My head pounding painfully, I get up slowly, stepping carefully over a bright red tom with a disfigured back leg who snarls in his sleep as I pass him into the clearing. It's cold, especially for what I can only assume is either greenleaf or newleaf, judging by the huge stock of prey on the pile and the short cut coats of the cats around me.

Where have I landed? Am I in DragonClan at all anymore?

New and curious faces stare at me from every angle, yet they somehow smell so much like home. I recognize very subtle things about their faces immediately: the slant of a nose, the curl of a smile, the distinct scent, all of it screams DragonClan.

Perhaps it's not a where at all.

Perhaps... it's a when.

My fur is much longer than it was before, my shoulders slimmer, my tail longer and my entire body larger, perhaps with age. The cats nods to me respectfully as I make my way through their ranks. They seem understanding when I stare at them, confused.

"Can you see them again?" asks a dark gray she-cat. "You look terrified."

However these cats know me, they know me as someone to be respected but looked on from a distance. Even the kits seem to shy away, excepting one, who bounds up to me with glittering eyes. "Are you seeing the spirits again, Ashleap? What do I look like?"

Ashleap.

The piercing alarm at the back of my mind grows still. There's a recess, a void that I didn't know could exist and I feel like I've been dropped into a bottomless lake.

For the first time in my life, I'm completely alone in my own mind.
"Probably an ugly toad!" spits her littermate from a distance.

"I'm fine." I tell them both.

Ashleap, Ashleap, what did I remember about her...?

She was a medicine cat in DragonClan a long time ago.

Perhaps it was before we moved camps. That would explain the Highfall's disappearance, the lessening of deciduous trees. DragonClan used to live closer to the mountains before one of the more recent leaders moved us away following a great catastrophe.

Alright. I can do this.

My mind still burns with the sudden emptiness. There are no voices, no whispers, but also an unexplainable emptiness that has no words or meaning to it.

Another red cat, similar to the one in my den in coloring but vastly different in build and bulk, nods to me as he passes by, off for a patrol, no doubt.

A gray she cat approaches me, her gaze penetrating and slightly terrifying. She must be the leader. "Well, Ashleap, what did you plan on doing today?"
I look about the camp and quickly decide, "I'll be gathering herbs."

"Will you be bringing your apprentice? He looks awfully lonely in the medicine den." The gray she-cat says, nodding towards my den.

I look after her gaze, but all I can see is the red tom with the disfigured leg, now fully alert. I had thought he was a patient. Thank StarClan he was asleep when I first stepped over him.

I want to shake my head, but it might be easier to get information out of him then the group of cats I'll inevitably have to face if I ask the right questions. "I will." I say. "It'll be good exercise for him."

"He needs it. Angry furball does nothing but sit in camp and complain when he's not around you."

I purr. "Better air him out, then." Concealing my inner confusion, I stalk over to my 'apprentice', who is lazily sprawled across the entrance with seemingly not a care in the world.

"We're going to go herb collecting today." I tell him briskly. "Are we low on anything?"

"That's your job." he tells me. Immediately, I feel my fur spike. Why would Ashleap, who was from what I've heard a very competent medicine cat, choose such a rude and apathetic cat as her apprentice?

"You should be taking inventory too." I insist.

"If you really must know, we're missing cobwebs and catmint. I also saw some reeds down by the river." He gets up slowly, a strange dance that involves him trying to maneuver around his broken leg. "Could be useful." he says nonchalantly.

"Could be?!" Why me, why me, why me?

"You're the prodigy, not me." he says. "I don't know anyone else who could teach themselves every herb in the forest in three moons. It's unfortunate you didn't have a mentor after Rainfall's death, but on the bright side, now we're stuck together."

How great is that?

It occurs to me now that I am not Ashleap, I am not a prodigy, and I have no idea what any herbs do outside of poppy seeds. Not only that, but Ashleap in my head has gone silent, leaving me to figure out her life alone. Is this some sort of messed up dream punishment for killing Jade? Did Titanfoot kill me? Am I not going to StarClan?

I force all these questions down as the red tom and I leave camp, side by side. He presses far too close to me to be comfortable, a gesture further complicated by my medicine cat status. Surely Ashleap wouldn't be having secret affairs... would she?

I brush him off, and he says nothing. He looks at me with a radiant concern so unlike the hostile and blunt cat I just met. Whatever he may act like, he probably cares for me... I mean Ashleap... a lot.

