Sorry for the long wait. And for the very short chapter in which nothing particularly interesting happens. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
...
Sandstorm had been in this cage for… a very long time. To be honest, she was pretty sure she had been in the cage for at least a moon, if not more. She had no idea why she was in the cage, or even where the cage was.
What she did know was that the twolegs who had taken her were unusual. She'd hardly seen them in the time that she'd been here, but what she had seen didn't make her overjoyed at her newfound kittypet-ness.
The one who seemed to be the 'leader' was a blonde-haired twoleg with a pointy nose and a constantly smug expression which infuriated Sandstorm beyond belief. He was often flanked by two other horrible male twolegs who were not much better.
Sandstorm ran her claws along the side of the cage in frustration. If only she could somehow get out and claw those twolegs' pelts off for taking her from her clan. She honestly didn't know why they were even doing it. Was she going to be eaten, like prey? Did they have some sort of horrible experiment planned for her? Sandstorm tried to stop thinking about it after a while.
It wasn't like her to be so frightened, but she was honestly worried for her life, and for those of the other cats who were taken. Had Squirrelflight, Brambleclaw and Firestar been taken to places with similar conditions? If so, should she be concentrating on escaping so that she could get them out?
The sound of twoleg voices caused her head to raise sharply and she managed to catch a glimpse of the pale twoleg striding across the room to do something. There was the sound of hushed conversation, then one of the other twolegs came into view, walking directly towards her cage.
Sandstorm gave a threatening hiss, knowing what was coming.
The twoleg carefully opened the cage with one huge forepaw, the food held at arm's length in the other. Sandstorm didn't wait. She instantly launched herself at his face, hissing, and as usual, managed to grab hold of his nose in her teeth and cause him to stumble backwards with a pained yelp.
Instantly, the room erupted in what Sandstorm had figured out was the twoleg equivalent of amused purring. Even the pale twoleg joined in, despite the fact that his friend was currently doing him a favour.
Sandstorm slashed and bit at every area of skin she could find, but eventually the twoleg managed to grab her by the scruff of her neck and drag her off his face. She was thrown unceremoniously back into her sad little cage, along with what was left of the food.
Yowling and spitting didn't do much once she was back behind the restricting bars, as one could only be so intimidating whilst in a cage.
Sandstorm glowered around at the twolegs, who, now finished with laughing, had turned back to whatever strange task they were doing. The pale twoleg remarked something to another twoleg, and the sniggers could be heard across the room. However, no one joined in this time.
Sandstorm narrowed her eyes. It wasn't a question, anymore. She had to escape.
…
Brambleclaw frowned as he manoeuvred his way back into the cage. Although there was no danger to being kept in the tiny space by his slightly odd twoleg, he found himself tempted to just run away and stay away indefinitely. It would certainly be nicer to eat mice and rats rather than the horrible food he was offered in this place.
However, it would not be at all sensible to just leave the place of relative safety whilst in an unfamiliar environment. Currently, he, Firestar and Squirrelflight had hardly any allies, and no way of getting to their real home.
He supposed that the small living space would have to do.
Once he'd figured out how the locking system worked, closing the door behind him was surprisingly easy. Soon, he and Firestar were safely locked up.
Again.
"Brambleclaw," he heard Firestar say.
"Yes," he responded.
"Are you sure you didn't see where Sandstorm went while we were in the pet shop?" the Thunderclan leader asked, sounding uncharacteristically vulnerable.
Even though he knew Firestar couldn't see him, he shook his head, "no. I only saw that she was taken by a very pale-looking twoleg," in fact, now that Brambleclaw put thought into it, the face of the unknown twoleg seemed familiar. But he had no way of placing where he recognised it from with his limited experience with recognising twolegs, "I don't think it was a kit, though."
"Well, we'd better keep a lookout for any pale twoleg kits anyway. Perhaps that twoleg gave Sandstorm to one of its kin."
"Maybe we should search the other twoleg clan territories," Brambleclaw suggested.
Firestar snorted, "that would be easier if we knew where they were."
"Good point. But we could always just look around this clan's territory. It's not like we've explored it in full," he shrugged.
"True. But I'm sure Squirrelflight has, and she didn't mention anything about Sandstorm when we saw her."
"By the amount of twolegs that are here, I'd say their territories must be quite big. There's still hope that she could be here somewhere," Brambleclaw pointed out.
Before the Thunderclan leader could respond, a sudden loud noise came from the area outside the door. Both cats instantly fell silent, their senses alert for danger.
Thankfully, it was just Neville, who seemed to have tripped on his way up the stairs and dropped a large, heavy object that he was carrying.
"Stupid cauldron," their twoleg muttered as he struggled to his feet, picking up the object as he went.
One of the other twolegs who were asleep in the room had woken up at the noise and said, "Neville, are you ok?"
