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 Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:07 am
 Moonlight on the ripples. The waves of the water silvered like the pieces of glass that Twolegs dropped that showed your face when you looked at them. The river flowed steadily, but not hastily, past the banks, and now and then a nocturnal fish would splash, sending a few short drops of moonlight into the shadows of the night. The wind ruffled the surface of the water and blew through the reeds, causing them to rattle against each other, whispering secrets that even the medicine cats might not understand. What beauty there was when the sunlight did not distract the mind and eye. What wonder and mystery was the night, perfect and calm, untouched by any cat.
Let alone the black tom on the riverbank. He sat, almost obscured by the reeds, as he watched the glittering eyes of Silverpelt. His brown eyes gazed at them questioningly. No cat spying on him could guess the question. He kept it hidden in his broken heart, the heart he never wished to heal, nestled beside his memories and the knowledge he had gained outside the Clan. Blackshiver was not the apprentice he had once been. He was a warrior now, but not a happy one. It was on a night like this I last saw Pinepaw... he thought. A few days before the combat...Are you up there, Pinepaw? Are you missing me like I'm missing you? Where do I go from here, when all I wanted to do was walk beside you always?
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:24 am
 Twilightgaze sat silent and still on the silvered riverbank, letting the twilit eyes gaze into the depths of the flowing river. The glittering eyes of Silverpelt alone watched her, a fact that had always unnerved her. She was an odd one, very different from the rest of the clan, and sometimes wondered why StarClan chose to make her so vastly different, though always at night, when she wasn't on patrol. Sighing softly, she stretched as she got to her black feet with their purple toes, and padded deeper into the reeds, wanting to be out of StarClan's sight. She wasn't on patrol tonight, but she dearly wished she was, so she didn't feel so heavily scrutinized by StarClan and the eyes of Silverpelt at night.
She froze when she picked up the scent of a tom already sitting in the reeds. Drat. The last thing she needed on a night when she wasn't patrolling were the eyes of a more ordinary warrior and StarClan, the former trying to politely avoid commentary on her pelt. Well, maybe this tom wouldn't notice such an unobtrusive she-cat, so she settled down as close to the riverbank as possible, not quite realizing how close she actually was to the tom in question. Having curled up again, she resumed her gaze into the river's depths, losing herself in the gentle currents.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:54 am
Blackshiver's ears twitched at the sound of movement and he turned towards the rattling reeds. Through the striped plants he could see a light blue pelt, stark against black fur. He scented the air, recognizing the scent as that of RiverClan. A fellow warrior. With a clan so large, there was a high possibility that he might not even recognize her. He sighed and yawned. While another cat was here, he might as well socialize. He turned towards her and watched her. How could such a perfect night be ruined by another cat's presence?! Oh well. "Good evening," he murmured with the softest of mews. "I don't think I recognize you. Strange, that, since you're certainly very...distinctive." He shrugged. "I've been missing from the Clan for a while, though...my name's Blackshiver. What's yours?"
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:02 am
Twilightgaze stiffened. The tom had noticed her. She let out the quietest of sighs. If he was going to insist on conversing with her, it was only polite to respond. "Good evening to you, too." She could now see him through the reeds, and he was definitely one of the more normal cats in the clan. She definitely wasn't thrilled at the presence of a "normal" warrior disrupting the serenity of a night alone, but maybe it would keep her mind off StarClan. "I am called Twilightgaze. I suppose it is because I am distinctive that you do not recognize me, for I am loathe to be around other warriors when I am not on patrol." Her violet eyes were drawn irrevocably to the shadowy cat. He looked like the river on a clear night when Silverpelt reflected off the waves. She knew what she looked like, which was why she'd long since ceased to gaze into the river in the daytime, unless it was strictly necessary.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:15 am
Blackshiver nodded slowly and twitched his tail around himself. "Nice to meet you, Twilightgaze." He frowned and looked her up and down. She certainly looked like twilight--the blue sky fading into darkness and the last purple flames of the sun dissolving into the distant horizon. An exotic sort of beauty compared to his own pelt. What was it she said once...? "You are like ice in the shadows, icicles on the trees and snow sprinkling down into the night..." My Pinepaw, what a poet you were... Blackshiver shook his head vehemently to dislodge her voice from his head. He narrowed his eyes at her. What was she thinking. She seemed an enigma, a riddle to be solved, and the way she looked at him..."It's impolite to stare," he said coldly.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 12:01 pm
Twilightgaze smoothly transferred her gaze to the river. "I wasn't staring," she said a little stiffly. "I was just noting that your pelt reminded me of the river on a night such as this, a clear night with the frosty eyes of Silverpelt shining on the ripples in the current." She carefully omitted her opinion of how judgmental Silverpelt and StarClan's eyes were, lest this Blackshiver be one of the more pious warriors. Twilightgaze believed in the Warrior Code, but seriously doubted StarClan, though she was very careful to hide this fact. No point in calling more attention to herself than strictly necessary.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 6:38 pm
Blackshiver snorted. "But to make such observations, you had to stare at me for a while. And you're wrong. This is a green-leaf river. I'm a leaf-bare river, cold and unforgiving." It chilled him to say these words, but wasn't that why he was named Blackshiver? Because he was icy and unfriendly? Yes. That's what I am. Pinepaw said I was an icicle, and that's what I am. I will never be ashamed of that. He glanced at her sideways. "Just because you're more interesting than the rest doesn't mean you have the right to make bad analogies."
