Here I am, finally back with another chapter! I hope all of you can remember what's going on in the story, because I sure couldn't before I started writing... I had to go back and re-read my own story... Anyway, thanks to World of Make Believe, mink'prowl, Willowfur, Fioralba, and starpaw for reviewing!
Oh, and 'No name'... Ever heard of that thing called 'spelling'? Yeah, that. Well, please employ it in future so that you can give me a proper flame.
DISCLAIMER: I... no. I don't own Warriors. Not yet, anyway. =evil laugh=
Nine
A shiver ran down Chicory's spine as she felt the soft grass underpaw change smoothly to hard Twoleg stuff, cold and strange. She wished that she had a familiar pelt to press against like some of the kits were, but there was no way Chicory was going to try to search out Holly in this darkness.
It was past moonhigh, but Heather had insisted that they could all get a few more pawsteps of ground covered before finding a place to sleep. Chicory hadn't been the only one to be dubious about this plan, especially when they had seen the bright lights of the fabled Twolegplace before them, winking like a fallen piece of the night sky. In fact, a whole family of cats, complete with two young kits, had decided not to follow them into Twolegplace, but instead stay in the grass, claiming that they would catch up in the morning.
Now that she was here, Chicory half-wished that it had been her family to stay. Bright, yellow lights gleamed harshly every couple of foxlengths like miniature suns. In the distance, Chicory could hear the roar of what must have been the Thunderpath.
Fur brushed her flank. Chicory instinctively shrank back. The other cat pressed against her, obviously trying to give comfort.
"Pine?" Chicory dared to mew. It was too dark for her too make out who it was. Only then did she realise how quiet it was - most cats were just wearily trudging on, not bothering to speak to their companions, or mewing in hushed tones.
"Shh. It'll all look better in the morning." The answering whisper stirred Chicory's ear fur. Chicory's trepidation vanished instantly.
"Ivy!" she hissed in outrage, pulling herself away from him at once. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out his tortoiseshell-splashed pelt, but she could only see his silhouette in the light the artificial suns gave out.
"Ah, come on, Chic, give me a chance! I just want to travel with you!" pleaded Ivy, his mew low.
Chicory didn't answer, heat flooding her pelt. She dropped her eyes as she annoyance battled with her chagrin.
However, Ivy seemed to take her silence as an invitation to say more. He continued eagerly, "I'd be nice, I promise I would. So would Tulip. I'd make her be nice to you. Somehow."
He's persistent, I'll give him that, thought Chicory grudgingly. The embarrassment was still searing her pelt too much for her to tell him to go away, so it was with an unfamiliar surge of relief that she caught sight of Lilac, momentarily awash in the round circle of light that one of her miniature suns gave out.
"I can see my sister over there," she blurted out quickly. "I'd better go and... um... see what she wants."
Swiftly, the white-striped she-cat ducked and weaved her way through the crowd until she reached Lilac's tortoiseshell fur.
"Lilac, please," she puffed, before her sister had a chance to say anything, "just do this one thing for me. Anything. Any excuse, just talk to me. I need to get away from..." she hesitated, "...someone."
Interest flashed across Lilac's expression. "Of course I will, Chicory," she meowed innocently. "You're my sister. Now tell me-" her mew became more animated, "-is it a tom?"
Chicory flushed under her fur. "Maybe."
"Ooh, who?" asked Lilac keenly, her eyes widening. "It's okay, you can tell me - I used to talk to Cornflower and Lavender about this sort of thing all the time. I don't think they really got it about Beech, though..." she added ruefully, her mew softening on Beech's name.
Chicory sighed internally. They had arrived at Lavender and Cornflower - and Beech, someone who Chicory had forgotten about. I'm going to have to do something about that, she thought. Heather wouldn't be happy if she found out...
But at the same time, if Lilac wanted to blither on about Beech all night, that was fine by her. Chicory definitely wasn't comfortable with discussing Ivy.
Because Ivy wasn't a tom in the way Lilac saw them. Thinking on this, Chicory made a face.
No, Ivy wasn't a tom in that way at all.
###
Ivy might not have been a tom in that was, but Chicory had to admit that he was right.
Everything did look better in the morning.
