Author's note: Patches and Nightpaw are briefly mentioned at the end of Fernmask: Kittypet to Warrior. This story is basically a "Meanwhile, this happened" story that will eventually meet and continue past the Fernmask story.
Patches gaped his jaws in a huge yawn as the moon lifted above the high twoleg nests. As the moon came up, the loner was beginning his "day'. Some cats hunted during the day, but the tom found the night and the shadows more to his liking. Stretching out each heavily muscular leg luxuriously, he padded out of the sheltering box that had been left in the alley.
Made out of wooden slats and stuffed with rich smelling wood shavings, it provided both warmth and shelter for those cold rainy days in Leafbare. Now that it was Newleaf, the days weren't so bad. He couldn't help but be thankful for that; sooner or later the Twolegs would find his box and take it away. That was the way of things in the Twoleg place; shelter came and went, as did hunting grounds and food. Several cats who made their home here were more than eager to tussle and fight over food or gang together to overwhelm those weaker than themselves.
Patches, on the other hand, rarely had to fight. If he caught it or found it, he ate it. Few cats were bold enough to try to snatch it away. The times they were, they were never so flea brained as to repeat the mistake. He had no patience for fools and when he clawed someone, they remembered his claws long after the bleeding stopped and the injury healed.
Idle curiosity turned his paws as he heard threatening snarling coming from another alleyway. As he recalled, it dead-ended at a high wall and some trashcans. Indeed, three cats had cornered a small back cat against the wall and were closing in on her.
"Leave me alone! I haven't done anything!" The small stranger wailed. She was so thin that her pelt hung from her bones.
Like light and shadow, Patches' black and white fur let him melt through the patterns of light and darkness as he approached the group.
"You trespassed," growled a large tom, drawing his lips back in a snarl. "That's all the reason we need."
The other two chuckled in high, nasty voices. So preoccupied were they, that they didn't realize that the black and white tom was only a whisker length from their exposed flanks.
"That's true," Patches cut in, tapping the biggest tom gently on the flanks with one massive paw. The tom howled in shock and leaped three cat lengths straight up, spinning around with a hiss of fear that turned into an irate snarl as he saw who had startled him. "You always were eager to pick fights with those smaller than you Tin."
"Patches!" Tin snarled, "Since when is this any of your concern?"
"I am merely an idle passerby," Patches commented as the other two kept the small stranger cornered, "And I was idly wondering if it had occurred to you that trapping someone is the wrong way to drive them off." He licked a large white paw and ran it over his head.
"She'll be driven off once we rip some fur out to make sure the lesson sticks," Tin hissed, "This is none of your concern.
"Oh isn't it? What about you Fence? Or you, Rock? Perhaps you two get your pleasure from attacking those who appear weaker than yourselves?"
The two named cats flinched. Fence folded the remaining half of his left ear protectively against his head. Rock turned his head to peer sideways nervously at the large tom, exposing three long furrows across his cheek; They had healed badly moons ago and no fur would ever grow over them again.
"Good, good." Patches almost crooned, "I see you two do remember what happened when you attacked me. I am pleased to see that you aren't completely flea brained after all." He turned to the cross-looking ringleader, "Now Tin, surely you listened to the stories your friends told you about me."
"There are three of us and only one of you," Tim retorted.
"One, three, or five, it means all the same to me," Patches murmured absently, his yellow eyes narrowing fractionally. "On the other paw, you could save yourselves the effort and let the youngster go. Then she'll be gone and you three could go back to whatever it is you do."
Tin was silent, his icy blue-gray eyes flicking over Patches' broad shoulders, powerful jaws and large claws. Finally he gestured with his ears for the other two to let the young cat past.
The youngster needed no urging and scrambled past the cats to the entrance of the alley. Patches rose unhurriedly and followed. The young cat looked right and left, an expression of utter helplessness in her eyes.
"Where do you live, young cat?" Patches asked calmly, turning left and beginning to walk.
"Nowhere like this," she mewed wretchedly, "and my name is Nightpaw." She followed him like a duckling lost and away from its pond.
"Do you live in the part of the Twoleg place where the nests are all much shorter? That's only a day's walk from here."
Nightpaw's tail began to drag, "I don't live near Twolegs. I live where the pine trees stretch upward like Twoleg nests and range from the mountains to the lake."
"Lake? There are no lakes around here. Not within the limits of this place anyway."