Okay, granted, it wasn't a bad analogy. In fact, it was sort of flattering. Blackshiver felt complimented. But whenever he thought of Pinepaw, his sharp tongue turned against every she-cat in the area. Some part of him held them against his lost ShadowClan apprentice and judged them unfit...though a hidden part of his brain judged Twilightgaze a...passing attempt at perfection, closer than most...but was it close enough?
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 6:55 pm
Twilightgaze continued to watch the rushing current, turned black in the unforgiving eyes of Silverpelt. "Only in the day in Leafgreen and Newleaf is the river green and bright and playful. In the night is the river, Leafgreen, Newleaf, Fall-of-leaf, and Leafbare, turned dark and cold. You are clearly the river at moonhigh, dark and cold, reflecting equally cold Silverpelt on your back."
The tom's comment on her being interesting annoyed her. Clearly avoiding how abnormal she looked, and she wasn't in the mood to take this. "Look," she sighed, "I'm not 'interesting,' I'm a warrior upon whom StarClan surely looks with disfavor. Why else am I like the fast-fading day, when other warriors are like the earth, or occasionally the river?" That's right. Even other unusual warriors had the grace of the river for which the Clan was named, whereas she had the gracelessness to match the heavens at twilight, a denial of loyalty to the Warrior Code.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 7:19 pm
Blackshiver rolled his eyes. Did she never speak in prose?! Even Pinepaw dropped out of poetry--I need to stop thinking about her. Tomorrow it will hurt again... "First of all...I'm an icy river, not just a moonlit one. I'm a river full of ice that will tear you apart if you dip your paw in. I'm dangerous, okay?" He sighed and shuffled his paw, feeling injustice and rage fill his heart. He flushed it out, concentrating on the glittering stars on the black glass of the river, the wind ruffling their glossy fur and rattling the reeds until they whispered their own melody.
When he was sure he had pushed out the rage, that the injustice had dissipated like a bad smell in a strong wind, he continued, "Who gives a rats about StarClan? They're just overhyped dead cats." He knew instantly that he should not have said that, but he barreled on anyway. "Besides, even if they did have any influence over our pelts--which, by the way, is all due to our parents, it's not your fault or the fault of a bunch of reanimated corpses that you have sky-colored fur--most cats would say it's a blessing, since it's like saying you're good enough for them...StarClan is the nighttime, and twilight is the night, you know."
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:10 pm
Twilightgaze sat very stiffly. "I do not choose to dip my paws into any river, lest I be fishing, and you are one river I choose not to fish in," she said frostily. "You're a river too dark to be safe to fish in." Why in the name of the Warrior Code did this tom think she thought of *any* warrior like that? It was impossible for her, and she did not plan on having a family.
She managed to calm herself down, to get the ice out of her voice enough to be civil. "I certainly do not care about StarClan, and I seriously doubt they truly value those below, if they do exist."
Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Parents? I lack them. If I had them, I do not remember them, and I doubt they would choose to remember me, should they still be living. A kit of the night, much misfortune that is. All I can vaguely remember are voices saying that a kit so like the twilight, so sad her mother is gone, it would have pained her to see Twilight, always did so like the dawn, hated the twilight, always said twilights were bad luck, poor Twilightkit, she'll never know a proper mother's love." By the end, she was spitting out her words with a frozen anger filled with self-mockery and self-hatred. It was unlike her to speak thus, but those words from the queen who'd adopted her and the other queens around had stuck ever since, though she'd never have said them if this irritating tom hadn't provoked her.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 7:56 am
Blackshiver snapped back with a phrase he had learned from twolegs as a kittypet that always caused other twolegs to be shocked. "Everyone's got a mother and a father, even if they aren't there! Kits don't just pop up spontaneously from the ground, even Scrapswirl knows that, and he's insane! I'd respond to the rest as well, except I have no earthly idea what you just said. Something like...everyone pitied you? Why's that? You're the most gorgeous she-cat alive--don't make any bets with the dead cats. And I believe that StarClan exists. Where else do cats go when they die? I just don't think they have any control over our lives--not even what color we are!" He spat the last, his temper growing with every passing breath. He did not notice clouds cover the moon and stars; he could still see Twilightgaze in his mind's eye. Hatred for her rose up; other cats had no parents and they got over it. This stupid she-cat was just being difficult for attention; her own attention. Egotistical freak...
"Don't dip your toes in the water except for fishing?! What kind of RiverClanner are you?! You don't go swimming?! What's wrong with you?! Swimming is living, because the river is life! If there were no rivers in the forest, none of the Clans could exist, we'd all shrivel up and die!" He narrowed his eyes even further and turned away from her. "Even if I am a river, at least I swim in it. I embrace life. I am an icy river, though, because I do not embrace love."
