning to do this all my life. If you would allow me, I wouldn't let you down. This is your decision." A smile cracked across his face. This had not happened since the accident. It felt good to let his teeth show as a teasing comment began to turn the gears in his head. "Even so, when we go to the Moonstone, I'd like to find out which dead leader authorized this, because I don't appreciate the ultimatum."

The change that came over the sarcastic, witty tom was striking. He was suddenly earnest, humble, smiling. Mintwhisker's tattered ears perked. So... She tilted her head, her scarred face unreadable. Aspenpaw was serious. Or desperate.
Or both.

Although she wanted to take the tom seriously, she had seen him lash out just moments before. Either he truly wanted to succeed at being a medicine cat, and he wanted to help his clan, or he was only accepting her offer as a way to escape from the Elder's den- something that was understandable, to be sure, but that meant that the young tom could potentially put his clan in danger. If he didn't dedicate his entire life to being a medicine cat, it could result in the death of countless Windclan cats. It was something the Skyclanner couldn't permit.
Mintwhisker blinked, her murky eyes narrowing. She wasn't given much of a choice, but she still managed to turn healing into her passion. Even if Aspenpaw didn't really want to be a medicine cat, hopefully she'd be able to form some sort of connection with him. Perhaps, if she knew his motivation for becoming a medicine cat, she'd be able to work with him. Then, she'd be able to begin their lessons in earnest.

OOC: sorry it's garbage, I just finished finals and i'm feeling a little frazzled ;;