Run Away To Mars [solo]

Ever since Burdockroot was a kit, Frostedkit, she felt like an extra. An outsider. Someone that nobody noticed, even as she stood in front of them. Truly noticed. Especially when she was just a warrior, she was a nothing. A ghost amongst the clan. She was not anybody’s confidant, she was not someone’s crush, she was not the someone that a single cat brought their prey to eat with. Nightstar’s meals felt like his attempt to force himself to include an outcasted warrior into camp.

Burdockroot had respected that. He had tried his best, despite her unappealing nature to make her seem like an integrated member of the clan. As her mentor, it was only his duty, correct? Those forced meals and her time as an apprentice and warrior under Nightstar had slowly and surely created a sense of respect and something of a sort of loyalty to the leader.

But that was gone now. Mostly, anyway. She now saw him as he was and will always be.

While she changed, he stayed stagnant. Or worse, changed like the leaves change in Leaf Fall before Leaf Bare. The ugly crispness before the harsh bareness.

Fuzzybelly had seen her. Truly saw into her soul for the first time. He had seen her scars, her marks. Saw a cosmic specialness to her that no cat had dared to question. He wanted her, and he wanted her as herself. Her new mentor’s bubbliness and friendliness had chipped the first chip in the icy wall that was Frostednight, turning her into Burdockroot.

But he left her. Disappeared off into nothingness. Not even in StarClan, he was just gone. Forcing her to fight herself, with herself, and others all alone in the nothingness void of her life and head. The only cat that truly saw her was gone.

Iceheart – no, Pineblossom now – she saw Burdockroot but her friendship wasn’t a friendship of pleasure, it was a friendship of pure pity. Pity Burdockroot, she doesn’t have friends so I must talk to her. Pity Burdockroot, she has no love like the one I hold. Pity Burdockroot, she holds the clan up with her herbs alone. Pity Burdockroot, she doesn’t know how to change. Pity. Pity. Pity.

Pity was what she gave Pineblossom when her kits arrived dead. Burdockroot had tried everything to save them – despite her disgust with kitting – but in the end, they were destined for the stars before they tasted air. Burdockroot had looked down to Pineblossom’s laying form to return the pity Pineblossom had kindly extended towards her moon after moon. Pity, Pineblossom.

Through it all, the whispers had kept her company. Unable to understand them, yet at the same time always making sense. A constant stream of thoughts, just on the other side of a creek as the wind brushes past. They had been with her since birth, her friends, her world. But they had started leaving her too. They had slowly become nothing but… Whisps of feathers now. Drowned out but the disgusting and utter void of silence. She shouldn’t miss them, and yet in a way she does. If they left her, who else would she have left?

Nobody. She was destined to be a nobody. Since a kit, Burdockroot was a ghost.

Cats came and went from her den. They told her what was wrong, she fixed them, they left. End of story. There was no ‘just to chat’ stop ins, there was no ‘hey, come eat with us Burdockroot. I have a frog for you for pulling that thorn out of my paw.’ Even as a medicine cat, she was nothing more than a necessary stop. A necessary evil. A necessity to continue ignoring her. Grit your teeth and bare it.

She should have ran when she could. All the way back when she was the freshly named Frostednight. Slipped off into the darkness like she had planned. Nobody would have missed her. It would have taken days for them to notice. Redice still would have killed because it wasn’t like her observations made a single difference in the outcome. Nightstar would have done nothing about him without her, just like he did with her. Pineblossom would still have come mates with Forestbreeze without her; her kits would have still died without her. Fuzzybelly would still have left without her.

Her entire reality would have continued without her. There was no legacy left behind, there were no tales to be told by the elders to kits. Her star after her death would go unnoticed and quickly fading away like a burst of flame that wears itself out too quick. Nobody would find her star. Nobody would miss her in the end when she ran out of oxygen…

“Hey, Burdockroot… Are you okay?” The simple question broke the medicine cat out of the trance she was in, sending her crashing down from the stars and back to the ground in an instant. Her head turned to the cat sitting beside her, sitting in her den sorting herbs in quiet companionship. Harriertalon. The sight of the she-cat that had worn the first soft spot in her heart sent a wave of pleasant calmness.

Without her, Harriertalon would have died by that badger. Without her, Harriertalon would have never killed that badger with one eye to find a strength in herself Burdockroot has yet to find. Harriertalon, who looked to her to teach her the way of herbs instead of claws, the way she had to find herself.

The overwhelming sense of platonic love forced a small, genuinely warm smile to Burdockroot’s maw and she… purred. A strange sensation in her forever-still throat. Everything slowly and yet all at once clicked in that moment and she felt at home. Right now. In this den. With Harriertalon. The one single cat that Burdockroot would breathe her final breath for. The closest thing Burdockroot will ever have for a daughter.

“Yes.” Burdockroot purred, her tone actually whimsical as she gives a single nod. “I think I am just fine.”