Redpaw's Moonstone Journey

Redpaw's sleep had been fitful at best that night. He tossed and turned, landed on his denmates a few times, and apologized to probably everyone else sharing the apprentices' den. Usually the ginger tom had no trouble at all falling asleep; he'd been known to conk out at the drop of a feather. However, tonight was no normal night. Fawnshine's quiet voice sent a shock of nervousness through his typically solid heart. Tonight he would meet with StarClan. He bit his tongue for once instead of responding at his usual volume - if he woke everyone again an apology wouldn't be nearly enough. He crept through the mound of sleeping apprentices and came out to face the medicine cat.  The herbs at his paws didn't look particularly appetizing, but they were what he was meant to eat, and so down the gullet they went. He shivered at the taste.

With something that kind of looked like his usual gung-ho expression, he affirmed, "I'm ready!"

The journey felt both long and short as they approached the entrance to StarClan's den: Mothermouth. So distracted was he with his eyes upon the long, stony teeth - its name fit it well, it looked like the jaws of an angry snake and so seemed ready to swallow them whole - that he nearly missed Fawnshine's instructions. "Yeah, i'll stick close!" His voice cracked an octave higher and echoed through the tunnel in a rather embarrassing fashion, so instead of speaking any further he merely cleared his throat and followed behind the medicine cat as she led the way.

It was a tunnel dark and at times cramped, his broad body brushing against the cold and damp walls. After what felt like forever Redpaw realized the tunnel was getting brighter again. Did the tunnel lead outside again? No, it didn't. Another turn and their path opened into a tall cavern with what seemed to be a piece of the moon itself glimmering at its center. "Woah."

Touching the stone he understood, but was he really going to see StarClan? Unsure if he could even fall asleep, he approached the glowing stone and pressed his nose to it, settling down to wait until drowsiness took over.

---

Everything was really, really bright. Like blindingly bright. Redpaw found himself in a sunlit grove, for a moment confused as to how he got there. Was this StarClan? Was this place really filled with dead cats? In any case, this part looked a lot like ThunderClan territory, if that was possible. Weird. He sat up on his hind paws to gaze about. He was both excited and nervous to talk to someone long dead and buried. What would they have to say? ...Would it be someone he knew? That thought sent a complicated feeling through his gut. While he would love to speak with his father again, perhaps it would be more cruel to speak this once more and never, ever again until he himself died. He didn't think he could keep from telling his mother either, even if speaking about what happened during a moonstone journey was taboo. "Hello?"

It had been a while since she was called upon. Recently she'd felt... tired. Stretched a little bit thin. Perhaps it was because she had passed so far out of living memory--too insignificant for elders' tales, too much of a romantic failure to have any bloodline in the forest--that her stars were beginning to fade. And indeed, the she-cat looked a little bit paler than others who had passed more recently. It had been harder and harder to find Flamestripe, who suffered from the same predicament she was in. They had simply been here so long, and had been so unimportant during their lives. Two insignificant warriors in ThunderClan's storied past. ...How much longer would she even be here? Would her consciousness simply cease to exist?

Such ethereal thoughts were wholly unlike her. Turtlepelt waved them off, instead making her way to the Moonstone meeting grounds with a renewed sense of purpose burning in her chest. Right now, she was needed. An apprentice needed advice from her. ...Apparently. The young warrior was uncertain what advice she could possibly have to give, given how little she'd truly been able to do during her life. But again, she shook out her faded pelt, and instead settled down to wait. She had become remarkably good at that recently, if only because she was finding herself less and less restless. Compared to when she had been alive, she needed very little. As she awaited the apprentice's arrival, she found herself glancing around her surroundings. Tall trees, light dappling the ground, the deep smell of undergrowth and distant call of birds. ThunderClan territory. ...Actually, this looked very similar to the place where she had died. Were the stars playing a trick on her? Well, the joke was on them, because this was actually very relaxing. She missed her home dearly. It was nice to feel alive again--even in any bare semblance of the term.

