03-27-2018, 05:35 AM
This is not the ancestral home of the Clans.
Countless seasons have passed since the prophecy of fire and the four legendary warriors that bore its embers. It is a tale still shared from elder to kit—fire alone could save his Clan, and all the Clans; and there were three, kin of his kin, who briefly held the power of the stars in their paws.
For the most part, there has been peace. There is no looming terror, no great darkness waiting to be defeated. There are simply the day-to-day risks of living in the wild. ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, and ShadowClan are struggling to recover from a devastating season of greencough, and, for the moment, are at peace with one another as they rebuild. The legend of fire is merely that—it is the story of a cat that once burned as fiercely as flame, and who was eventually extinguished in order to save the Clans.
In all the stories, his kin, too, carried that fire; his daughter led the Clans to the lake, and three of his blood were blessed beyond comprehension by the stars. But many hundreds, if not thousands, of moons before the time of the Clans, the area was occupied by a different group of wild cats.
Their destinies were irreparably changed by the cat born of fire, too, for his child’s child used the great power bestowed upon him, and sent them away to live in the mountains, distant and forgotten. He believed this was their collective destiny, for they would eventually come to know themselves as the Tribe of Rushing Water. He also knew that this would leave the land free for the Clan cats, who had claimed it for their own by the time he was born beside the lake. It was their destiny to be uprooted so the Clans would be able to survive.
But the mountains were never a place for little wild cats to thrive. There were bigger, fiercer cats that lurked in the shadows, and birds that could easily sweep them into the sky like prey. Their numbers struggled, and dwindled, and then eventually began to vanish as sickness swept through their ranks. Their Stoneteller was killed, with no clear successor. Terrified, the remaining Tribe cats fled the mountains, down to the Clans by the lake. The four Clans accepted them under one condition—that they renounce their culture, and commit themselves fully to StarClan and the warrior code. The Tribe was to be no more.
This was many moons ago now, and the old ancestors of the Tribe are in danger of being fully forgotten, while StarClan glimmers serenely in the night sky. Many cats with Tribe blood no longer know their heritage; cats are only given Clan names, and Tribal names have been wiped out.
But the Tribe of Endless Hunting, trapped within the grounds of StarClan, still remember.
Perhaps they will not be silenced so easily.