Havenkit tapped a ball of moss with his paw sending it rolling across the nursery floor. He watched as Gingerkit and Fleetkit raced after it with excited squeaks, curled up from inside his otherwise empty nest.
Since Ravenpaw and Duskpaw had been apprenticed, Ebonyflower had returned to her warrior duties. Havenkit wasn't particularly sad to see her go – she'd never liked him – but it was a little lonely, isolated in his cold nest. At least Honeypounce seemed to be acting significantly kinder towards him, without the presence of Ebonyflower's cool disdain.
"Are you excited, Havenkit?" Honeypounce mewed, watching as Havenkit sent the moss ball skittering across the floor again with Gingerkit and Fleetkit in hot pursuit. She was a pretty young queen, with ginger fur so pale it seemed almost golden, and kind amber eyes. "Your apprentice ceremony is today, after all."
Havenkit shrugged. "I guess."
It would be a nice change, he supposed. He'd have something to do during the day, at least. And maybe if he proved himself to be an amazing warrior, he'd be able to earn some respect from his clanmates. He wasn't particularly looking forward to sharing a den with Ravenpaw and Duskpaw again, though.
"Let all cats old enough to climb the Ancient Oak gather beneath the Skyledge to hear my words!"
Havenkit leapt to his paws, suddenly eager to prove himself to the clan. He padded lightly to the foot of the Skyledge, tilting his head back to stare at Aspenstar, who was gazing down at the clan. His face was impassive when he spoke, his voice cool and inflectionless.
"The time has come for me to name a new apprentice," Aspenstar announced. "Havenkit, come forward."
Havenkit struggled a little to climb up the Skyledge, his shorter legs much clumsier than those of the clanborn cats. He heard a snicker from the watching cats and felt his pelt prickle hotly with embarrassment.
He felt a cat nudge him from behind, allowing him to find his footing and clamber awkwardly on top of the stone ledge, scrambling to his paws to stand beside Aspenstar. He craned his neck around to see who it had been, and caught sight of a large golden-brown tom, sitting at the base of the Skyledge with his tail curled neatly over his paws.
Sunstripe, he thought in surprise. What's he doing? Sunstripe had never taken much interest in him at all, though Havenkit had sometimes seen him watching him and his denmates from a wary distance. He turned back around, facing the rest of the clan beneath the Skyledge. He could feel the eyes of the entire clan on him, and immediately dropped his gaze to stare down at his paws.
"Havenkit, you have reached the age of six moons, and it is time for you to be apprenticed," Aspenstar meowed. "From this day on, until you receive your warrior name, you will be known as Havenpaw."
Aspenstar paused, his gaze sweeping over the assembled cats, before he continued. There was a hard sort of glint to his golden eyes, glittering with an emotion Havenpaw couldn't place.
"Sunstripe," he announced, with narrowed eyes. Havenpaw started as Sunstripe padded up the Skyledge to stand beside him, watching Aspenstar calmly. "Now that Briarthorn has become a warrior, you are ready to take on another apprentice. You have shown yourself to be a skilled and bold, and I expect you to pass on all you know to this apprentice."
Havenpaw had to stretch upwards to touch noses with his new mentor, unable to read the emotion in Sunstripe's eyes. Sunstripe's eyes were gleaming with neither kindness nor cruelty, but Havenpaw was unsettled by the careful neutrality in his gaze.
A frosty silence had settled over the SkyClan cats, jarringly different from the warm meows of encouragement that would usually greet a new apprentice. Havenpaw lowered his head, feeling a vague, cold sense of hurt wash through him. He noticed Sunstripe leaping deftly down from the Skyledge and hurriedly tensed his muscles to do the same, but misjudged the distance and stumbled as he landed. Sunstripe made no move to help him, but simply watched as Havenpaw regained his balance, burning with embarrassment.
"Congratulations," came a kind mew. Havenpaw looked up to see Honeypounce twitching her whiskers warmly down at him. Gingerkit and Fleetkit wove in and out of her legs, nearly tripping her up in their excitement.
"Teach us the battle moves you learn, Havenpaw!" Gingerkit begged, as Fleetkit nodded vigorously in agreement.
