Warriors: What Is There To Do?

Chapter 2- Wait, No, Just Keep Them Closed

Glowstar led Rainkit to a cave. It was smallish, but it only had to hold her and her mate, whoever that was. It was also really dusty. How did this cat sleep at night with all of the little motes floating everywhere? Rainkit would never know.

The leader settled down, so she copied her and sat back, licking her chest fur. She was alone with the leader of Riverclan! She wondered what they were going to talk about. Maybe what her warrior name would be? That would be so cool!

"Now, Rainkit, it's about your name..." Glowstar started. She knew it! She was going to be Rainflash, or maybe Rainstrike! There were so many choices... maybe she would be named Rainsoul after her father or Rainheart after her mother!

"Now, your mother thinks you need a... a different name."

Wait, what?

She was Rainkit, what did Glowstar mean, different name?!

"I just thought you should know before I announce it to the clan... from now on you will be known as Splitkit."

"Because of my ugly face?" she deadpanned. Rainkit felt... dirty. Maybe she didn't deserve the name Rainkit.

Glowstar looked startled, but said nothing to deny it. She instead got up and walked out, calling the clan to a meeting. Rain-Splitkit didn't get up, though, but just sat there. She was a freak. She was an abomination. Her face... she was two different cats.

After another moment of these thoughts, she sank to the dusty floor. Why had Starclan made her like this? What had she done to deserve this?

"...from now on will be known as Splitkit." Glowstar's voice drifted into the cave, and Splitkit flinched. Why, oh why, did she look like this...?

No cat looked at her as she padded towards the nursery, but she looked at each of them, begging them to just glance at her. She didn't even care anymore, if she was pitied, flinched at... she just wanted cats to acknowledge her, not pretend she wasn't there!

Sadly, that is all that happened for five moons. She would look at cats; Glowstar, Iceheart, Skyheart, Strongsoul... nobody looked at her. She had to grab her own food, sleep in her own nest; Skyheart having already gone back to the Warriors den.

Splitkit had often heard her father speak about her to his friends with hushed tones, the scowls from the elders.

"Back in my day," one of the elders, Flowerwilt, had hissed to Skyheart one day, "we would've given her to the rouges or the kittypets. She doesn't look like a clan cat any more than a mouse does!"

Splitkit felt disgusted, exactly as she had for the past five moons. She felt like she was barely even a cat, more like an insect, or a burr on some one's pelt.

"That's actually not a bad idea," one of her mother's friends, Dawnlight, had whispered, glancing over to the nursery, unaware that Splitkit was listening and watching through a crack in the reeds.

"What do you mean, Dawnlight? You think we should give her up to the kittypets?"

"Well... yeah. It's not like anyone will want to take her on as an apprentice... what do you think about it, Skyheart?"

Her heart felt sore when her mother nodded her head, actually thinking about it!

"I'll go talk to Glowstar about it, now."

No! Splitkit didn't want to be a kittypet! She wanted to be a warrior! She wanted to be big and strong, to get to the point where cats respected her, even if she did look the way she did.

After her meal, Splitkit couldn't help but be stunned by what she had heard. No way would Strongsoul be okay with this... would he...? She honestly didn't know. She didn't know him well enough. She only knew enough from when she had listened from the reeds of the nursery, too ashamed to walk out into the clearing except to go to the dirtplace and to grab her food.

"May all cats old enough to catch their own prey gather underneath the overhang for a clan meeting!" Glowstar's yowl rang throughout the clearing... this couldn't be about her, could it? The leader wouldn't have agreed to her becoming a kittypet so easily... surely she would've sat on it for a while, or taken into consideration how Splitkit felt about it?

Again, she just watched from the cracks in the reeds. The whole clan was gathered around the little path that hung a couple of tail-lengths over the rest of the clearing, something she overheard being called... erosion? Something like that.

"I am calling you here today to discuss Splitkit's fate. Skyheart had stated that she wishes for us to give her to the kittypets."

There were a lot of murmurs. Not all happy sounding, but there were no disruptions saying that Splitkit was a cat just like them and her opinion mattered. No, none of that.

"I was thinking, however, that we take her to the gathering, which commences tomorrow night, and offer her up to the other clans. Maybe we could trade her for land or food."

"But we don't need food," one cat, Iceheart, she thought, protested.

"Maybe not, but what would you rather have, Splitkit stay here? Are you willing to mentor her?"

Splitkit begged him, begged Starclan, prayed, and did everything, just to have Iceheart say yes, that he would mentor her if she was allowed to stay in Riverclan. That she wouldn't be like herbs, traded for something in return.

Iceheart sat down from his standing position and said nothing, bowing his head down.

"Then it is settled. Tomorrow night, we will bring her to the gathering to be traded for land..."

And like that, Splitkit's fate was sealed. She would not be a Riverclan cat, would not grow up knowing her mother and father, to become leader or a queen. She might even become a kittypet, because who was she kidding? If all of Riverclan didn't want her, why would any other clan?

Now for the first time, she wished she had never opened her eyes.