PEBBLEPAW

    "May StarClan watch over you."

    The cloud of mist that rose into the cool morning air as Pebblepaw spoke disappeared almost immediately, as if it had never been there at all. The little tom shivered, frightened by the low-hanging clouds that pressed in on him from all sides and threatened to swallow him up in a wall of grey. The single raindrop that fell from above landed silently on his fur, announced only by a sudden piercing cold.

    His paws were dirty and caked with mud, but the apprentice did not move to clean them. His yellow eyes remained fixated on the small mound of earth before him. The smell of the wet soil rose up around him, blocking out the smell of the death.

    Beside him, Otterheart bowed her head, her own paws crusted over in brown. Grief hung thickly in the air between them, just another cloud to add to the stormclouds above.

    She noticed first the ginger kit's stillness in her bed of moss that morning, waking Pebblepaw with a soft prodding and sorrowful look in her eyes, no need for words. The two of them picked up the bed of moss, carrying it to the top of the cliff where Sparrowstar had been buried not too long before. The constant rain of the past quarter moon had softened the earth, making it easier to dig a grave, and before they knew it, the kit was gone. Forever.

    "We should head back," Otterheart mewed quietly, speaking for the first time since she woke her apprentice. She rose to her paws, but Pebblepaw did not move from his position beside the grave. The feeling of grief was too heavy in his chest.

    But behind that grief lay something else, a burning sensation unlike any the tom had felt before. A simmering anger, that someone would leave a small helpless kit to rot and leave her at the mercy of others. Others that couldn't save her, regardless of how hard they tried.

    The medicine cat sighed. "She's not going to rise from the dead, you know."

    The grey tom was well aware of that, but still he did not move. "Why did she have to die at all?" he asked sadly.

    Otterheart did not reply immediately, just as Pebblepaw knew she wouldn't. They both knew that death was unpredictable and unpreventable, taking whoever it wished whenever it wanted to.

    He thought he'd done everything in his power to save her, used all of his training to prevent her death, but it came as swiftly and silently as it always did. It made him feel unprepared, unready, useless.

    "The infection was too advanced," the tabby said softly. "You know that, Pebblepaw. There was no point in treating her with herbs that might be better used in healing others."

    "So you would leave a kit to die instead of using up extra herbs to try and heal it." His voice was blunt, a statement instead of a question.

    The she-cat started, obviously shocked by his reply. "No, I mean that no herbs could have helped her. If anything, it would have only prolonged her suffering. And, besides that, those herbs could mean the difference between life and death for our Clanmates one day."

    "What if they could have been the difference between life and death for her?" Pebblepaw asked, voice starting to rise. His failure to keep the kit alive was beginning to eat away at him, a thousand tiny fleas nipping at his ears and whiskers and tail.

    "There's no way to draw out an infection that advanced," his mentor repeated calmly.

    Pebblepaw closed his eyes, willing the image of the sick kit in its bed of moss to go away. She was the first cat he had not been able to save, the first to have died under his care. The guilt now clawed at him and the tom suddenly found it hard to breathe.

    "What if that had been me?"

    The question came unbidden. Pebblepaw found his eyes on the tiny grave once more, but this time the kit beneath the soft earth was grey in colour, or a light cream, or black and white. He closed his eyes, willing the images to go away and, when they did not, turned his head to the skies above. They reflected the misery he felt, the way everything seemed to be dark and gloomy, without a hint of sunlight to brighten it.

    He felt Otterheart's thin tail wrapping around his shoulders. "When Sparrowstar found you and your littermates, you were all strong, healthy kits. There was a little heatstroke, from being in the sun too long, but nothing compared to Sun's infection. All you needed was queen's milk."

    Pebblepaw opened his mouth to reply, but closed it when his mentor's words registered. His sorrowful eyes moved to Otterheart's.

    "Sun?"

    The she-cat gave him a quizzical look. "What do you mean?"

    "You said, 'Sun's infection'," the tom said.

    She nodded. "That's what her name was."

    The sun had disappeared behind the storm clouds days ago, turning the world bleak and cold, but it wasn't this that caused Pebblepaw's fur to bristle as chills ran through him. Sightless eyes watch the sun disappear, he thought and, suddenly, something in his mind clicked.

    "Are you alright?" Pebblepaw was snapped out of his thoughts by Otterheart's worried voice.

    For a brief instant, he thought about telling his mentor about the prophecy. She had been Shortwhisker's apprentice, after all, which meant she knew something about them. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, to let someone other than Asterpaw know. It was right there, on the tip of his tongue, as if wanting to be shared.

    Then, he remembered the promise he asked his sister to make in keeping the prophecy a secret. He couldn't betray that trust. It was just between the two of them and, if he told Otterheart, the whole Clan would find out. It would fuel the fear created by Palethorn's speech, bring with it another cause for alarm.

    Pebblepaw chose his words carefully. "I... I just felt like I should have done more for her, even if it was calling her by her name. It might have brought her comfort while she lay dying." His ears and whiskers drooped of their own accord and the apprentice found that he was speaking the truth, even if it masked the true reasons behind his curiosity.