"I'm fine," Neville grumbled, "I just nearly woke up the entire house."
"You woke me up too," another voice came from the corner, "I was convinced someone had died."
"What, because Neville dropped his cauldron?" a third voice joined in, "unless it still has that potion in it, I'm sure everyone is fine."
The owner of the second voice snorted, "you try being woken up in the dead of night by a banging noise while having a nightmare about Sirius Black."
As if the atmosphere of light teasing had evaporated, everyone suddenly fell silent. Then Neville put a tired paw on his forehead and sighed, "do you have to talk about that now? I'm about to go to sleep."
"Well, so is everyone else, thanks to you," the first voice sighed.
"Seriously, guys, I have quidditch try outs in the morning. Will you all please shut up?" a fourth voice who had previously remained silent pitched in.
There was a chorus of whispered apologies, then the room was once again left in complete silence. Brambleclaw half felt like interrupting again with a yowl, as even he had been affected by the amusement present in each of the voices, but he decided against it when soft snores came to his ears.
Twolegs are kind of funny sometimes, he mused, especially when you can understand their conversations.
Surprisingly, the calm silence began to cause him to drift off for the first time in days, and he soon found himself in a deep sleep.
…
"Where in Starclan's name are they?" Squirrelflight lashed her tail irritably, her anger partially caused by her friends' tardiness, and partially by the fact that despite having tried all day, they were still no closer to catching that rat.
Crookshanks sighed, "are we going to be waiting around for those cats for our entire stay in the castle? Why can't you just accept that they were probably held back by their twoleg and forget about it?"
"Because the more we manage to meet up, the higher our chance of making it home. I don't think you quite understand the urgency, Crookshanks. Our clan is currently leaderless and probably being attacked by all the other clans," Squirrelflight snarled at him.
"I get that, but if they can't make it, then they can't make it. Unless you want to climb all the way up the tower again, we'll have to wait until tomorrow," said Crookshanks slowly, as if talking to a kit.
Squirrelflight looked carefully up at the tower, half considering taking Crookshanks up on that offer. But her still-sore claws caused her to shake her head in frustration and turn her gaze back to the other cat.
"What should we do now?" she asked.
"Why not go after that rat?" Crookshanks asked, "you don't seem like the kind of cat to give up that easily."
Squirrelflight let out a small hiss, "I'm not," she said in annoyance, "but we've been trying to catch him all day every day since we came to the castle. Maybe we should just go find some normal prey to eat."
For some reason, Crookshanks suddenly found his front paws very interesting, "I'm… not all that good at catching prey," he admitted quietly.
"What? How have you survived this long?" Squirrelflight gasped, "come on! I have to teach you how to catch prey properly!"
A look of panic flashed across his face, "no! Not a good idea! I hate exercise!"
"Too late," she said with a flick of her tail, "you never know when a skill might save your life. Especially something as important as this."
Unsurprisingly, Crookshanks turned out to be the worst cat at catching prey Squirrelflight had ever met. It took all of her willpower not to claw his face off when he managed to scare away what must have been the fifteenth rat.
"See? I'm useless. There's no point teaching me anything," he sighed, looking at his muddy claws in frustration.
Despite herself, Squirrelflight felt a stab of sympathy, "don't worry," she told him, "I'm sure you have plenty of skills which I wouldn't understand."
When he began to look slightly cheered up, she snorted, "skills like advanced sleeping power," she easily dodged his paw as he angrily swatted at her, "come on, let's go back to the tower and see if the others have shown up by now."
The two cats padded back out of the forest and towards the imposing 'castle'. Squirrelflight paused at the base of the tower and announced, "ok, I'm going up."
"That's a terrible idea. You'll just wear yourself out," Crookshanks stopped her.
She levelled her gaze at him, "I have to speak to my clanmates, Crookshanks."
"Speak to them tomorrow. Maybe they'll be here by then," the other cat suggested.
"A whole day! That's a whole day we could have been figuring out where Sandstorm is!" she hissed in anger.
Suddenly, Crookshanks stiffened, "I think I smell dog!" he warned her.
She sniffed the air and lashed her tail, "so do I," glancing around, she made a second observation, "and we've got nowhere to go except up the tower!"
"It's coming from the tower," Crookshanks hissed, slowly beginning to back away.
There was a rustle in the bushes surrounding the base of the castle. Then, from the shadows stepped a huge black dog.
...
Yeah so it's been like eight months or something... I'm so sorry.
I have some very important mock exams coming up soon so I won't be able to update for a while. However, I am planning to take some time over the next few months to properly plan out and prewrite some chapters for all my stories, so when I come back, it will hopefully be with a semi-normal updating schedule.
Thank you so much for reading, especially if you haven't deserted this story by now.
