Her eyes regained their focus but their eerie blankness remained. She never seemed to be fully present at any given time. During and immediately after one of her ‘zone outs,’ however, her vacant gaze made it look like her mind and body had completely detached from each other. Cloud sighed. He coughed a few times. ‘Guess I’ll have to repeat myself now.’
“No, you didn’t upset me. I was just . . . working through some things. That’s all. Should I be upset? I probably should. I don’t know. But I’m not, and I’m mostly just happy to be back. And glad you’re not chasing me away because of what I look like now.”
‘Or maybe she was listening.’ He smiled. “No. Hyrees is right. Which, honestly, isn’t something I thought I’d get to say today. Right now is a time to be glad. My kitten has come home. Now come on, let’s get you back to the Glade.”
“Can we not say anything when we get there? I want to see how long it takes for someone to notice me,” she said.
His smile disappeared. ‘They’ll notice you. It’s hard to miss someone with glowing, human-made machines for legs. And even if they don’t see you at first, they’re going to hear you. It’s only going to make your hunting even harder. Oh, Ember, what are we going to do with you?’
Yet, in the back of his mind, all he could process was the fact that she was even alive at all, and even figuring out how to go about letting that simple, absolute truth sink in was something he wasn’t certain of. It all still felt like a dream.
“Sure,” Hyrees replied. “I kind of want to see too, but I’ll have to settle for watching smudges and listening.”
They walked back toward the Glade together: Hyrees on her right, Cloud to her left. Her human-made leg replacements whirred and whined with every step she took.
‘Poor kitten,’ Cloud thought. Nausea made his aching throat tighten. ‘Does she even realize how terrible this looks? She had a hard enough time fitting in before all this mess. What’s going to happen to her now, now that the humans have mutilated her? I’m so sorry I let this happen to you. You might say this is a good thing, but it’s only going to hurt you. Looking like that, not being able to have kittens, it’s a fluffheaded and broken thing, even having to worry about it, but it’s going to hurt you here, and I can’t stop it. I can try but can’t stop it. It shouldn’t matter, but when the entire colony shuns you . . . makes me sick, or at least sicker, just thinking about it.’
“D-Dad? Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, yeah, I’m fine,” Cloud said. He coughed twice. “Just a little dazed and recovering from a fever, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, at least you’re recovering.” She stopped. “Oh, I, er, do have something else to tell you.”
He sighed and turned around. Hyrees was still beside her, sticking to her like tree sap. “What is it, Ember?”
She flattened back her ears. “I, well, you know how I don’t like bright, sunny days or loud noises? And how I sometimes start laughing and you have no idea why? And just generally how I’m so weird and awkward?”
‘Am I supposed to say “yes” here?’
“Well,” she continued, “there’s actually a reason for that. Turns out I . . . oh.” Her ears drooped. “Oh, I didn’t think of that. Uhm, well, I guess you’re just, uh, stuck with me now. Let’s go see Mom and Kivy.”
‘A reason, huh? Is it that I failed as a father? Or is it something else? What’s going on inside that head of yours?’
She ran past him, Hyrees following beside her.
‘Oh wait.’ Cloud half-coughed, then trotted after them. “They actually won’t be there right now,” he called. “Sorry, they left this morning to go work on Kivyress and Farlight’s group hunting. You probably won’t see them until the sun peaks.”
She didn’t reply but stopped when she reached a completed section of the outer wall. She stared at it with uncertainty.
“Yeah, I know, it throws me off too. Lupine thinks it’ll help with our defenses in case of another attack,” Hyrees said, answering her unasked question.
Ember cocked her head, eyes narrow.
‘Oh, that’s right, she wasn’t here when he became commander. Guess she thought Farlight would take over. Poor thing. I can’t even imagine how big of a shock this must be, coming back to all this mess.’
“Lupine was wrong,” she said. “That’s a terrible defense and a waste of time.”
She padded into the Glade without any further explanation. Hyrees tilted his head in confusion but continued on prancing by her side like a fawn. Cloud followed behind them. No one reacted for a few moments, but as they neared first fire pit, a head turned. Someone did a double-take.
