Chapter One
I wake up because of the chill rushing through my bones and freezing me. I shiver as I reach out my arm to grab my warm and cozy duvet, as I notice it is not there. I slowly blink and see that nor is my arm, if I look correctly. Wait- what?
I scramble up, quickly swinging my head around. This is not my bedroom. There is nothing here that I know. Just a lake. And trees. Stars are shining in the night sky. Why the heck am I standing in front of a lake? On four legs. At night. I start panting. I need air, this can't be true. This has to be a dream. I look down to see two little, gray paws standing on the sandy ground. Paws.
I try to tell myself that it's alright. "IT's just a dream," I whisper to myself. I sit down, which takes way too long, since I still have to find out how animals with their four legs actually sit down comfortably.
I sit there for a long time. I just stare at the waves. Listen to the wind blowing through the trees, the waves crashing down on the sand before me. I can smell the grass around me. And I smell something different. It some kind of scent that's everywhere and I have no idea what it even is. Sometimes my eyes fall close and I have to keep myself from falling asleep since I don't know where I am, and pretty much every book has taught me to put of a guard for the night. And ´since I am alone, I must be that guard. Who knows what will happen if I fall asleep? Anything and everything could just attack me and possibly even kill me.
I for one am not going to take any risks at all.
So I just kind of sit there. Lie there. Roll around in the dust. Sniff everything and anything on the little beach. I even dip my hand, no, paw in the icy cold water just to yelp and leap backwards again. Note, don't touch icy cold water.
Sometime I start pacing around. After a bit, I look back and stare at the paw prints in the sand. I look back in front of me and also see paw prints. I take up my right foreleg and gently place my paw on the paw print and imagine my hand. Without fur and probably something scribbled it.
I feel like crying, and just wait for the tears to stick in my face fur, when I realize no tears are coming. Or will be coming. I remember that cats can't cry.
Looking at the sand underneath my paws, I decide to start digging. After a few minutes I have dug a nice little hole in the ground, big enough for my cat body to fit in and deep enough to give me shelter from any kind of winds.
I huddle down in the hollow and start thinking. Maybe if I go to sleep, when I wake up everything will be normal again. I will wake up in my bed, hear my annoyed sister and go to school.
But everything about this dream just feels so real. I don't know. It's quite hard to describe a real feeling dream. The taste is real, sound will still be echoing in your ears for a long time and smell stick in your nose so you can still smell it minutes or even hours afterwards.
I close my eyes, and slowly start fading into sleepiness.
I get shaken awake by someone shoving me around. I groan and turn around. I get shaken harder. I feel something heavy on my back now. When I open my eyes, the first things they meet are two blue-green-ish eyes. I shriek and try to crawl backwards, but I forgot I'm in a hole in the ground, so I just step into the sand and fall.
I blink, now getting a better look at the creature the eyes belong to. It is indeed a cat. Maybe she-cat, but I'm not sure. She has short pale ginger, somewhat sand colored fur. She seems to be a bit bigger than me. When looking up, I discover another cat standing behind the she-cat. I think it's a tom, though again, I'm not quite sure. He to be well muscled and is definitely older than the she-cat. His fur is pale with black looking stripes. They kind of remind me of a bumblebee's stripes.
He tilts his head a bit to get a better look of me and takes a step forward.
"Step back, Seedpaw," he tells her and pushes Seedpaw, I assume, out of the way. Then he starts eying me closely. He looks a bit irritated, confused maybe as he starts speaking to me, "So," he starts. "Why are you on ThunderClan territory?" He asks me, was it threatening I heard in his voice?
And I don't know the answer. So I just stutter and mumbled under my breath and try to find an answer. But I don't. I went to sleep in my bed as a teenaged girl and woke up next to a lake as a cat. How should I know how I came here?
So I just stare into his eyes for a few seconds. I can feel my heart beating faster and faster and have no idea if I will or even can ever tell him my answer. But I have to, who knows what he could do to me.
"Well?" he asks me, still holding Seedpaw back. "Yes, why are you here?" Seedpaw now asks me. I sigh under my breath. I guess no I have to answer. Maybe I should just invent some story…
"Um," I slowly get up, not breaking eye contact with either of the two cats. "I honestly just woke up here.. and I know this may sound strange, I have no idea where I came from and how I got here and what I did before I got here," I meow. My cat voice sounds just weird, if I may say so. Think so. Well, not a full lie, I guess. I never felt good about lying at people.
"Aha," the gray tom says more to himself than to me or Seedpaw. "Could she be a cat belonging to the horseplace?" She now asks him. When his reply doesn't come right away, she adds, "Bumblestripe?" As if asking if he even heard her. Bumblestripe, I suppose, shrugs before telling her to run back to some sort of camp and ask someone called Bramblestar to wait for them. Seedpaw nodded and immediately ran back into the woods. I sigh.
Bumblestripe looks down on me, asking me what my name was. I think for a moment. What is my name again? I blink a few times before remembering it. Damn, even if this is a dream, which I still hope, this is not good.
"Wi-Willow" I stutter my name. How stupid is that? Usually I am a very talkative girl and am not afraid to say anything. But this whole situation makes me incredibly nervous.
And yes, I know that Willow isn't a usual name, but my parents gave it to me anyway, though almost everyone just calls me Loey or Low. Bumblestripe nods and signals me to follow him . The tom starts making his way over the sand and into the woods. I hurry up to not get lost.
What have I got myself caught up in? Cats with weird names and someone who seems to be their leader.. I sigh as I start to realize that birds are singing now and the trees are so much bigger than I have memorized them. That must be the cat thing actually kicking in.
After a short while we reach some sort of barrier that Bumblestripe leads me through. When we exit the barrier we enter a clearing and already after the first look around I can see many cats there. Some are just eating something, others are talking, and some are sleeping. But wow. There are just so many cats, and I swear I have never seen that many cats in one place before.
I wonder if I will speak to this Bramblestar soon, and what I should tell him. Do I want to actually stay here? And live here as a cat in a group with many other cats? Well, I think I would prefer that over just spending the nights and days alone. And I think I saw a pile with what looked like dead birds on it, so I guess they have something like a hunting system. And I sure as anything else cannot hunt. Maybe I can ask if I'm allowed to stay with them. In this ThunderClan, how Bumblestripe called it.
So I actually am not that terrified as all cats start staring at us; okay, I am nervous and terrified and scared and maybe I find this whole situation a bit awkward, but I guess it should all go out okay, if this is a dream as I hope it is. I hear them talking now, they are wondering why a loner is in their camp. Some ask their nighbours if I come from the horseplace.
But they all fall silent as a voice calls, "Let all cats old enough to catch prey gather around the high rock!"