Disclaimer: I don't own the Warriors series!
Title: It's Not As Soft, But Moss'll Do
Summary: Purdy finds himself settling in quite nicely into the elders den.
Warnings: We all know Mousefur is asexual by now. =) That's about it.
...
"You smell like you rolled around in Twoleg nest." The brown she-cat, curled up in a pile of moss, spat.
Purdy isn't hurt by her words. He considers them a compliment, really. "S' nice to meet you too."
She glanced warily at his escort. "How long is he staying?"
"As long as Firestar wishes." Purdy's guide replies earnestly.
The she-cat stares at them a long moment. "StarClan's kits." She grunted irritably. "We'll never be rid of him."
The guide dips their head and leaves. His grumpy companion says no more, watching him gingerly step across the den and settle down in some moss. Her eye's narrow.
"Well?" She demands finally. "I can't tell if you're a kittypet or a loner. Firestar's crazy enough to take in either."
"Loner." He pauses. "Well, I was both, technically. I had some Upwalkers who'd feed me; trained 'em real good and everything. And what about you? Did they find you like they found me?"
"I'm Clanborn, mouse-brain." She sniffs. "I'd never be caught hanging around a Twolegplace." She stares at him, blinking very, very slowly. "I always knew Twolegs had fluff for brains, but I didn't know you could train them."
Purdy finds himself puffing out his chest. These Clan cats think they know everything- but they don't know the first thing about Upwalkers! "Oh, yeah. S' easy. Just gotta keep repeatin' yourself."
"Sounds like you're talking about kits." The she-cat snorts.
"I might as well be!" Purdy goes to tell the tale of his first successful Upwalker taming (Purdy is many things, and a good storyteller is one of them) when he suddenly remembers he doesn't know this cat's name. It's only polite to ask, he supposes. He's staying, at least for awhile. "I'm Purdy."
"Hello, Purdy." A nose touched his shoulder. A white tom with black stripes purrs at him in a friendly manner, a vole in his jaws. "That's my nest, I'm afraid."
Purdy jumps to his paws. "Is it? Whoops! Lemme get outta your fur." He glances at the cat's eyes, hoping to make friendly contact, freezing at the deadness to them. "What happened to you, young 'un?"
He snorts at the term. "A rabbit got me." He gently sets the vole down by the she-cat's paws. "I'm Longtail, and this is Mousefur."
Mousefur bristled. "I can introduce myself! I'm old, not stupid."
Longtail merely dipped his head, whiskers twitching with amusement. "Of course, Mousefur."
As always, Clan cat names are strange and long to the old tom. Purdy eyes the two cats, and realizes the she-cat is right. He can see the frailness in Longtail's limbs; practically feel the ache in Mousefur's joints as she shifts.
"So, this is where they put the old cats, huh?" He rumbles. "Gettin' us outta the way, I'm guessin'."
"Of course not." Longtail shakes his head. "We're elders. We deserve to be fed and protected. It's our right."
"They 'put' us here so they know to let us sleep in." Mousefur agrees. "No cats come bugging us about dawn patrols, that's for sure."
Purdy blinks at them. Protecting old cats wasn't really heard of outside an Upwalkers' den.
Longtail scoots over. "They'll bring you some moss later. For now, you can share my nest."
"His scent's already all over it anyway." Mousefur grumbles. "When was the last time you washed your fur?"
"Recently, I can assure you." Purdy tucks his paws under him. "S' been a long time since I had denmates. I hope you like a good story!"
"StarClan help us." The she-cat's tail twitched.
"Don't mind Mousefur, Purdy." Longtail shot her a look- or, at the very least, tried to. "If she really didn't want to hear your stories, she'd leave."
Mousefur's tail lashes, but she doesn't move. Purdy feels a thrill of satisfaction.
"Alright, alright. Give me a second. Gotta think of a good one- show you Clan cats I'm not soft. Hmm... Ah, I got it! I remember, one time, back when I was just a young 'un myself..."
Purdy realizes pretty quick the problem all of ThunderClan seems to have. Sure, they're noble warriors, trained to fight and hunt to the death for others- which, in it's own right, is pretty okay- but no cat ever talks about anything!
He hears words thrown around- floods, warrior code, Great Journey, etc- but there's never any story behind them. Every cat just expects every cat to know everything- and, if they don't, oh well!
And they wonder why so many cats are breaking the warrior code and getting away with it. Nobody tells anybody anything.
"Ya'll are vaguer than an' Upwalker tryin' to meow." Purdy grumbles, shifting his paws. The afternoon sun warms his fur, and he half-considers taking a nap in the middle of the clearing.
"A true warrior understands the need for silence." Longtail tells him, soulfully. "It separates the kits from the apprentices. The deputy from the leader."
"You lot just like keeping secrets, is all it is." He snorts, tail lashing. "I can barely talk enough to fill up the camp- which is way too quiet, by the way. It's so silent stepping on a twig gets you stared at."
"If they're staring at you, it's because you don't stop talking. Not because you stepped on a twig." Mousefur mumbles, between bites of a mouse. He almost makes a joke about eating kin, but he gets the feeling the she-cat wouldn't appreciate it.
He likes Mousefur. The other warriors always try to hide the truth behind fancy talk and prophecies; Mousefur tells it like it is.
"They stare because they're not used to you yet." Longtail gently told him, draping his tail across his shoulder. "Give it time."
"Well, that might be a reason, too." Mousefur rolls her eyes and gulps down the rest of her prey. "But that's a stupid reason."
"Hey, Mousefur?"
The elder snarls. It's late, so Purdy can only barely see the way she drawls her lip back to do so. "Can't you shut your mouth long enough to let me sleep?"
