Creamfluff's Hope

*/\* Chapter Eleven */\*

Creampaw woke with a yawn to the sound of Thrushwing's voice outside her den. "Creampaw, I'm showing you around the territory today, remember?" He called. Creampaw responded with a grunt and stood up, stretching a few times before exiting the den. Thrushwing was waiting outside for her, giving her a flick of his ear before padding towards the entrance.

Creampaw looked around the camp to see what everyone was doing. Cloverpetal and Nightmoon were sharing a mouse, Blizzardspots was organizing patrols, and Silverleaf was talking to Butterflykit. Creampaw looked for Softkit. The young tom-kit was sitting in front of the nursery with Creampaw's pinecone in front of him. He looked sad and didn't look back at Creampaw.

"Creampaw!" Thrushwing called from the camp entrance. "Come on!" Creampaw looked over at her mentor and nodded before bounding over to him. He started walking out of the camp and Creampaw followed. "We'll start on the FeatherClan border," he mewed, started to walk to the left of the territory.

"Will we see Moss Rocks and the Mist Falls today?" Creampaw mewed excitedly as she walked beside Thrushwing.

"Maybe not today," he responded, looking ahead as he kept walking. "It's been a few moons since we've had another attack on a border patrol from ShadeClan. We've figured out when to patrol that area of the territory, at sunhigh and moonhigh. It's not sunhigh just yet, and I don't want to risk an attack by heading to Moss Rocks right now."

Creampaw rolled her eyes at this. Thrushwing had started rambling on about the border patrols that had been attacked once. She knew about all of this, even if she didn't remember most of it. As they neared the FeatherClan border, Creampaw noticed that the forest turned into moor at one point.

"This is the FeatherClan border," Thrushwing meowed. "A border patrol will come by later and remark the scents." Creampaw nodded and ran the rest of the way to the border. She stopped running when strange scents filled her nose. She scrunched up her face and moved backwards. Thrushwing purred.

"What's that smell?" Creampaw stuck her tongue out at the border. Her mentor seemed to stifle a purr of amusement at this.

"That's the smell of FeatherClan," he meowed. "No Clan smells the same."

Creampaw looked along the border. There was a tall oak, a rock, a bunch of sunflowers, and other stuff she figured the patrols might mark scents on. She quickly recognized the sunflowers and how they were similar to the one on her head. That was where Aloeheart had picked her flower. She purred when figuring this out.

She was disturbed from staring by a paw prodding her shoulder. It was Thrushwing, of course, trying to tell her something. "Didn't you hear me?" He asked, recieving a shrug from Creampaw. He sighed. "Well, I said that we'd better get moving if you wanted to see the Mist Falls."

Creampaw squeaked in excitment. As she was about to turn around, a few squirrels came rushing down a tree. There were three smaller squirrels, and two bigger squirrels. One of the bigger squirrels looked at Thrushwing before rushing back up a tree. Thrushwing dropped into a crouch when the other four squirrels didn't move.

"Watch closely, Creampaw." Thrushwing whispered as he lowered his head to the ground. Creampaw nodded and watched as he carefully placed his paws forward, aware of leaves or twigs in front of him. The three smaller squirrels huddled together and stared at the bigger squirrel as Thrushwing crept closer. He kept his tail lifted just above the tips of the grass before pouncing on the three small squirrels. They shrieked like a kit in the nursery as Thrushwing swiftly nipped the backs of their necks. The bigger squirrel whipped its head around and quickly disappeared up a tree with a shake of its bushy tail. Creampaw stared at her mentor in awe.