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 8:34 am
Twilightgaze ripped her eyes from the river, where the eyes of Silverpelt were clouding over, to the icy river of a warrior that Blackshiver with eyes filled with pain. "They did not pity me, they said so themselves. My mother, Mistpelt, would have hated me had she known me any longer. No one knows who my father was, and even though he is by blood my father, by nature, he is not my father. Other parentless warriors may live with the belief that their parents loved them, but I live with the knowledge that mine would have hated me and cast me out."
She turned back to the river and said in the softest of voices, "I had only one brother, no sisters, Sunsetkit. He was the only one who cared a mouse's meatless bone about me. One evening we were playing too close to the river. Sunsetkit missed his footing and the river carried him away. I have only swum the river to fish ever since. Any pity the queens raising Sunsetkit and me had died with Sunsetkit. They said Mother was right, the evening really was misfortunate. They called me Mistpelt's Heartbreak, only cared for me out of duty to the Warrior Code, which has kept me alive ever since. I have not received one kind, sympathetic, or pitying word since," she finished softly. Twilightgaze got to her feet. "If you don't mind, I will find some more peaceful stretch of riverbank to sit, out of sight and not bothering anyone else." That's right, this volatile tom probably didn't ever want to see her ever again. No one ever did.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 7:38 am
Blackshiver sighed. It was a sad story...sad enough that he didn't even have the heart to point out that it served Sunsetkit right, wandering out of camp when no kit was allowed out. "No, don't leave, Twilightgaze," he murmured. "You've told me a sad story...how'd you like to know mine?"
He turned to look at her. The clouds were starting to move again, but he paid them no heed--except that they allowed the moonlight to once again gild the river in silver. Twilightgaze's silver markings seemed to blaze in the light. She was beautiful...her purple markings shone like bright stones, her blue fur shimmered like the river in the new-leaf sun. "I can't believe that no one has said a kind word," he murmured. "Maybe you weren't listening hard enough. My sister Branchmoon says the same thing to me sometimes: I don't listen when I don't want to. You wade so far in your self-pity you decide that you don't want out. You convince yourself so strongly that no cat will fish you out that even when a cat comes to fish you out, you ignore them, because in your reality, they cannot exist. Would you like to hear some kind words? All right, then. You are beautiful. You are intelligent--or at least, I think you would be if you'd just see the cats trying to fish you out of your misery...and mourning...you're still mourning Sunsetkit, aren't you?" He sighed. "I know the feeling, I lost someone I loved a long time ago..." Blackshiver closed his eyes as the pain poured over him once more.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:04 pm
Twilightgaze paused and settled down. "Yes, I'm still mourning Sunsetkit. Admittedly, my mentor did have a few positive words for me. He said something just like that right before the battle in which he died. He had known my mother and Sunsetkit, so it took a long time for him to say anything with pride for me. He started speaking with kindness within a week of his death, in a battle. In the same battle that the first and last warrior to ever get to know me, I earned my warrior name His last words for me as he died were that maybe there was some truth in Mother's words after all, though he hoped to StarClan that Mother's words about twilight were false."
She glanced out over the waves, and her mouth twisted into a bitter grin. "I guess Silverpelt takes a perverse delight in dark stories. Who did you lose long ago?" she asked gently. He'd listened to her dark past, it was more than fair that she listen to his. She curled up tightly next to him and glanced through the reeds. Silverpelt's eyes made the silver streaks and snowy spots of their reflection like on rippled water glow, and that glow intrigued her as it made her feel sorrow for him, whatever his sad tale may be.
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Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 7:32 am
"You know?" Blackshiver sighed. "At some point you'll have to tell me why your mother hated you. It's obvious she hated you before you got your mopey attitude...And don't curse Silverpelt. Curse StarClan. Silverpelt is merely their physical representation. And one of those stars is the most beautiful, most intelligent, kindest and funniest she-cats ever to live.
"When I was an apprentice...when I was Blackpaw...I went to my first Gathering very excited. Who isn't? My sister and I got into a conversation with a couple ShadowClan apprentices. Branchmoon--Branchpaw at the time--started arguing with one of them, but I stepped in to calm my sister down, and so did this beautiful dark brown she-cat with ginger stripes and dark green eyes." Blackshiver sighed as he felt his throat tighten with emotion. After all this time, he was finally saying it...and it hurt to say. It hurt so much, like his heart was literally broken, tied up only with some Twoleg string and cobwebs. And his story was fraying the string, melting the cobwebs. "Her name was Pinepaw...and she was that perfect she-cat. We took an instant liking to each other, even if she was from ShadowClan. We agreed to meet each other at Fourtrees when our duties were over the next day. I could hardly wait..." Blackshiver's voice trailed off as he stared, unseeing, at the carefree river. How can no one feel? Do I only share the pain with her beloved ShadowClan?
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