"We'll see about that," Sunstripe replied for him. He flicked his tail over Havenpaw's flank, beckoning him to follow as he padded towards the brambles that surrounded the camp. "Come. You need to be shown the territory, and then we must hunt for the Clan."
Havenpaw scrambled to catch up to his new mentor as they left the camp. He tipped his head back to stare at the trees that seemed to plunge upwards into the sky forever, amazed at the vastness of the sparse forest, his ears twitching as he caught the sounds of prey skittering inside the trees.
"This way," Sunstripe called, bounding up to the top of the slope that their camp lay nestled in with a single thrust of his long, strong legs. Havenpaw followed him at a much slower speed, flattening his ears against his head when he sensed Sunstripe's impatience. Neither of them said anything, though: Sunstripe didn't even comment on Havenpaw's pace, but stopped every so often to allow his apprentice to catch up.
"Scent the air," Sunstripe said, once they had walked several ways away from camp. "Do you smell anything?"
Havenpaw's nose twitched as he sniffed, desperate not to disappoint his mentor. He caught the scent of something cool and fresh, with hints of a faint, tangy prey-smell and the muskiness of mud. "It smells like…like the puddles that form in camp after it rains," he said finally to the ground, not looking up at Sunstripe. "Except…bigger?"
"Very good." Havenpaw chanced a glance up at Sunstripe, who looked faintly pleased with him. He felt his heart surge with delight at the words, shuffling his paws in embarrassment. "That's the lake, and it's the path we take to Gatherings on the island. Come."
They followed the glistening lakeshore, Sunstripe pointing out the Island, until Sunstripe stopped again. Havenpaw saw that the sparse coverage of their territory was thickening, dotted with trees that had needle-like leaves and a sharp, cloying scent.
"Remember this scent," Sunstripe ordered. Havenpaw took a deep inhale, smelling a strange cat-scent that was layered with an underlying bitterness, wrinkling his nose at the unfamiliarity. "This is the ShadowClan border. They gave up some of their territory for us a long, long time ago, when SkyClan came back to the forest. Don't let that fool you into thinking that they are our friends – ShadowClan warriors have no sense of honour. We've found their scent on our territory recently, many times."
Havenpaw shivered at the solemn warning. He was already so on edge – straining to remember the scent, his mind flashing with the image of furious cats invading their territory – that when he heard the rustle of fur brushing across the undergrowth and faint, distant voices, he nearly leapt out of his fur. Sunstripe's ears flicked, his amber eyes narrowing as he turned in the direction of the voices.
"ShadowClan patrol," he told Havenpaw. "We'll see if they decide to cross onto SkyClan territory again."
Three cats slunk into view, dark-pelted and broad-shouldered, even the apprentice that seemed barely older than Havenpaw himself. The leader of the patrol, a graceful-looking she-cat with gleaming golden eyes stopped abruptly, casting her gaze across the border.
"What is it?" The apprentice asked eagerly.
"SkyClan, Pinepaw," the she-cat replied. "Not enough cats to be a patrol, though."
"No point staying hidden now," Sunstripe muttered to Havenpaw, beckoning him forward with a flick of his tail. "Greetings, Ambertail."
"Sunstripe," Ambertail said in acknowledgement, surveying him and Havenpaw, who fought the urge to shrink in on himself. "Showing your apprentice the territory?"
The other cat in the patrol, a dark-furred tom with a thick ruff around his neck, stared at the two SkyClan cats as well. "Unusual pelt, for a SkyClan cat – any cat, really. Are you sure he wasn't swept down into SkyClan territory by the current from RiverClan? Or maybe by a breeze down from WindClan?"
Havenpaw burned with embarrassment, but at the same time, fear sparked inside of him. Could it be true? Was it possible –
"Don't be ridiculous, Snakefang, we're upstream from RiverClan," Sunstripe said easily, so that Ambertail's eyes gleamed with reluctant amusement. "And I'm not sure any breeze would be strong enough to carry a kit over the lake." Havenpaw's ears remained flattened though, crouched down defensively a little bit behind Sunstripe. Snakefang's oddly interested gaze seemed to scour him and see straight into his heart, past his silvery fur and odd black markings and small frame.
