Brownpaw is wrestling with Tidepaw when I catch him in the clearing. He hardly acknowledges my presence, though I expected no validation to begin with. Just seeing him pressing his adversary into the ground is reward enough for stopping near the training hollow.

I sniff the air and its familiar scents flood me like old friends. I know the dusty interior and the trees clustering around it well. It's far to the north of the new DragonClan camp and far to the south of the old one.

I sit down by an oak tree, pressing my face against bark that is now grown over with scars. The autumn leaves at my paws are just as brown and crackly as they are back home. I step on one, kitlike in my joy.

In the clearing, a head turns. It's Redshadow, one of the clans' newest warriors. The ambitious tom sizes me up from the forest, every muscle taut. "Shouldn't you be busy?"

I glare back reproachfully. "You have no right to judge if I'm occupying myself or not. Oak bark is useful for casts. I need it for Infernotail's cast." The blatant lie is almost hysterically transparent, but few cats pay much attention to what I do anyways. Expecting Redshadow to have any idea what I'm talking about, much less respect it, is like sitting by the river and expecting the fish to grow legs.

"I thought you used maple." pipes up Brownpaw from the clearing, blissfully unaware of my plight.

"I mix it up on occasion." I tell him. "The maple bark isn't working for him lately, so I thought I'd bring in something new to appease him."

"That's so considerate of you, mo- I mean Ashleap! I'll ask him how it works!" Brownpaw says cheerfully.

Not only did he almost call me 'mother', he's going to give me away.

He called me 'mother'.

I'm his mother.

Feeling my fur grow hot, I turn to leave, oak bark swaddled in a particularly large leaf, I hear Redshadow call after me. "There are rogues in the territory again. Be careful, alright?"

I turn back. Something about the voice is irritatingly familiar.

I know that face.

***

They loved him. The other cats in the clan would speak constantly of his bright future, as if Lightpaw was truly that- a light that blocked out all others, a cat so bright he could change the world merely by existing and doing little else.

"Have you seen him hunt?"

"What a fighter?"

"Those are the scars of a warrior."

Written on the tunnels were remarks that spoke otherwise. The darkness spoke of rival clans that had fallen long ago, their bones left to litter the tunnels. That was why DragonClan's territory was so luxuriously large, after all. The darkness had seen cats like Lightpaw rush into battle with claws sharpened and a triumphant yowl, unsure what they were fighting for but sure that they were meant to fight.

When he was grown enough to lust for more than a quick rush of adrenaline, Lightheart came to her. He was entranced by darkness.

She loathed him.

Her clanmates were blind, as usual.

They did not know where he went when he snuck out of camp. They did not know that the rogues in the forest were often scared loners or kittypets. They did not know of the bodies hastily shoved in the tunnels.

Flowers withered beneath his paws. He would crush them just for fun.

It is one thing, perhaps, to hurt things that can hurt you back. You can kill a fox in self defense. You can attack a cat if they attack you.

Lightheart was different. He struck first. He did not understand the karma of the universe in the way she did.

Then again, she rarely talked to her clanmates, so not much was coming around, good or otherwise.

One day, Lightheart stepped on a ribcage in the tunnels and did not apologize. He did not understand why the flowers were more than flowers, nor why the body was more than old bones. He came to Lunarshine after committing this crime and asked for her help.

"They are coming for me," he said. "They would not leave and now they wish to attack us. Bring the clan into the tunnels. Teach them to fight here. End the rogues. Save the clan."

Lunarshine was going to save the clan.

I am going to save all of them.

The moon will never touch the body, nor the sun. It is hidden deep in the tunnels where no one will ever find it.

"The rogues got him," said the clan.

"What a loss."

"We'll need to strike back."

In death, Lightheart killed every rogue in the forest.

The next time someone was cruel, they were fed to the rogues. The innocent dead were just as cruel as the guilty.

Is this how he felt?
Did he think his cause was just?

***

I wake directly from the flashback, my head still burning, and stare out of the warrior's den. Something is warm against my pelt. I look over to find Novablaze lying next to me. He's twitching in his sleep, his leg kicking out to hit my side. The breath of my clanmates is fogging the air, clearly warming the inside of the den far more than usual.

Padding outside, I find that there's snow on the ground with more on the way. The downy flakes fly about me like butterflies, stopping on my nose before quivering and fading away altogether. Something about the briefness of their lifespans is oddly terrifying.

With a shiver, I step further into the cold, feeling the snow crunch beneath my pads. It's oddly satisfying, though I find myself picking up the pace due to how quickly my pads become raw from the temperature. As I make my way to the Highfall, I notice just how few cats are there. Goldenfire and Sparrowheart are sitting with their tails twined, muttering sickingly sweet things to each other.

I look away, half out of envy, half out of respect for their privacy, and turn to Hazelwhisker's kits, who are racing around the clearing at top speed, bowling into warriors left and right. Out of the two of them, Flashkit is the troublemaker, mainly due to his sisters' shortcomings. Purekit stumbles behind her brother in the snow, sniffing the air to see where he's going.

