The Medicine Cat Code

Chapter Seven

Troutpaw was toiling in the medicine cat den. His mind was raw from sorting herbs for five days straight and the young tom was blinded by attraction. "Maybe catmint can cure my aching heart!" he exclaimed, just as his mentor, Ripplestripe trotted in. Her fur was long and flowing, framing her face and body in the most perfect way.

"Well, darling, catmint can cure anything," she purred. Her long, wispy tail batted Troutpaw on the nose. He shivered at the touch and his entire body shook with emotion.

Finally, he could not contain it any longer. The sheer magnitude of the fact that they were both medicine cats was enough to make them fall in love. "Ripplestripe, here we are, in a fanfiction. We're both medicine cats. This was bound to happen!" Ripplestripe smiled with understanding. Troutpaw's eyes filled with tears. "I know we're not in rival clans, so this isn't as typical, but-but...I love you." He blurted. "I want you to be my mate."

Ripplestripe stared him down. "I love you too, Troutpaw. I would be honored to be your mate and break our loose code with you." She shuffled her paws and batted her eyelashes. Troutpaw was drooling. "I've loved you ever since you were only six moons old and you became my apprentice. I'll never forget how your kit-soft fur shone in the moonlight on the evening of the ceremony. I am not a pedophile, I swear. I only love you!" Ripplestripe now had her turn to expel her emotions.

"We're like that Firepaw guy and his lover, Spottedleaf!" yelled Troutpaw, because cats can totally yell. "They had a huge age gap, and no one cared!" Ripplestripe purred in agreement and happiness. She sure did enjoy purring.

"So, I guess I'm your catmint. I've cured your aching heart?" Troutpaw melted at her pun-metaphor-simile thing.

"Of course, sweetheart," he murmured.

⚘⚘⚘

Brightpaw was confused.

It wasn't like her normal confused, the one where she literally had no idea what was going on because she was a ditsy medicine cat. It was the one where she didn't know why every tom she loved was dying. Sure, it was a normal medicine cat occurrence, but why was it happening to her? Brightpaw was hardly a medicine cat in the eyes of others. At this time, Brightpaw did not know it, but she was part of a prophecy.

So, the unknowing she-cat strolled the WindClan border, searching for some sweet honey. Not the medicinal type. "I just want a mate that won't die!" she wailed. No toms answered her call, as they were afraid of the inevitable downfall that came with dating a medicine cat. "I'm feeling . . . prophetically . . . sleepy . . ." Brightpaw said, as a fog came over her mind and put her in a deep sleep.

The land was dark, grotesque, hung with dead foliage and smog clouds. A cat shrouded in shadows stalked towards the dreaming medicine cat apprentice. "Listen, kit, this was going to happen sometime or another. I'm here to give you a somewhat earth-shattering prophecy that seems important but really isn't. Hey, it's better than a vision, those have absolutely no meaning.

"What?" Brightpaw said, confused again.

"You will fall into the wind and the trout will lay with the frog and won't ripple anymore. How's that?" The shadowy cat shuffled its paws.

Brightpaw, as any good medicine cat, didn't understand. "I wonder what that means . . ." she murmured, before waking delicately to the WindClan border.

The medicine cat apprentice began the trek home from the border, which had become second nature. She was deep in her own thoughts as a cat lay, screaming, on the ground. He was obviously in pain. "You're a medicine cat, right?" the tom panted. Brightpaw said nothing, and kept on walking. "I need your help! I'm hurt!" He yelled. "Isn't it part of your code that you have to help all hurt cats?"

Brightpaw let him suffer and only vaguely heard him, so was her reply: "Our code hardly exists!"

The she-cat was in the deepest thought she had ever been engaged in. "Who's frog? And wind? Maybe there'll be a tornado or something I'll die in." Prophecies are ever so hard, aren't they? After this difficult pondering, she pushed through the vines of the ThunderClan medicine cat den. Her mentor lay there, looking quite lazy with a satisfied look on her face.

"Are you okay, Coldleaf?" Brightpaw exclaimed. Coldleaf had a look of absolute calm on his face as he gazed into Brightpaw's eyes. "I have something to tell you." The older medicine cat said gleefully.

Muahaha! Enjoy the cliffhanger. -fire