Swiftpaw blinked open her eyes as feeble dawn light floated into the old fox den that apprentices often slept in when the weather became dreary like that as of late. The black-and-white she-cat had been made an apprentice the previous day as well as Petalpaw. Swiftpaw's mentor was Sedgewhisker, while her sister had gotten Swallowtail, and the two warriors had taken them out to see the territory and become familiar with it yesterday.

It had been a fairly enjoyable experience, and she liked WindClan's open, free territory. After they had gone around and seen everything notable, Sedgewhisker had allowed them to simply watch her catch a rabbit. The sight of it had made Swiftpaw's paws tingle with anticipation at the idea of learning how to do that herself, but they hadn't had time to get into training at the moment.

Now, though, they would be able to start learning how to hunt and fight! With this thought in mind Swiftpaw went over to where Petalpaw was still fast asleep and shook her abruptly with her paws. "Get up!"

The brown she-cat opened her eyes sleepily and yawned. "Why do we have to get up so early?"

"We're WindClan's only apprentices right now," Swiftpaw reminded her. "We need to train hard."

Petalpaw sighed and stretched as she stood up. "Fine."

Swiftpaw padded eagerly out of the den with her sister following much more slowly. As the apprentices came out into the camp they realized that they were the only ones up besides WindClan's deputy, Ashfoot, who had been standing guard for the night.

"Well, I thought you'd be the last to rise or at least certainly not the first," the gray she-cat called to them, seemingly amused. "Normally new apprentices have trouble realizing that they're not in the nursery anymore."

"We're the only ones WindClan has at the moment so we've got to do our best," Swiftpaw mewed cheerfully.

"When will our mentors be up?" Petalpaw asked.

Ashfoot let out an amused mrrow of laughter. "The dawn patrol hasn't even gotten up quite yet or I'd be in my nest sleeping. Since your mentors aren't on that I'm sure they'll be a while. You can still make yourselves useful though and get some moss. Swallowtail and Sedgewhisker took you to the ThunderClan border yesterday, right?" After both apprentices had nodded, she told them, "Good. With the stream there you can probably find some moss. You'll be going alone, so be careful and maybe you can prove your worth." The deputy winked.

This is a test of some sort I guess. She's seeing if we can handle ourselves without a warrior there to watch us. "We'll have a lot of moss back here soon," Swiftpaw promised her. Turning to Petalpaw she mewed with enthusiasm, "Let's go!" and charged off out of the camp toward the border with ThunderClan. Wind rushed by the she-cat as her paws thrummed across the ground, carrying her closer and closer to her destination. Within a few minutes she had reached the border and sat down to rest for a moment before scanning the ground for moss.

The black-and-white she-cat had been gathering moss for a little while before her sister finally arrived. Swiftpaw smiled at her and greeted her playfully, "Hi there, what took you so long sleepyhead?"

The white-patched she-cat did not reply and instead started plucking moss from the ground silently. Swiftpaw stared at her for a few moments before returning to gathering moss, but inevitably started feeling quite discomforted by Petalpaw's demeanor. Pausing in her work the apprentice looked at her sister again and asked a little hesitantly, "Is something wrong?"

Suddenly, Petalpaw turned a fierce glare onto Swiftpaw and snapped irritably, "Why do you always have to show off?"

Swiftpaw flinched as her sister continued to stare at her with a fiery gaze and mewed quietly, "What do you mean?"

"I'm pretty sure you know perfectly well what I mean," Petalpaw hissed. "Back there in front of Ashfoot you just had to take off and show her how wonderfully fast you are compared to me."

Swiftpaw narrowed her eyes angrily as she listened to the accusation. "You think I was trying to show off my running to Ashfoot? You think I would do that?"

"Yes, because you did! Because you always do! You always run whenever you have a place to go and there's someone there to show off your speed to!"

"I don't show off to anyone!" Swiftpaw protested furiously. "You only think I do because you're jealous! You're always being jealous of me whenever I do something well because you can't handle it!"

"No, you're the one who can't handle it! That's why I always have to put up with you going out of your way to show off to everyone!" Petalpaw spat.

Swiftpaw was shaking with anger at her sister's proposal that she spent her time showing off to her clanmates all of the time. She couldn't help it that she was faster than her and that she liked to run! As her temper reached its boiling point, she found herself instinctively lifting up a paw and moving to strike her sister in the face. As the paw moved, Swiftpaw realized that with it came a violent wind that stung her sister in the face before the paw struck harshly. It all happened so fast and so naturally that she didn't realize what she had just done until it was over. Luckily her claws had been sheathed.

Petalpaw let out a yowl of pain, but didn't seem to have noticed the wind, instead perhaps thinking that it had only been the paw striking her. She leaned down and grabbed her moss before racing back to camp without caring to even cast a glare at her sister.

Swiftpaw was then left alone. She still felt terribly angry at Petalpaw and now also guilty about hitting her in the face, but moreover she was quite puzzled. She struck out with her paw again and felt wind rushing through the air. Alarmed at this, the apprentice repeated the action several more times until she had definitely verified that it was real. Suddenly remembering her extraordinarily fast running, the she-cat grabbed her moss and took off back to camp.

As she ran, thoughts swirled through her head. This recent fight with Petalpaw troubled her deeply as she knew that the brown she-cat did not forgive easily even for the smallest of things. One night when they were younger kits, Heathertail had picked Petalpaw up and put her into the nest only for the kit to squeal with pain as there was a thorn in that spot. Their mother had felt terribly guilty and had apologized to her daughter, but Petalpaw had still remained angry with her for several days and refused to sleep in their nest until finally she had grown too tired of sleeping on the ground and gotten over it. This event was far worse than that one though and Swiftpaw feared that it would be a long while until she and Petalpaw were finally okay again.

The other matter that occupied the black-and-white she-cat's thoughts was the apparent creation of wind by her paw. Such a thing couldn't be possible at all, and yet it had certainly seemed like that was what was going on…

It was not long before she was back in camp. When she saw Petalpaw not that far in front of her, it seemed that she was still panting from her run and had perhaps only arrived a few moments prior to Swiftpaw. This made no sense at all, as Petalpaw had left several minutes before her…

I can apparently create breezes with my paw. Maybe I'm not just unusually fast, Swiftpaw thought uncertainly. Maybe I'm impossibly fast…

Whether or not she could run faster than any other cat could run, Swiftpaw knew that inevitably her first day of training as an apprentice had been ruined. She was still a little angry with Petalpaw, but had by now calmed down and realized that she probably had good reason to think that she was purposely showing off. Swiftpaw was willing to put it behind her if only Petalpaw could come to be too. Instead of wanting to learn how to chase rabbits or spar with another cat, Swiftpaw now only wished for her sister's forgiveness.