Waging War Book 4: Empty Peace {COMPLETE}

Chapter 1

"Take a deep breath." Owlbreeze instructed, pressing her ear against Sparrowpaw's chest. The apprentice took a deep breath and his breathing was starting to sound a lot more clear than it had the past the few days. "Good." Owlbreeze mewed and took a step back. "Your breathing is improving every day and your coughs haven't been as severe as they were when I got here." When Owlbreeze had arrived to the MountainClan camp a little over a moon ago Sparrowpaw had been quite sick and it got worse for a while, with the apprentice being confined to his nest and his sickness developing into greencough.

However, at the time Sparrowpaw had been the only one sick so she was able to dedicate plenty of herbs to the young apprentice, and he was perfectly strong so he was starting to recover and should hopefully be out of the den in the next few days.

In the past quarter moon or so more MountainClan cats had come forward with sickness and were now confined to the den to prevent it from spreading further, especially towards MountainClan's first expecting queen, Riverstep who was due to have kits this moon. Troutstream, Hazelspring and Poppysong had all come down with whitecough and were in the medicine cat den with Sparrowpaw.

Only Troutstream had developed into full blown greencough so far but he was also making a slow but steady recovery. All of MountainClan's warriors were strong and healthy prior to sickness so she wasn't too worried about losing any of them.

In her moon living in MountainClan Owlbreeze had found herself feeling right at home. The MountainClan medicine cat den was about twice the size of the SunClan den and she was the only medicine cat. She hadn't felt like a burden or like she was getting in the way since she got her and she had felt so happy being here. She felt like she was finally where she belonged.

She missed her family constantly, especially Blossompaw and she wondered how her siblings were doing every single day but when she saw Blossompaw at the last gathering she had told her all about what was going on in SunClan.

The only other issue that Owlpaw struggled with the was silent tensions between AshClan and MoonClan that were still an issue. Violetstar still refused to come to gatherings and Owlbreeze could tell that both Oneflight and Blackstorm were incredibly tense near each other. As far as she knew no other fights had broken out between them but she knew it was only a matter of time before another fight broke out.

Owlbreeze never found herself quite able to shake the image of Shadowstar dying from her mind as well as the desperate and frustration she felt when both StarClan as well as Dawnstar refused to do anything about the situation. She had spoken with Mountainstar about the issue but she couldn't put that kind of pressure on the new leader when her Clan hadn't even been here that long, though Mountainstar agreed that she would do her best to attempt and keep the peace at gatherings which was more than any other leader seemed to be doing. Both Dawnstar and Timberstar seemed to be ignoring the issue at hand, even at the last gathering it felt like Riverstar was doing everything in her power to ignore what was really going on.

Owlbreeze would have to see how things developed at the next gathering and possibly hope that Riverstar and Violetstar would resolve the issue on their own, but she knew that was the wishful thinking of a naive apprentice. She wanted to keep her faith in StarClan, but after everything they put her through she was finding it hard to rely on them. She didn't think it was fair that so much had been put on her shoulders and her shoulders alone.

She would continue to try and do what StarClan wanted her to do, but for now her new Clanmates needed her to focus on being a medicine cat and being MountainClan's medicine cat is what made her truly happy.

"Keep getting some rest." Owlbreeze instructed Sparrowpaw, forcing her attention back to her Clanmates. "I'll come give you some more herbs in a bit." Sparrowpaw nodded and she did a quick check of the other sick Clanmates before washing her paws in a puddle of water she had made with melted snow in a small dip in the stone floor of her den.