Wounds and Epiphanies [c]

Frostednight had carried her badger back to camp to show off her prize proudly. As soon as she came back, enjoyed the oo's and ah's, she was instructed to go see Fuzzybelly. Blood still pouring out of her face and shoulder wounds - but less so - she still felt fine. However, she knew that she needed treatment of some sort. So, she walked into the den without a greeting. Fuzzybelly had his back turned to the entrance, so she simply stood there. The blood began to pool around her slightly, but yet she remained silent. In her mind, she was playing back the excellent battle, the heroic tale that could quite possibly be the talk of ShadowClan. It would sure be nice to be recognized as a fearless fighter, versus just the quiet weirdo everyone avoided.

Fuzzybelly had been doing his best, but he had a terrible sinus headache. He could barely smell but was not one to complain. Some of the things he saw as a medicine cat, he was thankful not to smell sometimes...

He kept it to himself. After Froststar passed, StarClan help him, the medicine cat was petrified of leaving his Clan, especially to some horrific respiratory infection. Nightstar was already trying to get his leadership underpaw, his deputy Leopardsun didn't need to worry about him either. He could handle it.

Call it sick dreams, call it sick anything, he was having the most bizarre dreams. Perhaps there was something afoot? StarClan loved finding patterns. Even the smallest details meant something, which only drove the fluffy tomcat even more crazy. He had been having these dreams since the medicine cat meeting; that was half a moon ago. Clearly there was something he needed to intuit, but what?

All he could remember was pitch black, a thunderous crack behind him, turning to see red lightning in the sky, streaking into the depths of the sky.

He cleared his throat, trying to ready his stores. A very familiar smell hit his nose.

Blood? I haven't been able to smell anything in forever...

Wait... blood?

He swiveled his head to see the marred face of a senior warrior; Nightstar's former apprentice.

"Great StarClan, come in, come in! We got to stop that right away."

Fuzzybelly snatched every absorbent thing he could think of to stop the bleeding, trying to sop up the excess with moss. Goldenrod and dandelions were next to him as he tried to clean it off of the warrior.

"Frostednight, was it? What happened?"

The blood had not been fully taken off, and he was doing his best to get it out of her pelt, but that would take a lot of moss and a lot of time...

Frostednight allowed the medicine cat to work on her without complaint. Truthfully, she had never needed him before. The warrior stared back with her mismatched eyes, the contrasting colors so striking yet emotionless and guarded. She leaned down to allow an easier reach before replying in her gruff voice. "Badger. Right of Passage. His pelt is mine now." It stung, the wounds and she grimaced as the medicine cat pressed in. The fur on her neck and face had begun to clump with the blood and was sticky against her skin. It'll be such a pain to clean out, but the pride of her accomplishments was worth the time and taste.

Fuzzybelly clicked his tongue and wiped off the blood. Stars, there was so much of it, how was this warrior still upright?

"Rite of passage, huh?"

He was going to have to talk to Nightstar about this. This was the second warrior that was sent to him looking like they were struck by a Twoleg monster. It was lunacy, and come leafbare, he wouldn't have the cobwebs, marigold, or much anything else to keep patching cats up like this, especially gathering supplies solo. That, and Clans tended to get tense in the midst of leafbare, and having half of ShadowClan covered in poultice when war could break out was a fool's errand.

Luckily, there was some water that he could use that gathered in a small enclave in the back of the den. Usually, patients drank from it, but using clean moss to get the last of the blood off this warrior would be worth it.

"This should be the last of the moss-pushing, you've been great."

He took the water and rinsed off the crusted blood, exposing a gnarled gash by her neck. It wrapped along the side of her face, streaking like iterant clouds along her flank. Tendrils reached out over her whole flank, little claws warped around her fur. The wound had already clotted, and the crusted over parts were bulky and a deep carmine, hot fire glowing from her pelt.

I've seen this before.

Fuzzybelly couldn't help but look at it. He tilted his head, pensive.

"I, I hate to keep you. This looks like something really important."

The medicine cat chewed on some of the goldenrod, still staring at the gash in her neck.

"Do you ever have things happen, where you know it has to mean something, but you have to figure out what it is?"

He placed the first dabs of poultice in the center of the wound, his fern green eyes looking back at her mismatched ones before studying the wound again.

"Medicine cats, we see patterns. All the time. We visit the Moonstone every moon, we meet StarClan. They tell us what they know, but sometimes, we get dreams too. And, not to scare you, but I've seen this pattern before. I'm trying to figure out why."

Frostednight was taken aback at Fuzzybelly's words. Confused, even. She hadn't even noticed the gash in her neck and down her pelt, and she glanced to look at it. It looked like a lightening strike. Her gaze turned back to the medicine cat and shrugged, causing herself to wince from the pain. "A lot of times I guess. When I went to the Moonstone, I didn't talk to a StarClan cat. It was just a weird dream. I ponder that a lot, if that is what you mean." Her voice was skeptical with a bit of confusion. Why was he asking her this? It was weird for any cat to ask about her, besides maybe Nightstar, and it felt odd to actually tell him. She and the medicine cat had had minimal interactions, nothing more than passing clanmates. The silent kind, of course.

