Paragonclan P1
Speleology I'll code this properly once I have coding. For now this is just here, so just. bare with me.
It was Tumblepaw’s death that was the most memorable. Not because it was the first – although it had been – but because of the power that came with enacting justice. He had been talking about going to join his NB friend in a nearby clan once he was a warrior. It was no big deal to have a mate in another clan, of course. If a leader was aware of it, it could be used to help forge alliances. As long as their own clan was strong enough to provide the resources for their warriors, and not using inter-clan matings to reduce resource use, there was no issue at all in them. The code was very clear where the issue here lay. It was
not in inter-clan matings. It was in where the heart of a cat lay. A cat
could have a heart in two places and yet still be more loyal to their own clan. An intelligent leader would merely know to avoid sending that warrior to fight the other clan, and, really, they should have used the mating for a forced alliance or truce anyway. On the other paw, a cat
could keep their heart in just one place. If they kept it with their home clan, and saw the mating as an easy convenience? Well, this was the absolute ideal. If they kept it in their mate’s clan, however? That was the disloyalty the code spoke about. Even just preferring the other clan was code-breaking; a thought that Starclan could not abide. Wishing to leave to go there? That was code-
shattering. It could not be tolerated.
All the apprentices had hunted without thanking Starclan – and
played with their prey! They’d bullied the kits. They’d ignored Boastar in mid-age rebellion. They’d eaten before taking food back for the weaker clan members. They had all broken so much of the code…
But Tumblepaw had done the worst.
He
deserved to be first.
Oripendularnose’s mother had often said that you could tell if a cat had used their claws against another cat’s life. They had an aura around them, and a smell of death. But some of them were better at hiding it than others. Ori did not think the queen’s tale would apply – she hadn’t used her claws – but even if it had, what would it matter? She’d have the aura of Starclan’s justice. She’d have the smell of someone who was unafraid to shy away from doing what Starclan wanted. All cats who came before her would know who she was, and they would know what she represented.
She was Starclan’s justice.
She would not hide it.
Every day, Ori continued her patrols. It took up much of the day, but she could hunt and eat and pray at any point, as there were no kits, queens or elders to provide for. She hadn’t seen the ginger tom since her first morning as leader. She had also yet to find a meeting place with Starclan, but she would do that in time.
Today she came to the enclave with the human village. She paced around it slowly, looking in cautiously. There were a good many dogs there, and a flock of domesticate turkeys, chickens, and ducks. A few goats. The outskirts of the village were sprinkled with human-edible plants and their medicines – some in neat separate patches, others scattered beneath the trees. A useful spot to know of for the future medicine cats. Inside the village, there were no trees or plants at all – just grass. Not even that for much of it. There a pile of logs, and a few dozen little wooden huts, raised on stilts with sloping roofs. By that hut, a human lay in a giant spider’s web, a piece of wood in his mouth, smoke above him, and a vacant look in his eyes. In that central clearing, a group of women sat with bright rocks around their necks, mashing up the bitter roots that grew near here. In that corner, was a great big red thing, an ugly cylinder with a jagged top, and parallel lines leading up to it in the dirt, and then following down the one line free of trees around the perimeter of their village.
There was a lot to see here, and it was fascinating, and, truly, Ori
could have watched for hours.
But she wasn’t here to learn about humans. She was here to see if there were any cats. There were not. Which was disappointing. There was a line of human villages – all more concrete-y than this one – along the line of the sea. Maybe she could go there to look for kittypets in a few moons, when she wouldn’t be leaving her territory with no one to defend or mark its borders each day. But, for now, all she got out of her village was a hasty duckling that wondered too far from its mother. A tasty duckling.
There were – and Ori had checked many times – no clans that directly bordered their current territory. That could well change, as new clan members meant Ori could push the border out further. And, come to think of it, whenever she was sure there were enough cats that they could manage the additional patrols, she
would. Never mind if there were a clan there…
There was no point planning to demonstrate how clans were meant to act before there was a clan that
could act, though. Ori had to keep reminding herself this. There were no cats within the forest now (not thanks to her work as Justice), and no cats within the village, and no cats along the border. Rogues often migrated along this route and around the edge of the territory. Maybe she could test them, determine if they were worthy, and recruit them if so… Maybe. She didn’t want to rely on those who…
Wait. Ori stopped in her tracks, already half the way back to camp. That was exactly it! Rogues were dishonourable, everyone knew that. You couldn’t hope to make an honourable warrior from a rogue. All the queens knew that too. But… well, you could make a
dishonourable warrior. Her tail twitched. Perfect. Criticising the code wasn’t against the code, but Starclan wouldn’t want it. There was no way Starclan
could want it.
But you needed force to convince rogues, everyone knew that.
