Post by ѕωιƒтƒαℓcση on May 15, 2018 17:21:42 GMT -5
An entry for Brownie 's no longer a contest. My theme was "gray".
1,985 words
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It hurts, at first.
Pressure against my lungs, crushing my ribs, burning a pathway through my organs. The water presses inwards, filling my eyes, my ears, my mouth, and it hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
I fight.
But the water is stronger. It rushes in, fulling the spaces inside me where air should be.
And it doesn’t hurt anymore.
My fur drags me down into the deep. Colors with no name flicker at the edges of my vision, and I am so, so tired.
It doesn’t hurt anymore. The water fills my lungs as well as air ever has.
The lake pulls me deeper. What was once bitingly cold is now warm, wrapping me in its wet embrace, the vague, murky shapes of underwater plants waving through the gray. Blackness flickers, pulls, filling my brain, clouding my eyes, slowing my heart.
I close my eyes, and the water claims me as its own, floating forever in the gray.
✦
She doesn’t realize, not until after. Doesn’t realize the thinness of the ice, doesn’t notice the cracks spiderwebbing out under Ashwing’s paws. She stays on shore by chance, the cold weather bringing out the ache of an old injury in her shoulder, the slick ice making the throb worse.
She stays on shore, watching as Ashwing ventures out, drawn by the laughing of the apprentices out on the ice.
It breaks with a crack like thunder, and Ashwing is there, and then she’s gone.
Goldencloud screams.
She screams, and others come running. She screams, and others hold her down. She screams, and fights to break free, to run to the place where she saw Ashwing disappear.
She screams, and under the ice, Ashwing closes her eyes and lets the water take her away.
✦
I used to fear the Dark Forest. As a kit, the thought would keep me up at night. Gnarled, twisted trees and rot and eyes that stare at you from the darkness, sly and calculating. The opposite of the warmth and light and color StarClan promised.
I used to fear the Dark Forest. But at least if I was there, I wouldn’t be alone.
The trees are tall, sillouted against the dark gray of a sky right before a storm. Mist curls around my paws with every step, filling my lungs with the cold, dry smell of frost.
It’s empty and it’s colorless, and I am alone.
I still feel water in my lungs and my thoughts are clouded, murky pond weeds waving in the corner of my vision every time I close my eyes. I am eternally drowning, the endless gray of this forest the water that stole the life from my body.
I am a ghost in this empty place, and I mourn. Not for my own life; I made peace with my death as I was drowning. I mourn for the what-ifs.
I whisper the name.
Goldencloud.
Watching me on the shore. Watching me drown.
I heard her scream.
✦
There is no body.
They hold vigil in the starlight, but there is no body to be rubbed with peppermint and rosemary.
The elders lead the slow walk to the graveyard, but there is no body resting on their shoulders.
The medicine cat stands over the fresh dirt of a newly filled in grave, but no body rests beneath the dirt. They did not bury Ashwing here, in this little grove of trees where all their ancestors rest. Her bones have not joined the history of this place, but instead rest on the bottom of the cold, gray lake.
The medicine cat drones on, and sunlight filters through the leafless tree branches, dappling the grass, burning away the frost under the clan’s paws.
It makes Goldencloud want to scream.
✦
Memory is a fragile thing. I hadn’t realized that, until now. I find mine fading, the gray of the endless forest stealing away the color and life from my mind. Wisps of brightness sucked away into colorless voids, patchwork pieces in my brain.
One thing stays as bright and as clear as it was in life. Goldencloud. I remember her. Even as everything else turns to smoke and ash, I remember her.
✦
Spring comes in with sunshine and green, and Goldencloud hates it. There is an empty nest next to her, the scent long-since faded away. There is an empty spot next to her, where Ashwing is supposed to be.
It is a black hole, a void so desperately, desperately empty.
But the clan moves on.
Ashwing is gone, but the clan moves on.
“It’s been moons, Goldencloud,” Lilyseed says softly, “she’d want you to be happy again.”
“How am I supposed to be happy without her?”
How could she even think to say that? How could she ever, ever expect Goldencloud to be happy without Ashwing by her side?
They should have had moons together. To figure each other out, to admit to the unsaid things, to grow old together.
They should have had moons together, but Ashwing was stolen away, was stolen from life and from Goldencloud, in an instant.
She was there, on the ice, looking back to smile, and then she was gone.
How is Goldencloud ever supposed to move on from that?
✦
I am fading along with my memories. I can see the gray, frozen ground through my paws, and at times, it feels like the cold, scentless mist curls through me instead of around, chilling me down to my bones.
Sometimes, I just want to lie down and sleep forever. To let my memories drain away into the nothingness of this endless forest, to let myself flicker and fade away. It would be like drowning, I think. Painful at first, and then I accept it, I let it take me, and it’s painless.
The easiest thing I’ve ever done was die.
