Rosepaw was a very pitiable cat, Batcloud found. The little brown molly forged ahead on the trail her mentor had charted just outside the cave system Cavernclan called home, eyes darting around carefully as she looked out for the herbs Batcloud was searching for. Having an apprentice was a lovely experience, and Rosepaw was an incredibly diligent and intelligent young feline, but Batcloud had done her best to stay distant from her whenever she could.

Nothing personal, of course. Batcloud was beyond that, never known to hold a grudge or harbor hate within her heart in the slightest. Rosepaw just… made her sad to look at. Very, very sad to look at.

Poor kid hadn’t had an easy road. Batcloud had been around for the passing of both her apprentice’s parents; first Glowshine when Rosepaw was less than an hour old, then Sleepsong when he went out on a hunt alone and never returned. She could still vividly remember the morning she’d accompanied the search party looking for him, assuming he might be alive but injured.

A snake had gotten to him. He still had the squirrel he’d caught with him when they found the body. Rosepaw was an orphan at less than a moon old.

It wasn’t Rosepaw’s fault, not at all. If anything, it was right that she became a medicine apprentice. Batcloud knew she’d never fully wash off the guilt she felt about being unable to save the unfortunate cat’s parents both times. It was only fitting that she become responsible for the child whose suffering she couldn’t spare. She really, truly was a lovely young molly! The problem was Batcloud and the fear she held that maybe deep down, the dusky brown tabby knew of Batcloud’s failure and hated her for it.

She was sorry. So sorry.

“Poppies! Batcloud, I found poppies!”

The cream tabby rushed to the smaller cat’s side, beaming almost instantly when she saw Rosepaw standing near a patch of orange flowers. Quickly, Batcloud set to work examining the plants with keen blue eyes. Poppy… good condition, no visible blemishes… full bloom…

“Very good, Rosepaw. When we’re done gathering all the other herbs, we can come back and pick some of these. Then I’ll teach you how to get the seeds from them,” Batcloud praised, letting herself look into those verdant green eyes the same color as rosemary. They sparkled like a rushing creek in direct sunlight, a million little stars all in one daylit visage. Proud. Eager. Almost astonished by the approval she was given.

“What next?” the younger molly questioned as Batcloud turned away and started off down the trail again. “This is for more than just poppies, right?”

“Mhm! We’re keeping an eye out for lichen and sage,” explained the medicine cat, glancing back over her shoulder to ensure that Rosepaw was following her. “We use the lichen as a wound dressing and stick it on with cobwebs, and we make the sage into a paste by chewing it. The sage helps wounds close faster, so it’s very important.”

Rosepaw nodded, taking in the information with perked ears. “How do we know if a plant is sage? I’ve never seen it before.”

That was a good question. Batcloud was so used to identifying herbs that she often forgot that other cats had no clue what some of them looked like. She slowed from a trot to a walk, thinking of how to describe the crucial plant. “Well,” she began, absentmindedly gnawing on her lower lip for a moment, “It’s got these greenish-grey leaves and flowers that are always some shade of purple or blue. You’ll know it by the way it smells; weird and sort of musky. It won’t taste good, though, so keep that in mind the first time you have to make a poultice for someone.”

The apprentice listened carefully, clearly committing every detail to memory. “So what about the lichen? There have to be, like, fifteen different kinds here, right?” she inquired rather astutely. Rosepaw was right. If Batcloud counted all the different kinds of lichen she’d seen around Cavernclan territory alone, she’d probably count at least ten.

“The one we’re looking for grows on tree branches a lot, so it’s a bit of a climb to get to, but sometimes it falls down and can be collected from there. You’re looking for sticks that look like they’ve been dragged through long, matted fur. You can just take the whole stick, since I’m not going to teach you how to climb for it yet.”

“Got it. Kind of like collecting cobwebs, then.”

“Exactly, except we have to wind the cobwebs onto the sticks ourselves. Lichen comes prepared.”

Rosepaw, in her eagerness to learn, took off ahead of Batcloud again, trotting through the foliage and boulders that made up most of Cavernclan’s territory. It was tricky ground, often full of various obstacles and climbs, but Cavernclan had been navigating it for ages, and apprentices learned quickly. In fact, watching the near-expert and elegant way her apprentice navigated the terrain in search of their quarry, Batcloud felt her heart light up in pride brighter than a cave brimming with glowworms.

They poured over the rocks in a river of tabby fur, cream and brown glinting in the cold light that streamed through the clouds above. The weather threatened rain today, though yesterday the whole world had glowed with sunlight as though it were laced with fire. Like perhaps Starclan itself stood in broad daylight and illuminated the waking world.

Starclan.

