Hello! Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone and I hope you find a rainbow! :D

SakuraFlutist: I'm almost done with Chapter 18 of Everything but Nothing, so yay! :D

ScourgeXScarlet: Yeah, it was fun writing that. :D

Golden Feather Kid: I've noticed that; I'm going to try to make their (mainly meaning Amberpaw)'s dialogue less formal. Also, I haven't read anything like this story plot e4before, not that I know of. Thank you for reviewing! :D

Smurflover: Aww, thanks! :)

To both California Rain and mizumaru2312: Thanks for catching that error about his ears, I didn't notice that. For the "this close" thing, however, they were meant to be smashed together to show just how close Amberpaw and Tigerpaw were. (I saw this in a book once and thought it would be cool to incorporate it in.) But since it seems that the people who saw it and then noted it in their review, didn't get it, I'll change it. The doc manager does seem to have a habit of putting italicized words and the surrounding words together, though, so that could have been taken as a mistake. Thanks for your critique. :)

Cherrynose: Cool, what's your name on there? :D

Spottedfire98: Thanks! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Warriors.

Chapter 9: Bedtime

We sneak out of the snow-covered bramble entrance. No one's watching, which is good. Practically all the warriors are outside the camp catching prey for the Clan while the apprentices are entertained by the snow and the elders are tucked away sleeping in their dens. Who wants to sneak out?

Apparently, us.

We pad quietly on the white, powdery ground, the snow hushing the sound of our paws and covering our scent and the falling snowflakes filling in our paw prints until nothing is left. LeafClan's natural thick bushes and tall, clustered trees hide us from view even though their leaves have fallen off. It seems that today, nature is on our side.

Neither of us speak until we're at least twenty fox-lengths away from the entrance. Then Graypaw suddenly stops, and I nearly stagger into him. He's been leading us.

"I think," he proclaims, "that we should go left from here on, and follow the borderline until we get out of LeafClan territory and into Twolegplace. That will keep us on our own territory, and also I think that Cloudpaw would have chosen to explore Twolegplace. She wants to have the most extravagant story to tell when she comes back."

I nod. As her brother, he should know best where she might have gone. I hope he's right, though, about Twolegplace. I hope we don't get captured by Twolegs, I think, and shiver, from both the cold and the thought.

We start up again, padding side by side but keeping a rigid distance. I don't really know Graypaw, and pretty much the only reason why I'm even out here helping him is because I'm a pushover. And also because there's a good chance Cloudpaw will get in danger, and even I don't want that to happen to her.

Graypaw stares straight ahead, focusing his gaze on distant scenery, occasionally blinking hard to keep the snow from clumping on his eyelids. The snow is falling more thickly now, almost like a white thick curtain. By the time our disappearance is discovered, they won't be able to tell where we've gone at all, though they might try to guess.

The silence fills up between us until it's like a weight pressing down on our chests, begging to be broken by a word or two. I'm uncomfortable. Out of the corner of my eye, I observe Graypaw swishing his tail mechanically, jerking it from side to side and just managing to avoid hitting my side with it. So he feels it too. From what I know of him, he's not the most talkative apprentice, but he speaks normally enough. I swallow and wait for him to say something.

Eventually he does. "So…" he begins awkwardly. "You having fun?"

"Oh, yes," I answer. "Trudging through the snow is just my kind of thing." Oops, there's my sarcasm. Goodbye civil conversation.

To my surprise, he laughs. "Huh, I didn't know you could be funny."

"You have no idea."

With that, the uncomfortable feeling seems to clear up a bit, and I relax my shoulders. Graypaw, I notice, is no longer swinging his tail as much. Good.

I clear my throat and try to think of something else to say. Um… "Do you like your mentor?" Who's his mentor again? Oh right, Rainsong.

"Yeah, she's nice. How about you? Is Falconflight up to your standards?"

"He's nice. Well, I only had one training session with him, and then you know, this happened." I lift up my right paw, which is holding up pretty well. "So yeah, I think he's good," I finish.

"Oh, you think?" Graypaw grins, then goes on. "Cloudpaw was pretty mad that she didn't get to be the deputy's apprentice and you did." Yeah, I think I noticed that. "She says that you must have bribed Branchstar, or something." He pauses to put an exaggerated expression of skepticism on his face, which makes me laugh. "Which none of us believe, of course."

"That's good," I say. "That's a sure sign that none of you are idiots."

Again, he laughs.

We fall into an easy conversation about various topics, like what our first Gathering will be like, and what our warrior names will be.

"I would like to be called Graypelt," says Graypaw. "Or something mighty. I don't know."

For me, I hadn't even thought of my warrior name. So instead I tell Graypaw what Tigerpaw wants to be: Tigerflame.

He finds this as funny as I did, cracking up laughing. "That sounds like something CreekClan would name their warriors."

The time passes as we converse and walk through the snow, which has finally stopped falling and is up to my ankles. And so I don't notice when Graypaw abruptly stops and tilts his head up to gaze at a row of twinkling lights—not stars, but unnatural, yellow blocks of light seeping through small see-through walls in Twoleg nests. We've arrived at the Twolegplace, and I barely even noticed.

The line of nests continue down for as far as I can see, and probably even more than that. Loud noises and cacophony come from the nests and I can see humans laughing and eating through the transparent squares. A dog barks, and another one quickly answers it. In this place, I feel small and overwhelmed. How can we possibly expect to find Cloudpaw here, let alone find our way back to LeafClan? We'll be lost here forever, or get captured by Twolegs and have to be kittypets, or get eaten by dogs, or—

"Let's scout for the best place to sleep for tonight," Graypaw says, breaking off my building thoughts of horror. "We can look for Cloudpaw tomorrow morning, when we're fresh and ready and there's light."