“Wait, isn’t that Cloud’s daughter? The one who went after that outsider, Tainu?” one tom whispered.
“Oh tahg, I think it is. What happened to her?” another replied.
Whitehaze leaped down from the History Tree, where he’d been clarifying some older clawmarks. He ran to her, smiling wider than Cloud had ever seen him smile. “You’re alive! Of course you are, a fiery little wildflower like y—oh!” He stopped and sniffed her legs, then stepped back. His eyes widened with fear. “The humans. You’ve been with them, haven’t you? What did they . . . what have they done to you?”
Cats leaned closer, waiting for her reply.
“The Tree was wrong about them,” she said. “Some of them, at least. They saved my life, then brought me back here. So . . . I’m home now. Yay?”
Whitehaze’s eyes narrowed. All traces of joy disappeared. “They know where we are?”
“Well, yes, but not all of them. The one who does know isn’t bad. But didn’t you hear me? They saved my—”
“So that you could lead them here?”
“No! No! That’s not what—”
“What did you learn from our ancestors? What did Dark tell us about their kind? They are the enemy. If they helped you, it was for their own personal gain, I promise you. The History Tree—”
“Is wrong,” Ember said, cutting her mentor off for the first time.
Cats gasped. Cloud’s heart sank in his chest. He sniffed back the congestion still forming in his snout. ‘What are you doing, Ember? You’re just backing yourself into a corner. This isn’t going to end well.’
“Dark himself marked down the cruelties he himself experienced. It’s not wrong. The Tree is not wrong. What have I told you about questioning our ancestors? And now your human friends will probably come here and take us all before the East can even plan out their next attack,” Whitehaze growled.
Ember closed her eyes and paused. Her body tensed. Her tail thrashed like a captured snake. “They aren’t bad,” she said after a few moments of silence. “I didn’t lead them anywhere. She knew where to bring me because she knew where they found me. They could have let me die and they would still know where to find you. If they wanted to hurt us, they would have done it by now. But you don’t understand, they actually learned Felid. They spoke to me. They aren’t all bad.”
“Whitehaze, y-your apprentice has just come back from the dead, and y-you’re already yowling at her?” Lupine loped toward them.
Whitehaze lowered his head. “She gave our location away, Lupine. Dark knew better than all of us combined what he marked into the Tree about the dangers of interacting with humans. I’m sorry, Ember, for snapping at you, but I don’t take back any of what I said. Talking or not, they’re going to come for us one of these days. Lupine, I’ve told Aspen, and I’ll tell you now, one old tom to another; the time has come to find another home. This one simply isn’t safe anymore. We could send out scouts tomorrow to search for a new clearing with a young tree we could transfer the old clawmarks to.”
“I-I’ve looked to you for advice for almost seven winters, and y-y-you’ve never once failed me,” Lupine replied. “Now I-I-I see where you’re coming from with this, but we can’t do it, and you know that. We aren’t strong enough to risk sending out scouts. Whatever comes our way, we’ll just have to take it. Now come on,
everyone. Let’s give Ember a-a real welcome. After all, sh-she’s a little war hero now. Battle scars and, uhm, all.”
Lupine cast a leery glance at her artificial legs, then touched noses with her. “W-welcome home, Ember. In case you d-didn’t know, until Farlight is experienced enough, I’m the acting commander. I’m not a very good one, I-I’m afraid, but if you ever need help, I’m willing to give it.”
Ember looked down at her paws. “Th-thank you . . . sir.”
Her voice wavered as she spoke, as if she was trying to hold back some intense negative emotion. He couldn’t tell if it was anger, sadness, fear, or simply Ember being Ember. Cloud sighed. Most cats, like Hyrees or Songbird, were like clawmarks—readable when viewed from the right angle. Ember, however, was like trying to make a sentence out of overlapping bird prints. Through sheer chance, a clawmark or two might appear, but contextually they never made sense, and rarely, if ever, did they so much as form a two-mark word.
