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Shadow (27 days after)(200 votes special)

"Amberclaw's getting worse by the minute..." Thunder muttered to me as I laid speechless with dark gazing eyes, lowered to the earth, "I don't know if he's going to make it."

I didn't dare say a word back. I only stared down, sighing at the texture of some bundles of soil, like soft sharp rocks of mud. The sky was darkened now in the distance, a cold crisp shadow flooding over the plains like the floodwaters themselves, turning earth into frosted ice. Night was here. And death joined along.

I never felt so angry, so...agitated in my life before. It like landing on your belly without knowing how you fell in the first place. Its emptiness almost. The day could've been worse though, but as of now, it was a nightmare I demandd to wake up from.

Stella's last clanmate, Scorch, died according to Thunder, and from my interpretation of the world, he probably died young from starvation. Stella could even be the last herbivore on the planet from the numbers of the clock. Amberclaw's condition was fatal, with angered me more since it was mainly my fault for his collapse. We were both dragged into a death hole, and only I came out. I still couldn't believe I fell for a trick. And now my hopes backfired completely.

Dad, still standing tall behind me shook his head and grumbled, "Shadow, can't you just talk to me? Please?" I stayed quiet, biting on my tongue to snap my jaws shut completely. Though the firing anger thundered around my soul, I felt the need to say something towards my father that was essential to my life.

"Mom didn't die in peace did she..." I grumbled. I felt Thunder's feet stomp sideways, then a shiver rumble through his veins and scales. He seemed trapped in his own words already.

"Shadow...." He began, hesitated, then continued, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for lying, or sorry for never telling me the truth."

"I couldn't break your heart again."

"It's already broken," I spun my head to him, "Beyond broken in fact. I feel like it doesn't even exist."

"That's not true."

"I don't even know what is true or not anymore dad," I responded sadly, "Everything's a lie, everything is false, everything is fake or real, nothing makes any sense! All I know is that in 6 days, everything is going to change. Everything's going to fall apart. And there's nothing we can do about it."

Thunder just breathed in slowly, then flared his nostrils, "There's always another way Shadow."

"No..." I shook my head, "There isn't. We keep making paths to try and change our lives or 'make up' stupid lives, but we all know where that ends. There's only one path left, and we all know what happens if we just follow it 'sensibly'."

"We are not going to die!" Thunder growled, stomping towards me, "And we are not giving up now!"

"Is that what you said when you dropped my mother then?" I hissed. Thunder's eyes popped out of his skull, then flashed angrily, and a ground shaking stomp made my eyes narrow with a fierce rumble in my throat. He was about to yell something out, perhaps even attack me, but all that came was a hot breath of steam. He pulled away from me and grumbled, closing his large eyelids in an emotional thought. But even when I was expecting a powerful speech to blur from his lips, nothing arrived through my ears. I turned around, spotting Thunder in the shadows, still staring down at me with personal shame and grief. The ground shook seconds later, revealing that his presence was gone.

I let out a shaky breath as my facial muscles relaxed, then turned back around to face the horizon. For some reason I felt sick towards my snap back at Thunder, and somewhere in my gut, its aftershock began to scar. How could I say something so offending? Sure he lied, but he was my father, he deserved more respect from me than what I offered then.