"Put your tail lower to the ground," Owlwing meowed, her understandable exhaustion showing in her voice. "Not that low," she corrected when Berrypaw curled her tail under her paws. "Just keep it low enough so that prey won't notice you."

It was their third time out of camp, and Grasspaw and his littermates were practicing their form. Though his paws itched to get to hunting for real, Grasspaw knew that he (and especially his littermates) still had a lot to learn.

"Why do we have to stalk?" Applepaw whined. "We're WindClan! Can't we just run really fast toward our prey and not bother with stalking?"

"Have you ever seen a rabbit run? Those little furballs are fast as dirt," Spikeear muttered. "You kits wouldn't stand a chance in the Dark Forest of catching one without stalking the little crow-food-eater first."

"Watch your language, Spikeear," Runningfoot reminded the spiky-furred white tom. "These are young, impressionable cats you're talking to."

"Ah, mouse-dung," Spikeear spat. "If Sandstar pulls me over later today, I'm going to hunt you down and bite that stupid head of yours off."

Berrypaw's eyes widened in terror.

"He doesn't mean it, Berrypaw," Grasspaw sighed. "They're brothers. It's just how they are."

"Me and Applepaw aren't like that," Berrypaw sniffed. "We always play nice and say nice thing to each other."

"That's because you're she-cats," he muttered. "It's different with toms. You wouldn't get it."

"Hey, are you saying toms are better than she-cats?!"Applepaw demanded.

"What? I didn't say anything like that!" Grasspaw protested. "Neither one is better; we're just different from each other."

Applepaw grumbled something that Grasspaw couldn't make out. Then she spoke up enough for him to hear, "I know you liked that one she-cat."

Grasspaw dropped out of the hunter's crouch and turned around to glare at his sister. "What she-cat?"

"The one at the Gathering the other night," Applepaw purred, batting her eyelashes mockingly and imitating a lovey-dovey voice. "You remember Waterpaw, don't you? Oh, isn't she just such a special and wonderful cat? Everybody loves her, and you're no exception!"

Grasspaw was glad that his face was covered in fur so Applepaw couldn't see him blush. "Shut up!" he snapped. "I would never betray my Clan like that! So what if she's cute! I don't care!"

"But she's sooo pretty," Applepaw giggled. "Isn't that right, Grasspaw?"

"Well, in that case…" Grasspaw struggled to come up with a good comeback. "…If you like her so much, why don't you go out with her?"

To his surprise, Applepaw actually seemed to consider it. Eventually, however, she shook her head. "I would, but I think we're too young. Plus, like you said, I don't want to break the Warrior Code."

"Oh, yeah, that reminds me," Berrypaw chimed in. "Should I tell Barkstripe that you said you wished she was a tom so you could ask her out?"

"Don't you dare do that," Applepaw squealed, batting at Berrypaw, who flinched. "She's too old to be interested in me anyway! I'll have to wait," she added wisely, "until I'm a warrior too."

"Okay, everybody, let's get back on track," Owlwing sighed. "Grasspaw, what's this I hear about a she-cat from another Clan?"

"You should've seen him the other night, Mom," Applepaw mewed. "It was disgusting! They were flirting; it was blatantly obvious."

Owlwing gave Grasspaw a sidelong glance and he glared at Applepaw. Why did his littermates both have to be so annoying? Couldn't two cats even interact anymore without some mouse-brains screeching, "Forbidden love!"? I f not, most cats were even stupider than he'd thought.

"Waterpaw, dear, have you caught any fish for us yet?" Storkflight drawled from where she lay sprawled in the sunlight. "Remember, I'm not just eating for me anymore. You wouldn't want my kits to end up like your poor littermates, would you?"

Guilt pricked at Waterpaw's pads. That's right; she had to do better for her Clan! Every cat, even unborn kits, were counting on her to help them out. She cursed herself for not having caught any fish all day. Foxfang was going to be so disappointed in her!

"I'm doing my best, Storkflight," she sighed. "But the fish aren't coming."