“I-I-I hate to ask this of you so soon, but we really do need as m-much help as we can get right now. Do you think you’d be in any state to start patrolling in a-a few days?” Lupine said.
“I . . . should be able to. I don’t know how well . . . my prosthetics will hold up in a fight, but I can, uhm, give it a try.”
“Good molly.” He stepped back and lifted his head. “Everyone out of your dens!”
Cloud flattened his ears to lessen the noise. ‘Tahg, I didn’t think his voice could get that loud.’
“Ember has come home! When the hunters return, we’ll have a feast. The time has come to celebrate!” Lupine lowered his head and grimaced. “M-might as well have some kind of festivity before we die,” he muttered under his breath.
Several cats caterwauled with excitement. Even though many had already left for their daily tasks, the late-goers and Glade-dwellers alone made enough noise for the rock formations to create an echo. They jumped from their perches and exited their dwellings to greet and examine Ember and her peculiar human gadgets. They asked questions until their voices became a clamor. Ember tucked her tail and tried to back away, but cats surrounded her on all sides. Cloud pushed forward, trying to create a path for her to escape by.
“Hey!” one cat shouted.
Cloud stopped. His eyes searched the tumult for the speaker.
“I suppose, now that the defect is home, we finally have a reason to gorge ourselves and forget the war and the lives its claimed, don’t we?” One young tom’s gaze locked onto his, blazing with nonverbal threats. “Looks like your daughter isn’t as big of a disappointment as you thought, Cloud.”
Cloud growled, chest burning with anger. “I never once called her a disappointment, and you know it!”
Ember shivered and crouched down, trying to make herself smaller. They kept poking her legs and asking questions without waiting for answers, uncaring or oblivious to her discomfort. Cloud tried to focus back on getting her out.
“I said ‘thought,’ not ‘said,’ ” the tom replied, distracting him again. “And I can’t help but notice that you’re only denying the latter. Such an honorable, yet manipulative thing to do, high-rank.”
Cloud snarled, turning his full attention to the tomcat in front of him. “That’s it, I’ve had enough of you.”
He lunged forward. Lupine jumped between them before Cloud could tackle him. “Stop!” Lupine snarled. The clamor of voices obeyed, quieting almost immediately. “Sumac, I-I-I know your mate died, but this is u-unacceptable. You too, Cloud. You’ve both been reckless and i-irresponsible ever since the battle. Effective immediately, Sumac, y-you are to spend your free time for the next five days working on the-the second wall. Cloud, I’m afraid I’ll have to demote you to a regular council member. W-Whitehaze is now my advisor.”
Cloud stepped back. Panic flooded in, making his heartbeat pound in his ears. “What? Over this? But sir, he—”
“M-my decision is final.”
Sumac glared at him. “I still hate you, high-rank. You know that?”
Cloud curled back his lips, revealing his three fangs. “The feeling is mutual.”
Sumac snorted, then trotted away, paws crunching what little ice sludge remained. For a while, no one said anything. The sudden silence made his ears ring. Motion in his peripheral vision brought his eyes back to Ember. She lay on her stomach, tail still tucked and paws wrapped over her ears. Her eyes were closed and she was shaking all over.
Hyrees lay beside her, whispering comforts in her ears. “Ember, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over. Come on,” he mewed.
She didn’t reply. Cloud stepped closer. When he did, the faint sound of sobbing met his ears. “Ember? Hey, Ember, I’m sorry for the things that fluffheaded tom said. He’s always been a rebel and a troublemaker. I promise what he said isn’t true. You’re not a disappointment.”
He waited for a reply, or even a gesture—anything to indicate she’d heard him. ‘What’s wrong with her? What do I do? I’ve never seen her like this before. Crouched over, yes, paws over her ears, yes, crying, yes, shaking, yes, unresponsive, yes, but never all at once. Did the humans do this to her? Did I do it? Or Sumac? Or maybe it was all of us. Come on, Ember. Please do something. I promised. You know I mean it. Right?’
