Background

I don't remember exactly when it started. I was only the junior medicine cat, so I never strayed far from camp, you see. Warriors on border patrol started reporting more monster activity along the Thunderpath separating us from Twolegplace. Not the Twolegplace you might know, but one much further away from here. With them came their Twolegs, and they made a camp in the barrens just inside our territory.

Steadystar sent out a patrol to remark the border well outside of the Twolegs camp, and only one cat came back: Cindermask. He was little more than a Paw then, but what he had seen must have shaken him to his core. Charredbranch's brother was always taciturn, but after that first attack he became downright mute. We had always been friends, Charredbranch and Cindermask and me, but even I had to piece it together from bits and pieces.

But I'm rambling. You asked me a question; you didn't ask for the entire history of StoneClan. Forgive me, Cherviltail. I have walked alone for a very, very long time.

Not two or three nights after the elders had laid the pebbles for them, two of the warriors returned! Cowbird and Thrashertail walked back into camp as if they had just been on a hunting patrol. Starlingcloud, though, wasn't with them. She was Thrashertail's mate, you see, and she was just beginning to show. I had just helped her break the good news to Thrashertail the day they all disappeared. That was the real tragedy.

Cowbird and Thrashertail were unharmed for the most part, save for a bare belly and a strange scar on the ear, but Thrashertail's heart never recovered. When Rubblestomp left-- Well, that's not my place to tell either. 

Over the next few moons, more and more warriors were captured. With the long loops of shiny stone, or in prey-filled cage traps, or by some other form of monster. Most would return, save for Starlingcloud and a pair of apprentices. The warriors started training their apprentices in camp after that. Swansong met with Steadystar and the deputy before Rubblestompalmost every day, but StarClan stayed silent to me. I-- [The ghostly she-cat pauses as if something were caught in her throat.]  I didn't know what to do. If I had something different... Many things that came would have changed if I had decided differently. But there is one decision I would never have gone back on, no matter the consequence."

Charredbranch and I had become mates. We... were close as apprentices. We became closer when she earned her warrior name, funnily enough. She was always making up excuses to come see me in the medicine den: some new scrape or chore every day. [Cinnamonswirl chuckles.] Oh, I loved her so much. I wasn't supposed to, of course. But what was the harm? I was only the junior medicine cat, and we couldn't have kits together. 

Swansong, my mentor, knew. I loved that old billy goat, I really did. He was always stern with me. He was the only cat in the clan who refused to treat me differently because I was Steadystar's only living child. He worked me hard, quizzing me on herbs or training me for omens. But he had his soft spot for me too. He would always be on my side.

Steadystar found out too, eventually. I don't know if he pieced it together himself or if he forced Swansong to tell him. I wouldn't blame my mentor if he had; my father always was a cat to be reckoned with. I was terrified, but he... hm. How do I say this? He wasn't angry. But he wasn't accepting, either. he would go on as if we were making a big joke. As if this were just some silly little game that apprentices would play together. I don't think he ever viewed our relationship as legitimate, even until the very end.

And so life went on. Except Newleaf came and there were no expecting queens. Greenleaf and no kits in the nursery and all the apprentices grown. We knew then, what the Twolegs had been doing to us. Every young couple, every senior queen had come home with a bare belly and a tipped ear. They had made them all barren. There were still cats in the clan who had avoided the traps: myself for one, and your grandparents, of course--though they were not yet together. Swansong and a few other warriors too, but not enough. No mates. No parents. We didn't know how the clan could go on.

Charredbranch had been taken that Newleaf. When I found out what was going on, I told her first. I told her everything first. She was distraught. To tell you the truth, so was I. We could never have kits together; we always knew that. But we had always dreamed about finding some poor lost kitten or taking in some queen's litter and raising them together, as our own.

But now, that dream seemed so far away. She was barren--as was our clan's future. But I wasn't. And neither was Charredbranch's twin brother. I don't know who suggested it first; she and I always were of one mind. So together, we made a plan that could bring hope to our clan... and bring us our kits at last.

With Cindermask's help, I would secretly carry the litter and when it came time for them to be born, Charredbranch would care for them in the nursery with the elder queens. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to nurse them, even with alfalfa and herbs, but I was confident that we could make things work. I was so confident about everything, then. Swansong would help us, I knew. He knew all the ways of medicine kept secret from warrior and queen alike. Ways hidden even to me. And if we were found out, I could step down as a medicine cat! I would move to the nursery and nurse the kits myself, with Swansong caring for all of us. Everything would be okay.

But of course, nothing went according to plan. A moon into the pregnancy, Swansong was struck by a monster while out gathering herbs. The warriors on patrol said that he died instantly... But without him, we were lost. The clan's eyes all turned to me, then, just as I was beginning to show. Instead of retiring to the nursery, I was confined to the medicine den, imprisoned in my herb store by my own father. Steadystar was livid. I implored him to see that my intentions were good, or at least to allow me to train an apprentice in Swansong's absence, but he would hear none of it. I don't think even he knew what would be done with me after the kits came. I certainly didn't. Even until the last day, I begged him to let me go over birthing herbs with the queens, but he refused.

Then, well, that was the end. The kits came, but there was so much blood, and even the elder queens were at a loss without a medicine cat's guidance.

[The ghostly cat shimmers, but Cherviltail didn't need to see the instability of her form to see the pain in her eyes.] I didn't see exactly what Steadystar said to Charlie. StoneClan spirits can't stay near their bodies for long. But I pieced it together later. When I came back to hold my vigil outside StoneClan camp for my living clanmates, she was gone. Steadystar had thrown her out. Exiled her to a lifetime of loneliness. I didn't know where, exactly. Nobody did. Or at least, nobody would speak of it. 

I... [Now Cinnamonswirl truly chokes up. She takes a deep breath as an ethereal tear falls to the ground and disappears.] I don't know what happened to the kits. Maybe some cat nursed them, took them in, but with the state that the clan was in when I passed, I doubt it. Maybe they never even took their first breath. So much is hidden from me, now.

My father did a terrible wrong, and I fear that his actions may have doomed our clan. All for an act done out of love.