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Shadowsight had had a real connection to StarClan, once. One as good as any other medicine cat. Maybe even better than his mentor, a little voice had whispered deep inside his heart, once he'd heard the story about how Puddleshine had been chosen to be the next medicine cat at random, not because he showed any inclination for healing or for speaking to StarClan at all.
When he was only a few moons old, he'd dreamed of how to get home from far beyond Clan territory. His father had listened to him, and they had all made it home.
When he was scarcely older than that, he'd dreamed vividly of a giant waterfall amidst tall stony peaks - again of a place he'd never been, and again it turned out to exist just the way he'd dreamed. It hadn't seemed so remarkable when he was young - to a kit, dreams are often intertwined with reality - but he still remembered the awe and wonder he'd felt when seeing the home of the Tribe of Rushing Water for the first time.
His ability to dream the truth, his connection to the prophecies of StarClan, it was all gone now.
Not completely gone. Not vanished as if it had never existed, as though he was just an everyday warrior who would never see StarClan for himself until the day he died.
It was...worse, he thought.
When StarClan had been blocked off from them, the only connection he'd had to them had been Ashfur. Ashfur, only a single cat, not the voice of StarClan by any means, as undeserving of the rank as anyone.
Ashfur's had been the only voice in his dreams for moons. And he - inexperienced, young, naive - had thought Ashfur spoke for all StarClan.
A single cat, driven mad with vengeance and obsession, warping and twisting all morals and meaning to his own ends. And Shadowsight had listened to him. For moons.
He'd dreamed of StarClan again, after Ashfur had been killed, permanently and forever. He'd been dreaming, his mind fully relaxing in sleep for the first time in he knew not how long, and suddenly there had been lush green fields heavy with the scent of prey, bountiful herbs all around, and figures glowing with starlight approaching to talk to him.
He'd seen it only for an instant before his mind had recoiled, and he'd awoken shivering in his own nest, gasping for air.
It had happened again, several times. He would see a glimpse of StarClan's hunting grounds, and he would instinctively repel himself, unable or unwilling to trust it again. He didn't know which.
Undeserving, he would think.
No matter how hard he tried, he - or StarClan - just couldn't sustain the connection. Then he began to exhaust himself through concentration, and even the vague glimpses he had been getting were gone.
"If you try too hard, it doesn't work," Puddleshine advised him. "You'll be too worried, too focused. Your mind needs to be relaxed and open."
"How do you know?" Shadowsight asked. He'd never known Puddleshine to have any difficulty with communicating with StarClan.
Puddleshine shrugged. "That's what Leafpool said."
So Shadowsight had tried to relax his mind. He had found out quickly that trying not to think about something was pretty much impossible.
He had hopes for the Moonpool - where else could he hope for his connection to StarClan to be repaired? StarClan was stronger here than anywhere else in the living world. This was their sacred place. If not here, than nowhere.
And here, too, he caught a glimpse of vibrant green, and of star-flecked fur, that only lasted for a moment before he jolted awake, biting back a yowl. The water was cold on his nose, and he heard unseen cats whispering, just quiet enough so that he couldn't make out the words.
The whispering didn't stop.
He'd always heard whispering here. He used to think all the medicine cats did. It was the voices of StarClan. But they'd always stopped after he'd slept by the Moonpool, StarClan having been able to tell him whatever message they wanted to give him.
But now it didn't stop. It went on and on until he was nearly jumping out of his fur, until the other cats ever so slowly woke up from their blessedly ordinary visions and left the hollow. It took all of his self-control not to run as fast as he could; even so, he was the first one out.
If even the Moonpool couldn't break the hold Ashfur still had on him even from beyond the Dark Forest...what could?
It wasn't until he found himself in a shadowy forest, with endlessly muddy ground and tall, smooth trees that rose endlessly up into the gloomy sky, that he gave up.
Because he knew this place. He'd been here before.
And it definitely wasn't StarClan.
He panicked, running around like a cat gone mad. He ran around and around looking for a way out. He clawed at the earth, at the trees. He saw eyes glowing in the darkness, heard voices laughing, and didn't know if they were really there or not. He thought he screamed.
Puddleshine mercifully shook him awake after what felt like an eternity. Apparently Shadowsight had been thrashing around in his nest so loudly it had woken his former mentor up; Puddleshine had been certain that Shadowsight would start sleepwalking before he was able to wake him. The moss in his nest was so torn and tossed about he had to replace it the next day.
It was after this that he, terrified, exhausted, despairing, gave up on ever having a proper connection with StarClan again.
Better to have no connection at all than one like this.
Because if Ashfur had corrupted his connection so much that he found it easier to dream himself into the Place of No Stars than StarClan, what did he have left?
He spoke to Mothwing at the next Gathering.
She'd been watching him carefully ever since he and Puddleshine had arrived. She'd been watching him at the half moon too, he remembered. She hadn't been sleeping like the other medicine cats had been, but he'd barely noticed that then.
"I thought you might," she said when he finished telling her. "I saw you at the last half moon, you know. You acted differently."
He nodded.
"I do believe in StarClan now," she told him. "But I didn't, for a long time. I did at first, but..." She sighed. "You know I'm rogue-born. I didn't know about StarClan until I joined RiverClan when I was young. I believed in StarClan at first, but lost my belief some time later for reasons I don't want to go into. I only recently started believing in them again. Well, recently for me," she amended. "It was before you were born. It's been a long process."
Shadowsight suddenly felt sympathy for Mothwing, grappling with the questions of her beliefs in silence, with no one she dared confide in, not when she was supposed to be the one with the answers. For longer than his entire life, too.
"I have not had a vision from StarClan since my first visit to Mothermouth," Mothwing told him, and it was an embarrassingly long moment before he remembered what Mothermouth was. "Yet I have served my Clan as a medicine cat all this time. With one brief exception, they all trust me to heal them regardless. It can be done."
"But they like you," Shadowsight said. "They trust you."
"And you are worried that they don't trust you, for your role in Ashfur's war?" Mothwing asked.
She was right.
"They don't," he said. "You lived in ShadowClan, you know that."
"And how many of my Clanmates do you think trusted me at first?" Mothwing asked him. "I used to be a rogue. I became a medicine cat only after I had finished training as a warrior - oh, you didn't know I used to be a warrior, did you? And more than all that, I was Tigerstar's daughter. There were quite a few cats who didn't want me as their medicine cat once they found that out. But they came to accept me anyway. Your Clan will accept you too, Shadowsight, StarClan difficulties or no. You already have your mentor, your parents, and your sisters." She suddenly, surprisingly, looked wistful. "Everyone else will trust you again, Shadowsight, just like you will learn to trust yourself again. Just give it time."