Starlingpaw continued to wonder about Birchpaw's reaction at the ceremony over the next moon. As she pondered, leaves faded from green to orange and the warm air took on a chill. Swimming in the river was difficult, as the cold water made her muscles freeze up, but Starlingpaw labored hard to improve her warrior skills. Long days of intensive training made her exhausted, and she barely had any time to relax, so her contact with Birchpaw only dwindled.
One day, in the first quarter-moon of Leaf-fall, the she-cat apprentice was taking a well-deserved break by the prey pile. Her sable paws stretched out on the dusty floor of the clearing, she attempted to soak in as much sun as possible from the glittering rays that pierced through the overhead foliage. As she relaxed, a bright red leaf detached itself from whatever branch it had lived on, dancing slowly down through the air to land between her ears. She shook her head violently to upset the leaf, but it was still hard to search control her skull's tremors, and the red plant remained on her forehead.
Angrily twitching her ears at the interruption, she settled her head between her outstretched paws and closed her eyes. In the moment of peace her thoughts flooded once again with the day that haunted her mind; Poppyfang's ceremony. Two different cats- three, counting Starlingpaw- had some reason to be angry about or at the new warrior. Starlingpaw didn't have the faintest clue about Ashscar, as the deputy kept mostly to herself and no cat knew much about her, save for the elders or maybe her old denmates. Birchpaw was a bit less of a mystery, but only by a tiny margin. Perhaps he was jealous of Poppyfang for being named a warrior, and he was impatient for his own ceremony? After all, he was now about eight moons into his training, far longer than he should have been, and he was still an apprentice. Maybe he felt the same as Starlingpaw, worrying that he would never become a warrior for some reason or another. She thought once more about the scar she had seen on his scruff, and for the first time, she was curious about its origins. Had some cat been too rough in picking him up as a kit, or was it something more horrible? It was almost fully healed, she could tell, but it didn't look like it would ever disappear. Whatever had happened to give him such an injury? Starlingpaw couldn't remember a battle against DuskClan in her lifespan that was more than a tiny spat between patrols, so what enemy could he have possibly fought?
She opened her eyes to see the cat of interest standing right before her. Birchpaw purred with laughter, reminding Starlingpaw of the leaf that was still sitting on her head.
"I think you've got something on your head, Starlingpaw," the tomcat meowed.
Starlingpaw growled angrily and tried once more to shake it off, to no avail. "I can't get rid of it!"
Birchpaw purred once more, his tail twitching as he laughed, but he soon bent down and removed it with his teeth. He sat down beside her, and she noticed his oddly calm demeanor. With a quick sniff, she deduced he must have come from the medicine den- he smelled of thyme, the first herb Honeypool had given to Starlingpaw after they discovered her kit-gait. Starlingpaw couldn't quite remember what thyme was for, other than trembles, but she was proud to have discovered a clue.
"I know you've been pretty busy with your training lately. How is it going?" Birchpaw asked, making conversation.
Starlingpaw straightened up, stretching as she did so, and meowed, "It's going well. The swimming has made balance easier, so I can pounce and dodge better than I ever have. I'm to the point where I've relearned almost everything I already knew, so it's just improvement from here on out. Darkfeather is a great mentor." Birchpaw flinched at her last sentence, and curiosity overcame her. "How has your training been?"
The tom looked away for a moment, and she heard him take a long breath before he replied, "Not… not that great. Thornflame is… well, you know him. You're lucky to have a kind mentor like Darkfeather. Not to insult your father, but he terrifies me."
Starlingpaw nodded, then meowed, "Oh, yes, I know. He's very harsh on everyone, excepting Poppyfang, of course."
"Why did he have to be my mentor? Why not, I don't know, Breezefall, or even…" He shuddered. "No, Ashscar would be even worse than Thornflame. The two of them should have a competition over strictness."
Starlingpaw snorted with laughter. "I'd like to see them try!" Her thoughts quickly returned to his first sentence. "Really though, why don't you have Breezefall as a mentor?"
Birchpaw blinked at her, confused. "I wasn't being serious. I don't think Blizzardstar would make my father mentor me."