Waterpaw moved her paw again. The icy current was almost unbearably cold, but Waterpaw had to withstand it if she hoped to get any fish this way. If only the ice hadn't covered the river! Just a few days ago there had still been open water in spots, but now it was completely frozen over, and RiverClan had to resort to ice fishing. Waterpaw had broken a hole in the ice using a large rock, but the hole had been too small at first, so she'd scraped away at the sides with her claws so she could maneuver her paw around under the ice.

At first, Foxfang had praised her for her cleverness, but then she'd failed to catch any fish. And it hadn't even been the first day she'd failed like this! Just the other day Waterpaw had had a salmon swim practically into her paws but she'd been daydreaming and it had swum away. Why was she slipping like this? Waterpaw cursed herself again for failing so miserably when she was supposed to be such a great apprentice. She wondered if Foxfang thought she was his most skilled apprentice ever anymore. He probably didn't.

And then there was Minnowleap. Sure, she still groomed Waterpaw immaculately at the start of each day, and she still made Waterpaw get up earlier than any other cat so she'd always get the first pick from the fresh-kill pile, and she still told Waterpaw how much she loved her. But Minnowleap had changed since the night of the Gathering. She seemed almost… suspicious of Waterpaw.

Only the previous day, she'd stopped grooming Waterpaw for a moment to murmur, "Patchfur told me he saw you talking to a WindClan cat at the Gathering a couple nights ago. Is that true?"

"We were only talking," Waterpaw had mumbled. "He's the same cat whose friend I saved a while back."

"Don't remind me of that," Minnowleap had hissed. Then her voice had gone back to the gentle tone that Waterpaw had found so comforting as a small kit but had recently been wondering about the authenticity of. "Well, Patchfur is a very silly tom, isn't he? What does he know about my lovely little kit?"

"What does he know?" Waterpaw had echoed, slumping down and closing her eyes as her mother resumed grooming her, as she did every night even though Waterpaw wasn't a kit anymore.

Now, almost a week since the Gathering in question, some cats till hadn't let it go. Smokefur had looked at her questioningly while they'd been out on the dawn patrol together, and Waterpaw had acted like she hadn't known what the look was for, but she really knew. Every cat thought that there was something going on between her and that WindClan 'paw.

Well, there wasn't! They had only met twice, and he was barely more than a kit. Even Waterpaw had only been a kit for a little over a moon, so she wasn't about to start thinking about mates. But maybe cats who were part of a prophecy were just more likely to also have forbidden love. Those two things certainly did seem to go paw-in-paw more often than not in elders' stories. But those stories weren't real life… were they?

Something finally brushed against Waterpaw's nearly-frozen paw, jerking her out of her thoughts. She lashed out, hooking her claws into scales. Water droplets flew up through her ice-fishing-hole, the fish's blood mixing with it. Waterpaw scrunched up her face and squeezed her other paw in through the hole so she could grip the flailing fish properly. Once she had a good hold on it, she jerked her paws up and a moment later a carp was flailing on the ice next to her. She bent down and gave it a quick bite to finish it off.

"Very good, Waterpaw!" Foxfang waved his tail proudly. "I expected no less from such a talented cat."

"Thank you, Foxfang," she purred. "It was nothing, really."

"I knew you wouldn't let us down again," Storkflight added from her sunny patch. "That was obviously just a one-time thing, right?"

Waterpaw nodded, because she had to. If she didn't, her Clanmates would think she wasn't as confident in her abilities as they thought. "I honestly don't know what got into me before when I let that salmon slip away," she meowed. "Perhaps it was just StarClan's way of testing your faith in me."

"Well, as long as you keep up that performance level, my faith in you is secure," Foxfang purred, licking Waterpaw's shoulder. Her mentor's eyes shone with… Waterpaw didn't know what exactly, but she assumed it was something positive. "I certainly am lucky to have you as my apprentice."

Waterpaw tried to focus on the compliment and not the implication that perhaps he'd lose his faith in her if her performance level dropped. She wouldn't let it drop, because that simply wasn't the kind of risk Waterpaw could afford to take.

