Warriors: The Beginning

Chapter 11

Night lay upon the forest. There was nothing but the soft shine of the half-moon floating in the sky, shedding its frosty glitter over the trees. The air was heavy with the scents of leaf-fall while the wind sighed softly through the trees and ruffled their leaves.

"We're going to the Sparkling Cavern," Ambereye meowed to her apprentice. "It's the home of special flowers that are called Glints. Glints only bloom during each half-moon, so you can't eat them at other times. If you eat them but don't visit StarClan or fall asleep immediately beside the Glint plant, you will get an incurable bellyache that lasts for one and a half moons."

Yinpaw gasped, slightly unbelieving of her mentor."Really? Has any cat ever done that before?" She looked at her mentor with a big, round, dull green eye.

"Only one, and she died of greencough. But the bellyache was so bad that it disabled her movements, and she caught greencough after coming back to camp. I was an apprentice then," the medicine cat informed her black and white apprentice.

"That's... Terrifying," Yinpaw commented, shivering at the thought. "I'll never do that." Ambereye nodded.

"I'll see that you don't," she replied.

They continued padding on, their soft paws stepping on the low, dry grass. The half-moon glittered assuringly over their heads.

"How much more do we have to travel?" Yinpaw asked out of curiosity. 

"Quite a while more," Ambereye replied. "Are you tired already? I'm sure you ate the travelling herbs. You did, didn't you?"

Yinpaw nodded. "Of course," she meowed.

After a while, they came across a dark hole in the side of a tall mountain. Yinpaw looked at her mentor expectantly to explain to her what the cave had in store for them.

Ambereye started, "This is the mouth of the cave. Albeit it's rather dark inside, it leads to a cave that's the Sparkling Cavern. The Glints grow in there. Come on; I'll show you." The medicine cat finished, then turned around and stalked into the dark. Yinpaw followed her, using her scent as her sole guide.

It turned out that what Ambereye said about it being dark in the tunnel leading to the Sparkling Cavern wasn't a lie; the darkness was so thick that Yinpaw could almost touch it, and it was the kind of blackness that your eyes could never adjust to. She almost lost track of where she was, but scented Ambereye a few pawsteps in front of her.

"Hurry, I can see the Glints," Ambereye said quietly, but her voice still pierced through the silence like a claw. When she spoke, Yinpaw felt a shiver sent down her spine like an icy claw. She padded after her mentor briskly.

In a heartbeat, the two cats were in a large, airy cavern with an amber hue. They continued walking forward, and Yinpaw stared at the hanging stalactites that seemed to be loosely attached to the ceiling by very thin, web-like threads. They also were glittering, and looked translucent by the way they reflected the glow of the Glints.

The Glints, as Yinpaw saw for the very first time, were a translucent pink flower rimmed with white. It had a tiny, white center with eight points that ended in a small, pale yellow seed-like shape. The long, elegant leaves of the Glint plant were pale light grey, and the whole plant was covered in sparkles that blinked like the stars of StarClan in the night sky.

The Glint plants weren't the only thing in the cavern-surrounding the Glint plants in a vee was a shallow trench of water, only several mouse-tails deep. Yinpaw faced Ambereye, waiting for her instructions.

"Have a flower," Ambereye instructed, using her tail to touch one of the pink flowers. The sparkles flitted down to the cavern floor and disappeared. Yinpaw stared at the flowers in awe and somewhat fear. They seemed harmless, but...