Sunset
They say nothing stays the same forever, but notions such as that are near indiscernible to realize when you're young. I certainly wasn't aware of it, not before it was too late anyway. As I find myself descending back into the stream of memories from that time, my mind seems to halt on an image in the closing of the first moon of our apprenticeship, an occasion that would mark a special moment in our lives.
Hollypaw bounded through the underbrush, skirting downhill through dense thickets while simultaneously kicking up piles of verdant leaves, propelling them airborne, as she sprinted onward whilst relishing in the ardent weather of Greenleaf. Immersing herself in the sheer vivacity of the forest, siphoning it off to augment and extend her own, Hollypaw simply adored the woodland during these secluded excursions, dashing about in a state of burning fervor that bordered on blithe abandonment.
The days of her chief official moon as a BoulderClan apprentice had slowly begun dwindling away, having been caught up in a tumult sequence of hunting, battle training, moss gathering, tick checking, and border patrolling. With that all now securely planted in the rearview, the sole remaining piece of Clan life she had yet to encounter came with the arrival of the upcoming gathering that night.
It would mark the first gathering that she'd be eligible to attend since becoming an apprentice. And Hollypaw had dedicated her ever constantly alternating focus on being able to go. The only real issue lay with how she would convince Roseblossom to let Crowstar agree to such an incredulous thing, considering the status of their shaky mentor/apprentice dynamic.
It wasn't that the two didn't get along, no, far from it. Hollypaw immensely enjoyed the fact that Roseblossom was her mentor, unable to imagine having been taught by any other cat. The two she-cats had a really strong foundation of trust and admiration supporting them, but the constant butting of heads and arguments among themselves left the tortoiseshell apprentice's mentor near exasperated with her on a daily basis, although the same could be said for Hollypaw's stubborn disposition towards her.
Hollypaw wasn't averse to taking her mentor's advice for certain things, but there were times in which she wanted to engage situations contrast to that of Roseblossom's opinion, ultimately resulting in their usual spats whenever Hollypaw inadvertently botched the assignment she had been given to accomplish.
Their latest bout had occurred only early today when Hollypaw had scared away a thrush that Roseblossom had instructed her to practice trailing, by emerging from a nearby bush and yowling at the top of her lungs she was the 'feared avenger of BoulderClan', sending it fluttering away in a wild panic. Her reasoning to Roseblossom for doing so was under the basis that she needed a battle-cry for whenever the Clan finally needed her to strike fear into the hearts of enemy Clan cats. It was necessary that she practice making sure it sufficiently worked on anything.
Suffice to say, Roseblossom had not been appeased by the explanation.
"You can't go around alerting prey to your presence, mousebrain!" she'd chastised the apprentice, shaking her in disbelief that any cat could be so difficult. "You've been an apprentice for almost a full moon now and still can't understand that?"
That one statement had sparked the argument from there, having the two headstrong she-cats going back and forth for several minutes before Roseblossom eventually sent Hollypaw off to hunt. Making her stance well known that Hollypaw wasn't to come back to camp until she'd caught a suitable replacement to make up for the thrush she had lost.
With a disgruntled huff and flick of her tail in Roseblossom's direction, Hollypaw had set off into the greenery, almost immediately forgetting her annoyance with Roseblossom as she was swept up in the abundant nature of BoulderClan's territory.
She'd been trailing across the forest floor ever since then, momentarily casting Roseblossom's words to the wind as she got caught up in the sheer enjoyment of being able to move and act as she pleased. Such a way of being was an ideal life style for the tortoiseshell cat.
Hollypaw continued on unperturbed for much of her romp. Just as she was slowly starting to slow down and take regard of Roseblossom's instruction, a call out from a cut in between trees gave her cause to halt.
"Hey, Hollypaw, wait up!" a familiar voice beckoned her to stop.
Hollypaw internally groaned, coming to a break in her stride, having just decoded the identity of the cat in possession of that voice. Whipping around, she let the irritation flare through and show clearly in her tone as she spoke.
"What do you want, Sagepaw?"
"Hey, hey, no need to be hostile," the russet tom laughed, rounding from around the corner of an oak, his fur smooth and body relaxed. He moved about her, smirking slightly, watching as Hollypaw's faced slowly formed into an agitated scowl, not at all in the mood to deal with another big headed cat.
"I was just heading back to camp with Ashfur when we ran into Roseblossom," he began, the smirk widening some. "She'd said that she sent you out here to hunt and asked me if I'd be willing to aid you since you tend to get distracted."
Hollypaw didn't even pause to consider his words. "No thanks. I'm very well suited enough to hunt my own prey, regardless of what Roseblossom thinks."
"Obviously not, if I'm here," Sagepaw replied, sounding smug. "Try to at least sound thankful, Hollypaw. You're getting to hunt with the best apprentice in the Clan."
Annoyed, Hollypaw rolled her yellow eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, Sagebrain. You may be good at accidently squashing others under yours paws in fights, but as far as hunting goes, I'm the best apprentice in the Clan."