Patches led the way to a Twoleg nest where the strong smell of fish wafted through the night air. An expert leap later, Patches lay a mouse at Nightpaw's feet. "Better eat something," he advised, "and learn to eat it quick. Most cats hereabouts have no problem stealing prey right from your very mouth."
Nightpaw needed no urging; she fell upon the mouse and devoured it in a few famished gulps. Morosely, she sniffed the spot where it had lain, as though searching for scraps.
"Better not," he advised her, not unkindly, "Fat bellies slow you down and makes you a target."
"Don't your clanmates protect you?" she mewed, looking up at him.
"No. Loners don't have clans." Something sparked behind his eyes. "Hum. That word is familiar though. Come with me." Patches flicked an ear and lead the way along the hard pathways to a less bustling part of town.
"Er… Patches?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry if this is rude, but was it a monster? Did a monster get your tail?"
Patches glanced back at his tail-less flank, "Nope. We were born that way, my littermates and I. Twolegs call us Manx. I guess that's the Twoleg word for 'no tail.'"
Nightpaw didn't seem to know what to make of that, so she was quiet as they padded through the twoleg nests.
"We'll stop here to eat," Patches said finally, nodding down an alleyway. "And I suggest you eat your fill. We won't be hunting for a while after this." There was a loud clatter of wings and Patches slid stealthily from shadow to shadow until he brought back a fat pigeon that had been too interested in a bit of twoleg food.
"Why not?" Nightpaw looked up from her mouse.
"Because after here, we're entering their territory. They often don't mind our hunting, but since we're going in as visitors, it's best not to assume." Patches passed a few pieces of pigeon to Nightpaw. "Eat up."
"They?"
"Starclan."
Nightpaw choked.
"Buh…. But S-Starclan is where you go when you die!" Nightpaw shivered. "Are these cats going to kill us?"
Patches grew puzzled. "Not unless we try to take anything by force. Look young cat, I don't know what kind of Starclan you've heard of, but these cats are good cats. A bit odd, but good cats all the same. Eat," he added with a bracing tone in his rumbling voice, "and you'll think better when we meet them."
Nightpaw ate, but smelled anxious the entire time.
The two cats padded away from the towering twoleg nests until they came to a new set. These still loomed high above them, but were much shorter than the gray nests that seemed to reach upward and scrape their hard, unnatural sides against the clouds. Stone gray nests gave way to earthly reddish brown, and the snarls of the monsters faded to a slower, more leisurely rumble.
The moon had only moved a mouse length when Nightpaw glanced ahead and gasped.
A single cat sat before them, reddish-brown fur making it all but invisible against the twoleg nests. Then, as the moon slid out from behind a clouds, silvery moonlight spilled down upon the figure and set its coat ablaze in a strange shimmer. Its shadow stretched out toward them, dark as the deepest night of Leafbare.
Patches padded forward until his paws stopped just short of the shadowy ears on the ground.
"Clear skies and good hunting, Starclan hunter."
There was a moment of silence and then a she-cat's voice rang clear in the night air.
"Clear skies and good hunting Loner Patches. What brings you back to Starclan's territory?"
"I've run across a young cat who has been separated from her clan. I thought she might be one of yours." He dipped his head politely.
"We haven't lost any cats in moons," came the reply as Nightpaw peeped hesitantly around Patches' broad flanks, "But come and be welcome, so long as the peace in your hearts remains steady."
They padded forward and soon walked a step behind the strange cat's shoulders. "My name is Skygaze, Watcher of Starclan."
"Watcher?" Nightpaw asked shyly.
"Yes. I watch the stars, and the moon, and the patterns in the leaves as they blow. Then I translate them into messages from our ancestors in Skyclan." Skygaze had a purr of pride in her voice; her gaze sweeping up at the skies above where the strongest stars glittered above them.
"Do you collect herbs and heal the wounded and the sick?"
"Why yes, how did you know?" Skygaze turned to Nightpaw curiously.
"We have a cat like you in our clan. But… aren't you worried, coming out alone to meet strange cats and leading them to your kits and elders?"
"Oh," Skygaze purred, with just a hint of fierceness, "I'm not alone."
"Look up." Patches whispered, and Nightpaw obeyed.
Several fox lengths above them, was a ledge running along the middle of the twoleg nest. Shrouded in light and shadow, it took come careful watching before she realized that there were sleek figures pacing along the high paths, on either side and behind them. They were surrounded.