The rabbit was chewing on a twig. It didn't see Grasspaw sneaking up on it. Excitement surged through him as he pressed his body low to the ground like Spikeear had showed him. His new mentor might have a sharp tongue, but he was a good teacher nonetheless.

The snow under Grasspaw's paws crumbled slightly as he took a slow, trembling step. The sound alerted the rabbit and it raised its head to glance around, sniffing the air. The creature's red eyes unnerved Grasspaw, but he reminded himself that rabbits often had red eyes. It didn't mean that they were possessed by a Dark Forest cat or anything, like in Windgorse's story about the three brothers who were hunting the red-eyed rabbit only to find that it had really been hunting them the whole time…

"It's just a dumb nursery story," Grasspaw muttered, not realizing he'd spoken aloud until the rabbit's ears perked up in alarm and it ran off. "Mouse-dung," he spat as it hopped away.

Grasspaw took off after the rabbit, chasing it over hills and dips, but it kept a few tail-lengths ahead of him at all times. Then the tail-lengths became fox-lengths, and Grasspaw finally had to stop. Panting, he cursed himself for letting the rabbit slip away. And just when he'd finally thought he was improving! After catching that redpole the previous day, Grasspaw had been sure he was getting better at hunting. He'd already been an apprentice for a couple of weeks now, after all, but he hadn't managed to catch a single thing yet.

Now he was really sure he wasn't the cat from that prophecy. Sandstar still thought he might be for some reason, but every time the old leader brought it up, Podtail would look away and not say anything. If even the medicine cat was sure you weren't special, chances were fairly good that you were just an average cat. And if you couldn't even manage to catch a dumb rabbit, well…

Grasspaw trudged back into camp, empty-pawed yet again. Applepaw had finally managed to catch something today- a crow, of all things. "Berrypaw helped," she mewed as she set it down on the fresh-kill pile, which currently consisted of only one other piece of prey: a day-old mouse so scrawny that no cat had bothered to eat it the day before.

Berrypaw nodded vigorously. "It was hopping around in the snow, so I buried myself in a snowbank and waited for it to hop over to me," she explained. "When it did, I jumped out and bit its wing. It got away, but then Applepaw showed up and took it down. It couldn't fly too well 'cause I hurt its wing, so she was able to get it."

Grasspaw shook his head in disbelief. "Amazing," he muttered. "I can't even take down a rabbit."

"Aw, what happened?" Applepaw asked as she hovered over the fresh-kill pile. She squinted at the day-old mouse before carefully hooking a single claw into it and pulling it over to Berrypaw, who ate it without complaint.

"Well, I was sneaking up on it, and…" Grasspaw trailed off. He didn't exactly want to tell Applepaw the real reason the rabbit had got away. "…The snow crunched under my paws so loud that it heard and ran off."

"That sucks," Applepaw meowed. She rolled over on her back and stretched her paws up in the air. "At least it's sunny out."

"I love it when it's sunny," Berrypaw chirped. "Don't you, Grasspaw?"

"Not particularly," he grumbled. "It's too bright and everybody has to squint, which makes us all look like rabbit-brains. And even if I did like the sun that much, it wouldn't change the fact that I'm too useless to catch a rabbit."

Applepaw sat up, blinking at Grasspaw with those wide amber eyes of hers. "You're not useless!" she gasped. "Why would you say that?! We're all going to get better soon! We'll improve as time goes on, just like Seedpelt and Barkstripe did."

"Speaking of Barkstripe-"

"Shut up, Grasspaw," she snapped. "I only told Berrypaw I liked her because I didn't know she was going to go and tell you." She put a disdainful emphasis on the word "you". "I just hope you don't tell anybody else about it. Nobody else knows I like she-cats! If they found out-!"

Grasspaw flicked his tail across his sister's flank affectionately. "No cat's gonna find out," he mewed. "You and Berrypaw might be the most annoying cats ever born, but you're still my littermates. You're secret's safe with me."

The freshly caught crow was too tempting for Grasspaw to resist. He tore off a chunk and took the rest over to where Seedpelt was relaxing in the shade of a gorse bush. Maybe he could pretend he caught it to impress his friend.