What type of affection is that?

As we stalk through the northern forests of DragonClan's territory, which I've hardly explored at all, the other bright red cat slams through the bushes and nearly knocks us both over. A rabbit scampers past my paws and I watch it go, still shocked by the sudden newcomer.

"Fancy meeting you here, my golden sun and... Infernotail." he says, coming far closer to me than I'd ever want from someone I hardly know. He's eerily familiar, far more than the other cats. There's a brash confidence about him that makes him irresistibly charismatic, complemented by ruffled and slightly scarred fur as well as powerful bulk.

"You've always been one for entrances, Pyrewing." Infernotail says.

"I'm just hunting. You two happened to get in the way." he meows, looking past us to where the rabbit disappeared. "Don't tell Cloudfrost and Tidalfall I've been goofing off. They'll skin me alive." He heads back the way he came, "I'll see you later, Ashleap." He gives me a tail lash that mirrors the modern day 'follow me' signal, though I doubt he means it in the overt sense.

"You're not going to go after your prey?" I ask, looking into the undergrowth past him, but he's gone.

Now that I think about it... he looks a lot like Novapaw.

Infernotail scoffs. "I don't know what you see in him."

My eyes widen and my fur goes hot. So it's not Infernotail, but Pyrewing! "He keeps me grounded," I say, and though I have no idea if it's true or not, Infernotail seems to believe me.
"If you keep having those outbursts, you'll need him, then. Is it true you had another this morning?"

Outbursts?

"I don't think that's any of your business."

"They say you have this stare when you see them, like you're looking past us-"

"Infernotail." I say more firmly. "Herbs."

Begrudgingly,he drops the topic, but first mews, "You can talk to me. I hate your silly too-broken-to-speak-of-it charade."

I ignore him, my heart racing with the knowledge I have no idea what he's talking about. We walk in silence to the river, picking reeds and luckily enough, there just so happens to be cobweb stretched between many of them. No one has passed through here in a while. It doesn't seem like DragonClan uses the river very much at all.

It's odd. I can't imagine modern day DragonClan going for a day without long dips in it and playful teasing about fishing or pushing others in. It's more of a place of relaxation than anything else, but Infernotail regards it as if it could be dangerous.

"Is there anything else we need? We might be able to patch up your leg." I tell him, casting a glance at the clearly very expertly made cast.

"What?" he hisses. "Why would we need any more herbs for my leg? We already got the reinforcements for the cast just a few days ago."

"I'm talking about some more permanent things," I mew quietly.

"Is this some type of sadistic joke?" Infernotail hisses. "You know I'm not getting better. Otherwise, I wouldn't be stuck with this stupid job in the first place! Do you think I want to be stuck doing medicine work with a freak?"
My ears flatten. Somehow, despite hardly knowing him, the accusation burns. Is he really unhappy with his job? Did Ashleap know this? What would she do? What would she say?

All of those thoughts are entirely too selfless. I step forwards. "You think... I'm a freak?"

His eyes narrow to slits. "N-no! It slipped out. I swear I..."

I feel emotion burning away at my soul. My fur stands up on my back and my teeth open into a wide hiss, but nothing comes out. "I took you in. You broke your leg and you thought you'd never be useful again. I gave you a job and I cared for you when even your own family didn't. I listened to all your dreams you'd never achieve and I kept them in my heart because I care about you. I just want... I just want there to be some hope and if that's wrong, then fine. Anyways, you know full well that I am-" I pause. This is the same situation I'm in back home. "I am a freak."

Lucky guess, lucky guess, lucky guess, lucky guess.

All of them are evidently true.

"We're both freaks, aren't we? We're the moon and the sun in a world full of stars."

I sigh. He's not suspicious. I want to feel for him, believe in him, and I want to know more about this world I'm in despite of myself. Until I figure out how to get home, I want to know just how similar Ashleap's life was to my own. Already, there are parallels clearly drawn. Perhaps my life is just a repetition of another, already lived long ago.

If so, why come back with someone violent as Lunarshine?

Why go through any of this?

Why do I exist at all?
For now, I suppose, I'm taking it one pawstep at a time. I nod to Infernotail. "It's fine. We should get back to camp."
"You're not angry?" he mews feebly.

"I've tolerated a lot of you," I tease, "Nothing you say could get me that angry."

Oooh, it's not true.

Luckily for us both, I'm a good liar.