The Medicine Cat Code

Chapter Nineteen

⌁ Written by Rio! ⌁

Heatherfeather let out a grunt as she padded up to the RiverClan border, considering the strong fishy scent that lingered that. The memory of Troutpaw's insanity at the previous Gathering was enough to make her take a few steps away. She took a second to let her gaze settle over the marsh area. Are there. . . are there cats hiding in that bush? Heatherfeather squinted at it, moving closer and ignoring the piscine* smell.

Ripplestripe was on the other side of the border, flirting with a WindClan tom. The gray she-cat took a few steps closer to them, anger glowing in her amber eyes.

"Sandyfur!" Heatherfeather gasped, spotting one of the many toms she was in a flirtationship** with. "How—how could you cheat on me?"

The pale brown tom stepped out from behind the bush, with Ripplestripe trailing behind him. "Well, ya see," he began. "Cheatin', at least in this case, is a two way street. You were flirtin' with all those otha toms before me, and I thought you'd be decent enough to stop, but ya' kept on flirtin' with all 'dem toms in da Clan. And I was hurt, deep in ma' soul, so I stopped seeing ya' and found this youngin' from RiverClan."

Heatherfeather's eyes lit with disbelief. "Really? Ripplestripe is at least _twice_ my age, and probably twice my age too! And stop talking like that—you're not a street cat."

"Don't tell my precious snugglebug that he's a street cat," Ripplestripe purred, weaving her tail into Sandyfur's. "His accent is adorable."

Heatherfeather snorted. "Oh please," she remarked. "I've been his Clanmate for twenty moons, and he's never talked like that in his life."

Ripplestripe let out a gasp. "You're older than twenty moons‽" she asked in disbelief.

"You're older than thirty," objected Sandyfur, not addressing her point directly. His ears were folded against his skull, and his 'adorable' accent had completely disappeared. Heatherfeather sat back with a smirk, ready to watch the drama unfold.

"Well you lied to me! I never told you my age, so it's not like I'm untruthful," Ripplestripe hissed, unsheathing her claws.

Sandyfur looked her up and down with a skeptical look in his green eyes, letting silence hang over the pair of arguing cats. "Do you really want to try to beat me in a fight?" he asked carefully, sounding more apologetic than frustrated now.

"Yes," Ripplestripe meowed, launching her anything-but-lithe body at the WindClan warrior. He easily batted her out of the air with unsheathed claws, watching her with an amused expression. The RiverClan she-cat charged again, but this time she attacked Heatherfeather.

Ripplestripe's claw was mere whisker-lengths away from her throat as Heatherfeather struggled beneath the larger she-cat. But before the RiverClan cat could continue with the murder, a lithe tom burst between them. Dazed from the attack, Ripplestripe tumbled off of the WindClan cat, rolling to the side. 

Heatherfeather was breathing heavily, her mind going to into a slight phase of shock. The tom hovered over her, anxiety gleaming in his blue eyes. "Salmon—Salmonflop?" the medicine cat meowed in disbelief, and then her vision when black.

*Not the French word; the one that means 'relating to fish'

**Relationship based on flirting only.