Yes. Ori would need a deputy she could trust beyond anything, but that meant she’d want to choose them herself – and that meant she could be sure she really did follow the code and appoint someone who’d had an apprentice. She’d need warriors and apprentices soon to manage that. A medicine cat would be nice, of course, but there was no point prioritising one until there were cats who didn’t have nine lives, and, in the worst case, they could surely find a suitable candidate during Expansion, or by straying a little outside their territory on a patrol. Either one. But the core of a clan was in its warriors. That settled it. Ori was going to find a way to talk to Starclan, and she was going to ask for a warrior this moon, and a queen (to provide the apprentices) soon afterwards. As soon afterwards as they had a medicine cat. They could look for more warriors while the kits were growing, and she could use that time to suss out the candidates.
Ori spent her evenings each day looking for somewhere to talk to Starclan.
There was a heavy rain, a half-moon into Ori’s leadership, uprooting a particularly leaf-less old tree, and knocking it sideways from where it had been nestled in a ruin. This left a gap in the ground, through which Ori could only see inky blackness.
It was close to camp, and she knew that all the caves connected eventually. This cave would have a link up to the surface, so it would be more lit than most.
The caves were cool, far cooler than the blazing heat outside. There was never really a winter in this territory. Just summer, hotter summer, and stinking, buzzing death. It was always the same temperature
inside, and you could get cooler easily by splashing through the rivers in the lower levels. The caves felt empty without the sound of kits stepping into the water. But that would change soon enough.
Ori descended a level, winding around a jagged pillar, with mushroom shaped extensions on its pale golden sides, perfect for stepping atop, and stained black where the feet of countless generations of cats had pressed. Little teeth pointed down from the roof of this section of the cave, as they pointed up in the layer above – before ancient generations had snapped off all but the most stubborn. These teeth would not be broken.
The sound of the river was gentle, quiet and relaxing. The cave was narrow here, but there were still plenty of places for a cat to tread, suspended high above the water, while it twisted and turned and snaked below. And soon, the cave widened out. And heightened out. The ceiling had been sloping up slowly as Ori had walked along it, but now it erupted upward like the clouds from a mountain. Tree roots poked through here and there – in that side, one was long enough to scrape the water. The water, for that matter, also looked a lot deeper. In the dark, it was hard to see in any colour at all, but it seemed more blue. Up in one corner, there was a glittering blue on the walls of the cave. Ori knew what that meant.
It took a little time to work her way across – although she’d now know a far more efficient route and it would take a fraction of this time on any future trips across the cave – but eventually, Ori bounded up a wall of teeth-like crenulations stacked precariously on top of each other, and up to a flattened area. It was round, and shallow, and broad. Easily a jaguar’s length across. Within the water were strange shapes, like a snake’s scales, which were rough as Ori touched them, and raised up by an ear’s height, almost breaking the surface, though the floor itself was as smooth as the water above. Light bounced off the surface, making flowing shapes like golden clouds on the cave walls that poured down to meet the pool on two sides. There were hints of blue on the ceiling, and plant roots that poked little scrabbling whiskers through the dirt high above, vying with the cave’s own teeth for space. And high, high, high, above, where the ceiling was only a tail’s length thick anyway, there was a little patch of hibiscus sky, touched with stars sprinkling their light down. The rim of the pool was a hair’s breadth higher than the water itself, and as Ori stepped in, a thin stream of water flowed out of the pool into the river below, gently dripping down the rock surfaces.
Suddenly, light erupted, a soft purple flowing up from the pool in tendrils, dancing across the walls. Ori could see cats in the mist, in the centre of the pool. She stepped further into the pool, carefully picking her paws over the scale-borders, and putting them back down without the slightest hint of a splash. She was underneath the hole now, and starlight could just be seen on the water’s surface.
Ori knew what that meant. This spot had been chosen. She had been meant to find it.
This was the moon pool.
It could only be a moon pool once the moonlight hit it, though, surely. Ori nodded dutifully, and stepped out of the water. The light dimmed back down to the blue ripples, and, having been exposed to the light so recently, the cave now seemed eerie, dangerous and unwelcoming. It felt like there was something in the dark, waiting to pounce.
Which was ridiculous. The only things down in the dark were her, the bats, the insects, the cave-fish, and the spirits of Star-clan. There was nothing to fear, so long as she could keep herself above the water. There was no one there to save her if she fell in and started to be carried away, of course. But she wouldn’t fall. Ori was lithe as a Yucatan squirrel. She could not fall.
Eventually the light shifted. It was a little brighter – more than could be accounted for with her just growing more accustomed to the dark. Looking at the pool again, there was a smudged silver shape in its center, right below the hole. With the pale silver there, the pool looked all the brighter. If blue could ever be said to look toxic, there it was. But it was where Starclan had chosen, and Oripendularnose was not so much a fool as to disobey their directives.
She stepped into the pool again, having walked around the fresh bat skeleton, carefully repeating her steps, and lowered her head to drink.
[ Oripendularnose is renamed Oripendularstar ][ Oripendularstar receives nine lives ][ Oripendularstar requests a warrior from “Starclan” ]- 2174
PARAGONCLAN, CHAMROSH
ANCESTRAL REQUEST:the spirits that watch over paragonclan pay heed to oripendularstar's request and send her a
deputy.
- Dei