The following days were madness.

Tension hung heavy in the air, thick like blood and laced with the stinging spines of nettles. Cats seemed to turn on each other left and right. Everyone was ready, hackles raised and eyes burning with lust - a lust for food, a lust for survival, for prosperity - from sunup and through the scorching day until the bitter chill of night returned. What they were ready for, Seedscatter couldn't say. As aggression coiled through his friends like a snake, the deputy felt as if he were shrinking in on himself. He had no power over these cats any longer.

Seedscatter knew that, deep down, this was all his fault.

Some small, fading part of him argued incessantly with the needless guilt that overpowered it. This was out of his paws completely! He couldn't change the path of the sun across the sky and chide it into a forgiving nature. How in the world was he to stop this panic from rooting itself into FieldClan all on his own?

And the panic wasn't his fault. That wasn't something that the voice could argue against. But such a repetitive argument would not keep the guilt from dragging him down, nor the fatigue from shadowing his duties. If this was the end he would come to, Seedscatter would not be fighting on his way out.

He settled down in his nest that night with an empty stomach. In the shadow of the barn, the warriors' den was caught in a constant state of cold and darkness. Not even the moon graced the cats with its presence. Did he prefer this to the intense heat of the day? Seedscatter wasn't sure. Nevertheless, he rested his head on his paws and focused on the soft breathing of his clanmates. They might claw my pelt off in the morning, he thought to himself darkly. But at least they're tolerable when they can't open their muzzles.

___________

Seedscatter's sides heaved with the effort it took to cough. Something granulated and tasteless had invaded his mouth, and it didn't seem to want to retreat any time soon. It coated his lungs and forced his throat to constrict in violent gasps for air. But there was no air; it was everywhere. He couldn't open his eyes, but he could tell that he was surrounded by miles upon miles of it. Up, down; left and right - he was being strangled by the earth itself.

Pushing upwards desperately, Seedscatter swan through the filth like a carp caught dry on a shoreline. His limbs thrashed and his heart pounded all on the whims of one tireless thought: up. Almost too soon to be logical, he felt the substance fall from his pelt, and he gulped breathlessly at the hot wind that tangling in his ear fur. He clambered his way out of the hole giddily, laughing like he had forgotten his sanity underground. And then he saw it.

Sand. Sand as far as he could see. Sand that stretched forever and ever, climbing mountains and diving down into rivets in an endless field of heat and abrasion.

Seedscatter spun around, hoping against hope that he had just been unlucky enough to climb out on the wrong side.

There. On the horizon, a speck of black flourished amongst the gold. If that truly was a copse of trees, or even an animal skeleton he could sleep in for the night, he would be safe. With a grimace up at the sun, Seedscatter wondered if this place even had a night.

His paws, though broad and powerful, were not made for walking on sand. With each step, his feet seemed to sink even further, and he was forced to kick and struggle just to keep his advantage.

With the noonday sun bearing down upon the land, each of his paws were burning with pain, and his steady pace had soon turned into a choppy sprint-to-walk movement broken up by his own exhaustion. 

Something about this place was... foggy. Everything that could be excused and obscured by ripples of heat was. No matter how long he traveled, time didn't seem to pass and distance trudged along like a defiant kit, backtracking and then racing ahead only to stop altogether. The dot on the horizon was only farther away the next time he looked up. Seedscatter didn't understand why he was here. Where had FieldClan gone? Wasn't he just in his nest back home?

The realization hit him with the full force of a monster. This was just a nightmare. And he could do anything in dreams, right? Wasn't that what his mother had always told him to help him sleep through the night? Shutting his eyes, Seedscatter imagined his paws leaving the ground. He pictured his body, free now of mortal weight, sailing swiftly towards the dot like a hawk in a dive.

He peered through one eye only to see that nothing had happened. Seedscatter let out a curse.

"How adorable."

Seedscatter spun around, eyes blazing with all and more of the fury that smoldered down from above. But all he saw was the same scene: sand everywhere.

"Awww, I could just bundle you up and have you for a late night snack! In fact, maybe I will."

Seedscatter wheeled around again. Nothing. He let his eyes trail the horizon slowly, following the rise and fall of the dunes. But each time he went over a spot for a second time, the landscape changed, altered in some way that completely screwed up his careful analysis.

"Face me, coward!" Seedscatter yowled, hating his helplessness in the situation.

"Good idea," hissed the breathy voice, sending trails of sand pouring into his ear. Seedscatter coughed, shuddering uncontrollably at the unfamiliar and very unwanted sensation. His whole body shook in a futile effort to escape the burning discomfort. 

Turning and moving to flee in the other direction was his next mistake, and this time, another scorching wind, this one much more powerful than the first, forced him back and onto his side. Seedscatter cried out, but his yelp was drowned in the laughter of another.

Down below, black sand, darker than night itself, wound around his ankles and through his toes, grains darting as one.

The sand stuck there, constantly moving but never jumping far from the manacles around his paws. They seemed to have a purpose, and as Seedscatter looked up, he saw why.

In front of him stood a cat. Its fur was an unfortunate shade of bone-white that hung dry and thin down its sides. Ribs stuck through its pelt at odd, unnerving angles. The black sand wound around the other cat's ankles too, but it was not the same hostile, swift-acting sand that belted the deputy to the ground. Almost comically so, it slithered through the white cat's legs like an admiring kit. But it was its face that set Seedscatter off the most. Eyes too big for its head glinted back at him, glossy and black. And then its smile... It wasn't natural the way that it sent him a toothy grin. It's mouth stretched from ear to ear, split as if by the talons of an eagle. Pearly white teeth stuck out in a disarray, as if they couldn't agree on who was supposed to be doing what and where.

"How is this, uncle?" Seedscatter felt the sand rattle in his ears, creating an unholy cacophony of sound. Its voice sounded like claws on stone, but it wasn't loud enough to fully understand; the words were almost an afterthought, processed slowly and then placed in the blank spots left for them.

The creature (as it wasn't truly considered a cat in Seedscatter's mind) titled its head, gazing at him with an almost sad expression. And then sand started pouring from its mouth.

Streams of sand flowed swiftly through its parted jaws and spilled to the dessert below, tainting the deep orange tones with tar and ash. As if the commotion had torn more seams in the puppet's body, the river grew wider and soon spread until mud dripped from its eyes and gravel fell from its ears. The creature was deflating, sand burying its husk of a body. Seedscatter moved to scramble back from the skin, but he was still chained down tightly. As it looked up from its own grave with burdened eyes, Seedscatter felt the voice in his ear again.

"H o w  i s  t h i s ,  u n c l e ?"

And then it was coming from him. Sand drained from every cut and scrape, every hole in his face, every pore on his skin. He was the husk, he was the empty shell of a cat, and he could do nothing to stop it.

This time, however, it wasn't Seedscatter that screamed.

-

Author's note:

Reading this back for the millionth time, I can definitely tell that I was influenced by the Nightmare Before Christmas. Quite the seasonal update! I'm unimpressed by how the short the beginning is, but I didn't leave a lot of room for myself to add much back in. Oh well. I expanded more on that part and the dream, and that was what I had wanted to accomplish. I'm expecting at least one more edited chapter before the new year to get done, and maybe on the first as well. I don't have any plans on that day, So I may spend the hours up until midnight churning out some new material perhaps?