I shake off the clinging thoughts of what bad things might befall us and nod. "Right."

Night has fallen, and the stars wink at us from their places in the sky. A cold wind picks up, ruffling our fur. Graypaw takes a running leap, and digs his claws into a chain-link fence. He climbs up until he's at the very top. "Come on!" he shouts. I follow him and soon we're clambering down the fence onto the other side. My hind paws touch down and I drop to the ground.

Graypaw is already heading off in a different direction. We pass nest by nest, then decide to climb up into a tree to get a better vantage point. Snow falls from the branches as we scramble up the bare oak.

Up in the tree, it's almost like a whole new world. I've never been up this high, and the view is amazing. The see-through walls shine with bright golden light, and there are so many nests I can't even count them, lined up in tiny rows like how Whispersong might sort her herbs. On my right, the nests start to die out and trees crop up. LeafClan territory. I see Meeting Rock, a prominent boulder that sits just at the edge of LeafClan land. It's an excellent place for an ambush, I realize, and tuck that fact away. Beyond Meeting Rock, there's land that is strange and new to me. In one part, there are practically no trees at all, but instead rocks litter the ground. I can see a large hollow in the area and tiny specks moving around in it. Cats. In another area, there's a wide expanse of river with a camp set up next to it. CreekClan, I would guess.

While I've been marveling at the view, Graypaw has been looking for a place to stay. "Hmm, not there," he mutters. "Perhaps there…? No wait, I see a dog. Maybe we could go—"

Over the sound of his out-loud thinking, there's another voice. I tilt my head and listen harder. There it is again.

"This wondrous creature makes its home in the deserts of—"

It's coming from the see-through square.

I push past Graypaw and walk down the branch until I'm in front of the transparent square, which is halfway open. Inside, a Twoleg queen sits on a rectangular nest with her kit. She has a strange thing on her lap, and keeps looking down at it and then looking back up again to smile at the kit.

"It lives for thousands of years. Its tears can heal wounds. What is it?"

The kit grins in anticipation. I lean forward to hear the rest of the story.

"It is the phoenix." The adult Twoleg holds up the thing that's been resting on her lap, and there, on strange thick leaves, is a picture of a bird! Its beautiful red-orange-yellow wings are spread in flight, and its fiery tail of gold and scarlet trails tongues of flame. The phoenix's beak is open in a silent cry, and its black eyes look full of wisdom and beauty.

The kit claps its front paws in glee, and says, "Mommy, it's pretty."

The Twoleg, Mommy, smiles and answers, "Yes, it is, Leah."

"What are you looking at?" Graypaw has come to sit by me and the branch rocks. I clutch the branch with my claws until it's stopped shaking, then relax.

"Shhh, she's continuing again."

"What in the name of StarClan—"

"Shhh!"

He quiets, and I eagerly fix my eyes upon the Twoleg again. Mommy turns the thing back toward her, and turns the leaf. "The phoenix is immortal. It flies in freedom until it starts to grow old, then retires to its nest. It stays there until eventually, it bursts into flame."

She shows Leah the next picture. It's of a huge ball of flame, consuming the leaf it's on. The only thing that can be seen of the phoenix is one fiery red wing.

"All that is left of the phoenix is ash. But the phoenix is not dead, though it may seem so. For from the ash forms a small egg. This egg lies in the nest, incubated by the fiery warmth that still remains. Then it hatches, and out comes a baby bird. The phoenix." This picture is of a tiny feathery head poking out of the top of a broken egg.

"In this way, the phoenix never dies. It continues to live on, bursting into flame at the end of five hundred years, then hatching again. This is the life cycle of the phoenix, going on for thousands of years. And to this day, it's still alive, though we cannot find or see it. This is the phoenix."

The last picture shows the bird perching on a branch, small flickers of flame surrounding it. It looks out into a clear blue sky, and sand covers the ground below.

The Twoleg closes the book. "The end."

"Read it again, Mommy!" Leah cries. "I want to hear about it again!"

Mommy smiles indulgently at her kit but shakes her head. "Maybe tomorrow, sweetie," she says.

"Okay," Leah says, sinking back into her nest but is clearly disappointed.

The Twoleg kisses Leah on her head and then looks across the room. Graypaw and I quickly back out of sight. "Now, how did that window get open? That must be the draft I'm feeling in here." She crosses the room in easy strides, walking easily on her two legs. Then she lifts up her front paws and pushes down the see-through square—a "window", she called it.

Then the light turns out in the room and the see-through square is dark.

"That was a nice story," Graypaw says.

I nod my head in agreement. I never knew Twolegs could make such wonderful stories! And such beautiful pictures, too.

Graypaw decides to just stay here in the tree. I stay on the current window-level branch, and Graypaw climbs down to the limb below me. Then he curls up and goes to sleep.

I stay awake for a little bit more, thinking. Does it hurt badly when the phoenix goes up in flame? Does it remember its lives from before or does it start out new when it hatches from the egg? Where did it come from?

However, thoughts can't keep me up for long, and soon I'm fast asleep, dreaming of a strange but beautiful bird that soars through the sky with a haunting shrill call, trailing flames in its wake.

Yeah, so I know humans can't talk to cats and vice versa, but how about the cats understanding the humans at least? Midnight is able to talk to the Clans, though they can't talk with other badgers, foxes, or dogs. Did Midnight teach herself how to talk to cats? I forget. :/ But since it suits the story, I'm keeping it that way.

In this chapter you see why this story is named Phoenix! :D The information I used to create Leah's bedtime story is from my own head, previous books I've read, and a bit of research on the internet. Please tell me if a part of the story is wrong or I've missed a part that you think is important (but keep in mind that there are variations of myths of the phoenix, so it might just be a different story than the ones I used.)

Well, see you, and review! ;)

~Ponyiowa