“Ember, get up,” Whitehaze said gently. “No point in making a spectacle of yourself.”
Ember opened her eyes, but they didn’t focus on anyone in particular. Instead, they darted around like the wild eyes of a frightened rabbit. Cloud leaned down to lick her head. As he did, she leaped up. Her forehead banged into his muzzle. He jumped back. Ember ducked her head in apology, then darted past him.
“No, wait!” Hyrees called. He got to his paws and ran after her. “Where are you going?”
She sprinted across the Glade in silence. Everyone watched in confusion, and a few glared in annoyance. Somewhere in the back of his head, Sumac’s scornful words repeated themselves.
‘She’s not a disappointment. I failed her. This isn’t her fault. It’s mine. I was too soft on her.’ He sighed and followed them. ‘Please know that I don’t want to hurt you, Ember. And I hope you don’t hold what I’m about to say against me. I’m only doing this for your own good.’
He found her at the back of his own den, head pressed against the wall, trembling like cornered prey. Hyrees sat beside her, grooming her neck.
“Ember, listen,” Cloud said. “I know you just got back, and I know today is supposed to be light-hearted, and joyful, and fun, but things are changing. I know we told you this already, but war is inevitable, so the time has come to grow up. I hate to be the one who has to say this, but it had to be said. We don’t have time to deal with this kind of behavior anymore. It needs to end. It’s not healthy for you.”
Ember lifted her head, but pinned her ears back even farther. “Y-y-you think I want t-t-t-to do this? You think this is some k-kind of act I put on for a-attention? I don’t want attention. I-I just want everyone to leave me alone.”
“Well, laying down and crying in the middle of the Glade won’t make others leave you alone. In fact, when you do that, it seems an awful lot like you’re trying to draw a crowd.”
“Maybe you should stay out of this,” Hyrees said.
“She needs to hear this.”
“Hear,” Ember whispered.
“What?” Cloud asked.
“Hear,” she said, jaw trembling. “I hear everything. Your breathing. Hyrees’s breathing. Icicles dripping. Cats walking. Cats talking. Can’t understand them. There’s a hovership coming. S-s-still don’t like those.”
Cloud’s ears twitched as his mind registered each sound in turn, but as he switched focus, some of the softer noises disappeared once again into the background. The whirring of the machine she’d mentioned grew louder as it passed overhead, then faded into nothingness.
“You can’t have heard that all that at once, right?” he asked. “What does this have to do with anything?”
She mewed something unintelligible to her
self, then turned around. Her head remained low. “I did. And I still am. Each waking moment, every sound, every light, every movement, every touch is right there, yowling, and flashing, and thrashing, and hitting me. I’m not like you. You can ignore it. You can make it go away with the sheer power of your head, but I can’t. It’s not that I’m not trying, it’s that I physically cannot make it stop. Just like the words repeating themselves inside my mind right now, nothing stops. Nothing ever stops. It’s like a really bad lightning storm is always going on somewhere inside of me, and it will not go away.”
‘Is she telling the—who am I joking with? She’s telling some version of the truth, but some form of exaggeration is taking place here. It’s simply not possible to hear, feel, or see everything at once.’
“Em, why didn’t you tell anyone about this sooner?” Hyrees asked. “I never realized . . .”
“I thought I was broken, or doing something wrong, or—actually, no, that’s exactly the problem. I thought I could fix myself now, now that Matthew helped me, but I . . . I don’t know if I’ll ever not be this . . . this.”
Cloud gritted his teeth. “So whose fault is it? Mine?”
“No. I don’t know!” She pushed her forehead against the wall again. “Just . . . please . . . Know what? You’re right. You’ve always been right. I’m too weak to survive here. I’m gonna die out here, aren’t I? But that’s okay. I may only have a few winters to live anyway. One day these prosthetics are going to malfunction, and when that happens I’m going to die, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop that.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but realized he didn’t know how. Everything he could think of was either apathetic or a lie. He closed it again and sighed.
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