Ever since birth, she's been completely blind.

I feel a stab of pity for the wandering kit in the snow, pulled along by her hyperactive brother, but I'm called back by Novablaze's voice.

"Rushcall, Carbonfrost, and Cherryshine, you will be patrolling the ForestClan border."

"We should head out then." Carbonfrost says. He walks past me across the river, barely noticing how wet his paws have become.

"You shouldn't pull stunts like that. It's practically leaf-bare," I scold Carbonfrost. He barely notices my plea, trekking on through the snow as I follow behind, ears flattened. Cherryshine bounces along behind me, quickly dashing in front as I trudge along. My pads are already sore and we've barely started walking!

The snow begins to fall faster around us as we pace along the scent lines, digging beneath the snow to lay our scent there. I spy no warriors over the border, a good sign, though it's worrying that we might be the only ones out there. I mark another border and turn to see Carbonfrost and Cherryshine are already a ways off.

"Wait up!" I call, but they don't turn around.

Frustrated, I begin running, but with an angry howl snow blows faster and I lose sight of them. It's well up over my paws now and I'm absolutely freezing. I look up and snow burns in my eyes. It's coming down incredibly fast now, far faster than anything we received last leafbare.

"Hello?" I call, trudging through the white emptiness, a place where the trees have parted and the only sound is the falling snow, which sounds at once like nothing but somehow manages to block out all other sound without trying.

The infinite silence has swallowed me whole.

Panic begins to rise within me. Something thrashes in my insides, making me feel sick.

Suddenly, a violent headache threatens to break my head open, a single voice calling to me as the world blurs away...

***

It snowed like this once and you held him in the cold and he kept you warm.

***

Lunarshine?

Not now, not now, not now. I can't be trapped like this. Carbonfrost and Cherryshine are coming back for me.

I lurch to the side as if hit, my head falling against the snow, which is surprisingly painful. Have I hit my head against a rock buried beneath the fresh drifts?

I try to get up and fall to the other side. Within my own head, I can hear distressed wailing. I try to scramble up, but some invisible force holds me down.

***

You'll learn to love me more than him. I am the moon and you are the sun.

***

It's definitely Lunarshine, and she sounds desperate. Dots begin to speckle my vision, a sure sign that nothing good can come of whatever's currently happening. The war in my head makes my heart pulse faster as my paws begin to go numb. My breath speeds up, then slows, then quickens again.

***

Fire and light are in love with each other. That's why when there is fire, there will always be light. The light comes to the fire, curves around it, gives it meaning.

***

Ashleap.

I can hear yelling in the distance. Someone is calling for me.

***

Once, long ago, there was a fire and a light who met in the dead of the darkness. They were so close that it was hard to tell that they were not, indeed, one and the same. Together, they grew so powerful that the darkness trembled before them. They grew so bright that they outshone the stars, and all of the world fell before them, and all the cats and all the creatures of the earth grew to need them. The stars, knowing they could not outshine the darkness themselves, and secretly jealous of this great light, plucked them up into the sky, where they became the sun, illuminating the entire day by themselves.

There are many other times the two met beneath the same sun, their new forms a pale copy of the light they had once created together.

From then on, whenever they met, no matter what world, they were fated to fall in love.

No matter what happened, one of them was fated to die.

***

Pyrewing is calling my name. I can feel him trying to nudge me awake, but I'm curled up in the snow like prey in the last stages of its life and there is no saving me now. I can feel him against me like fire. Ashleap's story burns at the back of my mind.

It's true. Every last word is true but the sun is gone behind the clouds now.

***

Ashleap.

***

I am Infernoleap, but all of my legs are numb and near breaking. They are ice. If anyone steps on them they will shatter.

They're yelling at him. He never wanted to be a medicine cat.

***

What?

***

No. That's real yelling. In my abandoned physical body, my frostbitten ears catch a sound from far away. There's warriors trudging back through the snow.

***

None of this matters anymore.

There's no more time.

There's only one more leafbare and then it's over.

We may not even survive this one.

***

Pyrewing is shaking me awake. I can feel the warmth of two warriors and his own, which is nothing but pure, beautiful fire.

"Rushcall!" cries Carbonfrost. I don't even open my eyes. "My daughter, please..."

"Don't mourn for her. You're the one who left her to die."

"She walked off on her own. Do you have any idea how far we are into ForestClan territory?!"

I am colder than ice and now I'm melting. I can feel my body dripping away, my fur covered in flakes that make it stick up, frozen...

"Where did you last post a scent?"
"Almost six treelengths from here. When we noticed she had fallen behind, we went back for her and she was gone. We thought she might have gone back to camp, so we ran back-"

"You harebrained fool."

***

There will always be time for stories.

***

There's a light in the distance. Unfazed, I stare straight into the sun.

My whole body is immersed in warmth and then, there's nothing but darkness.