Snow was piled up on the branches of the trees, causing them to droop down. The heavy sown had made a bunch of saplings bend into each other, creating a tunnel of sorts. This was the tunnel that led into the RogueClan camp.
It had been about a week since Rubblepaw had met Honeypool, and he had never been happier in his life. He truly felt that all of these cats were his friends, except for maybe Fishpaw. Rubblepaw was technically supposed to sleep with him beneath a bramble bush, where the snow had been cleared away, but no cat seemed to object to Rubblepaw sleeping up in his nest in the tree instead.
The problem wasn't so much sharing a nest with Fishpaw as it was training together with him. Strikestar and Honeypool took turns training him, almost as though they were fighting over his possession, and since he and Fishpaw were the only two apprentices, they would often end up having to practice battle moves on each other, or competing over a piece of prey, which did little to help improve their already antagonistic relationship.
On the morning of Rubblepaw's fifth day in the Clan, he woke up to the sound of creaking tree branches. He blinked open his eye and looked up at the sky. It was still mostly dark out, but if he stood and craned his neck a bit, he could just make out the faintest hints of the rising sun over the treetops. Rubblepaw had always enjoyed watching sunrises and sunsets, so he settled in and started grooming himself as he watched the faint streaks of pink and orange overtake the pale gray dawn light.
Sunsets were beautiful as well, but after they were over it was dark. After a sunrise, it was bright and cheery. Rubblepaw enjoyed the night sky, but only on clear nights. When it was a cloudy day, he didn't mind it as much as a cloudy night, because the sun would still shine through the clouds in shafts, and even when it didn't, it would still create a slight glow from behind the clouds. On a cloudy night, you couldn't see anything, and you had to rely on other senses. Rubblepaw's night vision wasn't as good as that of other cats, and he got scared easily, so while sunsets were always pretty, there was always something unsettling lurking behind them. Sunrises, on the other hand, were warm and welcoming and the start of something rather than the end.
"It's nice, isn't it?"
Rubblepaw jumped, his paws slipping on the icy tree branch. He managed to sink his claws into the woods before he could fall, but not before slipping down and ending up dangling precariously. The branch creaked loudly as Rubblepaw looked around, startled, for the cat who had spoken to him.
"Down here, Rubblepaw!" It was Honeypool. Her face held a mixture of amusement and concern. "It looks like you could use a little help. Want me to climb up and get you?"
"No, it's okay," he assured her. "I'm close enough to the ground to drop down."
He demonstrated, retracting his claws from the icy wood and letting himself fall to the ground, landing on all fours with a poof as his body displaced the snow around him. He scrunched up his face against the snow that flew up when he landed. Now Honeypool only looked amused.
"I'm sorry I startled you," she apologized while Rubblepaw shook the snow off his pelt. "I didn't know you were so jumpy. I kind of thought that was my thing."
"You're not jumpy," Rubblepaw said, although he did remember the way she had reacted to his greeting on the day he'd first met her. That had been different, though- he'd been a stranger who had woken her up without warning. "Anyway, you were right- sunrises are nice."
He would have given her his entire psychological explanation as to why sunrises were more comforting than sunsets, but he decided she probably wouldn't be interested. Instead, he changed the subject to a much more universal topic: food.
"Do you want to go hunting with me?" Wait, that didn't sound right. Rubblepaw re-evaluated his words. "That is, could you teach me more about hunting techniques? You know, as my mentor?"
"Sure," Honeypool answered casually, not seeming to notice the fact that Rubblepaw was trying to bury his face in his chest fur out of embarrassment. "I think Strikestar wanted to train you today, but I'm sure he won't mind too much."
"I prefer your training anyway." Rubblepaw cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. He was going to make a fool of himself, one way or another. "Um, what I mean to say is, you seem… more skilled than Strikestar."
"I'm more skilled than the leader, am I?" she purred. "Well, I'm flattered, but I have to disagree with you there. I'm pretty good, but Strikestar is better. That's why he's leader and I'm… well, I guess I'm a deputy, even though he never calls me his deputy."
It was a chilly morning, but the longer he talked to Honeypool, the hotter Rubblepaw's skin grew. At least she couldn't see how hard he was blushing through his fur.
"Okay, let's go hunting, then." He started walking in no particular direction. "We're going hunting together," he informed no cat in particular. "We'll be back shortly."
Rubblepaw's stilted walk lapsed into a more natural one as he passed through the bent-over-tree tunnel and transitioned into an all-out run as he ran deeper into the forest. He heard Honeypool call from behind him for him to wait up, but she didn't sound angry about it, so he guessed that she wasn't actually demanding that he do so. Sure enough, in just a few seconds the honey-pelted she-cat had caught up to him- she was a natural sprinter, that's for sure. The two cats bounded along side by side, sending a spray of snow up behind them. They jumped over fallen trees and boulders, and crossed the occasional frozen-over stream.
