Chapter 10, Hobo

The sound of pounding, rushing water filled Shadowflight's ears. She looked up, her vision blurry. She saw grey, jagged stone walls all around her.

She stumbled to her feet. She was soaking wet, and she felt cold.

"Eh-he-he-he."

She leaped in surprise when she heard a terrible, dry, raspy laugh coming from a corner of the den. She looked around and saw a cat.

His fur must have once been brown, but now it was grey, and around his chin it was white, with a few brown hairs sticking out. He had old, saggy, light blue eyes.

"Well! Me found myself a girl kitty. You're a young'en. Pretty, too. How many kittens, eh?"

Shadowflight's mouth wouldn't move. Who was this cat?

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Ah…a few here and there. Met an ol' cat

named Purdy, got around to liking him. Oh yeah, me name. I'm a hobo. Call me that, all the girls do. Had a lot of girl kitties in my age, always ready for more."

"Well okay…Hobo." Shadowflight said.

"Me found ya in the water, rush'en down stream. Sort of asleep. Sort of dead. Never found the word for that. Grabbed you. This cave is in the river bed, but water just never gets in. But the sticky guys, like us with no fur, their crap gets in here."

He flicked his tail at a pile of Twoleg rubbish.

Shadowflight curled her tail around her paws. Hobo found a piece of crowfood on the sandy ground and chewed at it.

"So…" he looked pretty bored. "What to do?"

"I have to go." Shadowflight said.

"It's really hard to get out of here. You get to the entrance of the cave, take a big, big, big breath, and move aside 'da rock, put it back really, really fast, then swim to the top. When a she-cat comes in here, she had my kittens, lets them get weaned, then basically dies." He laughed a wheezy, dry laugh. "And you ain't leaving here without giving me kittens."

He moved away, back to the corner, and sighed. Then he looked at Shadowflight. He paused, looking intent, a hard expression on his face.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked in his raspy voice.

Shadowflight shook her head. "No."

"Now that's strange," he rasped, and, with a wave of one paw, he disappeared into smoke.

Shadowflight let out a silent wail of shock. Suddenly feeling scared and angry, she raced foreword, and pushed her paw onto the boulder at the entrance for the cave. It rolled aside easily. She swam up, through the water, not bothering to close the boulder. It didn't matter if the cave got flooded. It didn't matter to a ghost.

Her paws worked furiously, as she saw the light get closer and closer. She paddled harder, and suddenly got a huge breath of air.

She was above surface. She paddled over to the bank and pulled herself up.

She was in a grassy meadow. She knew that she would get back to ThunderClan territory if she traveled upstream. So she started walking.

XXX

Shadowflight was tired. She had been walking for several hours, and the sun was beginning to set. There was no sign of anything familiar.

She let her mind wander over to Demon. He was still with his guards. Shadowflight thought they just ought to let him into the forest. But she actually wouldn't like that.

She shrugged and walked on, through a meadow of dry grass. What had happened with Leafcloud, Seapaw and Nightwind? The thought made her start walking with incredible swiftness.

Suddenly she came face to face with a Twoleg nest. She started dodging between nests until she leaped over a fence and recognized some of ThunderClan territory.

Sighing with relief, she raced foreword, until she could see the ravine. She raced down it.

And instantly, her heart pounded like mad, threatening to break her chest, as her whole body zoned out.

"NIGHTWIND…"

"Shadowflight? Oh, hello."

But the black she-cat had already passed out.

That was funny chapter, huh?

Sorry I didn't review yesterday, but things were really busy…Well, just so you know guys, review as much as possible because I'm going to need 100 reviews before the sequal…don't get to shocked guys, I'm very ambitious (How can my friend, who writes horrible stories that only copy mine, read her stinking crap of a story at the talent show, and I can't? Grr…She writes in a notebook, and says she loves writing when it takes her three hours to write a sentence! She can never think of anything to write! It's so not fair!!)