    "You feel guilty," Otterheart said quietly, a sad look in her eyes.

    The little tom found he couldn't answer her question, the sorrow he felt earlier flooding over him once more. He nodded once and the tabby she-cat shifted closer to him, their fur brushing as they shared a moment of grief.

    After a time, she got to her paws and, without a word, turned in the direction of camp. Pebblepaw did not notice her absence until a while later, when he was no longer wrapped up in his emotions. Slowly, he was coming to an understanding, the idea of death being inevitable no longer so frightening. It seemed that, sometimes, it was better to let nature run its course.

    Comforted by the idea that Sun's death meant something more, he turned to follow his mentor home, a single ray of sunlight breaking through the dark clouds behind him.

<<>> <<>> <<>> <<>> <<>>

    Pebblepaw took right to cleaning out the medicine storage when he came back, the movement of shifting the herbs to and fro distracting him from the strange emptiness of the medicine den. The herbs were always the same, their velvety leaves soothing to his paws and their sharp scents tickling his nose, calming and predictable even when everything else wasn't.

    He tried to organize them by the shapes of their leaves, but soon realized there were too many possibilities, and took to sorting them by scent. The sweet-smelling ones were soon grouped in one corner, the sharp-smelling ones in another and everything that didn't fit the two categories in between. Realizing that this, too, was not a reliable sorting method, he resorted to organizing them by use.

    Their scents rose up and filled the air around Pebblepaw as he shifted them along the uneven floor of the storage den. The apprentice drank in the familiar smells as he moved the chervil to join the horsetail and the feverfew towards the lavender, one pile for soothing infections and the other for bringing down fevers. These four herbs were the ones he had become so familiar with in the past quarter moon.

    Pebblepaw wondered if this was what life as a medicine cat looked like. Gathering herbs, organizing them, administering them. Learning their uses and becoming more and more familiar with them as sick and wounded cats came and went.

    Then, was it just healing, praying and watching them die? He was utterly dependent on battle, disease and death; without them, he would be nothing.

    But these thoughts were too depressing to dwell on for much longer, so the apprentice turned back to the herbs he had come to love, regardless of their purpose. Once again, he became engrossed in the task of sorting, so much so that he did not notice he had company until it snuck up on him.

    "It smells wonderful in here," said a quiet voice and Pebblepaw nearly jumped out of his fur.

    "Kestrelpaw!" he cried as he caught sight of the tortoiseshell, her fur wind-swept from being out on patrol. "You nearly scared me to death!" His heart rattled about in his chest, bouncing from one ribcage to the other.

    "I don't think you're quite there yet," she replied, tilting her head to the side, as if trying to get a better look at him. Her gaze went right through him, her blind eyes unfocused, looking in his direction without seeing anything at all.

    For a brief moment, Pebblepaw wondered if Kestrelpaw had ever been able to see. If, as a kit, her now sightless eyes had seen the light of day. He had never thought to ask, even though the two of them were close friends. Deciding that it would be insensitive to pursue the subject, he pushed the thought aside.

    "Is there anything you need?" he asked instead, wondering why the apprentice came to the medicine den in the first place. Other than Asterpaw, the rest of the Clan only visited when they were in need of treatment.

    Kestrelpaw shook her head. "I just wanted to come see you. We haven't talked since..." Her face took on a sorrowful look and it took Pebblepaw a moment to realize why.

    "She died this morning," he said quietly and the she-cat nodded, as if she had already known. The tom didn't press on.

    "How has your training been?" he asked to break the silence. Already, she seemed stronger and slightly bigger than he remembered her being, though her apprentice ceremony had only taken place five or six sunhighs ago.

    The she-cat made a face, as if she'd swallowed something unpleasant. "It's alright, I guess. Gentlefern showed me the territory and I can tell apart Big Rock from Training Cliff."

    "Have you caught anything?" Pebblepaw asked, the mention of Big Rock filling his mind with images of sinewy lizards.

    Kestrelpaw's whiskers drooped then and she bowed her head. "No," she said quietly and the tom immediately felt guilty for asking the question. Wrapping his tail around her shoulders, he attempted to comfort her.

    "It hasn't even been a quarter moon since you've been apprenticed!" he said cheerfully. "I bet Whitepaw and Emberpaw didn't catch any prey within their first quarter moon of training either. Besides, there's one cat who will always be worse at hunting."

    The she-cat's whiskers twitched. "Oh, really?"

    "Yeah, me," he replied and she purred in response.

    "Just watch, by the time Brightkit and Skykit are apprentices, you'll be catching lizards." He moved closer to the she-cat so that their fur brushed and was surprised when she did the same.

    "Thanks, Pebblepaw," she purred, licking his muzzle.

    "For what?" he asked, feeling himself grow warm.

    "For making me feel better," she replied. "It's more than anyone else has done in the past few sunhighs." The tortoiseshell shuffled her paws awkwardly, as if ashamed to admit it.

    Pebblepaw purred, leaning down to lick the small she-cat's ear. "That's what medicine cats do, isn't it?"