Worries. } } }

[ambird]

<sup>Story Title: Worries
Author: Amber
Character(s): Not owned by me: Reedfoot, Elkstep and uh...Starclan.
Genre: Religious/Mystery? It's Thrushflower hating and then my idea of Starclan and what they really think of her.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Thrushflower hates on pretty much all of Pineclan, and all (former and present) loners, rogues and kitty pets. And then my silly idea of Starclan fearing what will become of the Clans with cats like her milling about.

Blood-lines. They kept cats in check, telling who was rightfully part of a Clan, and who was just some cat pretending to be more than they were. It was hysterical, really. Kittypets becoming more than lazy imbeciles who would rather sunbathe in their yards than really live. Loners were just that: cats who stayed on their own. If you had that brilliant plan already, what use was it for you to break your irrational solitary confinement? Rogues…she hissed at the term. She felt these cats were the vilest. While loners were just toms or she-cats who hadn’t see Starclan’s greatness, kitty pets were foolish lost souls that disgusted her…but rogues? Thrushflower wished for them all to burn. They held no allegiance to anyone but themselves. Thorn has shown her that. Oh, her supposed mother had most likely started the deep hatred. Perhaps that was a good thing. Nothing swell comes from being forgiving, however.

Pah, and yet the Clans were still letting these sort of cats be allowed to join the ranks as warriors! Being very nearly Clan-born(after all, Thrushflower had been raised by these cats, not by her pathetic excuses for parents), she had a hard time believing that kitty pets and the like would be wonderful additions to their Clan-life. These cats could not understand the true greatness of what they lived by. The Warrior Code. Starclan. Their laws and their ancestors’ could not be grasped by measly loners. Small minds such as their’s simply can’t. The most atrocious thing of all is letting a cat join you, when they do not care for the Warrior Code! And, what is given from that, Starclan! Thrushflower could name of several cats like this. Elkstep! That arrogant idiot who decided to throw caution to the winds. He treated she-cats like they came by the dozen, felt the Warrior Code was just guide-lines and didn’t believe Starclan existed in the slightest! Why was so much wrong with a single cat?

Of course, over the moons, she has come to realize that some cats will join regardless. However unfit they may be. What really set her on edge was one some cat of lesser blood gained a position of higher authority over Clan-bred cats. Had not they shown what they could do? Proven to their higher-ups that they were just as worthy? Granted, Thrushflower had grudgingly permitted cats that had joined as the Clans were formed to be allowed to be called Clan cats. Why? They joined at the opportune time. That was why, over time, she had grown fond of fellow Council Member, Reedfoot. She was a true believer, and had a similar past. Unloving parents. Thrushflower sympathized with that, having her own parents abandon her at a similar age.

What she could not understand(and partially did not want to; all she was to assume was that certain cats are just ignorant) was how a kitty pet like Cinderpaw became Streamclan’s medicine cat apprentice. Did they find no shame in having her being a kitty pet? One of their connections to Starclan not(in her humble opinion) worthy to be that well acquainted with their almighty powers. The stupid she-cat thought she had what it took to even begin to appreciate Starclan. How wrong she was! At least her blood would not continue to taint Streamclan, that was the last thing a majority of what was wrong with every Clan. Pineclan? Non-believers surely polluted their minds. Nothing else could explain it. A Clan cat not believing? Unacceptable. But those flea-bitten loners, rogues and kitty pets? Anything was possible there. Meadowclan had the rebellion because of stupid cats who were really being treated exactly how they should be.

Elsewhere, far from the territories of the Clans, far from any one....except the dead, of course, a group of shadows gained the appearance of cats silhouettes. A few looked as though their shadows were flickering in the dim light of the stars. Some were looking beyond this being no concern to them. The head of the semi-circle, however, was horrified. What kind of cats were they creating by their influences? Could it only be this cat's particular opinion? They knew enough about what was happening below to realize that entire Clan of cats was becoming tainted, but to what degree? "Enough! I cannot look into this cats views anymore!"</sup>

[ambird]

<sup>Another shadowed figure nodded in agreement at this judgement of this cat. They four had been looking into her for quite sometime, and they all had come to the same conclusion: darkness could overshadow the light in cats, but this she-cat did not have an characteristics to show she would ever become a more caring cat. The pollution of this tortured soul could not be healed without any help. Time had not done her any favors. It only made the evil inside her grow and blossom, in a term of speaking, into a darker, fouler version of what this she-cat originally could have been.