"Apologies, Hollystar," he snorted with a bow. "I had no idea that I was in the scarce presence of such unrivaled greatness. If I may be so bold as to ask you the privilege of allowing me the honor to hunt besides your grace, I would be ever so ecstatic."
Still slightly annoyed, Hollypaw smiled despite herself. Even when he was behaving like he was scheduled next in line to become leader, Sagepaw wasn't as obnoxious of a cat to be around as Hollypaw liked to pretend he was.
He could be worse, she reasoned as the two of them began to walk together, chatting. Oh, could he be a lot worser than he actually was.
The two of them gossiped about training, argued about which elder was crankier than the other, and about what they could expect from their first gathering, verging on the belief that both of them may be chosen.
"What I'm really looking forward to seeing is SwampClan," Sagepaw was saying. "I want to ask one of them if it's really true that they sleep in mud and only eat frogs."
"Me too!" Hollypaw eagerly responded. "I heard something from Lilypaw about having saw a patrol of them passing by while Duskpelt and Bluefoot were renewing the scent markers, and that a bunch of them had mud clinging to their coats."
"I heard their camp is located in the middle of a large marsh!"
"I heard at an early age they teach their kits how to hunt tadpoles!"
Hollypaw and Sagepaw's exchanges went back and forth like this for a bit further before Sagepaw finally drove the conversation away from talk about Clans and onto something else she had been neglecting to pay attention to.
"I haven't seen much of your shadow lately."
Hollypaw blinked. "My shadow?"
Sagepaw smirked at the puzzled look. "You know, your little red shadow. It's been awhile since I've actually seen the two of you together, much less him."
Hollypaw stopped in her tracks, suddenly making the connection. That was true. Now that she put some actual thought into it, Hollypaw realized that she had not seen the familiar ginger pelt of Redpaw around the BoulderClan camp lately. That went also for his mentor, the bizarrely upbeat Oakclaw.
A slight squirm ensured in her stomach. She never felt comfortable around that cat. He was weird. More so than that, something about him just felt incredibly unnatural. Whatever it is was though, hadn't been brought up by Redpaw. The only thing that she had heard from him about Oakclaw since their training with Swiftstep was that he had resumed his role as Redpaw's mentor.
Whenever she woke in the morning his nest would be empty and whenever she returned to camp in the evenings his nest would be empty. If it wasn't for the traces of warmth still lingering to the moss in the mornings, Hollypaw would suspect that Redpaw never actually slept in camp.
A part of her had felt the lack of Redpaw's existence around camp, despite the fact the tom wasn't very vocal to begin with in the first place. But she couldn't help feel that they had possibly drifted over the course of this moon.
"You two have a spat or something?" Sagepaw prompted, grabbing Hollypaw's attention back. "Knowing you, Hollypaw, I wouldn't be surprised, but I thought he was your friend. StarClan knows you're his only one."
Hollypaw scowled, remembering now why she very rarely hung around Sagepaw these days. "I think I'll hunt over there. You pick your own spot and stay out of my way."
Not waiting for a response she tore off in a separate direction from Sagepaw, her eyes ringing hotly with the russet tom's words. Was she a bad friend for not noticing Redpaw had been absent for much of this past moon?
While scouring the underbrush for prey, Hollypaw thought to herself of a way that she could possibly remedy these troubled feelings within.
It'll be a full moon since we became apprentices tonight. With how his start to an apprentice began and everything else piled on top of it, I wonder if Redpaw even remembers? Maybe there's something that I can do to help alleviate some of the past hardships he's had to face, Hollypaw thought. Maybe there's something I can do to celebrate the two of us having made it here.
She was stalking through the thick camouflaged underbrush, mind swirling with different possibilities when a call sounded from Sagepaw, breaking her from her trance.
"Hey, check it out!"
Swearing under her breath that it better not be something stupid or else she'd skin his hide, Hollypaw followed the direction in which she'd heard Sagepaw's voice emanate from. She found the russet tom standing on top of a slight hill, overlooking the field below it. Coming to stand by him, Hollypaw fixated her gaze questioningly onto Sagepaw who merely shook his head in reply and nodded his head to the wide green field below them.
From their position on the hill, Hollypaw caught Sagepaw's line of sight and followed it onto falling her own eyes on a moving patrol of cats on the other side of the border. Five in line, grouped together, moving about as a unit.
"MeadowClan," Sagepaw whiffed with an underlining hint of wonder.
That was my first real sighting of a patrol of cats from a different Clan. They were all slender built she-cats with the exception of one evenly sized light brown, black spotted tom, lingering near the back of the group. What I remember most about him though were his eyes. They were a reflective shade of gold that seemed to engulf everything it took in, analyzing it down to its barest degree. Those eyes are probably what originally sparked my interest.
Hollypaw's eyes followed the group for a few seconds longer before she decided to turn away. "Come on," she said to Sagepaw. "We need to get hunting; otherwise Roseblossom will come out here and have my hide."
