Chapter 4: Piranhas

The moonlight lit the gray tabby fur of the old tom, and his tired amber eyes were growing dull with age, as white hairs flecked his muzzle. He gasped, his voice rasping, and he turned to the hulking figure beside him.

"Talon... Talon..." he whispered. "Co—come." The cave-guard turned, his scarred tabby face outlined in the fading light of the full moon.

"Yes, Stoneteller?" the cat named Talon murmured. "What is it? Are you—are you losing a life?"

"Yes," rasped the Healer. "It is my—it is my eighth. Talon, I will join the Tribe of Endless Hunting soon. Talon..."

"Stoneteller, you can't—there is no cat to succeed you!" Talon nearly cried out. "Who will lead us?"

"The—the Tribe of Endless... Endless Hunting has told me, warned me, sent me a... a sign," he croaked. "The one who will lead will... is coming... he will... she may... bring light to the cave... the waterfall will... whispering wind... falling rain...swirling rivers and silver mist... nothing is clear, Talon, nothing can be as... as before, and nothing... will change."

And then Stoneteller let out a last gasp, and beneath his tribemate's gaze, became limp one last time.


"Raindrop, concentrate!" even patient Leap was beginning to get irritated with Raindrop's lack of focus. "There is a flock of eagles attacking our camp, what are you going to do? What attack? What battle method?"

It was just past sunhigh, and they were standing outside the Cave of Dancing Moonlight. The gray rocks were just warming, as the scalding sun had barely cleared the towering waterfall above, but the shafts of sunlight that did fall made swirling patterns and sparkling rainbows in the heavy mist. The tribe cats at the Telling had awakened only a little while ago to find that the storm that had forced them to sleep in the Cave had finally rained itself out. A few, including the exhausted Windteller and the snoring Pounce, were still asleep, while Raindrop had awakened early, thinking about the whispers she had heard the night before.

What could they have meant? 'The mountains will whisper'? 'Fish will snarl'? What in the name of—?

"Raindrop! I'm tired of you tuning out on me like that! I need your attention right here, right now," Leap was looking really annoyed now. "Okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Raindrop mewed, nodding as she came back to earth, trying to restrain a grumble. "So... it's... the eagle defensive attack... thing? Right?"

"Yes," Leap nodded approvingly, "the 'eagle defensive attack thing'. Actually, it couldn't be a defensive attack, because that would be an oxymoron, so..." Leap trailed off, giving Raindrop a hard stare. It was like she was reading the to-be's mind. "You know, the rocks here aren't really right for this sort of battle practice," she said rather loudly. "Why don't you go find something to eat? We'll have a battle session later. As soon as we get back to camp, no exceptions."

Raindrop's heart skipped a beat. "Seriously?" Leap smiled, and Raindrop beamed at her. She didn't miss Mist at all! Her sister was way nicer, much more forgiving. "Thanks so much! I'll be there on time, promise! Thank you!"

Leap laughed and grinned, waving her trainee away with her tail. "Oh, you're welcome. Go catch a fish or something."


The river tumbled by, frothing and spraying Raindrop with unexpected showers. She crept towards the bottom of the Waterfall, watching the tons of brown water thunder down into the lake-sized pool below. The water frothed and bubbled up, white foam instead of brown water, with thick mist swirling and rising from the base of the huge waterfall. Raindrop shook her head, droplets flew off her damp pelt around her, where they joined the billions of others spraying up, and she was soaked again within heartbeats.

Snorting some waterfall out of her nose, Raindrop trotted towards the shadowy tunnel that led into the Cave of Dancing Moonlight.

"Hey Raindrop!" called a voice. She turned and saw Wing, crouching by the riverbank nearby, sparkling droplets of mist caught in her black fur, her orange eyes glittering and her glossy tail twitching as Eddy's mentor hunted for fish. On her other side, a shadowy figure was facing Raindrop. The mist was swirling around so thickly that Raindrop couldn't tell who it was until he trotted up to her, grinning easily. "You want a fish?" asked Eddy.

"Uh—sure, if you think you can catch one," Raindrop mewed blankly, "before one catches you," she added with a bizarre grin worthy of Pounce.

"Oh, really?" Eddy purred. "You think I'm that small?"

"No," laughed Raindrop. "You're just not aggressive enough!"

"Oh yeah?" Eddy said. "Let's see!" he launched himself at her, but Raindrop sidestepped him easily. Eddy rolled over to attack again, but Raindrop simply strode over and sat down on him. Squashed, Eddy tried to wriggle out, but Raindrop just grinned at her opponent.

