All right guys, new chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 5: For the Sake of Peace
2nd Century
Briarlight's Point of View
Ugh. Everything felt funny. My whole body felt bigger, different. My joints, they felt turned. The strange thing was, was that everything felt natural, but my mind screamed differently. Keeping my eyes closed (opening them felt like it would be a colossal achievement) I honed in my other senses. Beneath me, I felt something soft and squishy. Was I in a nest of some sort? Inhaling deeply, I smelled almost nothing. Huh. Strange. Pricking my ears, I heard the strangest sounds, sounds I had not taken the energy before to listen to. The sounds were entrancing and hypnotic. I had to know more about them. There was the sound of pawsteps, whiling things, the roar of a strange monster. There was also the sounds of twolegs. Like usual, the loud, coarse sounds of twolegs reached my ears, but strangely, it sounded familiar, as if I spoke it myself. As if I concentrated hard enough, I could understand them. As if I was a twoleg myself. Haha, good one Briarlight. You, a twoleg. As if! I thought. But then, it all fell into place, like a perfect catch. It was true, I must be a twoleg!
I rolled over in shock at my revelation. The soft nest thing I had been lying on disappeared beneath me and I heard an oof. My eyes snapped open in shock and my cheeks ignited. My eyes stared into the murky blue orbs of my medicine cat. Well, at least Jayfeather was blind.
Fox dung! Jayfeather could tell when someone stares at him. The fire on my cheeks spread to my ears. Please, StarClan, I thought, please don't let him realize I am staring at him.
"Umm, Briarlight, could you please get off of me? I'm having a bit of trouble breathing," Jayfeather huffed out. Huh, he was a twoleg too.
Using my forepaws to push myself off of Jayfeather, I apologized to him, "Oops, sorry, didn't mean to crash onto you."
Jayfeather gasped out a 's okay. I looked him up and down. Jayfeather's twoleg head fur was a slightly shaggy grey brown. Cat ears poked out slightly from his shaggy fur. He had a long grey pelt on his torso with a weird scruff thing on the back of his neck. It looked soft. Underneath that grey pelt a blue one seemed to peek out. On his hind legs he had a sturdy-looking blue pelt on that didn't look nearly as soft as the one on his chest. Then, on his hind paws, he had black and silver coverings. A tail protruded out from behind him. 'Huh, I suppose we have kept our ears and tails in our twoleg form.' "What are you looking at?" Jayfeather growled. He had known that I was looking at him. No matter how long I was around him, I could never seem to remember that.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "I was just looking at your twoleg pelts."
I turned my gaze toward my own appearance. My hind paw coverings were purple and grey. My hind legs had brown coverings that stopped slightly short of my hind feet. A brown tail poled out from between the brown pelt of my hind legs. On my chest I had on a forest green thick pelt with a pink under pelt. My head fur fell just below my shoulder blades and was anchored somehow behind my head so it would keep off my face. It was light brown that had strands that were as golden as the sun interlaced in. I could feel my brown ears on my head. I flicked them experimentally. 'Yup, still there, still work.'
"What's going on?" said a female voice. I wiggled around to see a female twoleg getting up onto her hind paws. She had pretty dark brown head fur with a tawny streak on the right side. Her pelt on her torso was black covered with grey and silver markings. There was also a cord around her neck with a weird stone hanging on it. On her hind legs, there were long light grey pelts with some weird black case thing attached on her right thigh. On her feet, she wore black and silver coverings that went up higher on her legs, which were different than Jayfeather's and mine.
Then, I followed her eyes to see a blonde male twoleg. That twoleg had a similar build to the female one. He was wearing an assortment of colored pelts that just baffled my eyes. The female walked over to the male and held out her front paw to him as if to help. The male twoleg just brushed it off, saying, "No, Inspector, I am fine." But as he got up, he staggered, and she caught him.
"Of course you're fine," she said, sarcasm dripping of her voice. "Now, will someone please tell me what's going on?"
The female twoleg lead the male twoleg over to the cushy thing I had been on before I rolled of onto Jayfeather. She was so kind to him, I wondered if they were Clanmates. Speaking of Clanmates, Jayfeather had been awfully quiet. I decided to speak up. "Yeah, all I really know is that I'm supposed to do as he says." I flicked one of my forepaw's in Jayfeather's general direction. "My name's Briarlight, by the way. And that quiet furball over there is Jayfeather. What's yours?"
"I am Inspector Elizabeth Lestrade of New Scotland Yard. And that is Sherlock Holmes, private detective and my co-worker," said Inspector, as she gestured over to the male twoleg, Sherlock, sitting on the plush nest thing. Her eyes peered, confused, at Jayfeather and me. Must've been the ears and tails. I decided to shorten their names like the Tribe of the Rushing Water cats did. Then, something hit me.
"Wait, you mean Sherlock Holmes like the cat that summoned the windstorm that brought Jayfeather and I here?"
"Briarlight," said Jayfeather, "Sherlock Holmes isn't a cat just like we aren't twolegs."
"Ohh..."