She'd better hurry if she wanted to get back to camp before Crowstar announced the cats attending the gathering tonight. There was also the task of getting back before sundown to track down a certain apprentice for something she'd just come up with.
Later, as the sun was slowly descending its way across the sky, Hollypaw and Sagepaw slid into come through the gorse tunnel both carrying two separate pieces of prey that they immediately went to drop off at the freshkill pile. The tortoiseshell gave a long stretch, feeling the reduction in tension in her muscles and relishing in the fact that she was done for the day.
She'd had to work a bit harder than she had originally planned too, but thankfully all that was now taken care of. Now all that remained was Crowstar's call for the gathering, but before then there was one other important thing that needed to be taken care of.
Leaving Sagepaw to himself at the freshkill pile, Hollypaw began scanning around camp for the familiar ginger pelt of her long absent den mate. That was something special that she had planned for the two of them, but it all depending on how quickly she'd be able to find him.
Come on, Redpaw, where are you? She thought, scouring the BoulderClan camp top to bottom in search of him. They'd have to be quick with what she planned if she didn't want to risk missing Crowstar's call for the gathering attendees.
Hollypaw was just exiting the apprentice den, failing to find trace of the tom, when she caught sight of Redpaw entering the camp, alone, eyes brimming and carrying a single mouse, heading straight for the freshkill pile as Hollypaw dashed to intercept him.
"Come with me," she ordered, grabbing the mouse from the surprised tom and tossing it into the freshkill pile without a look back. She ushered him back towards the gorse tunnel, despite Redpaw's confused yowls of protest and shoved him back down into the tunnel, quickly following behind.
Back outside in the forest she came face to face with a perplexed and displaced ginger apprentice, eyeing her with endless bounds of confusion to what was going on. He'd been in the camp maybe five heartbeats before Hollypaw had jumped on him.
"I have an idea on how to commemorate our first successful moon as apprentices," Hollypaw cut right to the chase, excitement emanating clear throughout her tone. "We have to go right now if we're going to make it."
Redpaw titled his head to the side, still clearly taken aback. "Isn't this kind of really sudden?"
He asked this with the same innocent look in his eyes had Hollypaw come to detect since their kithood, appreciatively releasing a held breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding this entire time.
He still the same, she thought gratefully, though she wasn't entirely sure why. Same look, same talk. He's definitely still the Redpaw I know.
Hollypaw wagged her tail, smiling while simultaneously shooting Redpaw a wink. "Spontaneity is my strongest trait. You should know that by now."
It was then that Redpaw did something that surprised her. Returning the wink, he responded with a tiered smile of his own, simply replying with, "I do."
Hollypaw was momentarily frozen, actually taken aback by something she considered a bold move for such a shy cat such as Redpaw.
Maybe you are a bit different after all.
Realizing there wasn't much time for her to ponder over exactly what had occurred to Redpaw over the course of the moon, she nudged him forward and headed off at a brisk pace into the slowly growing shrouds of the forest. This was literally a race against time, and despite the immediacy of it all, Hollypaw would not stand for anything getting in the way of tarnishing this moment for her.
They ran without talking, partly because Hollypaw was fixated on getting to their destination on time and because of the fact she had no idea of what to say to Redpaw after having barely seen much in last moon. The ginger tom for his part, wasn't speaking either, but that was already something that Hollypaw had come to expect from him.
The woods began to part around them before Hollypaw could just make out a part in the trees as the ground suddenly scaled upward. The sky was slowly dimming into the aftereffects of night, and with some trepidation in her heart, Hollypaw forced herself onward, climbing up the hill with Redpaw closely tagging right behind her.
With a final heave she made it to the top of the hill and looked back to see Redpaw just making his own way up.
"This is it," she said, focusing her gaze straight ahead.
She heard a slight gasp from Redpaw, internally smiling to herself that she had successfully managed to surprise the apprentice. Together they stared at the sight of a fiery red orb slowly descending down into the horizon whilst painting over the sky in an magnificent orange backdrop that resembled the hue of the last glowing embers of a dying flame.
The colors faded into a sparkling golden haze that splashed across the hilltop they were standing on, highlighting their pelts in a reflective sheen that shined out brightly in an elevated display of gradience.
"Glad I'm so sudden now?" Hollypaw lightly teased Redpaw.
The ginger tom sat in a stunned silence, trying to absorb in all of the colors of the variegated sunset as he beheld the gorgeous sight. There was only one word he could offer in response.
"Yeah."
Hollypaw smiled in turn. "Couldn't have said it better myself. Congratulations on your first moon as a BoulderClan apprentice, Redpaw. Here's to us."
It would be one of the few last times that the two of us would share such a moment together. With that sunset set rise to the beginning of the changes between us and marked the eventual end of our friendship. We were drifting down two completely abstract paths, and in the end before I was fully conscious of the change, they would end up coming into conflict with each other.