Rubblepaw picked up of the scent of prey a few times, but oddly enough, hunting was the last thing on his mind. In fact, although he was enjoying her presence next to him, Honeypool was the last thing on his mind as well. Throughout the last few days, Rubblepaw had been surrounded by other cats, and even though he'd always wanted things to be that way, it felt nice to be running through the woods by himself again, even though he wasn't by himself at all.
They didn't slow down until they reached an area that was marshland during the warmer seasons. Brown, shriveled cattails still stood speckled throughout the stretch of land. It would be hard to run through a patch of land covered in such long grass, even if the grass was now brown and dead. Besides, the marchland was on the other side of the twoleg walking trail, and Rubblepaw could just make out the faint sounds of twolegs coming along the trail. It was surprising that they'd be here so early in the morning, but twolegs did odd things sometimes, and nothing they could do would ever really shock Rubblepaw too much.
All of these things were things that Rubblepaw and Honeypool had no need to communicate with each other. They both simply looked out across the trial for a few seconds, and then turned to each other and nodded. Honeypool stood up and turned around, and Rubblepaw followed her, his pads aching now that the moment and the exhilaration of the running were over. Running on cold snow was not only difficult, but it also made your paws cold. Then again, running on snowless ground was also painful when it was covered in pebbles, which was why Rubblepaw was grateful that he lived in a forest rather than on, say, a rocky beach.
"Now that we're done running, we should stop and hunt for real," Rubblepaw meowed, his belly grumbling. "I'm getting kind of hungry."
"Yeah," was all Honeypool said.
Rubblepaw picked up the scent of squirrel on the wind. He hadn't mentioned anything to Honeypool (or any of the other cats) about how he didn't like hunting squirrels because they were cute and it made him feel bad, since he thought it would make him seem odd, so of course she would be expecting him to catch it. Not wanting to come off as lazy- or worse yet, unable to detect smells- he dropped into the hunter's crouch and looked around for it.
Sure enough, he could see the little red animal nibbling on a nut at the foot of a tree. He crept quietly toward it, preparing to pounce when a startling an unfamiliar yowl ripped through the woods. The squirrel bolted up the tree, but Rubblepaw could handle trees. It was a spruce tree, so he took a running jump and caught a low branch in his mouth. He didn't have to look behind him to tell that Honeypool was watching in confusion, but this strategy had worked for him before, so he didn't see why it wouldn't work now.
His weight pulled the branch in toward the tree, where he momentarily sank his claws into the bark before pushing off with his back legs and instead wrapping his front paws around a higher branch. He hoisted himself up onto the branch and proceeded to hop from branch to higher branch from there. But by the time he had reached the top of the tree, the squirrel had jumped from it into another tree, and was already scurrying down the trunk. Rubblepaw felt disappointed for a second before Honeypool intercepted the squirrel on its way down the trunk of the second tree, catching it in her paws and finishing it off quickly with a nip to the neck.
Now he felt kind of dumb, sitting up in a tree with nothing to prove for himself, since Honeypool had been the one to catch the squirrel in the end, but there was nothing to do but carefully shimmy down the tree until he reached the ground, where he daintily hopped down and gave his fur a couple of nervous licks.
"Good job," he said, motioning to the squirrel. "I guess all my endeavors were pointless."
"That's a fancy word for a cat your age to be using," Honeypool remarked, following up with, "I wouldn't say they were pointless, though, since it was you who scared it into the other tree. I just took an easy opportunity, that's all. You're the one who set it up."
"What was that yowl all about, anyway?" he wondered.
"I don't know," she admitted. "It sounded oddly familiar, though. Maybe some cat got attacked by something."
"Let's go check it out," said Rubblepaw. Honeypool nodded in agreement and they began to run again, but this time with urgency.
It didn't take them long to find the source of the yowl. A frightened-looking young tomcat was pressed up against a tree his fur standing up, while a pale gray she-cat snarled at him. The tom was wearing a collar- he must have been a kittypet. The she-cat was wearing a collar as well, but it wasn't a normal collar. Fangs jutted out of the colourful fabric, and they looked like they came from a mix of prey, dogs, and possibly other cats.
Rubblepaw had heard about a group of cats that wore collars like that, but he was almost certain that that group didn't exist anymore. Maybe this cat was just trying to copy the group he'd heard about- it wouldn't surprise him, as the group in question had gained a certain level of infamy among rogues and loners.
"Hey!" Honeypool's pelt bristled as she approached the cat with the fang-studded collar. "Leave that innocent cat alone!"
The she-cat turned around and hissed.
Rubblepaw stepped up beside Honeypool.
"That's right! We won't stand for the abuse of a helpless cat!"
When the strange cat saw Rubblepaw, something strange happened. It was almost like when he had first seen Strikestar, but rather than a melancholy look of regret, this time the shock was followed by an almost angry look, accompanied by a flash of fear.
"You're still alive," she breathed.