HIS BLOOD FEELS hot and out of control, like the sun's rays themselves have been sucking every last pawful of moisture from his body and left in its place a languid feeling of dryness that hangs on his frame like a second pelt. Ashpaw hates it.
He hates the fact that he's been told to live like this; he feels the blades of grass brittle and itchy beneath his paws and thinks about gathering cobwebs near the run-down warehouse instead, pushing poultices onto wounds with these paws and watching light flow back into cats' eyes. He's stuck here, though, learning to kill with those very same paws that crunch noisily on the ground. Ashpaw sniffs and raises his head in concern. The eclectic mix of rogue and kittypet, loner and warrior whooshes by his nose in a stray draft from the distant caves before it is replaced by a more familiar smell, one that sends him out of his stupor.
"Ash! You stupid? Blackclaw just told us all to head back ages ago!" shouts a greyish-brown tom, all spiky fur and eyes full of fire, bursting through the shrubs behind him.
"It was you who thought I was following behind," Ashpaw mumbles back, lazily turning his gaze towards his friend. "I'm coming."
"Thinkin' about 'Star's conflict, I'm guessing?" the brown apprentice meows as they tumble back through the shrubbery, and though he phrases it rhetorically, Ashpaw glares.
"No, my brain'd combust if I thought about that too much," he replies honestly. "You're ready to go to war every day, I'm not."
"Nah, that's also 'Star's thing," Wolfpaw answers. He obviously doesn't care regardless, leaping over the river-rocks happily while Ashpaw pads behind. The other apprentice is excitable as always, a blur of fur that rushes past everything and leaves destruction in its wake. Sometimes, Ashpaw wishes he could do that in good conscience. Instead, he just wants this peace to last forever—a peace that Kestrelstar is still too willing to give up for a few more patches of the same boring fields and hollow trees, and that the other leaders are willing to give up in exchange for mere excitement.
As if enough cats hadn't been killed by the epidemic many, many moons ago. As if all the cats around him, with him hadn't been killed, and he hadn't been forced into someone else's conflict. (Not my conflict, definitely not my conflict, the voice in his head growls with certainty. This is Kestrelstar's conflict, Wolfpaw's when he grows up. Not mine.)
The gorge, however, pleads for him to think otherwise. It welcomes him with much-needed cool air and a scent that eases his nerves into thinking it's home.
"Ashpaw!" Sedgeblaze hisses, padding up to him with green eyes narrowed in annoyance. "No prey for the pile?" He flicks his long tail towards the boulder near the center of camp, letting it do all the talking for him.
Damn Wolfpaw left me in the dust, he thinks distastefully, looking up and finding those green eyes still glaring, Sedgeblaze's shadow bearing over him.
"It was too dry…miceallranIguess," he mutters quickly, lowering his head. He'd forgotten it was a hunting trip in favour of tracking down that stars-forsaken rogue scent back near the caves. Glory day.
"Too dry? In the forest?" His mentor quirks a brow, though his gaze softens a little. He seems to be appraising the young apprentice, exhaling slowly through his nose. "Fine. Bring back something tomorrow; go tend to the elders now." He turns, nodding towards Flametooth, who'd grinned at him, beckoning from the distant warriors' den.
Ashpaw lets his posture relax, slinking to the ground. He pads over to the prey pile, sighs, and picks up a decent-looking thrush, bounding towards the elders' den. He doesn't really care for their stories of the mighty four clans of hundreds of moons past. It is all drivel to him, legends of the same petty disputes that always led to the same results. As he leaves, having brushed off any stories the senior warriors attempted to tell, he glances towards the medicine den instead, spotting Teaselpaw's golden tail swishing from outside the hole in the rock. If he pricks his ears, Ashpaw can hear Tangletail's cheery voice from his perch on the stones, blabbering about medicinal flowers of some sort. Suddenly, he senses a figure near him and Ashpaw twirls around, teeth bared in annoyance.
The fluffy orange tom near him takes a cautious step back. "Sorry! Sorry," he stammers. "I thought you might be lonely again, so I just…." He trails off and looks away.
"Nah, Stoatpaw, it's nothing," Ashpaw dismisses with a flick of his ear. "But weren't you with—" he begins, and the other apprentice cuts him off.
"Wolfpaw," he says, smiling a little. "Yeah, he showed me a few battle tricks of his."
"Hey, I'm glad. The brat doesn't give you trouble anymore?" Ashpaw jokes.
"Ehm rifgh here," Wolfpaw's rough voice exclaims from the clearing, as he pads in with a rabbit clenched in his jaws, a white molly following closely behind and laughing, voice muffled.
"Speak of the Dark Forest, right?" she exclaims, batting Wolfpaw on the ear good-naturedly.
"Shut up, Apple," he meows back, pushing forth the rabbit. "Heard you didn't get a thing, Ash, so here ya go. Stoat too, I guess. 'Cause I didn't hear nothing offensive from you."
"You are a brat," Ashpaw says, "Not any less because you just gave me food." Stoatpaw gives him a look.
"Just take the prey," he whispers, except Applepaw hears and starts laughing again.
"Well toms, here's to our benefactor for the day," she teases, while Wolfpaw counters with something unintelligible.
The apprentices talk, and talk, and mister no-fun-allowed Sedgeblaze gives them a lesson (on how to kill again, thinks Ashpaw). Then, there is once again an uncomfortable fog amongst the warriors, as noon passes into night with no sign of progress for the attack patrols and no sign that Kestrelstar's nerves would stop being stretched taut.
Mistclan's leader sits from his ledge under the sliver of light from the waning moon, gazing at the camp. A growl forms in the back of his throat as he thinks of this, his home, and his choices. Being leader meant you were supposed to make good choices, but the grey tabby didn't think he'd made any good decisions in all the moons he was alive.
Not good, but not wrong, either, he wants to say, but his brother down in the caves figuratively smacks him, hissing at him to shut up. So Kestrelstar looks at the ground beneath him quietly, and returns to his den.
"Don't do anything you'll regret, Aster," he tells his brother, as if the wind would pick it up.
Sometimes he feels like it's something he's just telling himself.
A/N: hello readers! ever since my first time reading the warriors series, i've wondered—there are so many warriors who are stuck being medicine cats, but where are the warriors that long to be medicine cats? of course, i don't believe ashpaw here has the right idea of what the job entails, but nonetheless, here is his story (and the story of a certain other cat).
thank you for reading this, because that means both my writing and characters don't turn you away, and that's a feat i'd like to hopefully accomplish. stay tuned for more!