They had expected, upon entering the territory of the alleged Starkeepers, to be taken in by a stray patrol or to detect some semblance of clan-like life, but despite the presence of scent, no such cats appeared. Birchpaw felt himself growing restless, twitchy and even agitated, but more than anything he was lonely. He knew in his heart he was longing for his mother, and yet she was no more present than she had been when they had begun their quest. Even the scents, familiar as they were to his nose, were not of hers but the ghosts of cats he did not know in the waking world.

It was Sleetpaw who found the first den. It was perched up on an outcrop of rock, a precarious position, but the scent was fresh. He tapped it with his paw. "It's thick, alright, but what are you going to do if you fall? Doesn't seem all that safe to me." He sat down in the den, pretending to stare out at the vast landscape beyond. "It is mysterious though. I'll give them that."

Birchpaw looked out at the sloping trees, the fields, and the eventual flicker of water and distant shore on the horizon. Home was so far away from them now, and yet Birchpaw felt fulfillment shake him. "We're close." He lept back down towards the path and continued on, Sleetpaw trailing behind.

"When we do get there... what's the plan?"

"Plan?" asked Birchpaw. "We get there."

"And?" Sleetpaw continued, "Do we go back?"

Birchpaw thought of the distant shore, little more than a thin line on the horizon, and the large rock features on either side seemed to be creeping in on them. He could feel the old mountains trying to suffocate them both. "We'll know when we get there."

Sleetpaw muttered something under his breath, and Birchpaw's heart ached. Pass them. Keep running forever. he thought to himself. They'll understand. No one will miss you back home. Who says this can't be your destiny? He shook his head. There were cats up there with answers, cats like him- maybe even other males with his coat. Maybe even his mother. He closed his eyes, weighing futures, and continued up the path.

As stars began to creep across the sky, the paths became more and more divided, jutting this way and that. Birchpaw stuck to the high roads, Sleetpaw loping along. Hunger and weariness clung to the two toms in a miasma, dulling any further conversation, and they pulled themselves along the rock face together. Sleetpaw moaned beneath his breath, and Birchpaw twitched his ears but kept his thoughts to himself. Below them, a river cut across the lower paths, fish leaping.

"I want to throw myself off the rock face," Sleetpaw groaned.

"Don't!" Birchpaw yelped. "Please."

"I wasn't being literal. I feel like I want to throw myself off the rock face. Better?"

Birchpaw turned back. His blue eyes swam with concern, and Sleetpaw almost fell into him before cutting a wide arc around the other tom. "I don't think I can keep going like this, but I don't think I can sleep." Sleetpaw yawned. "I am swimming in misery right now."

The tortoiseshell tom lowered his ears and walked on. Sleetpaw followed, head tilted, and they followed each other into the night until they thought they might have fallen off the edge and begun to walk on the sky. It was only when they awoke the next day that they realized they were no longer moving.

"Where are we?" asked Birchpaw. Never mind. I know.

The air smelled like other cats, familiar ones, and the faint tease of mountain herbs his mother's pelt had always had. Beneath that there was water and something like liquid starlight. Sleetpaw raised his head by his side and tasted the air, his mouth splitting into a yawn. "They're over there."

Birchpaw bolted up. The den was huge, and the cats clustered about the outsides seemed to be treelengths away. His paws hurt as he ran up to meet them, unsteady, and asked, "Are you the Starkeepers?"

A calico she-cat nodded. Most of the cats were mollies, though there were a few ginger and black toms. None of them resembled him in pelt coloration, at least not the toms as he had hoped, though their eyes and ears were familiar. "You're one of us."

Yes, he thought. I am.

"We're from ShallowClan." Sleetpaw corrected them. "A 'clan' is a large group of cats who care for each other, um, and support-"

With little more than a tail flick, the calico waved him away. Sleetpaw looked down at his paws. "We know what clan cats are. They pass by on the way to the Place Where The Stars Fall Down, on occasion. It is safe to say that you two have gone the long way."

We had to get around RyeClan, so they wouldn't kill us." Sleetpaw offered.

"We have also heard of the clan cats' reputation for violence." mewed another cat, viewing the apprentices as if they were particularly vicious pieces of prey.

Birchpaw sweltered under the heat of their stare. Sleetpaw shot a glare at them, and whispered, "Not all of us." Birchpaw's heart lept a bit. The cats' pity had turned to confusion, even reproachful condescension. He felt something tugging at his fur, begging him to get out, and he wanted to drag Sleetpaw by the teeth out with him. Sleetpaw's eyes slid back to Birchpaw, then, when Birchpaw gave no answer, he muttered something soft beneath his breath and strode out into the misty morning.

Once he was gone, Birchpaw mewed, "I came here for answers."

"Unsurprising." The tallest among the cats, the calico she-cat, said. "Many do."

Birchpaw bit his own tongue. "Well... have you ever seen a cat with my pelt coloration? A tom?"

The black tom nodded. "We've heard of cats like you before. It is rare indeed to see your pelt on the back of a tom, but not impossible."

"That's just awful," Birchpaw said, looking to Sleetpaw, who was out at the front of the den, taking in the air. The silver tom had his ears flattened, and was choking on a bug. Birchpaw was unsure if he should laugh or go to help. Emotion around Sleetpaw was easier than anyone else, save for maybe his sister, but it was still a vague and confusing blur.

"I am sorry, indeed. That is a long way to keep going for a single question, though. Is there something else you needed?"

"Is it true you're storytellers?" asked Birchpaw.