The sable she-cat flushed. She had forgotten that Breezefall fathered Birchpaw and Ravenpaw, as well as the new litter in the nursery that Ebonypetal was nursing. The queen was truly lucky to survive her second litter; many she-cats including Starlingpaw's mother had died after their second kitting. Some believed it was a curse from StarClan, others simply seeing it as bad luck.
"Of course. Um, speaking of that, how are your siblings?" Starlingpaw awkwardly attempted to tear the focus from her mistake.
"Black-kit and Skykit are fine, I guess. They'll be apprentices soon." Birchpaw meowed, caught off guard by her question. After a pause, he meowed quietly, "I don't like to be in the nursery, so I don't really know much about them."
"Why?" Starlingpaw inquired, unsure of how any cat could dislike one of the happiest dens in the Clan.
"N-nothing. Just bad memories, you know?" Starlingpaw did not know, but she nodded anyway. Though her kithood wasn't exactly lovely, she had enjoyed frolicking around with her search brother, and occasionally the other kits, who were still her denmates. What bad memory would take place in a place full of innocent kits and new life?
"Hey!" a new voice yowled from nearby, making both apprentices turn their heads at the sound. Larkpaw sprinted toward them, skidding to a halt just a tail-length away from their resting spot. "Russetstorm told me to get you two. We're on the sunhigh patrol!" the creamy tomcat mewed happily, bouncing on his paws. "What if it's an assessment? I'm so excited! Come on!"
With that, her search brother took off toward the thicket tunnel. Starlingpaw exchanged a quick glance with Birchpaw before getting to her paws and following Larkpaw, enjoying the freedom that came with stable legs.
The group of apprentices crashed through the woods until they reached the stump clearing, where five different trees had lost their trunks and instead served as perfectly suitable climbing platforms. Russetstorm sat on the tallest stump, which was about half the height of what the tree used to be. His fur was dark ginger, nearly brown, and his yellow eyes almost blended in with his pelt. Larkpaw leaped from stump to stump until he reached where his mentor sat, and quickly pushed his nose against the older cat's flank to notify him of their arrival. Russetstorm shook himself, his fur a dancing flame against the earthy green background, and hopped off of the stump to approach Birchpaw and Starlingpaw.
Though she didn't know him well, Starlingpaw was aware that Russetstorm was in love with Darkfeather. However, Darkfeather's search brother, Sootpelt, was disapproving of him for whatever reason, most likely his vanity and pride. Russetstorm was siblings with Fireblossom, one of the queens in the nursery, but Starlingpaw suspected that he was related to Honeypool as well, if only because her fur was a similar color to his.
"Perfect," Russetstorm meowed in his low, gravelly tone. Starlingpaw did not believe that it was his natural cadence and liked to think he faked the voice to sound brooding. "Let's head straight to the border."
She followed the warrior closely, walking beside Birchpaw, laughing silently the whole way about the haughty angle of Russetstorm's head and tail. Occasionally she would signal to Birchpaw what she was laughing about and the two purred quietly together, but Larkpaw either did not notice them or purposefully chose to ignore their teasing. Multiple times, Starlingpaw wondered what Darkfeather saw in the pompous tomcat, but she felt uncomfortable judging her friend and mentor, so she assumed Russetstorm had some very redeeming quality.
They reached the river quickly due to their fast pace, which Starlingpaw could for once keep up with, and emerged from the cover of the trees onto the bank, where the earth was wet from the flowing water and the mud stuck to their paws. Starlingpaw glanced uncomfortably at Birchpaw, realizing that his freak-out had occurred when they visited the river last, and hoped that he wouldn't be upset about what had happened. To be entirely honest, Starlingpaw wasn't even sure what had taken place that day, and the events were starting to fade from her memory. Luckily, Birchpaw didn't show any signs that he remembered or was still angry about the incident.
The cats quickly marked the border, strengthening their scent so much that they all wished to leave behind the odor and soon ducked back through the trees to check the Twolegplace. Patrols were generally short, as the only truly important border was the DuskClan one, but DawnClan cats often checked the Twolegplace to ensure that any kittypets or rogues weren't stealing Clan prey.
