A Snowy Cavern - Short UTCM Story
Larkbreeze - Cinnamon sepia with a cream white belly & paws & brown eyes. Medium furred.
Petalsong - Lilac and cream torbie with a fully white tail, paws and muzzle, reminiscent of karpati vitiligo. Blue eyes.
Gingersnap - Ginger longhair with amber eyes.
Ashstorm - Dark grey smoke with a white chest marking resembling a lightning bolt and a burn covering around a third of his body. Blue eyes.
Stripepaw - Black mackerel agouti / Brown tabby. Green eyes.
Hailfoot - Fully white cat with one yellow one blue eye - deaf on the blue eye side of his face (something that actually happens with cats WOW!!!)
Erminepaw - A white cat with black rounded ears, tail tip and paws. Yellow eyes, short furred. Very oval shaped (face, ears).
Cinderfall - Fully black cat with green eyes. Longhair
Slatepelt - Black and ginger tortie with one white paw and brown eyes.
The dark grey, burned cat—closely followed by a ginger tabby with a troublesome demeanour—padded into the Moonroot, pelts lightly sprinkled with water from the Waterveil.
"Ashstorm, Stripepaw! Nice to see you," a honey-sweet voice purred, instantly recognisable as Petalsong, one of MelroseClan's medicine cats.
The other clans viewed MelroseClan's... "medicine roles," so to speak - as strange, since all cats in MelroseClan knew basic healing. The medicine cats acted as more advanced healers, and StarClan guides.
Nonetheless, to each their own, they thought.
"We almost thought you weren't showing up," Hailfoot meowed.
Behind the spindly tom was an anxious looking black and white cat, peering around, eyes slightly lighting up when they saw the other apprentice.
"Ah– This is Erminepaw, my new apprentice," the SnowClan medicine cat meowed, his voice flat.
"It's– uhm– very nice to meet everycat!" The white cat squeaked, overwhelmed by meeting so many cats in one place.
"Nice to see you finally got an apprentice, old man," Ashstorm playfully mewed, tail flicking.
Hailfoot seemingly didn't react—yet a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
"Careful," he replied after a moment. "You're getting too old to be called a 'young cat' yourself."
Stripepaw let out a loud snort.
Ashstorm looked deeply offended.
"Your joints disagree," Hailfoot said.
The Moonroot erupted into laughter.
Even Gingersnap, who had been sitting bored near one of the ancient roots, let out an amused huff.
Erminepaw shifted awkwardly closer to his mentor.
And somehow they all seemed to know each other already.
"Don't worry," a gentle voice meowed beside him.
Erminepaw nearly jumped out of his fur.
"The first gathering is always the scariest."
"I hid behind Larkbreeze for most of mine."
"You did?" Erminepaw asked.
Petalsong nodded solemnly.
"It was 30 minutes," Larkbreeze interrupted from across the cavern.
Petalsong's whiskers twitched.
"It felt like three hours."
Erminepaw hummed slightly, slowly settling into the warmth of the room surrounding him.
"StoneClan still haven't shown up," Gingersnap mewed, her irritation loud and clear in her voice. "At this rate, we should start without them."
As if by magic, a tortoiseshell and a black cat lumbered into the den.
"Sorry we're late," the tortoiseshell rushed. "One of the apprentices decided it was the perfect time to scrape their leg against the rocks and cut it."
"Honestly, warriors never hurt themselves at the right time," Cinderfall meowed sarcastically.
"Glad to see you both made it," Larkbreeze mewed. "Now we can start with sharing news! We'll start - there hasn't been any bad illness in MelroseClan, thank StarClan."
"Our herb store could not handle a greencough outbreak this moon. OH! Yeah - the main spots we get our herbs from got trampled by badgers," Petalsong continued.
"BirchClan has some spots we could share?" Stripepaw prompted.
"Getting too big for your britches, Stripepaw. Ask me first, you mousebrain," Ashstorm teasingly quipped. "... Oh - and yes, we're willing to share."
"Thank you, Ashstorm. Gingersnap, it's your turn."
Gingersnap smiled. "Finally."
"There luckily have been no major incidents in FernClan either," she said.
"Just a minor whitecough outbreak - it was controlled and cured with the help of Raventail quickly," she purred, happy to think of her old mentor, now retired.
"Glad to hear it." Cinderfall purred.
Erminepaw tilted his head slightly, trying not to look confused.
This was… very different from SnowClan camp.
And very different from what he had expected a gathering of medicine cats to feel like.
Larkbreeze glanced around the group.
Hailfoot gave a small flick of his tail.
“No outbreaks. A few cases of frostbite from apprentices refusing to return to camp.”
“They were racing again, weren’t they?” Petalsong asked.
“They always are,” Ashstorm muttered.
Hailfoot shot him a look.
Ashstorm coughed lightly. “A reasonable training method. In moderation." He paused.
"Anyway, it's all good in BirchClan. A couple scrapes but we're tough. We can handle it," he smirked.
