Echoes of Reality [closed solo]

Her paws moved without her telling them to. They carried her up the ravine outside camp, winding through the territory aimlessly. They were tired, numb, and heavy. And they were webbed. But Dawngaze's RiverClan roots didn't protect her from the relentless downpour of rain that battered her face and back, fat drops of water that stung when she stepped out from the shelter of trees. The wind whipped the water against her heavy frame like thorn branches pulled back and released with every powerful gust. The saturated earth swelled and little streams of water gushed across the territory's gentle slopes, but the solitary she-cat did not avoid the dips and gullies where cold rainwater collected. She stepped in the puddles as absentmindedly as she stepped in the mud that would inevitably be washed away by the next pool she wouldn't bother to avoid. Tricolored tabby fur clung to her skin everywhere but the bare patches that had been ripped out in recent conflicts with predators and trespassers alike. Dawngaze cared little for these small injures; they were mere scratches. She'd suffered worse. Even now, soaked to the bone, joints in her back legs ached in ghostly memory of the flood that still stalked her dreams, just as she now stalked her hunting grounds. Only the light of distant lightning guided her. The moon and stars were covered by the thick thunderclouds that had rolled over the forest cats that morning, and between the battering rain and the deep midnight darkness, Dawngaze had nothing to follow but herself and the occasional flash of lightning. She should have been asleep in her dry nest with the other warriors, but maybe it was her ShadowClan half that drew her from her rest and called her by her name into the unknown.

The unknown, as it turned out, was Fourtrees. She could see the silhouette of the great oaks and the large rock where the most powerful forces in the territories converged once a moon. The trees' boughs groaned and trembled in the flurry, a wailing that could be heard all the way from the edge of the clearing. Dawngaze didn't dare to step farther than a foxlength from ThunderClan territory, leaving her exposed to the elements. The warrior sat on the slope and allowed the weather to pummel her without protest. All of her focus was internal; she hardly recognized the freezing cold sheets of water dripping into her eyes. She stared into the distance, looking but not seeing. In her mind's eye, Dawngaze pictured Hazelpaw's body, torn open and stiff with death. She should feel bad. Repulsion, of course, was natural at the sight and keenly felt by all parties involved in the discovery of the young cat's death. But the warrior knew that she should have felt something beyond that for kin of her kin, daughter of her only beloved sister. But how could Dawngaze allow herself to feel anything? Hazelpaw was dead. She was lucky to have been indifferent, or her heart would have shattered for the hundredth time in her life. She decided she didn't deserve the guilt and the shame of being empty. It wasn't fair to expect her to rend her heart over every misfortune because of her bloodline. Yes, if Oakstar and Dustcloud could love her unashamedly without being truly related, why should Dawngaze expect blood to matter at all?

A flash of lightning cracked through the clouds, illuminating the clearing, and Dawngaze saw her surroundings through open eyes for the first time in moons. The shadows cast by the trees and Great Rock were long enough to dance around her for a split second. A sinking feeling in her waterlogged body brought her low, crouching over the ground before her, as images in her mind once again distracted her from what was really around her. Flashes of her mother's brindled body lingered before her, one moment soft and curled around her, and the next moment lying prone in the clearing with bloodied wounds freshly torn into her. Brushgaze was a follower. She was innocent, even StarClan saw that. And yet the dead ancestors had seen it fit to kill her and all those like her because they were flawed. The fact that they'd had the gall to parade her mother in front of her as 'redeemed' in their eyes was infuriating, and Dawngaze's teeth bared against the memories of her mother greeting her with purrs and hushed words of love. The tabby shivered, shaking like the trees in the center of the clearing, not from the cold but from the sheer strength of the emotions that now flooded her. Dawngaze had been fighting the emotions since... put simply, she couldn't remember a time that she allowed herself to feel any of it. Surely she would have lost all respect in the eyes of her clanmates if she let her feelings stop her from being a warrior.

The flashes of lightning continued, and with each blindingly bright flash and deafening clap of thunder, Dawngaze remembered the perfection of her family on that dark red evening. She knew a peace then that had never again graced her. There were no enemies, only the stories of the foolish forest cats that lied and slandered and hurt everyone around them. There was no death, there was only her family, wrapped up sweetly in one nest. And there was her father who hated her but nevertheless lived. A hot, burning anger filled Dawngaze's stomach like a wildfire set loose on her innards. She didn't know who to blame more: Lichenmask, StarClan's failed messenger, or StarClan themselves, the authors of his foolish dreams. He was right, of course. The clans could never be at peace as long as filthy half-breeds and muddied ancestry pulled the warriors of one clan into loyalty for another. Her brother was called Duskkit, the end of an era of codelessness. She was Dawnkit, the beginning of a glorious new order. And together, they were everything their parents had ever fought against.

Of course blood mattered. It was the reason for her existence and she would carry StarClan's hatred for the rest of her days because of it.

"Will you look to the past, or to the future?"

Dawngaze, jumped, startled by the voice that called out to her. It was a deep, gravelly voice laden with meaning she could barely comprehend. It was a voice that echoed in her darkest, most upsetting nightmares. But it had always been in her mind; this voice called to her, here, in the open clearing in the middle of this Leaf-fall midnight. The thunder and lightning had stopped. Everything went completely dark. Dawngaze whipped her head around, standing to her paws, and peered at her surroundings with golden eyes as wide as she could open them in a fruitless bid to see through the shadows around her. She could only hear the heavy rain that pounded against her skin and her loud gasps spurred on by her terror.

"Who's there? Who's out there?!"

Silence and rain. Fast heartbeats. The smell of wet earth and fear-scent. Blood on the wind.

"DAWNGAZE!"

A streak of lightning split the sky and struck closer than any of the other bolts. The light cast over the gathering was violently red, and the voice and the thunder simultaneously crashed in the she-cat's flattened ears. A shadow of a cat long dead appeared atop the Great Rock, eyes glowing furiously and peering into her soul in just a split second. Dawngaze shrieked, terrified of what she saw, and scrambled backwards until she found her footing in the loose, wet grass on the hillside. Cold fear shot through her body and she streaked away from Foutrees, tears indistinguishable from the heavy raindrops that crashed into her face as she darted back through trees in a horrified silence.