"And my name's Jayfeather," stated my medicine cat as he turned towards Inspector and Sherlock.
"Umm, what's the matter with your eyes?" asked Lestrade. "They seem... foggy?"
To my surprise Holmes chuckled and said in a voice laced with wisdom that seemed beyond his years (though he looked to be the same age as Lestrade), "I suppose it is not around much anymore, but I suppose you know what blindness is."
"O-oh. Yeah, I do. I've just never seen it before, that's all." Lestrade fumbled.
"Anyway," I said, "can someone please tell me what's going on? Surely you know what's going on Jayfeather."
"Yes I do," came my reply, "and so does Holmes.
After Jayfeather and Holmes (Holmes is what the male twoleg likes to go by) finished their story of dreams, headaches, meetings, and healings, it was silent for a moment in the twoleg den we were all in. I broke the silence. "I might be able to walk again?" I murmured with disbelief.
"Yes."
"Possibly."
Both replies came at the same time. Jayfeather whipped his face around to face Holmes. "What do you mean 'possibly'?" Jayfeather may have said it quietly, but he said it with the ferocity of a thousand queens protecting their kits. It scared me and I wasn't the one assaulted by it. I wondered how Holmes had felt with the blind yet intense stare of my medicine cat. He didn't bat an eye. Holmes probably didn't know that Jayfeather got very quiet when he was mad. Either that, or he was used to facing the wrath of another's fury far greater than Jayfeather's.
In a low dangerous voice, Jayfeather asked once more, "What do you mean? You agreed to it."
"Well it's not like I had much of a choice. Beth would have ended up in a mental hospital!" Holmes exploded and the room was deathly silent.
Jayfeather stared at Holmes for what felt like moons, when the hardly distinguishable fury on his melted into something more cold and distant. Something far more terrifying. "Oh, I see," Jayfeather said all calm and scary like, "you do not treat us like allies. You treat us like enemies that have you under our paws. Maybe Briarlight and I should just leave and see what fate Bluestar bestows onto you."
Before the fight could go any farther, I interrupted, "I don't care if it works or not. We have to try and find a cure. For the sake of peace, please get along."
Jayfeather and Holmes looked at each other; with a huff they crossed their forelegs and turned their backs to each other. I made a mental list of their similarities:
1. stubbornness
2. silence
3. cold masks
4. calculating moves
5. stubbornness
Those two where too stubborn for their own good!
"Listen to me! We have to try! What if Bluestar won't let us go back? I don't care if it doesn't work! I-I don't care if I d-die trying..." I broke off, holding back sobs and I was ashamed at my stubborn outburst. It was not in anyway an action that I would have normally done. I suppose that being in camp all those moons made me slower on my paws than most cats. I was used to getting information second paw and I was probably in shock.
The room was deathly silent. Even more silent than before. Jayfeather stuttered, "Briarlight, I-I didn't know you felt that way. I'm so sorry. I should have, no could have done more to cure you."
"It's okay, you've cared for me so well these past moons. You've done everything you could. This is just really confusing," I murmured soothingly, more reassurance for myself than Jayfeather, but it seemed to smooth his pelt.
"Jayfeather?" We both turned around to see Holmes with his right forepaw extended. "Truce? For the sake of peace?"
Jayfeather grinned with a wry smile and to my shock, held out his right forepaw (must have been a twoleg custom), and though he groped around awkwardly with his blindness, he eventually grasped Holmes's outstretched hand and shook it. "For the sake of peace, for the sake of healing, truce."
And they both smiled, not wryly, but real. I didn't need Jayfeather's skills to feel the peace that seemed to settle around our small group.
Well, it turned out a bit different than what I originally planned. I wasn't going to have the little fight between Holmes and Jayfeather, it was only going to be like a four line spat, but it kind of escalated to being the whole theme of the chapter. I like it though and I hope you guys like it too.
Here's what Jayfeather and Briarlight look like.
Jayfeather: shaggy brown grey hair, not too long, just unkept. He still has his cloudy blue eyes. He's wearing a dark blue shirt with a dark gray hoodie on. He has blue jeans and mostly black tennis shoes with some silver on them. He's about 18, shorter than Holmes (But still lanky) with a stature of about 5'10" For some strange reason, there is no stubble on his cheeks, probably his cat genetics. His grey ears poke out very slightly from his hair. They can only be seen if looked closely at. His grey tail comes out from a hole in his pants, kind of like the hole that is put in Build- a- Bear clothes, if you know what I mean.
Briarlight: brown laced with gold hair. Kept back with a ponytail. Gold/amber eyes. She has a pink shirt covered by a green zip up jacket. I'm not sure if forest green is the right way to describe it. Forest/ dark/ olive-green. She has brown capris on with mostly gray tennis shoes that have some purple on them. She's lanky and slightly shorter than Lestrade, so she's probably around 5'5" Looks sixteen. Her cat ears stick out a lot from her hair and her pants allow her tail to come out like Jayfeather's.
It's probably confusing coming from a warrior's point of view, especially the twoleg descriptions.
Well, please review!
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Wow, these chapters just keep getting longer and longer.
