Thrushpaw intercepts them. Though both Stonetail and Streamheart begin to approach Mistpaw's prone form, the medicine cat apprentice plants herself firmly in their way. "Leave her be," she commands. "She's been there for a while now."
"But she looks–"
"It's how she's grieving," says the small tabby, not budging as Stonetail peers around her. Her eyes are flinty, all hazel and hard with a frostiness that Stonetail has never seen before. The grey warrior glances once more past Thrushpaw at the WillowClan apprentice (thank StarClan, she catches the faint rise and fall of Mistpaw's chest), but averts her eyes quickly, looking anywhere but at the apprentices before her. Streamheart is similarly evasive in regards to Mistpaw, although she dips her head to Thrushpaw before murmuring something about getting something to eat. Then she is gone, off choosing from the fresh-kill pile while ex-mentor faces ex-apprentice.
Stonetail feels like she could tear the tension apart with her claws. It's hard to look at Thrushpaw with Mistpaw lying in the background, and it grows harder still when the pale warrior realizes she has been hovering over Mistpaw from a safe distance since WillowClan's arrival. Her concern for the orphaned she-cat is just as palpable as the strain between herself and Thrushpaw.
And Thrushpaw knows it.
"Quit holding your paw up and go see Robinfoot," she says, giving Stonetail's shoulder a brief scan. "It won't heal itself if you keep it tucked like that." Without any hint of malice save for the level tone she holds, Thrushpaw pads around the grey tabby and to the camp entrance, where she nods at Stormfoot and gives some explanation for leaving that concerns marigolds. Stonetail forces herself not to watch the medicine cat apprentice vanish into the pines, and instead swings her focus to the medicine den. Suddenly deflated, the walk to the other end of camp seems like it's tree-lengths and tree-lengths long, while her nest is so very close. The temptation to visit Robinfoot later in the evening is overwhelming, a feeling only strengthened by the desire to lie in dry moss and worry with Streamheart over Greystar's private vendetta against the nameless cat. But Robinfoot needs rest like any other cat, and the possibility of waking him too late (and by extension, waking Thrushpaw) is far from appealing. Besides, Thrushpaw is absent, if only for the time being, and another conversation is temporarily avoidable. Good shoulder sagging, Stonetail limps to the bracken-covered den with her tail leaving a faint line in the dirt.
"Robinfoot?" she calls, trudging in. "I think I twisted my shoulder."
A pair of amber eyes blinks open in the corner at the sound of her voice, but they do not belong to the medicine cat. Coal lies in a small nest, chin on his paws and body curled in tight; Stonetail is beginning to think she will never see him in any other position, he is so often postured like this.
"What are you doing here?"
He pushes a paw forward gingerly. "Tore two claws," he grunts, withdrawing as soon as Stonetail gets a good look. Blood is crusted across his toes, and there is a fresh stain on the moss. Cobwebs are nowhere to be seen.
"Robinfoot went for supplies," Coal explains automatically, shutting his eyes and exhaling. "Used them up on WillowClan."
"Won't be gone long, then." Favoring her injury, Stonetail awkwardly settles down at a safe distance from the loner, wincing when she jostles her foreleg against a heavy stone stained with the paste of berries past. Pinching her tongue between her teeth, she lets a sharp hiss escape her.
"You all right?"
"Fine," she mutters, rolling onto her uninjured side and stretching her neck to rest her cheek against the remains of a pine stump. From this vantage point, she can see the den's entrance, and resolves to leave immediately if Thrushpaw returns before Robinfoot. She'll seek treatment overnight if that is the case. Waiting on edge, though, is hardly comfortable, and she soon drops her head to the ground, engaging in a glum staring contest with a spider scuttling its way across the den floor. It totters along with haste, eight legs rhythmically propelling it straight towards Coal's paw. He glances at it before sweeping it aside; the spider vanishes among a pile of moss, and the black tom snorts as fresh blood oozes from his injuries.