Thankfully she did not have to wait long. Redpaw showed himself sooner rather than later. He blinked around, seeming stunned by the glaring sunlight and probably overwhelming sensation of uncanny familiarity that the grove emanated. The leaf-patterns that the mixture of shade and sunbeam created on the ground was in fact the perfect camouflage for her. However, she shifted--taking a step forward--and the illusion of loneliness vanished. She appeared a stocky and muscular tortoiseshell, built powerfully like most with ThunderClan heritage. Though she was half kittypet, it wouldn't show in anything about her. That half of her had been left behind long ago. Dark brown was the main color on her pelt, though it was mottled with just enough alternating tones to make her nigh-invisible before she stepped into a patch of sun. Deep forest-green eyes peered out of a round, soft-whiskered face, meeting Redpaw's gaze with an evenness and steadiness she had never quite possessed in life. One could almost believe that she was alive, if not for two things. The first was that bright stars poked through her fur, shimmering ever so slightly with every motion, proving her station as one of Silverpelt's dedicated ancestors. And, when she moved, another thing was apparent. She was translucent. Far from the opacity of a living cat's fur, flesh and bones, her spirit offered a vague imitation of the same that would be shattered by a close look. The tall oak trees behind her were far sturdier than she, seeming almost to be a part of her before a gentle movement would prove them to be the background and her to be almost intangible. It was a strange dichotomy; wisdom of the ages was evident in the fading edges of her pelt, and yet the youth she had never been able to grow out of shone deeply in her eyes.

"Hey there, Redpaw." A young, friendly voice piped up from the mostly-visible warrior. "It's nice to meet you! My name's Turtlepelt. I used to be a warrior of ThunderClan... many moons ago." She let out a huff that was halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "It's probably pretty obvious, actually. Really, it's a bit embarrassing. I used to be proud of my looks, you know? And now there's a lot less of me to look at!" She shook her head. Her thin tail curled around herself, seeming almost to disappear, when she sat down as far into the sunlight as possible. "Anyway, it's nice to meet ya. Have any questions for me?"

Some part of him wasn’t actually expecting to see someone appear, so Turtlepelt’s entrance made him jump a little. “Ah! Hello!” He definitely hadn’t spoken an octave higher than usual! Very cool, Redpaw. Ahem. Feeling a bit embarrassed, he moved to face the ghostly ThunderClan warrior.

“Do you - are you - have you - sorry, I’m not used to talking with, uh, with dead cats.” He paused, realized what he said, and looked off into the distance. “I guess that’s true of most cats besides like, medicine cats or maybe like, prophets. And I’m not either of those things I think.” The ginger tom shook his head and planted a paw down like he was trying to ground himself. As best as he could in a place where he wasn’t entirely sure if it was even real or just a really, really immersive dream. “I’m sorry, I’ll start over.”

He closed his eyes for a moment - before quickly opening again, wondering if that could somehow cause him to wake up if he wasn’t careful. He decided to just come out with it before he tripped over his words again, practically shouting when he really didn’t need to. In one breath he said, “Didyouevercausetroubleforyourleaderoncompleteaccidentlikeyoureallydidn’tmeantobutyougotsoexcitedinthemomentanditwasonlyafterthatyourealizedyoucan’tundoit?!” Translation: “Did you ever cause trouble for your leader on complete accident like you really didn’t mean to but you got so excited in the moment and it was only after that realized you can't undo it?!”

Dead silence. Stars, this was embarrassing. It was a good thing his fur was already red, right? That’s what he told himself. While staring at the dirt.

Turtlepelt would have talked with anyone if it meant being wanted, being needed. But she couldn't help but be glad that it was Redpaw who she had been chosen for. His eagerness and stumbling made her laugh--a laugh that was still deceptively full of youth, full of life. One could have been fooled into thinking that she was still just a young warrior in the prime of her youth, with many moons ahead of her, were it not for the way that the trees behind her rippled in her visage as she laughed. Her half-transparent, half-star-studded face screwed up in mirth. "Yes, actually I have," she said, a warm smile sitting upon her face. "Several times, as a matter of fact. I messed things up pretty often, I'm afraid. It was almost a specialty of mine."