"Ashstorm - a cat broke their leg," Stripepaw snickered.
"Stars above, do you always have to pretend everything's fine, Ashstorm?" Hailfoot sighed.
"... Prey is running well in StoneClan... Unfortunately, we have lost a cat. Pebblerun is with StarClan now... His infected wound couldn't be cured," Slatepelt dipped her head slightly, her voice full of grief.
"StarClan watches over him now." Petalsong lowered her head.
A moment of rare silence fell over the Moonroot.
Slowly however, the warmth of the cavern returned.
"Let's begin, this is getting boring," Gingersnap meowed.
The massive silver-white root sat in the middle of the room, the hole above the cave letting the Moonroot reflect the stars in the sky. Five large roots spread from the larger root - one for each clan.
Each cat slowly stepped forward, and pressed their nose to their respective root. The tree was cold, and their noses almost felt like they were freezing off.
Rather than the regular separate StarClan encounters the cats usually had - each cat was still together in the Moonroot.
"Did - did it not work?" Erminepaw asked.
"This... Doesn't tend to happen," Slatepelt murmured. "Maybe we need to try agai-"
Slatepelt stopped. The roots... were moving. Those ancient roots - the ones that had been in one place for thousands of moons - were spreading through the cavern. The five roots seemed to take over the room.
The roots twisted across the stone floor.
Like something waking up after a very long sleep.
And then - the five roots were separated from the connecting root. One root... became five.
Then, it began to snow. Hard.
A blizzard raged from above, covering the roots in snow.
Until crimson spread across the white surface.
Each cat was silent. Nobody was ready to say it - and every cat was thinking the same.
"Those are... the prophecies."
Still - no cat said anything. Maybe it was the fear, or... something else.
Four shadows appeared in the den. Slowly, cats appeared above them.
These cats had star-dappled pelts, and were ghostly.
First... there was a ginger and white tabby with kind eyes.
A long brown tabby who seemed constantly on edge.
A large statured silver cat.
A fluffy white, blue-eyed cold cat.
And a sturdy-looking solid grey & cream cat.
These were... the Clan founders.
Every living cat in the root cavern was baffled.
"Holy StarClan..." Stripepaw murmured.
"W-what are you doing here?" Larkbreeze meowed. "It's one of the greatest honours to meet one Clan founder at a meeting, let alone all of them at once!"
The kind-eyed cat - Melrosestar - was the first to speak. "I know this must be strange, to say the least," she purred.
The brown tabby, Fernstar, was the second to say anything. "We - and all of StarClan - have an important message," he murmured.
"A time of great change is coming to the clans," meowed Birchstar, the silver cat.
The white cat, Snowstar's voice was raspy as he spoke. "Something ancient is waking up in the forest."
The last was Stonestar. "And history is not as complete as it seems."
Then, as one, the founders raised their heads.
All cats began to speak in unison.
"Under the clawed moon, a forgotten shadow will be born, and the snow will run red.
When the forest falls silent, and one becomes five, three will hear the warning, two will doubt the sky, and the smallest shadow, the one who walks away, will decide who lives.
Five roots grew from one forest, yet when snow runs red and shadows rise, the forest will remember the path of the first."
The blizzard continued to rage around them.
Finally, Ashstorm stepped forward.
"What does it mean?" he demanded. "What shadow? What ancient thing? What are we supposed to do?"
The founders exchanged glances.
Melrosestar's kind expression faltered.
"What?" Stripepaw blurted.
"The future is not ours to choose," Stonestar rumbled.
"You must find the truth yourselves," Fernstar added.
Snowstar's icy gaze swept across the gathered medicine cats.
"The forest has forgotten something."
"And soon," Birchstar said quietly, "it will remember."
"Wait!" Petalsong called.
"How much time do we have?" Cinderfall asked.
"What does one becomes five even mean?" meowed Gingersnap.
"Who's the forgotten shadow?" Erminepaw mewed.
For the briefest moment, every founder fell silent.
Melrosestar's ears dipped.
Stonestar's gaze settled on the young apprentice.
Something unreadable flickered across his face.
Then the blizzard roared louder.
The founders began to fade.
"Wait!" Erminepaw called.
But they were already disappearing.
Their star-speckled pelts dissolved into drifting snow.
Roseheart vanished first.
Snowstar's pale shape was swallowed by the storm.
Finally, Stonestar faded into the white.
The blood staining the roots began to blur and run.
The cavern dissolved around them.
White swallowed everything.
Around him, the other medicine cats stirred as well.
The Moonroot was exactly as it had been before.
Ancient roots stretched across the stone floor.
Moonlight streamed through the opening above.
For a moment, Erminepaw wondered if they had imagined it.
Slowly, every cat turned toward the great central root.
Resting against the silver-white bark was a single crimson drop.
For the first time in many seasons, every medicine cat in the forest was thinking the same thing.
The prophecies were no longer ancient history.
