xx Sαfє Hανєη xx || CHAPTER FOUR

I flattened my ears against the ringing, but I couldn’t help a grin from spreading across my face. Hot wind tickled the fur inside my ears, and I gripped the side of the cliff tighter under my claws. I had to dig down deep into the dry, sandy earth before it had stopped crumbling and could actually hold my weight.

The top of my bluff overlooked the city in the distance. It was a jewel on the coastline, shining and glinting silver and gold as the sun set over the ocean. The ocean, lapping dark blue and sea green across the horizon. With the wind, it would seem as though the waves would be tall and curling, but this was not so. Instead, the water was as flat as a moonlit lake.

The ‘coastline’ was also stranded miles from its usual spot, leaving the seafloor exposed to the hot, hot sun. I could only imagine the stench of all those suddenly beached fish and other water creatures that were now land creatures with too much air to breathe, their corpses steaming and baking where the water once was. Although the wind was blowing this way, I was too far to smell that.

One thing I was glad of.

But what I enjoyed most was seeing the people milling around in a panic. I couldn’t pick out individuals, but clusters of humans were packed around large, yellow-and-orange boats. I had a good imagination, and so relished the scene of the panic, people pushing and shoving to try and be included on the Evacars -- as they called them on that annoying broadcast radio. I twitched my ears. Even the monotone beep was better than the looping announcements they’ve been playing for the last hour.

I watched and waited atop the bluff, my tail twitching in amusement. Silly humans.

I let the sun go down, dipping the last rays into the sea and throwing the town into abrupt darkness. Lights started to flicker on, little fireflies along the glow of the sea. The Evacars were like little suns in the night. But even with this, I couldn’t see what was going on. I couldn’t see the terror, the panic.

I got bored of watching the lights quickly. I stood, turned, and flicked my tail over my back. Behind me, the sea rushed into the city. Whatever leash that had been holding it back was now gone, and the ocean eagerly rushed in to claim its prize. I knew the city would be completely submerged in minutes, the surrounding basin in mere hours.

I growled, annoyed, as I padded down from the bluff. I shouldn’t have waited until night. I’d enjoyed watching the humans squirm for too long in my hubris.

Now I’d have to wait until dawn to see the aftermath.

Iris dragged herself under the shade of an oak tree, but even being out of the sun didn’t help. The heat was in the air, a physical presence that pushed down on her. She was exhausted, though she had only walked from one patch of shade to the next. The shade that didn’t help one bit except as a mark of her movements. Shade to shade to shade. One step at a time. She drew in a long breath, and the air scorched her dry, scratchy throat. “Why does it have to be so hot?” she rasped, saying something to check that her voice hadn’t given out completely in the heat.

She hadn’t expected someone to respond. “I know what it is.” She twisted her head, too tired to be surprised as a cat materialized near the bark. He was tall, handsome. His dark brown fur shimmered in the heat, almost as if he were a mirage. “It’s the beginning of the End.” Iris rolled her eyes, disgusted by the snobby tones in his voice. As if he knew all the answers in the world. It was just such a gift that he decided to share his limitless wisdom.

The short rest had given Iris a bit more energy, enough to scoff at his words. “Yeah right.”

“What else can it be? Look at the sky, see for yourself!” he gestured up to the sagging leaves of the oak. Iris didn’t look; she didn’t need to. She had been marvelling at the sky since it had risen that morning. The sun was a drop of ink on the red velvet sky, a void of nothing where the once-golden orb once roamed. The horizons were shrouded in a deep maroon, arching up and paling to a rosy pink. No clouds wandered across this nightmarish skyscape.

It was unnatural, this red sky and black-void sun. But she didn’t want to agree with this tom, even though in the back of her mind, she knew he was right. “It’s just the sunrise,” she said, trying to sound as snobby as he had.

The dark tom just stared pointedly at her, twitching the tip of his tail until she gave in. “Fine,” she growled, “you win. Maybe it is the End.” She remembered all the stories and rumors about the supposed End. It was going to be a deep freeze, another ice age. It would be earthquakes and floods. The moon would crash into Earth and the damage to the atmosphere would suffocate everything -- that is, if the impact didn’t kill you first.

Iris had tossed all of this off as nonsense, but that had been before--

“Hey, I didn’t catch your name.” Iris blinked, snapped out of her thoughts. “Mine’s Riddle.”

“Iris,” she replied. Riddle, a funny name. But Iris liked it; it was quite. . . mysterious.

Riddle nodded and sat, his dark fur almost a part of the tree except for that shimmer. “So what brings you out into this horrible heat? You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” Iris conceded. ”But I could be asking you the same question.”

