Plagued

 PLAGUED 

A story by Dogwood

Prologue
The medicine cats' den. Full. Always full. The Clans may have pooled together their medicine cats, but it still is not enough to combat the disease. It will never be enough.

Shivering with dread, you enter. The thick, heavy scent of sickness assaults your senses. You tremble, but move on. Again, you check the living. Vomit, bile, and untouched scraps of fresh-kill litter the ground. You search for her, but she isn't there. Panic rises in your chest. You look left and right. Where is she?

You know where she is, but you deny it. She can't be there. She wouldn't leave you like that. She wouldn't die without saying goodbye. She's still alive, you tell yourself. The plague hasn't taken her yet.

You fill your head with these delusions, these hopes. That she lives, that she breathes, that she's a medical miracle. But all is in vain. She is not in any of the nests lining the den. Quickly, you turn to the nearest medicine cat.

"Brambleheart?" you ask quickly. "Is she here?"

The medicine cat frowns. Pity and sorrow twinkles in her gaze, but it's dull. She has done this so many times that there is no heart. "Come...come here."

Dread trickles into your stomach. The medicine cat takes you to the pit in the middle of the den. Your eyes scan the bodies, both hopeful and doubtful. Are you hopeful, or are you doubtful? You force yourself to hope. You shove away the doubts, the truths, creeping up in your mind, screaming to be heard. She isn't here, she was mixed up with the other ones, she's alive, she's alive, she's alive. Hope- hope begins to flutter in your chest, flying upwards and soaring into the air. The lies themselves begin to dance, using the veil of this hope as their guise for truth.

Only to be crushed by reality as your eyes lock onto the limp ginger body.

She's there. Lying in the pit with the other corpses, her eyes wide open and slitted like a snake's. Slimy green ooze trickles from her jaws.

You cry out, anguished. A yawning chasm of loss opens up in your chest, and you plummet into it. Hissing, you whip around. Your mouth froths, and your gaze is frenzied and wild.The medicine cat backs away slowly, but there is no concern for her safety. She knows she is safe. They will keep you away from her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

But you know why. It is the custom. Long ago, it became that there were too many deaths to inform the living. A season-cycle later, that still has not changed. The deputies come to drag you away, foaming and raving. They lock you in the prison with the others who take out their pain on the medicine cats.

Her dead face haunts you every night as you sleep in the cold stone prison. Memories of the golden old days float through your dreams, when you two were free and happy. When the plague didn't exist, when you had no idea of the darkness ahead. These visions of the past...will they ever become the future?

Little do you know that you too will lie in the pit in nothing short of a few moons.

Just another victim of the plague.