Oh hiiii. You may be wondering what I'm doing here after having spent so long in inactivity. Or not, if you've never read something of mine before. The short answer is that Shadow told me to write a Warriors fic (Which we are now doing together! You should go read her new fic, The Valiant. It's amazing. There will be soooo much angst~). The slightly-longer-but-not-by-much answer is that I missed getting critique and I wanted to test out some characters in a project which isn't so serious. And I just got lonely. Sooooo lonely. You know how that is. Right?
Right! So. The last Warriors book I read was The Fourth Apprentice, so about three years ago? I also haven't read Crookedstar's Promise, so I'm not basing a great majority of personalities or characters off of it or any other Warriors book. It's all made up. Hope that's fine by y'all. Oh, yes, and this is in the old forest, back when Tallstar was being all leaderly and whatnot.
Okay. So. Story time! :D
The wind traces its way through my fur, waking me slowly. If not for Mudpaw shifting in his sleep, rubbing his pelt against mine as his hind leg scrapes against my side, I might've just dozed back off. Now that I've a dim flickering of consciousness, there's no chance. My jaw practically unhinges with the force of the yawn that escapes me, but even through my bleary mind, I'm already searching for Redclaw.
The dark ginger tom is sitting in front of the gorse wall that encircles the camp, and it takes a moment for me to see past him to the elder he's talking to. I stand and stretch, arcing my back as my tail curls overhead, before padding over to the two. "Good morning, Redclaw, Whiteberry," I say, nodding my head respectfully to my mentor and elder.
"Hello, Owlpaw," Redclaw replies, flicking his tail in recognition. "You slept well, I take it?"
"Very," I answer, unable to prevent a second yawn.
"So I see," Redclaw says, amusement glinting in his amber eyes. He stands, flicking one of his paws as though it's wet. "I was just about to come and wake you anyways. Rockfur, Shrewstep, and the two of us are going on patrol. A fox's scent has been hanging around ShadowClan's border. It's stale enough, but we need to make sure.
"Of course," I say, feeling my paws lighten already. It'll be good to be out running: the sun beating down on my dark tabby fur, the coarse grass crumpling underpaw, wind sailing through my fur and my ears. The smell of fresh rain on packed dirt is already in my mouth, and it takes a conscious effort to keep from barreling out of camp this very moment.
I look around camp to try and locate the two other members of our patrol. Tallstar and Hawkheart are over by Tallrock, their heads bent close like they're discussing something serious and secret. Across the clearing, a few apprentices are still sleeping, their chests rising and falling with the melancholy pace of deep rest. The yellow-flowered gorse wall shudders and sways with the wind, leaves filling the camp with their soft murmurs and promises of newleaf. A sky as blue as water stretches overhead.
"Oh, calm down," Whiteberry says, flicking my ears with the tip of his tail. "I'm getting anxious just watching you. They'll get here when they get here."
"Sorry," I say, ducking my head. From the corner of my eye, I see Mudpaw waking up, shaking his fur out to displace the fallen leaves and scraps of grass. "Um, I'll be right back."
"Don't be late," Redclaw calls after me, but the ways he says it is almost like an afterthought, and I'm not very worried.
"Morning, sleepypaws," I say as I come up on Mudpaw. The mottled dark tom brightens with an inner energy as he sets eyes on me, his ears swiveling forward to point towards me. "Glad to see you've finally deigned to join us waking souls."
"Well, you know how it is," Mudpaw says, playing along. "Things to do, dreams to have. Cats to not see."
"I think I've just been insulted," I say, feigning offense as I pull back slightly. "I don't know how our friendship can ever continue on after a blow like that."
"Oh please," Mudpaw says, his mouth quirking at the side. "You're so overdramatic."
"And you're not?" I tease. A flash of dark gray fur catches my attention and I turn to see Rockfur padding alongside Shrewstep as they head over to join Redclaw. "I'm going on patrol," I say, turning again to Mudpaw. "I'll be back later, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Mudpaw says with a bored inflection, even though his tail is still slowly swaying in silent laughter. "Just get going. I'm not going to let you blame me if you're late."
"Like that would happen," I say, rolling my eyes.
I rejoin Redclaw, and am, somewhat ashamedly, happy to see that Whiteberry has gone. That fussy old cat can be so annoying. "Are we ready?" Redclaw asks, directing his question to me.
"Yes," I answer, slipping into a more solemn expression. Mudpaw and my father, Rockfur, are the only cats I let see me with my guard even partially down. If I didn't have this respectful and sincere façade all the time, who would care about me then? I see the way some of them glance at me when they think I'm not looking. I'm not sure what it is I did, but I will do anything—be anything—to earn their full trust. I want to be a warrior my Clanmates can be proud of.
I fall in step beside Rockfur after we duck through the gorse tunnel, waiting until Redclaw's and Shrewstep's idle chatter is so far ahead that they won't hear us before I speak. Rockfur knows my habits, and so doesn't press me to talk before I'm ready. "How are you?" I ask.
"Same as always," Rockfur answers, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. "I don't know why that's always the first thing you ask me."
"It seems the best way to start any conversation," I say mildly. "Or do you have a better way?"
