Caɾղaցe Ɱօօղ ┃ 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐬

18 🌙

🌓 11.7 Moons Old 🌓

The moon was half-full that evening, pale and ivory above a luminescent blanket of waving switchgrass. The two apprentices wondered if anyone was currently at the Moonpool. Maybe a medicine cat from another clan had tried their luck tonight and made it there. What a profound hope that was.

As they pushed their travels quite farther into dusk they discussed the threat of the wolves with Cheetah. She listened patiently and was mostly silent, which Crescentpaw thought was uncharacteristic of her.

The last night before the trio of she-cats reached Clan territory they shared a nest among the roots of a lone elder tree. Before settling, Crescentpaw had caught a wood mouse with just her jaws in the same relative area. They had been feeding on fallen seeds in the gathering evening. Underneath a purple twilit sky, she had snatched one up and thanked the Starclan warriors above.

Wow. I would've thought hunting impossible.

But learning how to do that was initially difficult. She'd first lost a starling by instinctively trying to jump on it with her foreclaws. The second piece of prey, a squirrel feeding on the moonlight-dappled forest floor, had moved too quickly for her to grasp with her teeth. Turning back towards their makeshift den, she had taken a different path and found the exposed mice amongst the scattered leaf-litter.

She'd have to learn to improve it on her own, and tell Tinypaw the tips later. At least she'd found out that she could catch something. (If only mice, and on the third try.)

Crescentpaw knew she would have serious problems for herself if she couldn't hook a fish with her forepaws. Riverclan's main source of prey was trout and carp.

Worry about that later. Just like she'd told Tinypaw to do.

Falling asleep had been easy. Walking across the pastures had taken up most of their day. When she woke the next morning she found her muscles refreshed and exuberant. Her paws had completely stopped hurting over the past three days; and now, even if she ran as hard as she could, the empty sheathes no longer hurt.

As the young she-cats set off again Cheetah began rambling with her profound illusion that all of the Clan cats would love her. That they would have to, because all she simply wanted was to help out and be friends with everybody! It was almost as though she was reassuring herself. And soon enough Tinypaw got tired of hearing it.

"Can you hush? We've only got a bit longer until we get there, and I can't even be excited to see my clan through your rambling!" Agitated, Tinypaw fluffed out her thin black tail.

"Besides, you can't just chatter on so loudly like that! There's prey and wolves out here, you know. And sometimes they attack at daylight instead of pre-dawn. You need to be paying attention to your surroundings. Scenting the air and listening behind you!" She spat.

"Hopefully you'll have a mentor to teach you all of that soon," Crescentpaw tried to help diverge the negative atmosphere.

"That's the least of our worries, Crescentpaw. We can't even climb a tree if the wolves come. Have you really thought this out?" Tinypaw mewed, halting and then swaggering back to her taller sister on small paws.

"You realize that we could be taking Cheetah back to her death as well as our own? This is serious, not a quest to make new friends."

Crescentpaw smiled nervously at her friend over her kin's shoulders. But then Tinypaw shot up and into her eye frame, locking gazes with her. "Don't you see that we could be kicked out the second we walk in? We'll never become warriors if they find out! And walking into camp with a kittypet as well as our missing claws... what we usually catch FISH WITH- is crazy!" She spat, her thin shoulders shaking. "This is all crazy," Tinypaw sighed with frustration and turned away. She rarely took her anger out on others for very long, if at all.