"Alright," Eddy surrendered good-naturedly. "Now get off before my eyeballs pop out, why don't you?"

Raindrop laughed. "Sure! How 'bout that fish?"


The late afternoon sunlight fell in shafts of orange light, gilding the Jungle's leaves in an orange glow. Frogs croaked, crickets chirped, birds trilled, and distant monkeys chattered, their calls echoing eerily through the forest. Raindrop crept along a branch, glancing around occasionally, but not in a guarded way. Tonight, she was simply looking around. No sneaking off to be above the canopy, no storming off angrily, just sort of patrolling about; looking.

In the past half-moon, Raindrop had thought a lot about the whispers in the Cave of Dancing Moonlight. But no matter how much she racked her brain, looking for answers, nothing turned up. So by now, Raindrop had stopped trying to figure them out.

On of another note, she, Windteller, Eddy and Pounce had slowly become a close-knit group. Raindrop had forgotten her annoyance with Pounce for existing, and her resentment towards Eddy for trying to help her, and had since become good friends with them. Windteller, who had grown more nervous since the Telling, spent much more time talking to Raindrop, and she told him some things now, too. Life in general was going exceptionally well for Raindrop these days.

Only the whispers that nagged her in the back of her head when she slipped into her own thoughts were bothersome. And at night, Raindrop often had horrible dreams that she could never fully remember; only the whispers that fluttered around her ears, just out of reach, like the dreams she could never recall. With a sigh, Raindrop trotted forward along a thick branch.

She headed towards the river, where it wove through the forest, a ribbon of shimmering crimson beneath the setting sun. Raindrop could already see it through the leaves of the Jungle, and she was pretty sure she heard voices as she leapt down the branches towards the thin strip of pebbly riverbank. Wondering if Eddy or Pounce were there fishing, she trotted down off the last tree and shouldered her way through the tangle of vines that fenced in the Jungle. In the blazing fire of the setting sun, Raindrop blinked and looked around.

She had come out closer to the Waterfall than she'd meant to, and looking around, she saw that there were no prey-hunters talking. None fishing. There weren't any cats at all.

With a muffled gasp, Raindrop darted back into the Jungle, but it rustled and crackled as she tried to escape. Her heart pounding, Raindrop scrambled up into a sapling as a high snarling whine rose and echoed through the Jungle around her. The bird calls and cricket chirps faltered as the cry became a grinding screech. The hairs on the back of Raindrop neck rose and a chill ran down her spine. The eerie shriek rose and echoed around the Jungle.

Raindrop crept towards the sound to investigate with her ears flat back and her neck fur fluffed out. She was still shaking from fright at what she'd seen.

On the bank of the river, on the pebbly shore of the grassy field that marked the edge of the Jungle, towered two huge monkeys, their fur gone, their peachy skin covered with loose pelts of green and red, their paws gigantic, and their heads covered by hard yellow half-rocks. But even those things didn't scare Raindrop as much as she had been startled by what they carried. They were rusted orange and silver objects the size of Rock, the biggest cat in the tribe, with teeth as big as Raindrop's claws that growled and whined and snarled. Like... well, they looked a lot like fish, piranhas, to be exact; once, a fish as big as a kit had leapt out of the water, followed by a whole school, snapping at the fishing cats. She Pounce had fought most of them off, and with Eddy's help, managed to get them back into the river, with a few extra left to bring back to camp.

Piranhas were vicious, and rather toothy, and Raindrop was going do her best to avoid any more encounters with them; she still bore the scratches and tooth marks of the tussle with the monstrous fish. Now, seeing the towering furless monkeys carrying huge ones, she was scared out of her pelt; but she was Raindrop, so she naturally crept closer to investigate. Along the thick branches and through the sea of leaves, she slunk towards the horrid screech of the piranhas that the furless monkeys were carrying.

Finally, she darted out of the lower branches of a towering oak into a small copse of saplings, and crept towards the high-pitched grinding whine that howled through the forest and echoed in her ears. Fighting the urge to turn tail and run back to the tribe, she thrust her head through the last layer of leaves and vines.

With a gasp that tore at her throat, Raindrop's heart began pounding wildly at she saw.

The piranha was howling as it chewed through the trunk of a small tree, grinding and screeching and spitting out chunks of wood onto a pile of brushwood and saplings and branches that it had already gnawed to pieces, while a 'monkey' held it up and his companion covered his ears. The piranha shrieked triumphantly as the tree fell, and Raindrop squeezed her eyes shut, praying it was all just a dream. Suddenly, the tree she was crouching in began to shake, and the sound of the screeching piranha was all too close.

Raindrop's tree shook again, and then it began to fall.