Iris could hear the smirk in the tom’s voice. “Valid point.” Riddle stood and, despite the heat, did so with dramatic flourish. “I happen to be on a very, very important quest. Confidential, though it pains me to keep silent.” He paused. “Though I wouldn’t think it would hurt to tell, just this once. . .” he smiled, all fangs. “I’m looking for something to fill the ol’ tum.”

Iris rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep the grin from creeping up her face. “You missed your calling as an actor, Riddle.”

“How do you know I’m not one?”

“Because acting doesn’t matter in the End,” Iris’ voice dropped at the end, her last words almost a whisper. The heat pounded down around them, the ill-thought remark slamming both cats back into reality. . . or whatever messed up reality they had found themselves in. The reality of the End.

Riddle cleared his throat, and the silence was broken, even when the tension still crackled in the hot, hot air. “You have somewhere to go?”

Iris hesitated. “No, I was looking.” She didn’t give any details to why, and Riddle didn’t push. He either hadn’t noticed the edge to her voice or didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Riddle stood, stretched. Iris couldn’t fathom how he could still move in the heat, especially with his dark, shiny fur. For some reason, this made her laugh. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the tension playing butterflies in her stomach. Riddle blinked and tipped his head, but couldn’t keep a smile off his face. “Well I have room to share. Until you find a place, of course,” he added, casting a side glance at her.

Iris didn’t have to think long, and with her heavy mood shed it was suddenly easier to move in the pressing heat. Riddle gave a flash of a smile before slipping into the yellowed grass beyond the copse of trees.

Iris followed, watching the dark tom as he appeared and disappeared through the stalks. She hadn’t admitted it, but she hadn’t seen any other cat for days, maybe even weeks. Some company would be a good change.

And maybe together they would be able to survive the End.

The tortoiseshell she-cat coughed, trying to rid her lungs of the suffocating smoke, but only succeeded in making her throat sting even more. Her eyes were streaming as she spun on her paws, the once beautiful MapleClan camp now a haze of smoke and flames. Tears joined in, and she had to blink in order to clear her vision. “Cherryheart!” She noticed movement in the smoke and jumped towards her sister’s voice just as a tree creaked and fell in front of her, careening towards the ground and landing with a shower of sparks.

“Palefeather!” she screamed, her voice breaking as her smoke-filled throat cracked, filling her mouth with coppery blood. She jumped forward towards the tree, which was adding more smoke to the air but didn’t seem to be burning. The dust and smoke rose up from where it collapsed, shrouding the ground. Cherryheart slogged through it, as if it were muddy water or maybe deceased clouds. “Palefeather!”

Her sister didn’t respond. Cherryheart wanted to scream. She wanted to sob and scream her sister’s name until the stars showed her where her sister was. Palefeather had plenty of time to move away from the falling log. . . right? Cherryheart clung to this hope like a lifeline, whispering her sister’s name over and over as she searched. She felt something soft under her paw and flinched away. Pale grey fur. . .

She batted at the dust and smoke, desperately trying to force it away by sheer willpower. Embers popped behind her, and she jumped again. “Twigfoot! Stormhowl! Silverwasp! Anybody, help!” Cherryheart screamed, trying to make out a familiar pelt in the bright darkness. She felt her breaths coming in heaves, tears already streaking the sides of her face.

“Cherryheart? Is that you?”

“Twigfoot! Help me, it’s Palefeather!” she croaked, avoiding looking at the pale grey fur in front of her paws. “She’s stuck under this branch, if you can lift it I can get her out of there.”

Twigfoot nodded at my side, crouching and worming his way under the branch closest to the trunk. He stood, bearing most the weight of the branch on his tabby shoulders. “Hurry!” he hissed. Cherryheart grabbed her sister’s fur in her jaws and yanked her sister free of the branch.

But what she pulled out was not her sister. Her sister was not this squished mass of grey and pink. Her sister’s eyes were not dull and glassy.

Her sister was not dead.

No, this wasn’t Palefeather.

“Cherryheart! We have to go now,” Twigfoot said, stepping between Cherryheart and the thing that was not her sister. No. No. It wasn’t Palefeather. “Cherryheart!” His paws met Cherryheart's chest and shoved her away, sending her limp body skidding across the ash coated leaves. Light seared across her vision, and she frantically pushed herself further away from the flames that were now licking up the tree.

A scream echoed in front of her, and she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the not-Palefeather. She didn’t want to see the not-Twigfoot. She took a deep breath, counted to three. . .

and then turned and ran, as fast as her paws would carry her. Faster and faster, racing across the forest, away from her burning camp and burning Clan.

Not her camp. It wasn’t her camp anymore. It was just trees and ash now.

Trees, ashes, and the not-Palefeather.

