Shattered Sky

Twigpaw was so young, he thought. I can’t believe she’ll never follow me around anymore, or run up and tease me. I can’t believe she’s really gone.

As he looked up, struggling to push aside his misery, he realized that even more cats were clustering around Bramblestar, listening to Dovewing in horrified silence.

“We searched the area,” the gray she-cat meowed. “We even crossed underneath the Thunderpath by the tunnel and tried to pick up her trail on the other side, but there were no signs of her.” Her voice broke. “There was nothing more we could do.”

“This is all my fault!” Ivypool exclaimed with a lash of her tail. “I feel so guilty.”

Bramblestar stretched out his neck to touch the silver-and-white warrior’s shoulder with his nose. “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” he assured her.

“Oh, but I do!” Ivypool insisted, her blue eyes dark with grief. “I was her mentor, and I knew how much she wanted to go and look for SkyClan, but I tried to talk her out of it… for stupid reasons, really,” she added with a glance at her sister, Dovewing.

Dovewing looked up, her whiskers twitching in surprise, while Tigerheart curled his tail protectively around her shoulders. Alderheart saw something flash in Ivypool’s eyes, but he had no interest just then in whatever was going on with the three of them.

“I’m the one who should be feeling guilty,” he confessed. “I also knew how much Twigpaw wanted to go and find her kin, and I knew she’d been upset. Maybe I could have caught up with her if I’d tried to follow her right away.” He hunched his shoulders under the burden of his regret. “I was even going to look for her, and then…”

“And then what?” Bramblestar prompted, as Alderheart’s voice cracked and he broke off.

“And then Purdy died, and I forgot,” Alderheart admitted.

Bramblestar took a pace forward and nuzzled his son’s neck fur. “We will all miss Twigpaw greatly,” he meowed. “Her loss is a tragedy. But you can’t blame yourself, Alderheart.”

I know he’s right, Alderheart thought, but I can’t help it. I forgot about Twigpaw, and now she’s dead…

Stars glittered in a clear indigo sky as ThunderClan gathered to sit vigil for Twigpaw, forming a ragged circle in the middle of the camp. Even though they had no body, the Clan could honor the apprentice and send her spirit out on its journey to StarClan.

Alderheart found it strangely comforting to crouch there in the darkness, with Sparkpelt at his side, silently supportive, and listen to one cat after another offering their memories of Twigpaw. But at the same time there was a weird feeling in the camp, perhaps because of the presence of the ShadowClan and RiverClan cats. They had formed an outer circle, listening politely to the ThunderClan ceremony. But Alderheart knew that they couldn’t share in his Clanmates’ grief for Twigpaw; they had hardly known her.

The last few days have been so confusing, he thought, I don’t suppose many of the others even realized that Twigpaw was gone.

Ivypool was on her paws now, speaking about when Twigpaw had first become her apprentice, and how she had taken her for her first tour of the territory. “She was so excited, so eager to learn,” she mewed. “She would have made a fine warrior.”

Dipping her head to Bramblestar, she sat down again and curled her tail around her front paws.

“Thank you, Ivypool,” Bramblestar murmured. “Alderheart,” he added, turning to his son with amber eyes that gleamed in the starlight, “would you like to say a few words?”

Alderheart stumbled to his paws, but for a moment he had no idea what to say. When Twigpaw and Violetpaw arrived, he remembered, many of us were convinced that they were ‘what you find in the shadows’ from the prophecy. I believed it myself… but now I’m not so sure. And I don’t want to start that argument again—not right now.

As he hesitated, Sparkpelt gave him a gentle nudge in the side, her gaze warm and encouraging. “You can do this,” she whispered.

Suddenly Alderheart found that he could. “Like Ivypool said, she was eager to learn,” he stammered. “She was… she was lively, and she loved life. She felt things so… so deeply.” At last he came up with the one thing he was sure of, and the only thing that mattered now. “Twigpaw was… She was my friend.”

Feeling breathless, with no more words, he sat down heavily at his sister’s side.