Weaselpelt fell in alongside Flyclaw. His longer legs made it easier for him to stride through the forest, but Flyclaw was not one to be overshadowed by the taller cats. Quicking his trot, he gave his brother a warning growl to rut off, but Weaselpelt payed him no mind.
To Flyclaw, the world was cruel.
His birth mother had rejected him since before he was even born. Pineclaw had dropped her kits to some other queen and went straight back to the warriors den. She never visited them, talked to them, played with them, groomed their fur, or even yowled their names when they were promoted from kits to apprentices. Whenever they had tried to get close to her, she treated them with coldness and cruelty.
He knew she hated him most. He was the runt. A puny, weak kit with stunted legs that lived while his siblings died. The stronger, bigger kits should have survived. Flyclaw was a mistake.
His foster mother, on the other paw, had been wonderful. No, that wasn’t right. She had been beyond wonderful. Lizardpelt, a shy molly with a plain face. But to Flyclaw, she was milk, warmth, love, and sunshine. She played with him, told him she loved him, and told him that he could do anything. She told him that he was a descendant of Tigerclan, that he had the power of the moon in his paws. She had yowled his name the loudest during his apprentice ceremony, and told him how proud she was that he’d received such an acclaimed warrior like Gooseclaw as a mentor. She had been there when he earned his warrior name, when he had suffered his first serious injury. She had always been there for him.
Flyclaw loved her children too. He loved them as if they were his own littermates. Alderpaw and Jaypaw, two wonderful cats he had been raised with since birth. They had nursed together, trained together, wrestled together, slept together, and talked about their dreams. They would lay by the lake, viewing the stars, discussing how they would grow to be like their favorite ancestors from the legends once they became warriors.
But those cats were dead.
Flyclaw was alone now.
In a rotting clan with a broken leader. He wanted to scream. To slash out some cat’s throat. He should have been strong enough to protect his clanmates. He should have been strong enough to protect Alderpaw from dying, he should have caught enough prey so that Lizardpelt would have been strong enough to fight her infection. But no matter how hard he fought with his worthless, stunted body; Flyclaw was never enough.
It was never enough.
And Weaselpelt couldn’t understand that. His stupid, dirt-eating, useless brother could never understand anything. How dare he try to get close to him after all he’d been through? He didn’t truly care about him. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what Flyclaw felt like. Weaselpelt didn’t truly care about Flyclaw. Nobody cared about Flyclaw.
He was the laughing stalk of the clans. Cats from other clans whispered about the ugly, scarred tiny warrior from Shadowclan. Mollies and toms alike gave him cold, nasty glares. Not even his own clanmates respected him. Flyclaw couldn’t walk to the fresh-kill pile without Gooseclaw and Pineclaw yowling obscenities at him from the other side of camp. Thistlepaw grunted in disgust whenever he tried to talk to them. His other clanmates wouldn’t even spare him a passing glance. He slept alone, in the coldest part of the den, no cat to press against in the coldness of the night. When he wasn’t doing tasks, he had nothing else to do but nap, haunted by nightmares of the cats he once loved. There was no one to comfort him. There was no escape even in his dreams.
He hated it. He was so alone. His heart ached every day, and it took all the strength he had to keep moving forward. He wanted to give up. To shriek. To attack everyone who had wronged him. No cat cared about him. The prey the clan caught had more respect than him.
But Lizardpelt. Oh, sweet Lizardpelt. The thought of her soft brown fur, her beautiful laugh, filled his tiny heart with courage. He would live for her. To make her proud, to get revenge, to honor her memory, to help save the clan she loved so much. Everything he did, he did it for her.
In due time, they would be together in Starlcan. It was the only thing Flyclaw ever look forward to.
Weaselpelt would never be able to understand that.
