If it weren’t for the ramshackle remains of what seem to be dens, Buzzardfur wouldn’t believe a living cat had ever set foot in the clearing. As he takes a few tentative pawsteps in, an inexplicable sense of … something presses onto him, not quite dread but certainly not comfort. He’s never seen something like this before, a barren land that nonetheless was certainly lived in—empty, yet somehow teeming with life. No, he muses, life-after-death would be more accurate.
“I can’t believe it’s real,” he mumbles, nigh inaudible. “I thought it … I thought they were just some old queen’s tale.” He turns to look at Bouncerumble, who’d come to a stop at the lip of the clearing. “How did you know?”
“The same way I know anything. StarClan’s sign.” Bouncerumble’s voice is clipped, a bit too fast, but who could blame them? Buzzardfur himself isn’t particularly calm, either. “They wanted us to find this. I think … to start WaspClan anew.”
“Start it anew?” Runningripple asks, speaking up from the back of the group. “Why not leave it in the past? That Clan ate itself from the inside out, didn’t it?”
“I heard the last leader’s mate was killed, and she went mad with grief.” Shiveringkit’s little voice is far too bright a chirp for the severity of her words. “I heard she made the other cats practice with their claws out. She even poisoned some of them!”
“Actually, they weren’t mates; Bunnystar was just in love-”
“Stop it, Moorpaw,” Buzzardfur says, and his apprentice falls silent. “We can’t let ourselves get carried away with rumors. We don’t know what happened here, just that it was some clan’s camp. And if Bouncerumble says this is where we should be …”
“Then we should stay here,” Runningripple finishes, padding up to stand beside him. “It’s got more than enough space for us, and StarClan knows Thornstar is too logical to take us back.” She says it with derision, and Buzzardfur can’t help but agree—surely there was a better way to solve an overpopulation crisis than to cast out some of his own cats. “Is everyone in agreement?”
There are some grumblings from the rest of the clan—if it can be called that—but none of them have anything to say, even Hailbark, who always seems to have a gloomy remark in her mouth.
“Right, then,” Buzzardfur says, and sighs. Thank StarClan Runningripple is taking the lead; he doubts he could have wrangled them the same way as she does. Why they all elected him leader is beyond him.
He’s taken a few more steps toward the smallest den, nestled in the hollow of a dead tree, before something occurs to him. “What do we call ourselves?”
Bouncerumble’s voice doesn’t hold a hint of uncertainty as they say, “I told you—we’re WaspClan.”
Buzzardfur turns it over and over in his head. How could they become WaspClan? WaspClan was just a story to scare kits—why would they ever want to be that? The concept fills him with dread, as if the name itself is cursed. But who is he to question StarClan? Who is he to do anything? “Right,” he says finally. “We’re … we’re WaspClan.”