"I do, in fact," Rockfur says, his chest swelling. "Would you like to hear it?"
I pretend to consider his offer. "No. I think I'm rather well off without."
"Kits," Rockfur snorts. He shakes his head sadly as we continue after the others. "They were never so ill-mannered in my day. In fact, I think your mother would be rather sad to see how you've turned out."
"Now you're just starting to sound like Whiteberry," I reply, rolling my eyes. His comment about my mother glances off. I never knew her, and she knew me for only a few heartbeats before…whatever happened to her happened. Rockfur would never tell me the details of what fate befell my mother after giving birth to me. When no other cat is around, he'll tell me stories about when they were young and how they fell in love, but he never goes past when they found out she was expecting. He doesn't say anything he doesn't want to, and that's alright, I guess. I only wish I could've known what kind of cat my father—my father, who never looks at even WindClan's most pretty she-cats—fell in with. She really must've been something else.
Rockfur nudges me in the shoulder, his ears pointed forward. "Shall we rejoin the others? We're getting close to the place the fox was scented."
"Uh, yeah," I say, surprised to find that the grass underpaw is much shorter and pricklier than that nearer to camp. I part my jaws, but all I can smell is ShadowClan's sickly pine scent. If there's a fox nearby, I don't scent it.
"How about we race?" Rockfur asks, noticing my surprise and misreading it as something else.
"You're on, old tom," I say, sprinting ahead without hesitation. The ground is like springy moss underneath my weight, and it hardly takes any effort at all to tear ahead through the sparse outcroppings of undergrowth. Blood pounds through my ears as my heart jumps in time with my leaps, flying even further ahead than I am. Faster, faster, faster it sings—
An agonizing yowl behind me brings me to skidding to a halt, almost sending me tail over head. I'd been so engrossed in the run that I completely forgot about Rockfur. I spin around to see him spitting at a long red thing with a bushy tail. It looks like a cat, but it's bigger—and then I realize that that's what a fox must look like. A second later, its stench hits me, making me reel with the sharp smell of rotting meat and dead leaves.
A flash of ginger passes me on one side, and then pale gray on the other as Redclaw and Shrewstep pass me, spitting and yowling at the creature. What seems an eternity later, my paws finally rise and take me careening after them. This time, the run is not so enveloping.
Redclaw leaps onto the fox's back, sinking his teeth into its throat as the animal lets out a harsh shriek, backing up as it tries to fling the cat off him. Shrewstep batters it from the side, hissing as he sinks his claws into the thick red fur. He's shaken off in another moment, but he jumps straight back to his former position.
The sight of it freezes my blood. I've never seen something so…so huge, or ugly, or rank. What am I supposed to do? I don't know how to fight that. Luckily, Redclaw chooses that moment to call through his grip, "Owlpaw, see to Rockfur!"
I nod dumbly without registering what he said until a second later. My mind is sluggish and my paws even more so as I turn to see Rockfur lying on his side in the grass. Panic surges through me the next moment, sending a shock of adrenaline to replace my former lethargy as I see the dark red blood pooling around him.
"Rockfur!" I say, crouching by his side. A deep gash runs from his right shoulder all along his stomach, pouring out blood. Too much blood. Too fast. I fight the urge to throw up whatever I'd eaten last night and try to concentrate on my bleeding father. What kind of herbs would Hawkheart use in this kind of situation?
"Forget it," Rockfur gasps, and it isn't until then that I realized I asked the question aloud. "It won't help me now."
"Don't say that," I whisper. My paws are trembling. It's hard to stay standing. "We'll get Hawkheart. He'll make you better."
"Owlpaw, listen to me," Rockfur says, completely ignoring what I said. His eyes have a sudden sharpness to them, piercing straight through me and silencing whatever words had been hanging on my tongue. "Your mother is alive. She's…in RiverClan. With your sister."
A blank moment of blissful incomprehension. And then I recoil. "I'm…half-Clan? My mother is alive? I have a sister?"
"Briarclaw," Rockfur replies, and now his eyes are not so bright. They are dull and regretful and afraid. His side barely moves as he speaks now, and panic increasingly tightens around my heart—for his disappearance, for my newfound family, for the fact that only half of me belongs to WindClan. "Owlpaw, are you listening?"
"I am," I breathe. I pull my face close to his, and only then do I hear Redclaw and Shrewstep behind me. They must have chased the fox away.
"I love you," Rockfur says.
"I love you, too," I whisper, but by then his eyes are already glassy, staring up at the sky with a dazed sort of shock, as if to say Oh. I'm really dead.
Urrrgh, crap. I just wanted to get to the plot, so I'm sorry for rushing the end and trying to establish a close relationship in such a short amount of time. The next one shall be better!
Alrighty, so that's it for now. I suppose I shall be seeing you all next Sunday, which is when my updates shall be, for now and ever more until the end. (:
Oh, and I forgot to mention this before, but you definitely should not read my other two Warriors stories. They were my first two fics, and were, well, how to saaay…total crap.
Thank you for loaning me your eyes! And your attention. I hope I made it slightly worth your while. ^^