Melvin?

Leafpaw stopped walking over to the Shadowclan cats and glanced back at the source of the sound. With a sinking feeling, she recognized the kit from her nightmare smirking at Icekit whose eyes were wide with surprise.

She shuddered at the familiarity in both of their gazes.

"Leafpaw, are you coming?"

She tore her eyes away from the two kits and hurried over to Littlecloud who was waiting for the salve that Runningnose needed.

"Sorry," she apologized after setting the herbs at his paws. She glanced back at the two kits and found Icekit's cold, amber eyes digging into her own accusingly; she returned her gaze to Littlecloud instantly, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He had followed her gaze over to the kits and he shuddered when his eyes found the dusty brown kit. Leafpaw didn't even have enough time to force her fur to lay flat before Littlecloud returned his attention to her. His typically gentle expression was hard and serious.

He stared into her eyes for a while trying to decide if he should do something, before he finally decided that it was the right thing to do.

"Have you had any…odd dreams lately?"

Leafpaw blinked at him in shock and shot a quick glance at the dusty brown kit before returning her eyes to Littlecloud and nodding slowly.

"I thought so," he continued. "Have you-?"

"What are you two talking about?"

Leafpaw flinched. She turned around slowly to find Icekit glaring at her with cold eyes.

"You keep looking over at Dustkit and I; are we doing something wrong?" His tone had lightened, but his expression remained icy cold.

Dustkit…

"We were just saying how well you two seemed to get along since you've only just met," Littlecloud responded smoothly, smiling.

Icekit's eyes narrowed. "I don't see how that's any of your concern," he snapped.

To Leafpaw's surprise Littlecloud didn't seem fazed at all by Icekit's harshness. Although, he did live with Shadowclan.

"Sorry," he apologized earnestly.

The apology didn't seem to satisfy Icekit, but he didn't say anything else. Instead, he padded towards the make-shift nursery straight past Dustkit, flashing the brown kit a glare so hostile it could kill, to which the kit responded with a half crazy half happy grin, and disappeared into the den.

Well, Littlecloud was wrong about one thing, she thought, a smile reforming on her face. They certainly aren't friends.

"Stupid!" Icekit hissed furiously as he clawed at the side of the make-shift nursery causing bits of leaves and twigs to fall on him, coating his fur. He shook the debris off violently, still fuming from his encounter with Melvin.

He flexed his tiny claws and glared at the ground. Melvin's appearance had a decent chance of getting him discovered, and who knew what these cats would do if they realized a two-leg was a member of their clan.

Why did I say his name? Icekit asked himself angrily as he paced around the den.

The most frustrating thing about the whole situation was that he hadn't been able to do anything to him! If he had attacked the dusty kit then he would never be trusted by any cat again, especially if he had killed him, which was his first instinct. Plus, there was no way to avoid him now that Shadowclan was staying with Thunderclan.

Then he would just have to stay in here until Shadowclan left. Except, Icekit had no idea when they were leaving.

He sat down. His frustration with of all of this didn't seem to have any rational solution, and even though he tried to think of one until the moon was bright in the center of the sky and idea still would not come to him.

"We will leave at dawn!"

Icekit snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of Firestar's yowl. He peered out into the clearing as cheers of approval rang out from each clan's separate huddle.

He blinked in confusion at the scene. We leave at dawn? Did the other clans finally agree to leave?

"Where will we go?" one of the Windclan cats, a tabby tom, asked loudly. The question echoed around the rocks as the other cats began to wonder the same thing.

Icekit followed Firestar's questioning gaze over to Brambleclaw, who looked down at his paws. He had no answer for their question. Squirrelpaw, who was standing beside him, pressed her pelt into his comfortingly.

"As you know," the tabby warrior began slowly. "Midnight's sign never came." He looked so lost and unconfident, but he forced himself to continue. "So we don't know exactly where we should go. But we could head towards the sun-drown-place."