Cherryheart ran, as if running could distance herself from what happened just moments ago. Dead, dead, dead.

She was in a field now, looking back to where she had come. The MapleClan borders -- no, the trees -- were left far behind, only a pillar of gold and red where the magnificent forest once stood. It almost reminded her of how the maples looked in the fall. If she squinted her eyes, she could almost imagine that it was just the fall leaves that looked like a fiery blaze, that the smoke and ashes in her paws and throat was just dew and the cold breeze. . .

But the not-Palefeather flashed before her eyes and the illusion crumbled away, burnt beyond recognition. A sob broke free and she couldn’t look anymore, she couldn’t bear to see what had happened. Too soon, too close.

She turned away and kept running.

A skinny squirrel hobbled between the birch trees, moving from trunk to another as if there would be some sort of food left beneath them. Unbeknownst to it, there was a cat crouched behind one of these birch trees, and that squirrel wouldn’t have to worry about the lack of seeds much longer.

Marble licked his lips, watching intently as the squirrel came ever closer to the tree he had crouched behind. It was scrawny, but looked much more appetizing than many of the things he had eaten after the drought. He waited, willing his stomach not to rumble and alert his soon-to-be prey of its hunter. That would be a bad way to go: starved because a growling stomach scared away all the prey.

Finally he could wait no longer. The massive tom gathered what energy he could and used it to jump towards the squirrel. It didn’t have the strength to run, and fell quickly. It may have even given in to its fate and died before his claws met its fur. Either way, it was still fresh prey.

Marble forced himself to eat it slowly, despite his hunger. It wouldn’t do to eat it so fast that he threw it all up later. A hungry stomach is like that: too much good food after not having any at all made it upset. So he savored every bite, glad of the fortune in finding prey that day.

Even with the squirrel as scrawny as it was, he only ate half of it. He left the remaining half, sitting and looking away so that his stomach wouldn’t get the better of him. He knew he should save part of it at least, ration his prey so that it could last longer. Who knew when he would find another squirrel? Instead, he waited contentedly for his stomach to settle, looking around the land.

He was in a place that was covered in birch trees. Their elegant trunks rose tall, their leaves golden like they would have been in the fall, although he knew it was because of the dry. Even the moss that usually grew in lush carpets was now brown and crackly beneath his paws: one of the reasons he couldn’t hunt as well as he had before, stalking anything caused such violent crackling that any prey could hear a cat from a mile away.

Marble was surprised -- and relieved -- that the birch copse had not gone up in flames. For the last two or three days, lightning and thunder constantly rumbled in the dark sky. With the forest so dry, it would only take a spark to set the whole place alight. But although there was clouds and thunder, not a drop of rain had fallen.

He hadn’t seen a single cat since the clouds rolled in. Well, not alive, anyways. He shuddered, trying to block out the memories of clumps of thin fur and bone and the rotting stench that followed.

It was because there was no water. With no water to drink, a cat might live a day or two, maybe three. But there wasn’t even any moisture in the air, and he knew a cat would be lucky to live more than a day without water now. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that there was hardly any prey to speak of.

So it came as a surprise to Marble when he heard a distinctly cat-like sound echoing through the trees. Even more surprising was that it had called his name. “Marble!” He turned with narrowed eyes. Nothing.

“Marble! It’s me!” Why is the voice so familiar? So very, painfully, familiar. . . he turned and came face to face with a cat. Suddenly everything snapped into place: the light grey fur, green eyes.

Athena.

His daughter.

His only daughter, the daughter that shouldn’t exist. The mixed emotions of shock, anger and guilt roiled in his stomach, blocking his throat from any words that may have wanted to come out, not that there were any words he could say. Athena stared back at him, saw something in his eyes, and took a step back.

“Father, it’s me,” she whispered, never dropping her gaze.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her, he didn’t deserve to see her. She looked so much like her mother. . . “I thought I told you to stay away,” he said, his voice calm. It was the forced calm that made the words so threatening, showing so very obviously the emotions layered beneath. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“I was around and I couldn’t just walk on by,” Athena argued. She had grown steel in her voice, and it took all he had to not run from her that very moment.

Marble was trembling with anger, and he felt his paws echoing through the ground. Too much, too soon. “Go. Away,” he hissed. He still couldn’t look at her.

“No! I will not just go away. You said Mother wanted us to be together, to keep each other safe. We need to stick together, help each other through the end.” Her voice crescendoed into something more primal. The steel had been stripped away, revealing the fragile, glass panic that had been right underneath. “Father, I need you!"

Her steel couldn’t make it past his fur, but the glass pierced straight through to his heart. He felt his rage drip through his paws back into the earth, leaving him hollow. At least anger was an emotion to fill his emptiness. He sighed and shuddered. Numbly, he nodded, walking away before returning to gather the squirrel in his jaws.