"Come now, Havenpaw," Sunstripe added, flicking his tail down Havenpaw's side. "We have much more to see, and it's almost sunhigh already."
Havenpaw trotted after his mentor, uncomfortable under the penetrating gaze of Snakefang. He was relieved when they headed deeper into SkyClan territory, away from the ShadowClan border.
The rest of the tour of the territory was rather uneventful. They met no other cats along the way, not even a ThunderClan patrol at the border. Sunstripe had caught a fat pigeon on the way back, however, with a mighty leap that had let him snatch the unsuspecting bird from midair, and was now carrying it by one wing in his mouth. Havenpaw had watched enviously, furious at himself for his own small stature and thin, skinny body.
"You must be tired," Sunstripe said in a mew muffled by the pigeon's feathers as they entered the camp, the sun already starting to set. Havenpaw's legs were aching; he'd never walked so far and for such a long time before. "Go pick something out from the fresh-kill pile, and meet your new denmates. We'll start hunting practice at dawn tomorrow."
Havenpaw nodded, padding over to the fresh-kill pile, his stomach feeling hollow with hunger. Ebonyflower had never let him have very much milk, perhaps thinking he was stealing from her own kits, and he'd always been fearful of taking too much fresh-kill – he'd heard warriors complaining about him, an outsider, a stray, taking their hard-caught food. Perhaps that was the reason for his size. But once he'd learned to hunt, they couldn't say anything anymore…right?
For now though, Havenpaw selected a small sparrow and made his way over to where the apprentices sat to eat, lingering on the edges of their easy conversation, about a fox-length away from the others. He ate quickly, having no one to share tongues with, and headed into the apprentices' den when he noticed that the others were doing the same. He saw Whisperpaw mew a goodnight to Emberpaw, turning and heading towards the medicine cat den on the other side of the camp.
The inside of the apprentices' den was much larger than that of the nursery, warm, dark and dry. Havenpaw waited as the others settled down, their conversations blurring together with tiredness, and tried to find an unoccupied nest.
"Not here, stray," Stormpaw, the eldest apprentice snapped as Havenpaw tried to take the nest next to his. His blue eyes flashed with annoyance, and his dark gray pelt was bristling. "I don't want you anywhere near my nest."
"Not here, either," Ravenpaw added from where she and Duskpaw were curled up in two nests next to each other in the corner of the den. Their dark pelts blended in with the shadows of the den, rendering them almost invisible in the darkness but for their identical luminous amber eyes. "We've had to spend enough time so close to you."
Havenpaw burned with humiliation. He'd thought that being an apprentice might have meant that the clan would be more accepting of him…but that clearly wasn't the case.
"Here, Havenpaw," came a gentle mew. He looked up to see Brookpaw, Stormpaw's much milder sister. She raised her head, the white spots on her pale gray pelt gleaming in the darkness. "Next to me."
Havenpaw gratefully stepped over to the nest next to hers, which bordered another occupied nest occupied with a vibrantly dappled pelt. Emberpaw, he realized, as the older apprentice looked up with narrowed eyes. Havenpaw fought the urge to flinch away from both the ferocity shining through his gold eye and the lurid scar that slashed across his green eye. Even though Emberpaw's disfigurement and the reason for it was well-known throughout the clan, he'd never seen him so close. Ripplewind had commented many times that it was a miracle from StarClan that Emberpaw hadn't been blinded in his one eye for life.
"This won't be a problem, will it, Emberpaw?" Brookpaw asked, her mew still soft but edged with a hard steel that made it suddenly all the more obvious that she was not nearly as delicate as she seemed. Emberpaw snorted, blinking dismissively at Havenpaw.
"It won't be a problem at all," he said, turning so that his back was to Havenpaw and curling up inside his nest.
Havenpaw sighed, resting his head on his paws and wrapping his tail tightly around himself. He was one step closer to becoming a SkyClan warrior, but he doubted whether he would ever truly be one of them.