The sun drown place? Icekit had heard the term whispered around camp since Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw got back, but he still had no real idea where it was.

"If there's been no sign before we get there, we could find Midnight again and ask her," Squirrelpaw added.

Icekit glanced away from the conversation and rolled his eyes. Well at least they have a backup plan for when their precious Starclan doesn't follow through. He turned around and headed back into the nursery; he had all of the information he needed.

He curled up in the back of the make-shift den and let out a huge yawn. It had been a very long day. His ears pricked as he heard leaves rustling as someone entered the den. His muscles tensed, but he didn't turn around. However, they relaxed when it was Ferncloud's soft purr that greeted him.

"You must be so exhausted," she meowed kindly as she gently cleaned his dirty white fur with her rough tongue.

He was. Everything had seemed to go by in a blur that day. Coming back to Thunderclan, humans attacking Shadowclan, finding out about Hollykit, seeing Melvin, and the other clans agreeing to finally leave the forest, all of it had happened so fast.

Icekit felt himself drifting off, but he didn't resist it. Instead, he let Ferncloud's soft purr and gentle tongue lull him to sleep.

When he woke up, he was soaked down to the skin. It was extremely cold, but apparently not cold enough to turn the large raindrops into soft snow. Ferncloud was licking him again, but it wasn't warming him up very much.

He stood up abruptly, but instead of jumping back like he thought she would, Ferncloud just looked at him with happiness and relief in her eyes. It wasn't hard to guess why; he had survived another night.

"Everyone's getting ready to leave," she commented as she made her way out of the den, the roof of which had disintegrated at some point in the night. The ground was covered in dead leaves.

Icekit shook off some of the water from his fur and followed her out of the den. She looked down at him kindly then giggled to herself at her son's fluffed up fur. She began licking it down gently just as Leafpaw and Cinderpelt looked over at them.

He planted a half bored, half annoyed expression on his face and looked back at them. He could see the apprentice trying not to grin. She seemed a lot less nervous and jumpy than she had been yesterday when he and Melvin had been talking. Her eyes seemed so full of life, and not even the rain could wash it away. She shot one last glance at the small white kit before hurrying off towards Firestar.

Cinderpelt padded over to the nursery as Icekit watched Leafpaw disappear over the hill.

Ferncloud and Cinderpelt's conversation didn't last very long. The medicine cat just wanted to make sure that both Ferncloud and Icekit were strong enough to make the journey and tell them that she and Leafpaw would be sending around traveling herbs soon.

"Traveling herbs?" Icekit asked Ferncloud after Cinderpelt had left.

"They make us stronger," she replied, and then her face fell as she glanced around at her broken clanmates. "We'll need it."

Icekit looked up at her. Her eyes were glazed with sadness and grief. She was looking over to an area of Sunningrocks where he had never been. In it there were two small mounds of dirt that looked too sad to mistake them for anything else.

Hollykit…

Icekit felt his chest tighten uncomfortably again, so he pulled his eyes away from the mounds and ended up finding Leafpaw's.

She was looking at him sympathetically from a little ways away. In her mouth were two leaf bundles, one fairly large one and one smaller one. They could only be the traveling herbs that Cinderpelt had mentioned earlier.

"Oh, are those ours?"

Ferncloud's attention had shifted back from her kit's graves to the current situation. Her eyes were still a little sad, but they were mostly filled with hope for a better future for her kits.

Leafpaw nodded and set the two bundles at the queen's paws.

"The smaller one is for Icekit; it's half a dose."

Ferncloud nodded gratefully, and Leafpaw hurried off to deliver the next bundles to the elders.

Icekit ate all of his own herbs even though it tasted horrible. All of it was necessary to make this journey, the journey that was about to begin.

I'm really sorry I didn't update all summer. For some reason I can only write when I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork, so now that school's started again the chapters are back to being on the first of every month with the occasional bonus chapter if I feel like it. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. 8D