But then, I remember Goldencloud, and I force myself to keep going. I want to see her again. I want to tell her everything.
I stand on the shore of a vast, gray, churning lake, the colorless image of the one I fell through. I close my eyes, and despite the holes in my memory, despite the lack of smell, the lack of color, the lack of breeze, the lack of sky, I pretend I am alive and on the familiar shores, and Goldencloud is by my side.
✦
The lake is beautiful in spring. A deep, shifting blue, the breeze coming off the water smelling of ice melt and holding the faintest, residual traces of winter chill.
Under the water, the bones of Ashwing rest.
Goldencloud bows her head and closes her eyes. There is no grave to pray over, no daisies bloom above her bones, life coming from death. There is just the beautiful, cold lake.
“Ashwing,” Goldencloud starts, and stops, a lump in her throat and a pain behind her eyes. “I wish you were here.”
She wishes she could explain the feeling in her chest, like her heart has been removed from her body, and it drowned the day that Ashwing fell through the ice.
✦
I open my eyes, and there is color.
The trees are gray, the sky is gray, the pebbles beneath my paws are gray, but the lake is a deep, shifting blue, and beside me, her eyes closed is Goldencloud.
And she is beautiful. She is so beautiful that she takes my breath away, the sun trapped in her fur and so gloriously alive.
I must make a sound, because her head flies up and her eyes fly open, and we are staring at each other, green meeting amber, a ghost and a warrior.
The dead and the mourner.
“Ashwing,” Goldencloud says, and her voice is choked.
“My love,” I say, and my voice is as fragile and intangible as a gust of wind to my ears, but Goldencloud sobs, deep in her chest.
“I miss you so much,” she says, and her voice is thick and heavy. “I miss you every day.”
“Oh, my love,” I say, because I can think of nothing else. I am dead, a ghost fading away in an empty forest, but there is a spark of something quite like life in my chest. A sunburst in my veins, set alight by the she-cat in front of me.
“Are you in StarClan? Are you happy?”
“No,” I say, and horror crosses her features. “I am somewhere in between, I think. Wherever it is, I am trapped, and I am alone.”
“I’m so sorry,” Goldencloud whispers. “I think…I may be holding you back. I don’t…I can’t let you go. You were supposed to be with me. We were supposed to be together.”
“I know.” Oh, my love, I know. Alive and happy and together, a life stretching ahead of us, stolen away by the ice.
“But if you need me to let you go,” Goldencloud chokes out, “I will. Ashwing, please, if you need to go, go. I don’t want to hold you back.”
I can feel myself being pulled away, but I fight it, I fight for the last few seconds here, with her.
“I love you,” I whisper directly into her ear, her eyes fluttering closed. “I’m sorry I never told you. I love you.”
I am pulled away, and the last thing I hear is Goldencloud’s voice in my ears.
“I love you, Ashwing. I’ll always love you.”
✦
She opens her eyes, and Ashwing is gone, and she sobs.
✦
I open my eyes, and a night sky full of millions and millions of constellations is above my head, and I know I am in StarClan.
✦
Her death is quick, in the end. A border skirmish turned vicious, and Goldencloud doesn’t know who landed the killing blow. She feels pain, and then a swooping, dizzying blackness. She hears shouts and screams, and sees the ground rush up to her. Feels the grass cradle her. She sees the paws of her clanmates rushing towards her, and she closes her eyes.
She was never going to survive this. As soon as she agreed to be on the border patrol, her fate was sealed.
She breathes in. She breathes out.
She dies there, on the soft, green grass.
“My love.”
She opens her eyes, and she’s standing again. Her body is at her paws, looking smaller in death, but it’s no matter. Ashwing is smiling at her, fur flecked with starlight and entire galaxies in her eyes.
“My love,” Ashwing says again, and Goldencloud rushes forward. They press their foreheads press together, and Goldencloud is full, so full, she’s overfilling, happiness bubbling up and out of her.
“I missed you so much,” she says, and her voice is caught in her throat. “I love you so much.”
“Oh, my love,” Ashwing says, and her voice is kind. “We never have to miss each other again.”
There is a pathway leading up, away from the battle, away from Goldencloud’s body, away from life.
Goldencloud doesn’t look back.
✦
StarClan is bright and beautiful, grass green beneath their paws and sky full above their heads. It smells like the forest after rain, alive and new and theirs.
It is not the gray forest Ashwing was trapped in.
It is not the alive forest Goldencloud was alone in.
It is better than that, because they are together again.
✦
It’s said that if you go down to the shore by the lake, there will be two she-cats sitting side by side. One with fur the color of the stones beneath their paws, the other so golden it looks as if she holds the very sunlight in her fur.
They sit on the shore by the lake, tails entwined, and it’s said that they never speak, but if you were to see them, it is clear that they are in love. That they were always destined to be together.
The star-crossed lovers, together at last.