Cinder stood in the camp, watching the cats pass by. Sick kits taken in and out of the medic den, coughs filling the forest air. Her clanmates moved like shadows, stomachs and minds starving, half alive…and beyond them were the mounds of the d3ad. Sun took a shaky breath, the pain and death clinging to her like an infection. Everything felt wrong…even her name. The pain, the sorrow, the void in her stomach, her own /name/. Cinder didn't feel right. Cinder was the spark that led to the wildfire, the wild, live, unpredictable chaos. She wasn't that. She wasn't that spark. She wasn't the raging wildfire anymore. Where she walked, death followed like a crazed fan. What was that word again? Pyre? Something that was burned when someone died? Yes. Pyre. Her heart burned with anger and sadness when Turtle and Thrill died. Her heart burned when her fathers died. Yes. Pyre was everything she was. Grief was the fuel that powers her, her spark, her curse, but Pyre didn't finish the story, it didn't show the other side. What about the throne she lost? The throne she so desperately clutched onto until it was knocked out of her paws? The missing piece to the puzzle. The throne she chased but fell short of. That was it, right? Pyrethrone. Pyrethrone. Was she Pyrethrone? Yes, she /was/ Pyrethrone.