"Mousefur, what's this whole StarClan racket about?"
Mousefur doesn't answer. She slowly sits up, eyes glowing in the darkness. "What do you mean, racket?"
"Exactly what I said. You keep saying that they're your ancestors, but that can't be all there is to it."
"It can be and it is." She replies curtly. "They're our warrior ancestors. They watch over us and guide us. What more does there need to be?"
"But how?"
"Do I look like a medicine cat to you?" She snapped. "I leave the specifics to the cats who know what they're doing."
Purdy eyes the brightness in her gaze and the ridge on her spine. "You're really passionate about the ghosts of dead cats." He comments.
"You wouldn't understand." She sniffed, and he was prone to believe her. "You weren't Clan-raised. It's only to be expected. Now shut up and let me sleep."
The next time he gets to asking Mousefur about StarClan, it's Sunhigh. They're basking in the light, but a familiar restlessness has started creeping into his old bones.
"What about the kits?" He blurted out. Anything to ignore the ache in his joints. Mousefur cracks open an eye.
"What about them?"
"When they go to StarClan. Do they stay kits forever?"
The old she-cat shrugs. "Physically, maybe. But they'll be able to see all."
"Hm." That doesn't sound very comforting. Purdy twitches his whiskers. "Mousefur, did you ever have kits?"
"No."
"A mate?"
"No."
"Why not?"
She shrugs once again. "The latter leads to the former. Besides, nobody ever caught my eye."
"Ah." He hums. "That's a shame."
Mousefur bristles, hissing. "Not every she-cat wants to spend her days suckling kits!"
He blinks at her, surprised by her intensity. It's obvious she's had to fight this battle before. "Of course not. It's just such a shame you never had a mate. It's always nice to have a body to curl up with."
Now, that wasn't to say Purdy hasn't had a few young 'uns of his own. He has. He'd recommend it to most young cats he came across. But, at the end of the day, no matter how much he loved them all the same, he wasn't the one forced to carry small balls of fur around in his belly. He wasn't the one who gave birth to them. He couldn't blame Mousefur for not wanting to push a rabbit out of a mouse hole.
She scoffs, shoulders relaxing. "That's what my Clanmates are for."
"Even after you went to the elder den?" The place was incredibly empty, all things considered.
"Longtail had his accident moons before I retired." Mousefur replies simply. "I've never been alone, and I never will be."
Purdy shifts, feeling old wounds nag at his heart and belly. "You Clan cats are lucky."
She twitches her ear dismissively. "So are you. You've done things most warriors never will. Now, that doesn't mean I'd want that kind of life. You're lucky you got to be a ThunderClan elder. Most loners die with no one to rely on. It's not worth it."
"I suppose you have a point." He meows. "But I wouldn't change a thing."
It's late when Purdy rouses. The middle of the night, actually, but details details.
Sinking his claws into the moss, he forced the image of a fresh-caught bird out of his mind. He's not dead yet, but hunting birds has long become a thing of the past.
He rolls his shoulders. Pressed against his left side is Mousefur, the she-cat's tail draped across her nose. He wonders if she would have had better luck with a mate if toms weren't so crazy about kits, or if it was never meant to be. Either way, it was Mousefur's destiny alone, and he's certain she's happy with how her life ended up. That was the important thing.
Destiny? Bah! He snorted. I'm starting to sound like one of those star-crazed Clan cats.
Longtail's shoulders are pressed against his other side, rising and falling softly. His tail twitched in a way that struck Purdy as self-aware.
"Longtail?" He whispers. The tom's ear twitched. "You up?"
"You woke me up." He admits softly. "It's night still, right?"
"You can tell?"
"Of course I can. The temperature's dropped, and my fur feels cool." He stretches. "Why are you awake?"
"I feel restless. My old bones have some life in 'em yet."
He twitched in show of this. Mousefur shifted in her sleep. The fur along Longtail's spine rose in alarm.
"Go take a walk." He suggested quickly. "Believe me, Purdy. You don't want to wake her up."
"Maybe I will." He rasps, slowly getting to his paws. It couldn't hurt.
The guard posted- Hazel-something-or-other- nods to him silently as he passed. Always so serious, those ThunderClan young 'uns.
He opens his jaws to taste the air. The scent of Sol has long vanished. Yawning loneliness clawed at him, but he shook it away.
I've got Longtail and Mousefur. And... StarClan.
He glanced up at the stars. They were so bright and numerous it took his breath away. They'd never been this plentiful in the Upwalker dens.
Maybe they don't see the point of watching over non-warrior cats, he thought. Such a shame. If I'd grown up with so many dead cats above me, I'd believe 'em.
"Hey, you." He lifts his head up to look at the stars, eyes narrowed. "Yeah, you. Now, I don't know what all you've heard about me, but I've heard plenty about you. I'll admit, I ain't no warrior, but I'm a real good storyteller. All them kits up there? They could use a tom like me to tell 'em about life down here. I'll stay old and everything, if that's what it takes, so... don't make me die alone. I hate bein' alone." He sinks to the ground. "Don't make me leave."
He bowed his head respectfully, feeling like a fool.
"Mouse-brain." A paw cuffed his ear. "StarClan isn't that cruel, old timer."
"Mousefur?" He perks up. "What're you doin' out tonight?"
"Someone woke me up." She snapped, but there was no heat behind it. "And now my joints are achy from hiking here in the wet. Come back to the elders den. S' where crazy cats like you belong."
Heart warming, he padded after her.
The stars guided them home.
Author's Note: I gotta say, this is my first time writing non-OC warriors, so it might be a bit OOC.
I love Mousefur, okay? And Purdy. And Longtail. They're all amazing.
-Mandaree1