"Hey! Look, there's a thrush!" Jackalpaw squeaked.
"Shut up mousebrain, you'll scare it away." Wolfpaw snapped back. The auburn kitten slowly crept towards the bird his paws moving in tiny jerking movements. Finally he rushed at it and pummeled into the thrush.
The three apprentices have been shoved into an assesment the second they perfected the hunting crouch.
'Get to the Great Marsh by sunhigh and catch as much prey as you can on the way there' Ghostheart had declared in such a way that the mice would've obeyed her. Wolfpaw set his thrush down by Jackalpaw's two sparrows and Coyotepaw's magpie.
That was pretty much all they could carry so the three apprentices carried on to Great Marsh in their usual assembly line: Jackalpaw first, Coyotepaw in the middle, and Wolfpaw bringing up the rear.
Wolfpaw's amber eyes were half closed from the heat of the day and was walking mechanically. Shalefur was there to meet them at the Great Marsh and after a swift analysis of their mistakes, sent the three of them home.
Jackalpaw and Coyotepaw were busy chatting away and making plans to brag to everyone about their assessment. Wolfpaw walked behind them but stopped for a moment.
"Hey...look at those berries...." he pondered to himself.
"I wouldn't touch those, nightshade can kill you."
Wolfpaw jumped a foot in the air and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up as he stared at the form that appeared seemingly out of no where. Red ticked fur, so he wasn't paranoid after all, but now the problem was the fact that there's a loner right in front of him and if the loner decided to swat him, there wasn't a thing up in StarClan he could do about it.
"Who are you?! What do you want?!" Wolfpaw asked his voice stuttering.
"Me? Call me Mask and all I ask is to be left alone." the red cat replied still showing no signs of attack.
"Alone? Well if it's solitude you want then why are you here? There's got to be dozens of cats here and that's ShadowClan alone!" Wolfpaw exclaimed forgetting to be scared for a second.
"Yes I realize that but if you think about it, my ancestors and the ancestors of all the loners here were at the lack far before your ancestors migrated here." Mask replied nonchalantly.
"Well...hm...." Wolfpaw took a moment to consider what was said and found that he had no answer. "Well...I can't relate since I'm not clanborn."
"So you're a loner, like me." Mask remarked, "Heh, you probably wouldn't want to think that right? All those tales about blood thirsty demons that don't follow your warrior code? Well the warrior code isn't everything, generations of loners have survived perfectly without your code. The clans know nothing about anything outside of their society." An almost undetectable trace of bitterness entered the loner's voice.
Wolfpaw now was sitting down with his tail curled thoughtfully around his paws with his head tilted slightly to the side. "But I live in a clan, that means I'm a clan cat."
"Maybe, but can you stay a clan cat? Loners have their own agenda, the code of relations with your own kind is deeply ingrained in your history, it's in your blood."
Wolfpaw's attention was diverted by a call of "Wolfpaw! Come on!" by Coyotepaw. The second he turned back Mask was gone, the leaves weren't even disturbed. He blinked rapidly trying to piece out if he just had a hallucination.
"No way, there is no way I just imaged all that up!" Wolfpaw meowed to himself, "But there's not even any scent or paw prints...." he reasoned in contrast. Another call from Coyotepaw set him packing to catch up with his siblings.
"What's the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost." Jackalpaw teased, "Aren't you always the calm and collected one?"
"Aw shut it you furball." Wolfpaw considered tackling Jackalpaw but gave it up, he'll settle things once they got back to camp.
"I just had a brief encounter or if you prefer a hallucination about some random loner who comes here and says he wants to be left alone and that the clans pretty much stole all of the territory from the loners that were here before and said that we might live in the clan but loner blood is in our roots." Wolfpaw ranted in one breath.
"Huh? But the clans have always been here!" Jackalpaw protested.
"Well we don't know that for a fact but why does it matter? The clan saved us from dying, if Ghostheart never picked us up then we wouldn't bee here right now." Coyotepaw corrected.
"Hm, I guess you're right." Wolfpaw let himself be convinced, Coyotepaw had quite a few good points on that one. He owed it to ShadowClan, besides, Thunderclan seemed to be more of the target for hatred then some loner.
The three of them entered the camp quite happy with their accomplishments for the day. But the varioius warriors lying about weren't sharing tongues as usual almost everyone was sitting under the Shadow Tree muttering among themselves.
"What's going on?" Coyotepaw asked a nearby warrior.
"A patrol got ambushed by the RiverClan border." he answered swiftly.
"RiverClan? Didn't RiverClan and ShadowClan get along from the time of Blackstar?" Wolfpaw retorted.
"Kestrelstar never did like ShadowClan, remember what the elders were saying about the skirmish during the Gathering?" Jackalpaw reminded him.
"Yeah but it's not worth it, starting a conflict just because you don't like someone." Wolfpaw remarked.
"This doesn't mean a war you know." Coyotepaw cut in.
After figuring out that the three of them couldn't make whiskers or tails of this mess they trudged back to their den and Wolfpaw paid Jackalpaw back.
Wolfpaw sat up and blinked, where the heck was he? He didn't have time to consider as a shriek pierced the air and a spray of something wet hit his fur. A foul metallic scent filled the air and for no reason in paticular Wolfpaw found himself booking into the dark forest. A carcass fell directly in his path and he stopped so fast he nearly sat down. Cat fur coated the dead shape, skirting around Wolfpaw kept speeding forward. Onwards he tripped over a pile of dead bodies, there were more screams and yowls and live cats were clawing at each other. Some unknown sense made him look to the left and saw a shadow of a cat shape. At first he thought it was the red cat Mask but the cat's fur looked more gray then anything. "Come on." it invited, "this isn't worth it...right?"
Wolfpaw woke up and stood up with all his fur on end, after crushing his fear underpaw he hurried out of the den and into the center of the camp. He felt himself drawn to the medicine cat den.
"Darkwing? Are you awake?" he squeaked into the dark den.
"I guess I am now, is that Wolfpaw?" the voice answered.
"Yeah, can I ask you a question?" Wolfpaw asked with the kind of frankness only kittens can poccess. "Sure what is it?" Darkwing asked.
"Um...is it...dishonorable for a clan cat to become a loner you know...if things become really hectic?"
Darkwing twitched his ear, "Why would you ask that? Are you thinking of leaving?"
"What? No! I just had bad dream thats all." Wolfpaw denied.
"Well...if they desert in the middle of battle then yes I would think so but some times it's a choice, remember Ravenpaw?" Darkwing suggested.
Yeah but Ravenpaw was clan born, wait what am I thinking?! I am not going anywhere!
"But why do clan cats hate loners and rouges so much?"
Darkwing shrugged, "Some clan cats have no imagination, other times there's reason to hate. But it's best to leave loners alone."
Wolfpaw decided to confide in what Mask said, "But some loners have been here before the clans right?"
"Yes, that's exactly right." Darkwing's dark blue eyes suddenly became much more serious. "But this is survival, the strongest survive and the loners haven't come up with anything to drive us away."
"But the clans don't know anything about loners...right?"
"Maybe but it's not like we can do much to find out eh?" Darkwing's unusual seriousness broke off. "Go back to sleep Wolfpaw."
"Oh, okay." Wolfpaw obeyed and scuttled back to the Apprentice Den. He felt strangely reassured by the medicine cat's mild humor and didn't dream again for the rest of the night.