Bloodflower

Chapter 49

Returning to SunClan territory—what was left of it, at least—was like crossing the border into a whole other world, a gloomy and dead world. Back at the temporary camp, where the fire had not touched the land, the grass was green and the needles on the pine trees were even greener. But here...

Everywhere Rosethorn looked, all she saw was black. Black grass, scorched away or smeared with fallen ash. Black trees, their trunks sickeningly bare, with no leaves and barely any branches anymore. Everything was quiet and still; most of the prey was likely dead or hiding away in terror.

It was all so eerie, seeing her home like this, and Rosethorn suddenly wished she hadn't come here alone. But she reminded herself that she was doing this by herself to keep her Clan safe as well as herself. Just focus on your mission.

Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the air's sickly smell, she started to walk.

The light rain had stopped now, but the damage was already done—the ash that stained everything was damp and slimy. Rosethorn wrinkled her nose in disgust as she padded through the mess. Her tortoiseshell fur was naturally dark, but now her paws were even darker. My fur is going to taste like ashes for moons, she groaned inwardly.

In an attempt to distract herself from the mess, she tried to imagine what the SunClan camp looked like now. She predicted there would be damage in some areas, like the front camp wall, but that it wouldn't be too bad. The camp was positioned not far from the lower edge of their territory, which was one of the few places left untouched by the fire.

As unlucky as all this is, she mused, I suppose there are still a few things we got lucky with.

A lot of things that had happened, she realized, were through sheer luck. From the fact that the camp was probably still habitable, all the way to the fact that she and Dawnfire had survived their ordeal. That all the SunClan cats had survived. Though that could have just been StarClan looking out for them, not luck.

Rosethorn found that her mind kept drifting back to Dawnfire. The memory of Grayleaf darting away and just magically finding Dawnfire alive was still vivid, and had replayed in her head more than once.

That, she decided, must have had something to do with StarClan. Dawnfire and Grayleaf were both medicine cats, after all. They had special connections to their ancestors. Perhaps Grayleaf had received a message from them telling her that Dawnfire was still alive, and where to find her.

But that didn't explain how Dawnfire had even made it to the other side of the fallen tree. Her fur had been seared right to the skin, and all the fight left in her spirit had been torn out of her. Plus, there had been no visible way out of their fiery prison—except over the tree, but making that jump had been out of the question for her.

Rosethorn remembered that, when she'd asked her sister how she made it out, Dawnfire hadn't answered and had instead changed the subject. I'll get a straight answer out of her eventually, she resolved. I thought she was going to die; the fact that she didn't, against all the odds, deserves an explanation.

Rosethorn took lighter steps the closer she got to the Twolegplace border. Instinctively her ears strained to catch any sounds of life, and her mouth opened to taste the air. So far there hadn't been a single sign of the rogues; then again, she was still getting used to smelling things through the smoky air.

That could be a good thing, she reasoned. It means the rogues would probably have a hard time smelling me, too.

Despite all the dead and ashy scents, Rosethorn could still smell the strange reek of the Twolegplace up ahead. It was still strangely quiet, especially for a place that was normally swarming with Twolegs. Maybe the fire scared them, too, and they're hiding in those big stone nests.