It was Fuzzybelly's turn to be surprised. "I've taken a lot of apprentices to the Moonstone, and I haven't heard of an apprentice getting a dream from StarClan. They may be visited by one cat, sure, but a dream? That's unusual. Not a bad thing, I didn't say that. Just, something I haven't dealt with before."

Who was this warrior, sitting before him? He was the one that took her to the Moonstone, all those seasons ago. She had said nothing when she had awakened; though she didn't talk much at the time either. She wasn't exactly chatty now.

"You're free to talk to me about the dream, if you'd like. If you'd rather keep it to yourself, that is your right. But, Frostednight, I can't say this enough-- I haven't heard from any of the medicine cats about getting dreams like that, even when they were appointing their own apprentices, even when they became medicine cats. What happened to you that day is remarkable."

Fuzzybelly paused, forming his thoughts.

"When I was appointed as a medicine cat apprentice, it was back when the Dark Forest occupied the Clans. I was a kit; I had never seen Silverpelt before when Basilbloom asked me to be her apprentice. Call it stupidity, call it naiveite, call it what you want. But I wanted life to be different than what it was at the time."

"It took me a long time to train. I was little, and my memory needed work. We waited and waited and waited... then, StarClan came back. Like a whisper, then in the Great Battle."

"When it was time for me to be named a full medicine cat, I realize now, my mentor was dying. I had no idea how soon she would be gone. And when she passed, less than a half moon after my ceremony, I have been the lone medicine cat ever since."

"I've seen great things; when the flood happened, I trained the two medicine cats in SkyClan. I've helped a lot of people between injuries and kittings. But also, I've seen a lot of hurt, too. Medicine cats walk different paths than warriors. We're asked to rise above Clan rivalry for the welfare of all Clan cats. Basilbloom found coneflower, which saved lives in all the Clans. We have such power to do good. But it's a lot of responsibility."

Fuzzybelly finished applying the poultice to the lightning scar. Everything else seemed to be fine.

"The placement of this, right on your neck? That would have killed just about any cat. But you're still here, and thank StarClan for that."

"What do you think of all this?"

Frostednight didn't jump to telling Fuzzybelly about her dream, but a small twinge plucked in her chest when Fuzzybelly said she was special and unique. Fuzzybelly must only be a few more moons than her, if not less, if he was a kit during the Dark Forest invasion. How did she miss that? Her brain whirled at a thousand miles an hour, whispers screaming in her head while he continued talking like he heard nothing. The medicine cat spoke of greatness, and she was nothing great. He had done so much more than her. After he finished speaking she let the silence hang in the air, using the final seconds to allow her to decide how much she would say. Should she really be dead? Was Fawn still protecting her? Was something else? Frostednight knew she couldn't tell him about Fawn; any positive mention of the Dark Forest warriors was like uttering the worst possible words to ever be spoken. When they left, it was never spoken about or discussed in any sort of positive light in the quiet, fear - driven whispered talk around camp. Nor could she tell him about the whispers in her head that she still couldn't quite comprehend.

But he wanted to know about her dream. Because, to him, she was special. "Well, I was running in the swamp. I couldn't ever get out of the swamp. It felt like I was being chased by whispers that got louder and louder until they were screaming. My body collapsed because I could no longer handle the voices. I'm not sure if it really means anything. I haven't figured it out yet." Frostednight shifted uncomfortably with the weight of spilling one of her deepest secrets. Well, everything about her was, but this was a particularly vulnerable one.

He sat next to her, listening to her dream. She seemed so uncomfortable with all this. He couldn't imagine being a warrior and getting dreams like this, with no one to share it with or a mentor to talk through it.

"Well, voices normally try to tell us things. It sounds like they weren't easy to understand, though... do you hear voices a lot?"

"It could be a lot of things. Feeling overburdened, feeling trapped, but the voices, were they nice? Or were they angry?"

With dreams, the more information, the better. That was why the red lightning dream vexed him so much; it was literally one image and pitch black the rest of the time. Details helped work through the meanings. If she could remember anything else about this... it could shed light not just on her dream, but the red lightning dream too.

Frostednight was feeling hesitant to open up to Fuzzybelly more and uncomfortable with the questions. "Well, I hear whispers all the time. They're not angry, I just can't understand them. The whispers in my dream were not angry either, I just couldn't understand them too. It sounded like they wanted to be understood but I couldn't." The warrior avoided eye contact as she said this, looking down at the ground. She had never dreamed of openly admitting such a thing to any soul, dead or living. Mostly because she couldn't be convinced they were not whispers from the Dark Forest... But... What if they were actually from StarClan all this time? Could she have been living in fear for no reason?