The Twolegs seemed to turn off the false suns when the real sun rose. The monsters were a background droning rather that a distraction to cause frayed nerves, and while the cats were left to their own devices to hunt and explore before they left, Chicory discovered that Twolegs seemed to like having patches of grass in varying sizes behind their nests.
"Lilac! Pine!" Chicory hissed, balancing precariously on a fence. "This nest has one, too!"
She heard a skittering of paws behind her before Lilac and Pine leapt onto the fence on either side of her. Joy swelled in Chicory's chest that she was hunting with her brother and sister again, even if Pine was refusing to speak to Lilac. Truth be told, Chicory still wasn't too comfortable with what she considered to be her sister's 'betrayal' either, but it felt right to be doing this. Just the three of them.
"Whoa." Pine slipped down off the fence onto the rectangle of carefully trimmed grass. "Why do Twolegs have these things?"
Lilac leapt down lightly to join him. "I guess even Twolegs want a patch of the forest sometimes," she teased.
Acting as though Lilac hadn't spoken, Pine gazed at Chicory enquiringly, as though waiting for an answer.
"Um, yeah... what Lilac said," murmured Chicory, hiding her discomfort by sliding down the fence so that she was alongside her siblings.
Lilac, who had ignored Pine's less-than-warm response to her joke, was sniffing around the edges of the fence.
"What in the moon's name are you doing?" asked Chicory in confusion. Lilac went on snuffling around the vertical planks of wood that made up the fence as she answered.
"I can smell... the forest."
Surprised, Chicory opened her jaws and let the flavours of Twolegplace rush in. Sure enough, underneath the tang of monsters and Twolegs, a faint, musky scent of leaves bathed her tongue. "Me too," she meowed, the usual delight filling her that she could speak freely in front of Lilac and Pine without fear of awkwardness or stutter. She twisted her head around. Pine was still standing in the middle of the grass, acting as though Lilac didn't exist. However, he looked a little put out that Chicory was acknowledging her.
"Can you smell anything, Pine?" Chicory wanted to know, vaguely annoyed with her brother's lack of participation.
Looking distinctly happier, Pine trotted up to the two she-cats and gestured with his muzzle to a spot a little further along the fence. "Yes," he mewed. "And if my eyes are working properly, it looks like there's a hole in the fence." His tone was slightly haughty. Chicory could tell that he'd been working on this while Lilac had been sniffing.
At once, Lilac's head snapped up, and she dashed to where Pine had pointed. "There is!" Surprise coloured her mew. Chicory, joining her, saw that the gap was fairly small, about the size for a fox to squeeze through. The unnaturally neat grass was scuffed around it, dug up and turned over to reveal the dark earth underneath. Without another heartbeat's pause, Lilac stooped and thrust her head and front paws through the opening.
"Superior Sniffer? Yes, I know I am," murmured Pine to himself.
"I can scent fox!" reported Lilac from the other side of the fence, her meow muffled. "It's stale, though," she added quickly. A fox must have made the hole, as Chicory had thought.
Lilac's tortoiseshell haunches gave a little wriggle, and then disappeared.
"Wow! This is like a real adventure!" Was Chicory imagining a slightly mocking, insincere edge to Lilac's mew? "Come on! It smells so good out here!"
Chicory glanced at Pine. "Do you think we should?"
Slowly, the dark brown cat blinked. "There's prey out there," he reasoned.
With these parting words, he darted forward and squeezed through the hole.
Not wanting to be left behind, Chicory struggled underneath the fence after her brother. She could feel some of her fur catching on the fence as it scraped her back, and she gritted her teeth in slight pain as they tugged at her pelt.
As she finally freed herself - minus a few tufts of fur - her ears pricked.
"Can you hear that?" she asked, her mew hushed.
Lilac, who had previously been batting at a butterfly like a wayward kit, looked up at her sister. "Hear what?"
"I can hear birds." Pine swiped his tongue around his muzzle. "And I'm hungry."
"No, no," mewed Chicory impatiently. A strange feeling of dread had risen up inside her chest at the sound. "Something different."
All three young cats fell silent and strained their ears as the sound wailed again.
Pine's green eyes were wide as he turned to his white-furred sister. "Chicory!" he said, urgency edging his mew. "That's a kit!"