Treacherous Skies

Chapter 6

Echoheart opened her eyes. She was dreaming.

She blinked and looked around her. She was in a green, cliff-like moor, with dirt ledges rising above the ground on some sections. Flowers dotted the grasses like the snow on the distant mountains, and the small rises of dirt contained loose pebbles and rabbit holes. Echoheart realized, with a jolt of shock, that this was the same place where she had had the dream at the Moonfall. She turned; behind her was one of the dirt cliffs that rose up from the grass, kind of like the one in the DawnClan camp, but smaller. Grass hung over the top in clumps, and roots of the bushes clung to the rocks and unsteady dirt they were growing in. Turning around again, she saw the mountains, looking closer than she'd ever seen them before. They rose above the distant trees, peaks swarming with clouds."What? Again?" Ecoheart turned around and saw Whispersong walking up to her.

Another dream with Whispersong?  "What's happening?" Echoheart asked her sister.

Whispersong shrugged. "Last time, StarClan warriors came to us, so..." Her sister looked around hopefully, but neither she nor Echoheart saw anything.

Echoheart turned and looked around her, and she saw the grass ruffling just in front of the mountains, the wind slowly making its way toward them. The dancing grass carried the breeze across the field, warm with the weather of new-leaf. When it reached them, Echoheart heard Whispersong gasp.

"What?" Echoheart asked in worry.

"It's saying something," Whispersong breathed, her brown eyes wide.

"The wind?" Echoheart asked disbelievingly.

"Shh," Whispersong meowed quietly.

Echoheart swiveled her ears around, but all she heard was wind. "I don't hear anything," she meowed flatly.

"I... I can't quite understand it," Whispersong replied distractedly, her ears still perked.

Echoheart angled her own ears around in confusion, then turned around, facing the cliff.

"It's saying my name!" Whispersong suddenly gasped.

Echoheart turned toward her sister, startled, then she heard it too. Only it wasn't saying her sister's name, but her own.

"...Echoheart..."

Echoheart twitched her ears, realizing that the sound was bouncing off the small wall behind her. Echoheart stared at it in confusion. "I hear it too," she murmured. It's an echo, she realized, then jolted with shock.

An echo saying Echoheart.

Understanding flashed in her mind like lightning. The wind had come from the mountains, speaking hers and Whispersong's names...

"Whispersong!" Echoheart gasped. "It's a sign!"

Whispersong turned around. "What?" she asked in confusion.

"The wind first came from the mountains over that way," she began, the pieces finally fitting together. "And at first it was just a whisper, and you could hear it." When Whispersong didn't respond, Echoheart meowed, "Whispersong? Whispers! Don't you get it?" Whispersong cocked her head, her eyes widening. "Then, the sound of the wind echoed off the cliff right there, and I could hear it! You could hear the whispering of the wind and I could hear its echo! Whispers and echoes, like the StarClan cats told us moons ago!"

Suddenly Whispersong's face lit up with understanding. "It is a sign! For us, only we can hear it, and it was coming from the mountains!" Then she paused, and Echoheart stared at her. "It's calling us to the mountains, the whispers and echoes."