New Dawn: Dark Sky

Chapter 24

Act 5 - Greetings from A Warrior Long Gone

Dragonfang slid into their small den later that night, feeling refreshed after meeting up with Clearink. The moments they spent together under the stars still were fresh in his mind. The way they had stared up at the night sky then at each other, the way they leaned against each other and basked in each other's warm fur. It was so good to be back, although the circumstances weren't just right.

As he stumbled back in from meeting her, he felt something scrape against his hind leg. He looked back to see a thin root sticking through the tunnel wall, and it had made a small but very visible slit in his leg.

I'll wash it later.

When he strode into the main cave, he could see his sisters pelt rising and falling, facing the wall, in her own cave, albeit she was hard to see, with her being as brown as the dirt itself. She must've caught a whiff of him, since she flipped onto her other side and looked at him with drowsy amber eyes.

"I... ran into a root." He explained awkwardly. "Sounds like fun." Silkpelt joked, laying her head back down next to a few small mouse bones. Must've been her last meal.

Strangely, Silkpelt's mate Dawnflight was nowhere to be seen, smelt or heard. A decently stale stench of her hung in the air, so Dragonfang figured she left earlier in the night. He voiced his concern. "Where'd Dawnflight go?". Silkpelt raised her head yet again and meowed "Gone to track over the scent marks you left today. Left a few minutes before you came in.". Dragonfang responded with an understanding grunt.

Somehow he knew, as he settled in his own section of the cave, he wouldn't be able to sleep. There was too much on his mind; things to do with Clearink, things to do with the Clans, the Deep Woods, so on and so forth. He sighed loudly, causing Silkpelt to groan and saunter over to him, sitting down. As she took a deep inhale Dragonfang hoped desperately that the fix dung he rolled in earlier was enough to mask Clearink's distinct smell of herbs. Thankfully she didn't say anything, just wrinkled her nose and gagged a little.

All was silent for a few heartbeats, only the crickets' constant lullaby of chirps could be heard, but suddenly among those chirps came the thundering of pawsteps above the set. Dragonfang and Silkpelt both stood to attention and as they left Dragonfang's small cave Dawnflight burst through the entrance.
]"Silkpelt! Dragonfang! Come quickly! The Deep Woods are attacking BirchClan!" A small vision of Ratwhisker and Deerleap flashed in Dragonfang's mind before he swiftly shouldered past her and out into the open. Once out he bolted in the direction of the river, that was the territory marker between BirchClan and ForestClan. If he crossed that, he could make his way to their camp.

Thunder snapped overhead and rain began to lash down on the ground. Since he was bolting blindly through a dark forest, not paying attention to any attention other than scent, Dragonfang wasn't even aware that Dawnflight had lapped him, or that Silkpelt was hot on his tail. The silver she-cat yowled to him "Slow down! You're being reckless!" In truth Dragonfang didn't want to slow down, since his brain was whirling with horrible things that could be happening to his best friends, but he did.