She left as silently as she entered, just the rasp of dry leaves and the whisper of distant wind in the dead of night. No one was there to witness her one last time, nor would many have cared, but for those who knew her best, it would have destroyed them to know that this time, she would not return.

Birchpaw knew, somehow before he was told or before it became evident his mother had no plans of returning. It had only been a half moon since her last return, but there was a dark sensation in his gut when he woke up the first morning she was gone. She knew, now, that her kits were old enough to fend for themselves and the clan.

If not for them, who would she stay for?

***

Sleetpaw awoke to darkness and the soft hum of late leaf-fall, the sound of the emptiness where birds and crickets used to be. He shuffled in his nest, pressing his tail and ears against himself to persuade himself to fall back asleep, but there was a scent lingering in the air that disturbed him, nestled between the crisp scent of fallen leaves and his denmates. Like the sound of leaf-fall, it was marked not by the presence of something, but rather, a distinct absence.

Sleetpaw stepped from his nest, removing himself from the grasp of his plump sister and scrawny Carppaw, who more resembled his paranoid mentor everyday. He felt his face twitch as he watched them lying there, silent and unaware of his departure. Was it pity he felt? No. It was more of a melancholy feeling, but why? He'd see them in the morning, surely...

This energy in the air, the fear running through Sleetpaw's trembling whiskers, it all felt like something out of an elder's tale. This was the moment before a creature of monstrous power would bound out of the forest and devour him alive.

Drizzlemist was not one for stories, of course, but Sleetpaw had heard tales from the few elders of ShallowClan of things that existed before the clans did, passed to them by parents who had known the river before the advent of the clans themselves, perhaps even before Talon. It was like telling him that once, every tree in the forest had been a seedling. It had to be true, but it didn't make much sense, not when it seemed so impossible to move them. Not when they were the very foundation of life itself.

Still, the elders insisted that before the clans, other beasts had stalked these woods. They spoke of foxes their ancestors had fought; of mirages who shimmered over the water, who many a cat had drowned for; of the dead still walking before their ancestors had learned to climb the stars...

Two blue eyes shone through the gloom, and Sleetpaw's fur stood on end. The tom jumped half a foot into the air, and she shadow insisted, "Shh!"

It was more commanding than Sleetpaw had ever heard Birchpaw. "Thank the stars, it's just you." Sleetpaw mewed. "What are you doing up?"

"What are you doing up?" asked Birchpaw, his voice little more than a low rumble. Sleetpaw's eyes, which had quickly adjusted to the dark, now fell upon the calico's familiar blotched pelt, although the tom still seemed abnormally large in the nighttime.

"I- I have no clue. I felt like I was walking asleep there, for a while." Sleetpaw said. "I thought that there might be... well, let's just say I'm glad you're here instead of something else."
"Like what?"
"I have no idea." Sleetpaw's ears burned. "Can we go back to sleep?"

"About that." Birchpaw hesitated, tail-tip aquiver, and admitted, "I'm leaving tonight."
"You're what."

"Quiet, please. You're going to wake up the whole camp."

"Maybe I should!" yelled Sleetpaw, a little louder, and Birchpaw began to slink back into the darkness. He skipped forwards, coming heartbeats from Birchpaw's muzzle, and said, "You can't leave. You're a warrior of ShallowClan."

Birchpaw eyed his leg. Sleetpaw recognized it as the one that was injured in the training exercise almost two moons ago, now. Since then, it had been joined with numerous other soft injuries. Birchpaw sighed, "I'm not a warrior, and I never will be."

"You can't say that."

"Your sister's alluded to it a few times." Birchpaw said, bitterly.

"Both of our sisters are the worst, Birchpaw. You can't take anything they say seriously." Sleetpaw nudged his friend's muzzle upwards. "Come on back to sleep. I have a mid-training assessment tomorrow."
"I can't."

"Why?!"

