Redpool: thank you for reviewing! I really like your characters and will probably use them.


"Where are we?" asked Ember. East gulped.

"Actually, I don't know." Ember sighed, then spoke.

"And here I wanted to stay at a place that wasn't infested with rats."

She was right: the country had changed into a city at an alarming rate, but they were still in a deserted fringe, with foreboding buildings full of rats.

"Hmmm," murmured East. "This place actually looks familiar." He hmmed and hawed a bit longer, then sprang up.

"This is where Osprey and Dive live! Come on!" He rushed off down an alley, Ember dubiously following him.

"They should be around here," he muttered, circling a junkpile. Suddenly, two burly brown bodies appeared out of a garbage heap.

"There!" cried East, then introduced the identical twins. "This is Osprey and Dive." The tom stared. The she-cat nodded.

Two can play that game, thought Ember, and nodded back to Dive. "Can we stay with you?" asked East. Osprey shook his head.

Dive cautiously began to speak. "Maple and her family moved into Asson's old den. You know they've been trying to get it for years. Maybe you could stay with them."

"What happened to Asson?" asked East, curiosity piqued.

"He wandered off, saying he was going to find old Purdy, though he's been missing for many snow-falls."

"Okay. Thank you!" Dive nodded, and the twins leapt away.

"So, are you a kittypet, loner or rogue?" Ember asked East as they sauntered away.

"I don't have smooth-pelts, nor do I travel, if that's what you mean. I stay in the area, but I rely on hunting and trash as a means of food. Could you give me definitions?"

Ember still wasn't used to his strange form of speech. It was clipped and refined, so unlike the rougher tones of Clan cats.

"Well… loners and rogues are basically the same thing. Just rogues can live in groups. Like Darktail."

"Who's Darktail?" asked East, curiosity aroused. Ember related the horrible story to him, sighing when she remembered how she once trusted him.

"Well… we're here now," he said, fighting off the abounding tension.

She followed him into the warehouse via a hole in the roof, and quickly dropped into a gloomy room.

"Blizzard!" called East. "Maple!" Suddenly, a small brown kit rushed out of a dim hallway, his green eyes flashing. "East!" he cried.

He launched himself onto East's pelt. "I've missed you!" he crowed. East chuckled.

"Sparrow, does Maple know where you are?" Ember heard another voice.

"Yes, I do." A brown she-cat stood a few meters away, smiling at Sparrow's obvious enthusiasm. "Hello, East. And who's the black one?"

"Oh," said East, sitting up and shaking Sparrow off.

"That's Ember." Maple nodded coolly. "Anyway, we were wondering if we could stay the night." Maple considered his proposal.

"I'll need to ask Blizzard, of course." Now it was East's turn to nod. Maple disappeared a moment, then brought in a yellow-eyed tom.

"Blizzard, we want to stay the night." said East. Blizzard made a few paw signals. Maple looked back to them.

"He says you can stay in Proctor's old room until new-sun. You leave then." The white tom nodded mutely.

"Thank you." said East. "Can I sleep with you, East?" mewed Sparrow, raising his head and jumping up and down.

"Of course. But first, would you be so kind as to lead Ember to the den?"

"Yeah!" Sparrow leapt on to Ember and cried, "To the left!"

As Ember was curling up in her bed, she overheard hushed voices coming off the main room. "You've got to see her, East. She's devastated."

That was Maple. "Okay, okay. Mink tomorrow. Then the rest of my life." As Ember blissfully fell into sleep she wondered, a mink?


Fun fact: The place full of rats in the beginning of the chapter is actually the place where Tawnypelt got attacked by rats in Midnight: The New Prophecy.