The Return (#1)

Prologue

A she-cat's body lay in the middle of a small clearing, blood pooling from deep wounds in her stomach and chest. She tried to yowl out a feeble cry for help, but her breath bubbled inside of her, making the she-cat choke on her unspoken words.

Leaves flew past, as if fleeting from a murder. Her blood continued to pour over the cracked dirt, soaking in and staining it a deep red. A sharp wind stung her wounds, making her gasp with a throbbing pain that seeped through her. She believed she would be dead in a few minutes, her dark gray fur thick with blood, her eyes clouded.

"Treepad," mewed a soft voice. With as much strength as she could muster, the she-cat turned to look at the slender body above her. A she-cat leaned over her. The brown tabby's eyes glistened with pain, but there was a small hint of triumph that she could see hiding behind her sadness.

"Squirrel...." The dying she-cat tried to rasp, but instead broke into a fit of scratchy coughing. She could taste blood in her mouth, and knew her time was almost over. StarClan would be waiting; but she must first use her last breath for her daughter. "Squirrelpaw," she mewed hoarsely, "this was my destiny. I accept what has happened here, and I-"

"No!" Squirrelpaw yowled, her eyes feeling heavy with emotion. "You can't just go..." The young apprentice's eyes widened and her fur looked ruffled, as if a badger had trampled her.

"I must," Treepad mewed quietly, slowly and unsteadily stroking Squirrelpaw's flank with her shivering tail. "I'm so proud of you, Squirrelpaw, and your brothers. You are all so brave."

"You're brave, too!" she insisted, nudging her mother's head with her muzzle. "Don't give up!" Her ears flattened back on her head, and with her teeth bared like she was fighting an enemy, she continued. "You are strong!"

"So are you," she mewed, her eyes warm on her kit's face. "Now you must be strong without me." Her breath was coming in gasps now, making it harder and harder for speech. "Know that I love Mudpelt, and my clan."

"You were loyal to them till the end," she whispered. A light breeze ruffled the grass as her mother let out a final satisfied breath, her head falling to earth. Her eyes clouded over with black death, and Squirrelpaw choked out a small, "Don't give up..." ending it with a loud sob. She buried her head into her mother's bloody neck fur, shaking as the warmth faded from Treepad's body.

Paws pounded on the hard forest floor, making the ground rumble with the impact. Leaves bounced up and floated down to the dirt again before repeating the process once more. Distressed mews came from the patrol as they fled through the trees, shrieking for somecat.

"We must find her!" Yowled a dark tabby tom, whose eyes flicked from tree to tree anxiously. He turned around to face his clanmates as they stopped. His paws nervously churned up dirt from the earth, filling his claws with the brown muck.

"Hush, Mudpelt," a nimble silver she-cat mewed. "We'll find her; she's probably just caught in a bramble patch." Her tail flicked in four directions, signaling for the cats to split up. She dipped her head slightly before bounding off.

She leaped over fallen trees, under trailing ferns, and through small tunnels. Her muscles flexed under her pelt as she crushed plants under her step, flattening them to the ground. She was breathing heavily as she finally came to a small clearing, where she laid down to catch her breath. As she gazed around, she spotted a bloody clump of brown and gray fur.

"No," she murmured as she trotted over to the limp figure. Once she stopped beside it she was almost overwhelmed by the rotten stench of death, and her pads had blood on them from stepping too close. She backed up slightly, crushing a baby fern in it's reach for sunlight, and hung her head. She let out a long, loud, sorrowful wail as the other cats in the patrol slunk into the clearing.