The complete silence of the patrol unnerved Starlingpaw, so she attempted to strike up a conversation with Russetstorm by asking him about Darkfeather. Russetstorm spoke briefly, but clearly did not want to tell Starlingpaw much about his relationship with her mentor, so they fell back into the quiet they had had before.
Unburdened by distractions, the patrol soon reached the Twolegplace, greeted with odd smells of unknown plants and the easily identifiable smell of Twolegs. A silver and black marbled tabby perched upon a wooden fence, a bright blue collar with a bell choking its neck. Starlingpaw growled in the back of her throat at the disgusting sight; cats submitting to Twolegs to live lowly lives of easy comfort and reliability. Starlingpaw remembered moons ago when she had considered life as a kittypet, and cringed at the thought of it. Becoming a kittypet was akin to giving up on life, throwing away the purpose of being born as a cat, and adopting a dull and predictable existence.
At the sight of the DawnClan cats, the kittypet crawled further along the fence to inspect them, its nose sniffing wildly. Starlingpaw had to admit that it looked healthy, with gleaming, well-groomed fur, and a fit physique. The bell around its neck jingled merrily, but the noise was grating to the forest cats' ears and they hissed in response. The kittypet's eyes widened and it arched its back, quickly hopping off of the fence into its Twoleg garden.
"What a nuisance," Russetstorm muttered loudly. "It'll scare off all of the prey in the forest!"
Starlingpaw nodded vigorously, then added, "I wish the stupid Twolegs had never thought of those annoying collars!" She remembered learning the word collar from Vinetail back when she was just a kit that loved to sit in the elders' den. Vinetail had been a kittypet for a couple of moons before she wandered out of her Twoleg nest into the forest and found DawnClan, where her collar was swiftly removed and she grew into a talented medicine cat. Starlingpaw didn't mind that Vinetail had been born a kittypet; no, the thing about kittypets that upset her was that they chose to keep their lives of drudgery. Now that she thought of it, the kittypet's pelt looked remarkably similar to Vinetail's. Starlingpaw wondered if it perhaps had some distant relation to each other, but it seemed unlikely.
"Speaking of which, I'm starving!" Larkpaw meowed at a respectable volume. "I'm going to hunt before I head back. Russetstorm, you should come too!"
Russetstorm looked conflicted about leaving two apprentices behind, but Starlingpaw quickly assured him that they would head straight to camp and that she wasn't hungry. Though she did wish to practice her budding hunting skills, the she-cat was also excited at the possibility to spend time alone with Birchpaw. He was becoming increasingly interesting and kind as she got to know him.
Larkpaw and Russetstorm disappeared into the foliage, but Birchpaw remained in place, staring intently at the spot the kittypet had last been. Starlingpaw guessed he was having the same thought process she had, that being a Clan cat was unmanageable, and living with Twolegs was the only viable option.
Starlingpaw brushed her tail across Birchpaw's nose, startling him out of his concentration, and meowed, "Come on, Birchpaw. Let's get back to camp."
When the two apprentices returned to the DawnClan camp, they were greeted with a cacophony of yowls coming from a large crowd at the tallest tree. Starlingpaw worried that something had gone wrong in their absence and hurried over to investigate, but the crowd was too thick for her to see over. She caught a glimpse of Blizzardstar's snowy white fur from where he was sitting on the ground by the great oak, but that didn't tell her anything important about what had happened.
Grumbling with frustration, she turned to Birchpaw and noticed that he was tall enough to see over the other cats. He stood frozen in place, his pupils thin slits slicing through the icy green of his eyes. Starlingpaw tried to look again, wondering what had evoked such a reaction in her friend, and hopped as high as she could to catch a look at whatever was happening.
The sight she was met with explained Birchpaw's behavior fully, and her gut twisted in pain and sympathy for him.
Ravenpaw sat under the tree beside Blizzardstar as cats came up to nuzzle him in congratulations. Starlingpaw now made sense of what the crowd was crying: "Ravenwing!"
And there was Birchpaw, still an apprentice, as his search brother became a warrior.