"Keep. Your. Voice. Down." Birchpaw hissed, blue eyes wide. "Please. I need to go... I need to go find the Starkeepers."

"Who?" Sleetpaw asked, lowering his voice to match Birchpaw's. He was beginning to get the uneasy sensation they were being watched.

"My mother's kin. My father was probably a rogue, my mother is an outsider. I don't even belong to the clan by blood- but out there, somewhere, are cats I do belong to. Cats with all the answers, cats with all the stories, I don't know, but they just have to be who I'm looking for."

"If you want answers, why don't you ask the warriors? They know things."

"Not everything. Not the things I need to know." The conviction in his voice made Carppaw tremble, and a sadness flowed through him. An unfeeling Birchpaw continued,

"And I need to leave now."

"Why?" asked Sleetpaw, softly, indulging the both of them even though he was certain the situation was utterly pointless.

"There's a storm on the horizon. Can't you scent it?" Birchpaw asked, with a high trill to the question. His tail perked and his ears fell back as he lifted his head into the thick night air, which was brimming with moisture.

"No." admitted Sleetpaw. "I smell our clanmates, though. The scents I grew up with. Our family."

Birchpaw caught the apprentice's gaze, a disappointed shimmer in his eyes. Sleetpaw thought, in spite of himself, of the numerous glances they'd shared in the past, the potency of every time the two locked eyes. This? This wasn't that, and it might never be again. "Go back to sleep, Sleetpaw. You're going to do incredible things without me."

"Sorry," Sleetpaw said, "but I can't let you do that."

Birchpaw looked dumbly back at Sleetpaw.

"I'm coming." Sleetpaw explained.

"Oh," Birchpaw said softly, and he opened his mouth before closing it. Sleetpaw could practically see him trying to find a retort, an excuse, anything- "I'm glad to have you, Sleetpaw."

Sleetpaw sighed with relief. "Thought you'd try to stop me." He shuddered, not from the conversation but rather from a dash of cold water on his back. Birchpaw's prediction had been spot-on, and now rain began to fall into the clearing with accelerating intensity.

Birchpaw flicked an ear dismissively, and exited camp into the neighboring cover of the foliage. The underbrush was dense, but it was a good second layer of protection from rain that had already passed through the trees. Sleetpaw stuck to the edge, keenly aware of their ripped fur in the teeth of the bushes, but said nothing.

He'd agreed to this, oh sweet stars over the river, he'd taken all of this upon himself...

Birchpaw mewed, "It'll be too late. Our storm will wipe our scents when we pass over the river."

"The river," choked Sleetpaw.

"Yes. We'll skirt RyeClan's far territory, go off to the roguelands, and turn towards the mountains once we're sufficiently upstream. Should be at least four days, maybe even five-"

"Why in StarClan's name would you go that way to the mountains?"
Birchpaw's eyes narrowed. "I don't want to get caught."

"We are going to be caught! There are murderous rogues, RyeClan cats, foxes-"

Birchpaw stopped moving. He was completely rigid for precious few seconds before Sleetpaw followed his lead, his eyes darting about for some threat, and sure enough: there was Bluepetal, her white fur blowing in the new wind of the coming storm. She was sitting at the edge of one of the smaller bluffs, still as the trees.

Sleetpaw dipped his head to Birchpaw. "She can't see us."

"You don't know what Bluepetal's hearing is like, do you?" asked Birchpaw.

The storm grew faster and faster around them, and the she-cat trembled. Both toms' hearts beat in unison, unsteady on their own paws, but when their eyes locked they both knew that there was no doubt in what to do next.

Finally, the storm sprung from the heavens in earnest. At the first crack of lightning, Bluepetal spun around, white fur turned electric, but the two cats were already racing into the forest, faster than the rain or responsibility. The toms sprinted side by side through the woods, trees blurring past them into a nightmarish landscape that would only haunt them when they were much older, and Sleetpaw wondered if Birchpaw had the slightest idea where he was going.