"How did you do that?" Stonetail asks, pressing her back feet against the wall to stretch.
Too quickly Coal says, "Snagged on a root," and then he shifts to put his back to Stonetail, only the second cat to do so since her return. She grits her teeth and attempts to do the same, but gasps aloud as fire bursts through her shoulder. Clearly, isolating herself further was not the right decision, and through a brief bout of double vision, she spots a set of white paws trotting her way from the den's entrance.
"Just rolled funny," she says in dismissal, jaw clenched, as Robinfoot immediately discards his pawful of cobwebs to fuss over her. He has always been thorough, as is fitting for a medicine cat, and insists on gently prodding her upright before pressing his paws to various regions of her shoulder.
"You've dislocated it," he informs her. "And this will hurt." Stonetail expects another flash of fire to burn through her shoulder, but instead, Robinfoot turns aside to kick the cobwebs in Coal's directions with curt instructions to wrap his paw up well with the last of the crushed marigold. Without warning, the tabby medicine cat whirls back, places his paws on Stonetail's shoulder, and twists. She yowls, biting it back as her senses snap into place along with her shoulder blade, and squeezes her eyes shut.
"You should rest that until tomorrow evening," Robinfoot says, all tender and concerned once more. As the grey warrior composes herself, he presses against her shoulder to be sure it is properly in place, finally allowing her to stand once satisfied with his efforts.
"A little warning next time?" She winces, testing her weight; it hurts less to place both paws on the ground, though she is rather sore. "I wasn't ready."
Robinfoot flicks her side with his tail. "If I warned you, it would have been worse, believe me. Now go on. I've got him to patch up." Ears flattening against his head, he growls to himself, "Should let him do it himself for scratching at my alder tree. Only StarClan forsaken alder in this StarClan forsaken forest…"
Stonetail hesitates in the den entrance, neck craned to spot Coal's paw hanging over the boundaries of his mossy nest, swathed in white and gold as Robinfoot swoops in to finish the marigold-and-cobweb wrappings. Before she can be caught, though, she limps to the warriors' den (eyes carefully averted from Mistpaw, still in the camp's center), grateful to find Streamheart and Grasspelt are the only warriors inside. The tom is rather hard of hearing despite his young age, and any conversation Stonetail might have with her friend will remain private as long as they keep their voices low.
"Are you awake?" she whispers, easing herself down next to the silver tabby. Streamheart does not stir, though, and the steady rise and fall of her side makes it glaringly obvious that she's already asleep. Stonetail's stomach turns; when will they have an opportunity to talk about Greystar and Featherstar again? Now is the perfect time with the den so empty, but she hasn't the heart to wake the other warrior. Streamheart's best defense has always been to sleep her troubles away, and the grey tabby sighs, wishing she could do the same but fully aware that she'll only wake up more concerned than she was before.
"Talk to you later," she mutters, settling into her bedding to rest.
But she doesn't.
A disturbance comes in the form of Clay, tail hanging between his legs and whiskers drooping. "You're back!" he croaks upon wandering into the den. Blowing out a great gust of air, he shuffles over and nudges Stonetail to her feet, apologizing profusely when she headbutts him away from her shoulder.
"Tell me what happened," he begs. "We can go hunting, or pretend to if that's better. I want to know, and I've got to tell Coal." Forgetting himself, he gives the grey warrior another bump, and she bares her fangs in a violent hiss, from which he recoils with ears pressed flat. Apologies stream from his mouth one after the other, and when he finally clamps his jaws shut, Stonetail sighs.
"I twisted my shoulder," she explains," and Robinfoot says I have to rest it. No hunting, fake or not, until moonrise tomorrow."
"What about a walk?" he insists. This time he keeps a safe distance. "That's not especially hard."
"I don't want to risk it." And yet Clay's round, sincere face continues to beg and beg some more, until finally Stonetail rolls her eyes and heaves herself out of her nest. She agrees to the short walk, but makes it clear she intends to return to her nest immediately afterward to sleep until StarClan falls down.