"Stories?" asked one of the toms. "I guess we do have them. We have seen the land, as far as it goes, and many of our number are out right now, reaping them from the earth. The Starkeepers, as you might know us, are first and foremost a family, but we are also a collection of scholarly souls, passing knowledge from one cat to the next as the falls bring water from the peaks to the flatlands."

Birchpaw nodded. It was everything he had wanted to hear, yet his expression was blank as the stones, washed clean by the river. "One last thing. I was looking for someone. My mother. Her name is Harvestmask. She looks like me, but her face is split in two." he explained.

The cats exchanged a few murmurs, bending towards their neighbors so that they were all whispering into each other's ears, and the cat at the front nodded. "You're her son."

Birchpaw nodded again, more vigorously.

"She is a strange one... a wanderer amongst wanderers. She's by the Little Falls."

"Where?" Birchpaw asked, his heart pacing.

"We can guide you." the black tom said, and he and the calico got to their paws.

"Thank you. Thank you both... what's your name?"

The she-cat purred. The black tom mewed, "I am Shade, and this is Juniper."

"Thank you, Shade and Juniper." Birchpaw lowered his head. He yelled to Sleetpaw, "They're going to take me to my mom!"

"Thank the stars. Took long enough." Sleetpaw said beneath his breath.

Neither cat responded, instead, they guided the two toms down the sloping paths of the jagged landscape, down where the trees cropped back up again and further still. Water gushed over the edges alongside them, making the path treacherous,though only Sleetpaw slipped. Birchpaw found his pads held well on the rock, coarse and flat, and he lept ahead of the group despite his diminutive size.

"Do I have relatives?" he asked. "My mother's parents? Her siblings?"

"No one who has been here in a long time, but it is likely Ridge and his mate, Cirrus, are still alive. Ridge is your mother's brother, although they were not... terribly close."

"Harvestmask, not close with her siblings? Shocking." yowled Sleetpaw from behind, trying to be heard over the rush of the water.

The path evened out ahead, sloping to banks on the edge of a small waterfall. There sat a calico cat, peering out into the white currents of the falls, her form slender and familiar. Birchpaw lept forwards. "Harvestmask- mom! It's me. Birchpaw."

"Birchpaw." Harvestmask said, her back to her son. "I did not think this was the path you'd chose to take."

The other cats shrunk back, Sleetpaw included. Birchpaw grimaced. "You promised you wouldn't leave again."

"I did not. I couldn't." responded the she-cat. She hunched her shoulders. "I hoped in time that you would forgive me, but I could not stay, and you could not leave."

"What do you mean?"

"You have my blood. Look into the mists," she said, "This is close to where the stars fall down, and the destiny of the clans is visible here, in these waters. See how that stone is split, how the white spray curls about it like the forms of the dead? The clans are destined to tear themselves apart. Kin will fight for kin or against kin, all to the death, descending into anarchy. There is nothing that can sate them, like there is nothing that can stop the water from falling. It is nature's way."

"And you were going to leave us behind?"

"I had to. You were not mine to keep- you belonged to that life more than you could ever be mine. This place is not hospitable. This life is lonely." Harvestmask turned to him, at last. Her golden eyes gleamed in their sockets, but the wear in her coat and face was evident. "I saw your destinies, the first time I came back here, when I peered into the water. Poppypaw will be a great warrior. You will be strong in spirit and loved greatly. That is all any mother wants to here. All those trials... all those leaps... they were things that I would keep you from."

"We want you."

Harvestmask turned back to the waters. "My sweet kits..." He could hear the tenderness drowning in her throat.

"Will you come back, then?" Birchpaw stepped forwards.

"No. You shouldn't have come, either. Leave me to this." Harvestmask placed a paw into the water, tail undulating like a wave. "This is my home."

"Bluepetal misses you."

"I miss her as well."

"Then why-"

"I can not stay in one place forever, Birchpaw." Her tone was harsh now, reprimanding.

"Do you even care about us?"

Harvestmask did not answer. "I am trying so hard to do the right thing." she said. "I am trying so hard to feel anything at all, to try not to doom you to this. Leave me be. If you must travel, travel, but do not do it alone. If you must return, do so, and change the world best you can. If you can stomach the warlike ways of the clans, you are stronger than I. If you can discern comfort from the chaos that comes with loving another, you are strong of heart indeed. As for I? Hear that waterfall, Birchpaw. Imagine standing beneath it for the rest of your life."

Birchpaw almost fell into the surf, racing for her, and Harvestmask drew back. He stood, up to his dewclaws in the water, and his mother padded down the banks, into the mist and up the cliffside. His chest heaved with longing and the beginning of a breakdown.

Sleetpaw ran to his side. "Birchpaw! Are you okay?"

"How much of it did you hear?" Birchpaw asked, cringing by the water.

"Enough." Shade and Juniper were talking in the trees. "If it makes you feel better, I'd be happy to be rid of my mother."

"No you wouldn't." Birchpaw spit, glaring at the river-smooth rocks.

Sleetpaw sighed. "Are you... going to be alright, if we go back?"

"I don't know if I could stay here," Birchpaw says, "So we have to. We could... we could keep doing this, though. Go wherever we want. Learn to tell stories. Give up on everyone.

Poppypaw will be okay, won't she? Poppypaw has to be okay."

"I think Poppypaw knows what she's doing." Sleetpaw agreed. "I'm worried about the rest of the clan."

Birchpaw muttered, "I miss her,"

"I miss my family, too. I just wish- forget it. Let's get out of here."

They left the banks behind, and Birchpaw felt part of himself fall behind with it, fragile as the leaf-fall foliage. It crumpled beneath his paws, browning and crinkling into insignificance, and the bile in his throat made him feel sick.

(A/N: Favorite pairing in the book? There's a looooooot going on.)