Thrushflower's name could have meant something more, and it almost did for a few heart-beats. In life, it is not only the child's fault for their behaviors as adults. How they were raised sums up their courage and why they become what they do. From the start this cat was thrown to the side, not thought of as anything but a kit not worth the effort of the one's who are supposedly the closest to children. When Thorn threw her to the winds, that veered her path from what it once could have been. A cat's future is not made up in stone, but how they chose to live. And at that point in her life, parent's had the most influence. If she hadn't been found by the Fogclan patrol, who knew what she would have been. If Thorn hadn't revealed to her Thrushflower's true origins, perhaps she wouldn't have had that fierce hatred of non-Clan cats.

Only speculation, of course. "We can not fully understand her, Lioness. Do not tell me for a second that you believe that we ever could. We all know how she sees life, and we cannot change it." the large spotted cat answered the leader's cry of outrage.

"But why must we leave her Clan to deal with her?” one of the other two gasped.

“Lioness….you are not saying that we should…even if we could…?" Leopard exclaimed.

"She very well could have a point. Thrushflower is very much the enemy. She is what we all have come to fear from our descendants. Her views are what almost destroyed our first attempt of Clans all those moons ago. Or, have you forgotten, Leopard?" Tigress growled deeply. Her mind wandered back to the original Clans they had formed from going into cats dreams. It had ended...badly, to say the least. And it had started with cats who had thought exactly like Thrushflower.

"I shall never forget, and neither will the two of you. But can you two not see what could happen if fate would be so kind?" he said, trying to persuade them into looking deeper into Thrushflower than either of them ever had before. Far bellow, deeps in the trenches of her(admittedly scary) mind, was a slight hope. Deeper down that she would ever speak publicly about, her kithood lingered. And with that, what Thrushflower should have turned out as.

The two looked farther, and when they came back to the star-filled sky they dwelled upon, their heads rushed. "What....what was that?" Tigress murmured.

"Isabelle, or Thrushflower, her original wish. The thing she had yearned to do from the beginning What she had wanted to do all along." Leopard said matter-of-factly.

"Crush the dreams of all she met and become an insane cat who feels blood is more important than the cat themselves?" Lioness growled harshly. Leopard eye-rolled at this. Lioness had always been one for more dramatic things.

"No. Be accepted for who she was by the cats she felt loved her most. Her parent's. And, the three of us alone know how well that played out." Tigress answered for Leopard.

"Why would she ever have that opinion?" Lioness spat.

"Lioness. I know this was longer than anyone wants to admit, but do you not remember the times of frolicking as nothing more than a kit, and being happy and joyful? Only knowing the world by what your parent's said to you? Your parents being who you truly wished to please, no matter what you told yourself? If you don't, I sure as do." Leopard returned her sour-puss attitude with the same tone.

"Yes....but how could she?"

"No one, not even Thrushflower herself starts out with that much hatred inside them. It is formed."

"Leopard, you don't honesty expect her to ever change?"

"Tigress, I'm going to be honest...I truly do not know. She has let this hatred consume her, and I cannot figure how she shall escape the pit that has become her heart. It would take courage, maturity, and someone who would be there for her no matter how impossible she became."

"And could this cat exist?"

"You know as well as I do...those chances...aren't that good."

"The question remains. She is still a threat at large."

"Lioness! Have you not hear any of what I have spoken?"

"I have, but I am thinking for the good of every Clan, and ever cat. Not just some cat that doesn't deserve a second chance because she gives no one else one."

Tigress exhaled sharply, and her eyes became narrow. Who would ever have thought she would be defending a cat that had tormented countless apprentices and warriors? "Lioness, were you not yourself a piece of dung, back in the day?"

"I never hurt a cat the way she did."

"And yet.....you admit you did." Leopard said, his eyes narrowing as well.

"Fine, fine! We give her another chance. But I swear by all the stars in the sky, if this brat does not change, some cat will take her out. Not by our will, but because she is a pain and most cats don't like that! Like you two say, I would know." she hissed, and her shadowed form flickered out of sight.

"What say you, Tigress?" Leopard said, his form flickering, as well. The three knew their time was limited this night.

"I....I truly do not know what this she-cat will become. But I hope she is like the night. It is at its worst right before day break. I hope you truly know what your doing, Leopard." and with that last happy thought, her form dissipated into nothingness.

He sighed, looking up to the sky that he had once looked up to from the ground. How so much had changed. The two-legs, the forest, and of course, the cats themselves. He himself was not confident in Thrushflower changing.

"Whatever happens...let her at least realize how she treats fellow non-Clan born cats is a wrong that much some how gain a right. If she could learn to just look at a cat for who they are, and not what they were bred from. Perhaps then she could become more than a horrid cat who holds not shame in torture. But, even with all of Starclan, she better have an extreme change of heart. Or she shall perish, whether we somehow enable it, or some other cat wishes it upon her." he whisper to himself, and disappeared with stars trailing behind him.</sup>