"And if anything else happens to my shoulder, I'll have your tail for bedding," she mutters. Clay doesn't seem to hear, though, too busy offering his thanks repeatedly, as is his nature, and then he lopes out of the den at a steady pace; Stonetail finds herself unable to match it, stride impaired by a dull, pulsing ache. Gritting her teeth, she blocks out the pain and limps along at a slightly more hurried pace, nowhere close to catching up but refusing to be left in the dust. Thankfully Clay's obliviousness only goes so far, and soon he doubles back to fall into step beside her, this time much more slowly.
"I don't want to hear another apology out of you," she grunts when he opens his mouth; he quickly shuts it, and they pad through the hollow log at the camp entrance in silence. The quiet pervades for a few more precious moments, blissful and sweet, but the moment the camp is beyond their line of sight, Clay bursts with excitement.
"Tell me everything," he breathes, seating himself on a gnarled root belonging to a rare maple, generations older than ShadeClan itself. "What did you see? Was it still wet? Wait, was it dry? I hope it wasn't dry. Then something would be wrong. Territories can't be that dry that fast."
Stonetail gingerly eases herself onto her haunches, using the maple's trunk as support. "Wet or dry, something is wrong." It's tempting to admit that not all is well in ShadeClan, too, but impulse prevents the pale warrior from revealing her mother's secret. Instead, she lowers her voice and details the scorched earth, the charred reeds, and the clinging dampness of WillowClan's decimated lands. The clamminess of the soil seems to collect on her paws as she speaks, and too vividly she remembers the hot, acrid stench of the smoldering willow tree. A moment's thought reminds her that the willow was the only segment of the territory she and Streamheart explored that was mostly dry. The blaze could have dried it out, but that didn't explain why the rest of the territory was so saturated after burning.
"A lot of things don't make sense over there," she says. She half means the improbable wetness, but Greystar and Featherstar's clandestine conversation intrudes again. Still, Clay does not need to be privy to such sensitive, inexplicable information. He appears as if he's fit to sing like a jay, bated breath collected in his puffed out chest. Finally he exhales, mumbling a short curse of awe and disbelief under his breath.
"I wish I could see it."
"No, you don't," Stonetail corrects him, stiffly rising. The fur along her spine prickles uncomfortably, and she glances into the forest, searching for movement among the pines. A flash of stormy grey zips through the trees, sunshine alive on its belly; a robin, then. Closer to the ground, though, she sees nothing but the dappled shadows expected with the slowly falling sun.
Except one shadow moves.
A snarl forms in the back of her throat, but the shade comes around a tree and shakes silver tabby fur free of pine needles. "You need to come home," Streamheart says, not bothering to question why they are away in the first place.
"But Stonetail was just telling me what you saw," Clay protests, hopping down from the maple root anyway. He scuffs the dirt with white forepaws, giving the silver warrior his best pleading look, a technique any kit would benefit from learning. Streamheart's gaze is focused on Stonetail, however, brimming with urgency, and the grey tabby dips her head.
"I'll catch up," she says, adding to Clay, "And don't say a word, you hear me?" But he is already sprinting back into the pines with all the energy of a squirrel and much less grace. Streamheart hesitates a moment, but shakes her head and follows, calling an apology over her shoulder.
Stonetail does her best to return quickly, but winces at the thought of having to visit Robinfoot again for disobeying him almost immediately after being told to rest. She wrinkles her nose; there was once a day when she would have listened, but lately, defiance races white-hot beneath her skin. Brief thought leads her to blame the loners and the disorder they've brought into her life, but a moment more and her mind wanders to Greystar yet again. Greystar, who traded her apprentice away, who saddled two loners on her back, who keeps secrets with the leader of another Clan. Greystar, who she has, remarkably, not spoken with in what feels like an eternity. All the force and frustration that filled their past conversations has had nowhere to go, and now it leaks out like a poorly-patched wound fresh from the battlefield. She bleeds insolence instead of pooling it all behind a wavering barrier that's bound to shatter the moment her mother applies any force at all.
