Echoes Off The Wall - Warriors.

Chapter Twelve

Skyhawk sighed. 'Don't get angry, don't get angry ... Honeypaw was just being genuinely curious ... I hope.' he thought, before shaking some snow and ice off of his whiskers. He sunk the claws of his front paws into the ground, and then approached the herb storage, looking through it and wondering if there was any herbs that he may as well need to stock up on. It was barely noon yet, so he'd have plenty of time to gather up some herbs for the Clan ... as he looked through it, he noticed that he was about out of cobwebs, which was strange considering that MapleClan almost always had cobwebs in stock.

He also noticed that he was almost out of burdock root as well as daisy leaves, and the juniper berries - almost all of them were missing from the herb storage. Strange. And most of those herbs would be hard to find in the leafbare, which was bad. Skyhawk walked back outside of the den with those herbs memorized into his brain. He'd have to look extra hard for those herbs today, considering that it was leafbare, and leafbare usually didn't welcome any herbs. So he'd have to stock up quickly before they all died or rotted.

Skyhawk was extra careful not to step on Toadleap's bloodstain at the entrance of the den. Instead he quietly walked around it, really wanting to avoid that terrible thing for now. He'd have to keep reminding himself to get a warrior later and tell them to clean it up, because he really didn't want to have to do it himself ... too much memories. And he knew for a fact that Loststar wouldn't be wanting to do it, either. If it wasn't for Toadleap being so kind to Loststar, MapleClan probably wouldn't be the way it is now, and the toms would still be disrespectful and cruel to their she-cats. Which, if you asked Skyhawk, would be quite a terrible way to live, really.

Skyhawk walked out of camp, brushing past Cherrypaw's shoulder on the way out. She had whirled around on her front paws and glared at him a bit, then slinked away into the apprentice's den. Skyhawk could tell this much just by watching her with his peripheral vision. He continued walking outside of the camp until he reached the forest that was surrounding it. He was on the far south side of the territory now, so the waterfall wasn't near. He was looking for burdock root at the moment, so he needed to be in a dry area. He pawed up some snow from the very bottom of a tree trunk. Then he started digging into the ground with his claws until he reached the roots, and then he sunk his claws under those and dug them up as well. While he was there, he also picked a few cobwebs off of some neighboring trees. The cobwebs looked quite beautiful, with snow and ice hanging onto them. Though he gently, gently nudged the frost off of the cobwebs.

There were very few cobwebs at this time, so Skyhawk continued looking for them. After awhile, he decided that he had found all that he would need, everything that he had gone out to search for, so he decided that he should return to camp already, before they became worried about him. After all, a lot of weird occurrence's have been happening lately. And not just in MapleClan, either. For if Skyhawk could recall correctly, all of the Clans have been dealing to something similar to their situation. All except MeadowClan, that is.

And that lead Skyhawk to wondering if all of this just so happened to be MeadowClan's fault ... if Toadleap's death was their fault. Then again, Toadleap had died on the day of the battle between MapleClan and CloudClan, so it must be a CloudClanner that had killed him to begin with ... right? You could never be too sure.

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The next few days breezed by. Skyhawk had to deal with a few sickness', but it was mostly just a few colds that were very easy to take care of. Then, a few of the kits began developing coughs. Skyhawk had tended to them just a little bit, since they only had kitcough at the time, and it was easy to treat. But soon enough, the kits' coughs grew into whitecough, and it spread onto the other kits ... so five or six kits had whitecough, and a few even had greencough, which he usually treated those kits first. The Queens had to practically evacuate the nursery unless their kits hadn't been weaned yet, and still had to suckle. The Queens, of course, were willing to make a sacrifice of gaining greencough - a very deadly, dangerous disease - by feeding their younger kits the milk that they need to suckle if they are to make it through the day ...