The StarClan she-cat settled into herself, flicking an ear and grooming her near-invisible whiskers for just a moment before telling her story. "A long, long time ago, there was a wildfire in the forest," she began, her voice low and engaging. She would have loved to tell a story like this to her own kits at some point... if she'd ever had a chance to bear any of her own. "It hit ThunderClan especially hard, since our territory is covered in so many trees. The fire reached all the way to our camp. In a panic, Duskfall--the deputy--called for everybody to evacuate. Everyone was supposed to get themselves out, especially the apprentices. Only warriors would be allowed to run back and retrieve any who had gotten stuck in the debris or were too small or old to carry themselves." Her green eyes glimmered. "I was still only an apprentice at the time, if I remember correctly--and a particularly foolhardy one, at that. I did whatever I thought was best in the moment without even a moment's hesitation. And even though I heard Duskfall telling everyone to get out, I also heard someone calling for help nearby. They were lost in the fire, choking on smoke. I was supposed to run away. But I ran in to help them instead."

She shook her head at her past self, chuckling a little bit. "There were plenty of warriors who could help, but I guess I was just that mouse-brained that I forgot. Or maybe I should be kind to myself and say it was out of a desire to help. Either way, I went and tried to help him find his way out. He was Sunpaw, an apprentice only a bit younger than myself. But instead of getting out of the fire, Sunpaw said he heard someone else and wanted to go further in to get them. And since you know just how smart I was, guess what I did next." Turtlepelt opened her mouth in mock surprise. "I went further into the fire! By this point my throat was really starting to hurt. You might not know if you've never been in a fire, but there's thick smoke everywhere, and it hurts to breathe. If you breathe too much smoke instead of clean air, you can even die from it. It was stupid of me to keep going like that. Stupid of both of us. But we did anyway. Of course, it was about then that Duskfall showed up. He yelled at us and threatened to demote us if we didn't get ourselves out immediately."

The memory of that experience was far more vivid than it had any right to be. It had passed so far out of living memory that it was no longer even so substantial as a nightmare, and yet she could still recall the burning flame searing afterimages into her retinas, the sensation of trying to breathe the choking, scratchy smoke, squinting her eyes against the cinders of charred tree branches that were falling all over the camp, loud creaking and thumping as the whole forest started to come down around them. And Duskfall's eyes, narrowed in exasperation and rage, as he spat at them to run. And what had she done? "And guess what," Turtlepelt continued, her voice conspiratorial. "I didn't listen. I ran further in. Out of stubbornness, out of spite, out of a desire to be useful, I don't know. But I left Sunpaw with Duskfall and kept going, searching for the voice he'd heard. And I found someone." Orange tabby pelt, with brighter stripes that shone even among the flames. Of course it had been him.

"It was Flamekit. He wasn't really a kit--he was older than me, actually, but he'd been demoted due to causing some problem or other. I really can't recall now." Turtlepelt blinked the memories away, noticing belatedly that she'd been talking way too much. "Anyway, I'll wrap it up. Because I went back, I ended up helping him and saving his life, and we became good friends. But I also got in big trouble with Duskfall because of it. Someone else probably would have been able to get to him if I hadn't. I was really lucky that both of us didn't die, crushed by some falling tree branch, or killed by inhaling smoke." Not that she'd lived any longer than six moons or so after that, anyway. Her destiny must always have been to die early doing something monumentally mouse-brained. But she hadn't known that at the time.

"Where am I going with this?" Turtlepelt sighed at herself. "Sorry, it's just... it's been so long since I talked to anyone. You know? I've been up here so long that no one remembers me. I can hardly find Flamestripe anymore. I--" She stood up and shook her head. "Nah, I'll spare you my sob-story ramblings. I guess the story I was telling, I was trying to say something like this: yes, I have caused trouble on accident. It's okay to mess up sometimes. The main thing is that you should own up to your mistakes, and then do your best to become better. Don't make the same mistake twice. Try and learn from what you did wrong, and then improve in the future." She hoped that Redpaw had a long, fulfilling life. She hoped that he had plenty of time to grow and learn, to make mistakes and remedy them, to meet a cat he liked and settle down with a family of his own. She hoped every cat in ThunderClan would get that opportunity. Still, Turtlepelt smiled. "Was that helpful at all? I'm real sorry if it wasn't."