First her mom dies. Things only go downhill from there. Alongside raising her new siblings, Junco must navigate the now dangerous waters of life as a Wanderer. Death and feelings are the worst kind of problems.
Oriole was always very cheerful, and...
Oriole dropped her squirrel into the small pile with the other prey they had caught that morning and grabbed the mouse Estacado had caught. The sun was clearing the tops of the trees and the air was warm.
"You wait here, I'll bring this mouse to Snapdragon and then we can eat."
"I already had Estacado bring a sparrow to her so she should be good."
"Oh! Well let's find a nice place to sit then." She picked the mouse up and stepped over to a flat patch of grass that was bathed in sunlight. The dark gray she-cat padded over and sat down next to her. Junco had brought her squirrel and was beginning to eat it.
The mouse was fat and succulent, clearly it had appreciated new leaf like they had. She looked at Junco, both of them were crouched over their food, pelts almost brushing. Oriole shifted her feet a little closer to Junco, so that their fur was touching, and wound her tail around the other cat's. She thought about how long she had been friends with her and sighed.
As kits, both of them loved to compete to try to find the biggest or most interesting bug.
Whenever both of them spotted an insect at the same time, they would race to get it. Especially in the beginning, Oriole would always get there first. She was bigger than Junco because she had been born about two moons before her.
They were playing this game one day and Junco had found a tarantula. She was probably 3 moons old and didn't know what it was, and Oriole didn't either. While the two kits were marveling over the huge catch, it bit Junco. Her screaming had brought over Snapdragon. The healer could do nothing about the bite besides some minor dressings for the wound. She probably would have died if they hadn't decided to take her to some twolegs.
The twolegs helped her, and even let her go after, but tiny Junco was terrified the whole time, not knowing what was going to happen. It must have been so lonely, and we were so young. Junco had lost a lot of her spunk after that, and their game never happened again. It had seemed like she was getting better but the death of her mother and disappearance of her father only brought her back down.
Despite all this, she felt closer than ever to the solemn she-cat. Junco had never taken her problems out on some other cat, she was still very kind, despite her sadness. She makes me so happy, and I want to get more serious but I worry that she doesn't feel the same. Still...
"Hey, Junco? Can I talk to you about something?"
"Of course," Junco looked up from her squirrel, "What is it?"
"Well," Don't mess this up. "We've been friends for our whole lives,"
"Yeah?"
"So I was thinking," Oriole's pelt grew hot and her heart was pounding, "I really like you and I was wondering if you wanted to—"
"Junco! Oriole!"
"What is it?!" Both cats stood up in alarm as Blizzard ran up to them, clearly in a panic and out of breath.
"Branch is, we found him," Blizzard was out of breath.
"Found him?" Junco's fur fluffed up.
"He wasn't missing!" What happened?!
The white tom gasped, "Static and I were walking by the river and we found, we found his body! In the river! Branch!"
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