Chp25
I think that's hay I'm lying on, it's tickling me, and some of it's prickling my nostrils. I sneezed.
I shifted as someone poked me in the flank.
"Hey, hey, youngster, wake up!"
Great Moonclan, there's a predator!
Moons of living as a rogue made me paranoid.
I forced my eyes open, but an unnatural bright light from a Twoleg lamp made my vision go all dotted and rainbowy. I got on my paws, wobbling like crazy, muscles screaming in protest at the sudden movement.
I opened my muzzle to roar, but nothing came out of my hoarse, parched throat.
Still, with my bloodshot eyes, ragged and bristling fur and sharp, splintered claws, I must have looked threatening to some degree.
The rodents before me widened their eyes.
"Go away! This is my territory!" I snarled instinctively. Rogues and street mice have tried to ambush me a million times since my exile, and I automatically assumed these rodents are a threat.
And I must get rid of threats.
"Gee, it's five against one. Five healthy against one half-dead. I am so afraid." One rodent said, being sarcastic.
"This is not your territory. Besides, take a chill pill, dude!"
"Take a what?" I muttered as I realized that he was right. This wasn't my territory.
"Just calm down." A fat rodent told me.
I decided to heed his advice, and I took a deep breath, but then-
"You don't have a tail!" I exclaimed, suddenly noticing the backside of this rodent was. .. well, tailess, I suppose.
"What? What do you mean, I don't have a tail? Of course I have one. Here!"
He turned around, practically shoved his huge rear in front of me. I squinted.
Now that I looked closely, there was an almost non-existent tiny tuft of slightly darker fur.
"Is … that his tail?" I looked up and asked the rodents around me.
I remember my mother telling Sharpfur and I stories when we were still in the nursery, Stories of how Twolegs caught rodents with little bark-less wood and a shiny material that snaps.
These rodent-traps can slice off a rodent's tail like butter.
This rodent must have been caught by Twolegs, and his tail got sliced off!
I looked around, and realized that all the rodents didn't have tails.
I jumped back in horror, and suddenly I was twisting round and round and round, trying to see if I still had a tail. "Where is my-" I stopped suddenly as my hands found a smooth, silky, furry object. My tail.
"Thank Moonclan they didn't chop off my tail!" I sighed with relief.
"They didn't chop ours off either." A rodent said.
"Then how, do you explain, this," I said, as I turned back to the fat rodent, whose rear was, amazingly enough, still propelled up in midair. I pointed.
"All of our tails look like that. We are born with short tails. We're hamsters. Not mice."
Hamsters! My ears and whiskers perked right up. I've never met a hamster in my life!
And there was, one, two, three. . .five. . .seven of them right here!
Then as suddenly as my ears and whiskers perked up, they drooped.
Hamsters cannot survive in the wild. Their body shape, though incredibly cute, was too round and ballish to run fast. Their fur, though silky and soft, cannot block out the cold, cannot carry them through harsh winters.
Hamsters are breed to look cute, but they cannot fend for themselves.
All hamsters are destined to live in a cage. Of course, sometimes a hamster do manage to break free of it's confinements and get to see the world outside. They don't last long.
Several times in the history of our clan, hamsters were recorded to have made it to the forest.
Mouseclan always sheltered them, gave them food.
One, because all rodents appreciated those beautiful, exotic, gentle creatures.
Another is that these hamsters won't survive long in the wild, no matter how well they were treated. Mouseclan might as well let them live well for the short amount of time the hamsters have.
I can only be caged up somewhere now. Quickly, I did a 360 degree scan, and the glass walls that surrounded me from all sides confirmed my suspicions. I was in a glass cage, a sort of giant glass box with holes on the top.
My ears and whiskers drooped practically all the way to the floor.
What's going on? I asked myself, Why am I in a glass box? I thought my newest hiding place, after being kicked out from the previous one by a raccoon, was under a bush?
And that's when I remembered running down the Twoleg Streets, fainting from exhaustion and stress and everything else. A Twoleg must have picked me up and dumped me in a cage.
Wait, why did I run down a Twoleg Street again?
Oh, I remember now. I was so stressed and worn-down from living the life of a rogue, I didn't know how to live on my own, without a clan. I was starving as well. And it was so cold at night, without proper shelter like the warrior's den.
I must have gotten a fever about one moon ago, and because there was no Whitemoon to cure me, the sickness only got worse. In the last few week, I've been hallucinating.
Fever, hallucinations, fatigue, starvation, coldness, exile, worry about Lotusf-
No wonder I was suicidal.
My fever's not gone yet, but my head is much clearer, as if a fog just cleared, and I could see and think unobstructed again. I think it's this place. It's so warm and cosy, and that must have made me better.
Of course, I still feel horrible, depressed, and a bit numb. You can't just take away nearly three moons of exile with just a snap of your paw. But I'm so much calmer. And steady headed.
I composed my expression and sat down again, my leg muscles were tired and cramped.
I'm going to be a mouse they'll never forget. I was born a leader. And while I'm here, the lot of you listens to me.
"So who are you?" I asked.