✦
“There was a vested interest in the kit’s survival, you see. For generations, the cats that came before had told of a saviour, a cat that was blessed by the stars and the Shine. The seers – those who watch – had been having unquiet dreams, and the kits arrival was lauded as a miracle.” Honeyfang pauses, scratching at her torn ear with a back foot.
“It is said, it was an apprentice to all the cats of the clan. When its fellows and siblings were left to grow fat with the fruits of an abundant hunt – it was taught how to survive. Destiny is one of those tricky matters - you can’t just leave it in the paws of someone else. Sometimes, they say, you must force it.”
✦
“Again!” The orange tom’s whiskered muzzle is close enough to Beetlepaw that he could reach out and swat it, if he wasn’t so sure it was a bad idea. Instead, he rises unsteadily to his paws, shaking the dusted earth from his dark pelt.
“Next time, when I swing at you, you dodge. Understood?” Lionjaw’s voice holds the sharp edge of a growl, and Beetlepaw nods.
“Good.”
The warrior’s right paw comes down in a sweeping motion, and Beetlepaw takes the brunt of it across his cheek. He gives a hiss of pain, ears ringing – and ducks as Lionjaw’s paws come again. The apprentice stumbles back, feeling the pull of claws in his fur as he twists into a dodge.
It’s Beetlepaw’s himself that makes contact next, the young tom rearing back, yowling his frustrations. His claws carve into the older warrior’s jowl.
Lionjaw parts his lips into a grin, even as a bead of dark blood traces his chin.
“Better. Next time, don’t stop the swing halfway through. We go again.”
Beetlepaw scratches his claws into the dirt, readying himself. Lionjaw leaps.
✦
“How do you… force destiny? Isn’t that – not what destiny is?”
Honeypelt chuckles at your question, and you can’t help but feel just slightly talked down to.
“Destiny is what each cat makes of it. For the cat in the prophecy, it must have been its everything. Indeed, it is said that it was raised to know what was held by the stars for it. Matters like that have a tendency to come to light, of course, so there would be no point in hiding that. So, the kit became an apprentice, became a warrior, and it was a mighty warrior. A defender, of all the clan, but forced to bear the knowledge that some day it must stand before a force more powerful than ever seen by the eyes of a cat.”
Honeyfang lowers her voice, as if she’s confessing a secret.
“What I’ve said before has been fact, at least mostly– but from here, the story diverges. What we do know, however, is that they say that the ground came alive. The world swallowed whole in an instant, rock falling from the skies. The clan site was destroyed, and their records stop.
“But, what about the cats?” Your mew makes you feel like a kitten again, and Honeyfang grumbles, flicking the tip of her matted tail over her nose.
“Some say the cat of the prophecy led the clan to safety. Others, say it died, and the force of that moved the stars to save his kin – that its ghost still leaves pawprints in the mud around the site of the old camp. But really… that’s a story for another day.”
✦
The warriors’ lungs burn as he pants, and not just from the exertion of climbing towards the peak. Smoke fills the air, chunks of hot ash falling through the summer sky like a blanket of snow. There’s dark blood on his fur, darker than it should be, up his nose and coating the inside of his maw with wet iron.
His blood, he thinks, and the thought terrifies him. Beetlethorn lets out a desperate mewl, paws scrabbling for traction as the world around him ignites.
The prophecy he’s been hearing since kithood rings in his ears. His only chance to save them – to save everyone, is to stand and face this.
He’s swung his paws at bobcats, chased off hunger-thin coyotes. This is so much worse. Even in his cruelest nightmares, the tom had never imagined it to come about like this. The screams of his clanmates feel distant and hollow – echoing dissonantly in his ears.
Beetlethorn looks up to the mountain, the mighty rockface he’s always called home.
Molten rock pours down the slope, trees igniting the instant they meet the glowing rivulets. The heavy smoke chokes out anything that survives the flash of incineration.
He must stand before it.
He ought to.
Beetlethorn steps forward, heart hammering behind his ribs. A lodgepole pine comes crashing down beside him, the heat of the flaring needles singeing his dark fur – but he stands. The creeping flow of lava continues its course.
It dawns on him then, in one terrible moment. The desperate wails of his clanmates are already quieting – the sky falling with all the ferocity of an angered god, and Beetlethorn is nothing. The prophecy means nothing.
He’s going to die here.
The promised defender, destined to stand and face impossible odds, to win against the wrath of the earth itself, falters.
He gasps, fear sinking its claws deep into his spine. The tom twists away, leaping over the fallen pine – the rock below his paws hot as he turns and flees. The rhythm of his heart pounds within his head, matched by the frantic churning of his paws. He doesn’t slow – not until he’s crossed the river – and only then does he turn to look at his abandoned camp.
The entire southern slope is engulfed in sheets of flame, crackling as the molten rock settles into leggy paths.
Fur wet with tears and aprickle with panic, Beetlethorn heaves a desperate breath. His legs, weak from running, tremble under him, then give way, the dark coated tom collapsing into a heap of exhaustion and grief. There is no one to come find him.
In the coming years, the tom will lose his name and himself to the life of a loner. He wanders, for a time, dares not return to his clan lands – dares not to acquaint himself with any cat, lest they see the shame burning behind his ribs. Becomes the cat he calls Marrow – a distant watcher.
He fights where he needs to, hunts just enough to survive - a lost soul whispered about by those few who still carry tales of old, by those foolish enough to still believe the promises of prophecy.