Starclan.

---

“BATCLOUD!”

All the voices rang at once, both the distressed cries of Rosepaw and the chorus of cats that laid beyond the grave. She could feel herself slip, falling from the rock she was climbing and landing painfully on her side as the whole forest turned to something out of a fairytale, glittering like the night sky. These visions were common, but they were also terrifying and inconvenient. Batcloud had given up on counting how many times Starclan shouted her name and made her fall over, yanking her away from the realm of the living. One day, she suspected they’d simply never give her back.

The cat who stood next to Batcloud was a constellation. She didn’t recognize their face, nor did she know their name, but she could see the stars that shone within their otherwise transparent body, one in each joint and all along their long, well-groomed tail. White eyes with barely-noticeable pupils bored down into her soul, straight past all the fur and flesh.

“Hey,” the medicine cat tried to begin, sitting up. “What the hell is this?! I need to-”

A translucent yet very, very corporeal paw landed on her chest, pushing her back down onto her side while the stranger lowered their face to hers. They smelled like a summer night, and sounded just as vast and nostalgic. “Beware the one who will bring down the stars, and trust what grows in the dark.”

What?

Batcloud grimaced, starting to feel even more uncomfortable than she usually did when she had a vision. Never once had a Starclan cat actually appeared and spoken to her, save for the warning of a prey shortage her deceased mentor had given her in a dream when she was freshly graduated. Visions were supposed to be brief, fleeting things where her legs gave out from under her and she saw the other side of the veil between the living world and the afterlife. They only lasted a heartbeat, just a glimpse before she caught herself falling and forced her legs to take control and push her back up before she could fully hit the ground. Whenever she saw a Starclan cat in one of those split seconds, they never spoke to her, much less noticed her.

“LET… GO!”

Another voice, somehow familiar in this faraway place, boomed through the permanent night sky above Batcloud and her mysterious abductor.

“GIVE… HER…”

No matter how much she strained her big, batlike ears, the blue-eyed tabby couldn’t possibly make out every single word being screamed from above.

“GIVE… BACK!!!”

---

The air that rushed into Batcloud’s lungs was wonderful and vissural and real, and the clouded sky above her nearly brought tears to her eyes. Though her ribs ached something awful and she felt unspeakably dazed, Batcloud couldn’t have possibly been more grateful to be alive. There, on the moss-covered rocks, alive and intact.

“BATCLOUD! BATCLOUD!”

Rosepaw frantically rushed to her side, shaking the older cat with desperate paws and already beginning to cry. Her voice was hoarse, almost as though she had been screaming. In fact, she probably had.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” sighed the medicine cat, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “It’s okay, I’m alive, see?”

Rosepaw wrapped Batcloud in an embrace, carefully checking over her mentor with what little medicinal knowledge she had. “No blood, no limbs at weird angles… Can you breathe alright? Do you have a headache?”

Batcloud almost laughed at how sweetly concerned the younger feline was, wrapping her tail and paws gently around the distressed kid. “It’s fine, I’m ok. Just a few bruised ribs, maybe a fracture. Nothing I can’t patch up myself.”

“What happened?!” Rosepaw sobbed, burying her snout against Batcloud’s neck. “I was so scared! You just fell and stopped moving!”

A soothing tongue ran itself through Rosepaw’s long fur, almost motherly in its movement. “Nothing important,” Batcloud soothed in a quiet voice. “Just a vision. I get those sometimes, and I fall over a lot when I do. This one was just a little longer than the usual ones.”

The sound of Rosepaw sniffling made Batcloud want to cry, too. The guilt over the orphaning of her apprentice increased tenfold every time the cream molly watched the younger cat cry in sadness or in fear. She must’ve been terrified… Oh my stars, this is all my fault… I should’ve woken up sooner, I should’ve tried harder to stand up, Batcloud told herself, both thoroughly ashamed and pissed off at the starry stranger for tugging her away long enough to distress the already unfortunate Rosepaw. Like the only mother that apprentice had ever known, Batcloud gathered her close and gently squeezed her.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” the younger molly began to sob, and Batcloud began to weep with her.

“I know, sweetie, I know. I’m glad I’m okay too.”

Rocking in the grey light for a moment, an eternity could’ve passed before Batcloud finally pulled away from the embrace and stood up, reassuringly licking her apprentice’s cheek one last time. Her apprentice… perhaps even her daughter, though she didn’t feel like she was allowed to feel that way after how she’d so horribly failed Rosepaw when she was just a kitten. Standing up and putting on a brave face, she turned back in the direction of camp and took a deep breath, signalling with her tail for the other to follow her.

“C’mon, kiddo. Let’s go home.”