A/N: a little thing that came up for me… what if Crowfeather and Leafpool were human? What would happen then? How would it all be different? Here's my take. I thought of it while I was doodling my lost hopes in a notebook.
Disclaimer: Don't own Warriors. Sorry.
I looked up to see this new boy, watching his short dark skater-cut hair sweep around his face from the school's sucky air conditioning system. It's always aimed perfectly for the teacher while we all sweat in the middle of the room with the body heat.
His eyes scanned us all, wary maybe. I couldn't read his emotion. But I could pick up on a lot of things at first. His name was Cale. He was from somewhere in Iowa. Folded across his chest, his arms were long and thin, just like the rest of him. Probably built for speed. I could imagine him now, speeding through the streets, running for no reason.
Why is my head always in the clouds?
That was when his dark eyes hit me and I could feel all the blood rushing to my cheeks. I ducked behind my book, Need by Carrie Jones. The sequel was sitting in my locker somewhere. Captivate I think it was called. I wanted to duck into the world of Zara and her pixies once again.
He gave a little wave to everyone. The kind that said 'I don't really care, but I'm stuck here so HI!'
Cale passed me, a pencil in his hand, which he drummed lightly against my desk as he passed and a smile involuntarily crawled across my lips. I fought it back uselessly. One of those hopeless attempts. Wow, he was cool. I wouldn't say… yeah, I said it. Cute. Definitely positively cute. But I draw the line there. I won't date until college. My personal rule of thumb. I should get more thumbs and eliminate half those rules that I have and make new ones. Ugh.
Class continued as usual. I brushed my sandy blonde hair out of my face to catch a glimpse of Cale sitting back there, still tapping his pencil like the cute little skater boy he was. I swear, if my heart stopped there, I would've died staring at him. Until my hair came back down. Pushing it behind my ear was only a temporary thing. It never decided to behave and stay.
When the bell rang, I was the last one to get up and out of my seat, finding myself alone in the class. Being the nerdy girl that knows everyone has its perks. They don't have anything against me, but I know all about them.
My locker was jammed with books from Shakespeare to Maggie Steifvater (Shiver is the new Twilight for those who don't know yet. Love it. Learn it. Live it. Robert Pattinson is for the witchy girls that want an after-life). It's sad, but it's me.
I found that the new boy's locker was only a few down from mine. It was pretty funny watching him trying to slam the lock into the locker even more when it didn't open. And once he did get it open, he pulled out a bag of chips, looked in, found it empty and trashed it.
Guys. I don't think I'll ever understand them.
Weaving my fingers through the mess of pages and books and text, I fetched my sketchbook from the back. It was always hidden there in case someone decided to break in. Better safe than sorry.
I felt eyes in the back of my skin. My head whipped around, throwing my hair into my eyes, and I brushed it out to see my sketchbook on the floor. A pair of hands found it before I could grab it back from the middle of the hallway.
The pages were flipped through neatly, cleanly so not to ruin the perfect pencil strokes that I worked on so hard. "These are good," he said, his voice sounding rough and smooth at the same time. How it was possible: I have no idea.
"Thanks," I found the voice to say back. "You're Cale, right?"
I already knew it. I had it memorized since I first saw him. His eyes were searing my skin and he pressed the book back into my hands. "Yeah," he said. Then the bell rang again, ruining the moment. "Guess I gotta go. See you around." His hands fell into his pocket and he sauntered off.
And he vanished in the hall of the school amongst all those other kids. He wasn't like them. At all. He was the boy with the eyes for my art. The heart and soul of the wind. The one with the tall frame and (I assumed) the strong chest that I already wanted to bury my face in. Weird. I hardly even knew him. Already I was falling in love.
"Leah!" Cassidy called from the next hall over, her voice echoing through me. I caugh a glimpse of her silvery blue eyes focusing on me. She was tense against the wall, waiting impatiently. "Get your butt over here! And bring your bag!"
Somehow, I found half of my mind reaching out to her call. "Coming, coming," I muttered, stalking past the popular girls and football goons. The warriors of the school. They sicken me. Not everything is about them. There are other people too.
Without even asking, Cassidy took my sketchbook and pressed a leaf into the first empty page she came across. A maple, the pointy sides perfectly aligned to make an incredible shape against the page, veins sticking through. "Draw it," she commanded. "I want this drawn before it's perfection withers."
I fought the urge to roll my eyes at her, and began to sketch, feeling the pencil running along the page naturally.
"So who's the new guy that you were talking to?" she asked as I began to study the veins a little bit closer, making sure that every detail was drawn in before I went back over it once more.
We had the same study hall. No rush to class in any way. "Hold on," I breathed, biting my tongue to focus. Then I tasted blood and decided that the biting the tongue thing wasn't exactly my artistic style.
Cassidy remained quiet. Her eyes studied the tendons in my hand as I gripped the pencil tighter, erasing the one mark that blemished the perfection of this leaf. Why did I draw leaves? Better question: Why not? It's the way I think most of the time.
"Almost done," I sighed, the air from my lips shifting the leaf just slightly.
My best friend was the one that moved it back for me. Same position and everything. Her blue eyes scanned the picture, nearly finished.
I filled in those tiny lines, knowing it wasn't a perfect copy, but about as good as it could get. The pencil slid over the paper like a ghost. Silent, but powerful in the same motions. "Good," I announced, carefully ripping out the page and handing it to Cassidy. Her eyes immediately lit up and I got a hug as she skipped down the hall, singing something about the stars speaking to her, whispering her secrets of death.
Cassidy. I only shake my head when I think of all the other friends I could've had. Jocks, princesses, goths, emos. In retrospect, I'm glad I got stuck with her. The psychopath that speaks of the stars. Not that it's weird! I totally respect it, but I do find it a bit… strange.
My heart pounded as I followed her and she was twirling with each leap into the air, filled with grace and hope for the world outside these walls.
We both believe in these things. Love is something a bit harder for us. It's not easy for the art geek and the dreamer to fit into a crowd of normal people. Me, being the artsy one and she, the crazed dreamer. The two of us, friends forever.
Her purple and gray streaked hair disappeared in a wisp behind the door of our study hall. So what if we're late? Does it really matter? We're a couple of the best students. No one really cares what we do anymore.
I collapsed in a chair to feel eyes against my skin again. I had a feeling Cale and I had just crossed paths again. For some reason, I didn't mind.
A/N: of course, it should be full length, going all out and into everything. You should already know who is who. Not all Warriors characters will be used. Only the important ones. R&R please!
~Sky