It feels good.
Squeezing into the fallen log leading into camp, she pushes the faint thrill of independence behind her heavy heart, which her twisting innards drag down deeper into her chest. Streamheart was all too short with her announcement to be considered the bearer of good news; anxiety strums cold claws across Stonetail's heartstrings.
The mossy overhang falls aside as Stonetail passes through, and those claws miss a beat as the camp's central fixture is missing. Mistpaw's little grey form has been moved from the flat, damp grass, and the grey warrior parts her jaws, seeking out the scent of death. Did the apprentice pine away?
No, she has not. There is no scent that would summon crows from the sky, and looking into the corners of camp, discovers that Mistpaw has likely moved herself. The WillowClan apprentice is snoozing beside Coal, who lies on his side with his cobweb-swathed forepaw stretched out.
"He got her to talk," Clay whispers, bounding over with Streamheart close behind.
"He sat down next to her and asked what she saw. That's all he did," the silver tabby adds. When she glances back at the odd pair, she catches Coal's eye; at this, he eases himself upright, careful not to disturb the sleeping form next to him. Favoring his injured paw, lurching in a rather undignified way as he makes his way over, he joins the small group at the camp's entrance.
His penchant for short and sweet has not left him. "She saw lightning strike a willow, hid in a shallow creek, and when she went back to camp to warn everyone, it was already on fire," he says, shoulders rigid. Unruly tufts of fur stick up along his neck and back, pine needles clinging to his short pelt along the side. Seeing him unkempt this way twice in one afternoon sparks uneasiness in Stonetail, but given his irritability earlier, she opts not to press that issue just yet.
"What else did she tell you?" she starts to ask, but he cuts across her to give Clay a gentle shove with his forehead, steering him towards the exit. The brown tabby pushes his heels into the dirt, but gives way with the second shove, taking a couple tentative steps into the hollow log.
"Coal, what are you doing?" he whines, looking back at Streamheart and Stonetail. Instead of the round, pleading look he so often uses to beg for information, his ears are flattened to the curve of his skull, and his eyes flicker to his brother unsteadily. Coal is unaffected, though, and flicks his tail as if in a hurry.
"It's time for us to go," he says. A bite colors his voice, but for once, it is not directed at anyone around himself. The black tom huffs and fixes his line of sight on the forest past Clay as if something more interesting lies out there.
Then his eyes widen, and he backpedals, nosing Clay back into the camp first. Amber eyes wide like moons, he limps aside to allow two cats passage. Thrushpaw comes first, a tuft of marigold clenched tightly in her jaws. Her brow is furrowed with strain, and leaning heavily on her tiny form is Lakewhisker. His entire frame sags as if StarClan presses down upon it, and each pawstep trembles violently. Streamheart surges forward to prop him up on the other side, relieving the pressure from Thrushpaw, who stumbles with the change in the distribution of weight.
"Get Robinfoot!" Streamheart cries, lifting her father's chin with her muzzle only for his head to loll forward again. Clay springs into motion, scampering towards the medicine den while shouting for its senior resident, and Coal and Stonetail hurriedly make way for the unsteady three as they struggle across the uneven ground. Meanwhile, cats poke their heads out of dens and look up from sharing tongues, alarm beginning to taint the scent of ShadeClan with a sour smell.
When Robinfoot finally sprints out of the den, Stonetail lets out a shuddering breath. "You're not going anywhere," she murmurs, casting a sideways look at Coal. He nods, transfixed by the way Lakewhisker shivers, shakes, collapses in a heap with his jaws parted.
"I'm getting out of the way," he replies faintly. And then he hobbles off to the warriors' den, slipping past the spectators in the entrance as unobtrusively as possible, no more than a quavering shadow.
Stonetail ignores him after that and races toward the medicine den as quickly as her tender shoulder allows. As she goes, she mutters a short prayer.
"StarClan, don't take him."