He was scared. Memories he had wanted to forget welled up where Athena had pierced his heart. He didn’t want a daughter, he didn’t deserve a daughter.

No murderer did.

Graffiti clawed her way to the surface, only having time to gasp in another breath before she was plunged underwater again. The world spun around her, the current dragging the little black she-cat wherever it pleased. She couldn’t do anything against the force of it, except keep trying to struggle to the top when she could finally puzzle out the directions again. Up, down, sideways, she could hardly tell where she was anymore, only that her life had suddenly turned to water.

Panic fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird -- or was that the air that wanted to come out? The life-giving air, so important when she was pummeled under the tide. It would have been so easy to watch the bubbles float in front of her face, just let the water take her. She screamed, letting loose a flurry of white bubbles in the darkness, pushing off of the ground and back up towards the air.

She pushed against the water with her paws, gasping, trying to stay up for as long as she could. She had to stay up, she couldn’t go tumbling under again. Buildings flashed in the sides of her vision, dark, frothing water slamming against the glass. She was moving fast, faster than she could have ever imagined water could move. Other things rushed on the top of the water: cars, wood, unidentifiable metal objects.

She tried to orient herself forward, to see where she was headed. Surely the water had to stop somewhere. There must be something she could grab onto to ride out the waves. Everything was dark, no stars lit the night sky. Streetlights were buried meters under the frothing waters. Everything was dark and shadows, rushing past in a blur. She churned her paws, having figured out how to keep herself afloat. She took a deep breath.

And then everything went sideways. She was spinning, choking on the water that had once been air. Panic slammed back as she lost orientation. Where was the sky? Where was the air? She saw a shadow growing in front of her, the dark water growing even darker until blackness filled her vision.

She couldn’t even see the wall as she slammed into it with the force of the current, feeling only pain before she didn’t feel anything at all.

- - -

Where? Where am I? Graffiti’s heart nearly stopped when she couldn’t open her eyes. Panic surged, even more powerful than the water-storm-- the water-storm. The memories flooded back, and horrific as they were, they grounded her as she tried to wrestle her emotions back into control. She counted her breaths, relaxed her muscles. Only then did her eyes flutter open.

Everything was white. Then the color started to leech in, darkening into shadows and objects. Splashes of vibrant color marked the twisted remains of cars, what little of them there was left after the water-storm tore through. She watched for a moment, counting her heartbeat. After a while she fell into a daze, the colors blending together until they no longer resembled what they were. She didn’t know how long she stayed like this before she realized what was happening and fought against it. She blinked and the images swirled back to be contained in their normal shapes, albeit a bit hazily.

She knew she couldn’t stay lying about. She had hit her head in the water-storm, hard enough to knock her out. She couldn’t slip back into sleep, however desperately it wanted to claim her. With this kind of injury, even she knew that to give in to sleep would mean death.

With that thought in mind, the small black she-cat tried to gather what strength she could, building herself back up from her core. Then she stood. At first the world pitched under her paws, and she gasped, stumbling a few steps sideways before she could find balance. Paws splayed wildly beneath her, Graffiti gritted her teeth and waited for the world to stop spinning. The stones in front of her grew doubles, then triples in her vision. She hissed and everything shuddered back into one.

It felt as if she had run across the whole city and back. Her paws shook, threatening to send her crashing back to the ground. No, no, she couldn’t give up that easily! She pushed away her weaknesses, instead taking a step forward. Then another.

Her left shoulder flashed with pain as soon as she touched the ground, and she pulled it up as though it had been dipped in lava. She couldn’t see her shoulder itself, but she could see the crusted blood down the side of her leg, matting the fur on that side. Gingerly, she let her paw down again, little by little until she could at least use it to balance. She hobbled forward, trying not to let her left paw take too much of the weight.

After a few more wobbly steps her confidence grew. The same blackness pushed down on her mind, but at least now she was pushing back. She gave a humorless grin and took another step.

She had to get out of this place. She had to get away as far as possible. Graffiti let that one thought occupy her brain until it nearly swallowed up the blackness, throwing it back to be a tiny, angry speck, surrounded by her determination.

She had lived through the water-storm. She wasn’t going to die that easily.

She smiled, even if it was more of a grimace, but didn’t stop walking until the concrete gave way to grass and the rays of the morning sun poked out from over the hills. Only then did she let her body rest, knowing that she had did as much as she could possibly do to fight for her life.

She could only hope that it was enough before the darkness grew and swallowed her up.

     
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I'd like to dedicate this fic to the old forums and everyone on it. I'm posting this story the same day the forums were officially deleted in memorium of all they did for me and for others.

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