A Great Promise
“What an intrepid little adventurer!” one of the Gathering Grove elders exclaimed, and the word drizzled from the back of her neck down her spine and her legs into her paws. She swayed in place and leaned heavily against Prudence. The elder chuckled. “Oh, that’s early, poor thing,” they muttered into the small circle of knowing nods. She didn’t know what frustration she was in for at the time; she was eight moons old and she had seen other catlings find their names but recognized their struggle only distantly. In this moment, she was more focused on absorbing the shock and righting her balance than the long wait until her year.
Prudence gave her a comforting lick behind the ear. “Honestly, Basil, you’ve surprised us both!” she exclaimed to the elder who had given Intrepid her name. “I was sure it was going to be something to do with speed. I swear, I felt I had only just sent her off for that yarrow and then I turned around and she was already back! Quick as lightning, she was, but aye, you’re right. Running that fast in a rainstorm was a brave thing, catling.” Prudence laughed at her glare. “Oh, are you realizing it now? You’ve got four moons to wait!”
*
Four agonizing moons later, she stood before Courage and declared, “I am a child of Pond’s Heart and I come to claim who I will be.”
“Who then will you be?” Courage asked, eyes glowing yellow and voice rumbling like an oncoming storm in the silence of the camp.
“I will be Intrepid,” she said, and the clan murmured quietly. They’d all expected it.
“Intrepid.” Courage said her name and her heart swelled. Finally, her name was hers. “The Ancestors hear you. What do you pledge this night?”
And here she hesitated. She had always been told that the most important thing to do during the pledge was to be honest, no matter what, but she had seen ceremony after ceremony of cats pledging to protect the clan, to serve the clan, to honor the Ancestors-
But Stillness’s ceremony hadn’t been like that, and yet no one looked at her with disapproving frowns. So Intrepid stood firm in her stance and said, “I pledge to seek the unknown.” There was more murmuring from the cats behind her, but she continued, “I pledge to follow the wind and the stars to sights unseen and return home to share their stories. I pledge to lay my own pawsteps in a trail those after me can use as a starting line from which to seek their own adventures.”
For a long, long moment, the camp was utterly silent. Intrepid could hear her heartbeat pounding, could feel every grain of dirt under her paws, and could not find the room to fill her lungs. Was it wrong, this pledge of hers? It was what thrummed in her blood, the challenge she saw in her dreams, the hope that infused every waking moment. There was so much more to the world than their little patch of forest or even the Two-Leg camp that bordered it; was it wrong that she wanted to see it all?
There was a crack of thunder and a flash of yellow light, and from the spot on the ground where the lightning had struck there emerged... a cat, somewhat. But it was tall, taller than any cat any of the clan had ever seen, long and slender and covered in thick, blotchy spots where the night sky mingled with their golden fur. A line of starry fur stood up on the back of their neck and down their shoulders, their tail faded into the blackness of the night, and slender lines of darkness carved tracks from the corners of their eyes to the corners of their mouth. The Great Ancestor stood above them and stared down at Intrepid. “The Ancestors have heard thy pledge, Intrepid, and I offer to thee this challenge: what is home to thee, thou who would live with only the stars as thy map?” Their voice was not great and ringing as Intrepid had expected; it was instead a relentless susurration of wind racing through grass and over broad plains. It made Intrepid ache for a place she had never been, a terrain she had never seen, a time long gone and far away.
“Home...” she murmured, almost unaware of speaking aloud. “Home is-” She stopped. ‘Here’, she’d been about to say, but that wasn’t all of the truth, was it? And if ever there was a time to be fully honest, it was here at the feet of a Great Ancestor. She relaxed her bold stance and turned to look at the awestruck faces of her clan. “Home is my brother’s laughter when something catches him off-guard.” A snicker in the silence proved her point. “Home is Prudence telling me I wouldn’t have to eat the nasty plants if I just took better care of myself. It’s Echo and Charge teaching me how to sneak up on prey if I can or catch up to it fast if I can’t. It’s Solace telling us stories in the winter to keep us entertained, it’s Boldness telling that Stone’s Smoke cat to leave Hush alone, it’s Negotiation sitting me down with Gleam so we stop fighting over nonsense-” And here she dipped her head to the white she-cat only a moon older who Intrepid simply hated until recently, and Gleam dipped her head back. “- and it’s Stillness and her Stone’s Smoke cat sitting together at Gatherings and it’s Courage and Charge running that fox out of the territory and it’s-” She stopped and turned to face the Great Ancestor. “Home is my clan,” she announced, feeling so full of pride and love that she was about to burst. “And I stand by my pledge: I will always return home.”
Intrepid could feel the weight of a warning as the Great Ancestor leaned over her. “Thou art known to us, Intrepid. We shall yet see if thou art able to keep this great promise.” Then with another flash of lightning and crack of thunder from the cloudless sky, they were gone.
