CotS #2: A Brighter Future (currently being rewritten)

Chapter Ten

Raindrop woke just a few seconds before dawn. She got out of her nest and stretched before padding to the apprentice den and gently shaking Blossompaw awake. Her apprentice rolled over sleepily, then saw Raindrop and jumped to her feet, all fatigue and sleepiness gone. Raindrop purred in amusement as Blossompaw beamed at her immediately.

"What are we learning today?" Blossompaw whispered softly, careful not to wake her two littermates who were still sleeping soundly.

"Catching fish. The morning is a great time, they're still half-asleep," Raindrop whispered back, and her bubbly apprentice nodded eagerly.

They went down to the river for Blossompaw to catch some fish. Raindrop showed her how to pull the fish out of the water then slap it on the ground, stunning it before giving it a swift and clean killing bite. Blossompaw practiced it on some leaves, which Mallowclaw had helped her to draw mouths on the previous day. Raindrop dropped them into the water and let Blossompaw fish them out, slap them on the ground and bite their necks.

"They're too tiny!" Blossompaw complained after a while, staring down at the pile of crushed leaves at her paws.

"Some fish are tiny, and fish wriggle," Raindrop meowed. To demonstrate, she leaned over to the water and pulled out a fish. It was slimy and almost fell out of her paw, but Raindrop managed to slap it on a rock and kill it cleanly. Blossompaw's eyes widened in awe.

"I wanna do it!" Raindrop's apprentice bounced up and down eagerly.

Blossompaw had just caught her first fish when her two sisters appeared at the other end of the river, the shallow end, learning how to swim. Streamflow's eyes narrowed when she saw Blossompaw easily catching fish with Raindrop.

"Okay, let's do some swimming now," Raindrop meowed. "It's a race, you have to beat me!"

"That's not fair!" Blossompaw argued.

"I'll swim as slow as possible," Raindrop meowed, "while staying in front of you."

Blossompaw stuck her tongue out and she and Raindrop jumped into the water together. Raindrop grinned and called the countdown before immediately starting to swim. Blossompaw chased after her, looking extremely concentrated and swimming her fastest. They swam loops and Blossompaw was getting faster, making Raindrop need to swim faster and faster. Raindrop could see that her apprentice was tiring, though. Blossompaw didn't have boundless stamina as she did energy. Still, they made it to the last loop. Even Raindrop was tiring by then, her paws aching from constantly swimming. Blossompaw fell further and further behind.

"-ndrop!" Blossompaw cried out before falling into the river. Raindrop rushed to swim over and pull her apprentice out. Just then, Blossompaw kicked off Raindrop and swam to the finish line first.

"Yay, I win!" Blossompaw meowed happily.

"That was cheating," Raindrop grumbled, but she smiled jovially at her apprentice. "Okay, let's hunt some more land prey. We're going to spend the week mastering that, okay?"

"Okay!" Blossompaw meowed eagerly. "Can we learn to catch different types of prey too?"

Raindrop raised her eyebrows. "Would you have mastered hunting if you only know how to catch mice and minnows?"

Blossompaw shook her head at once, still looking as eager as ever.

"Ahem," Waveshine called from the other side of the river.

Raindrop looked over, a questioning expression on her face.

"They're on tick duty today," Waveshine called.