Willow woke up to the sound of the most excited voice she'd ever heard.
"It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing!" she yelled. Willow grumbled. Robin. What's she doing here? she thought grumpily. She got up and stepped outside. It was snowing all right. In fact, it was coming fast, and certainly not lightly.
"It's a blizzard, Robin!" she snapped. "This is nothing to be happy about!"
"Yes it is," Robin protested, putting a paw firmly on the snow. It sank deep. "Ah!" She was pulled under.
Willow looked behind her. Tinker was giggling. Willow smiled. "You did that," she giggled.
Tinker smiled bigger than Willow's, even showing his teeth a bit. Willow wrapped her tail around his flank and pulled him a tiny bit closer.
Robin's head appeared in the snow behind them. Then Rex came out of a bush near the direction of his home. Amber came next, flanking her brother. Willow and Tinker barely realized, until Rex caught their attention.
"Hey, lovebirds." Willow snapped her head back toward him. "Over here." Rex flicked his tail, and him and Amber stepped in the same paw alignment, going over to a tree.
Robin chose that moment to pop the rest of her body up out of the snow. "What? What?" she said. She didn't wait for an answer. Instead, she decided to start a story. "Well, one time there was this blizzard, and that's when-"
Rex cut her off. "We'll get to that another time. But come over here. Look what me and Amber found after we left yesterday."
He parted a bush, and it led to a big, open clearing. Four cats had already scented them, and ran their way. A beige tom with black speckles, a silver she-cat with white splotches, a white tom with ice-blue eyes and black paws, and a small gray tom with green eyes and a white tail-tip.
The silver cat spoke up first. "They're on our territory!"
"Calm down, Silverstar. They probably don't know that." said the beige tom.
The white tom spoke next. "Nobody asked you, Birchclaw! I say we kill them!"
"Frostfall!" the gray tom mewed. "We need to work through this together. Not separate."
Willow stepped out of the bush. She decided to choose kindness towards them, because they seemed hostile. "I'm Willow. And these are my friends, Rex, Amber, and Tinker." Each cat stepped out of the bush next to her in called turn.
"Fine." Silverstar took a deep breath and let it out. "But we're taking them back to camp as prisoners."
