The Book of Warriors One-Shots

Wrong

My entry for a couple different writing contests since I don't have time to write three different entries. The Wattpad one is MaccyCheese's. 

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I was wrong.

I was wrong on so many levels. So many bad choices. So many terrible decisions. If I hadn't been so wrong, could this all have gone a different way?

It started when I was an apprentice and they were warriors. New warriors. I watched their ceremony like any apprentice would, eyes wide, picturing myself and my brother up there, a mixture of awe and impatience and jealousy and pride.

I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary then. I remember sitting next to Goldenpaw, her whispering her normal witty, quirky, and usually sarcastic remarks to me, me giggling and trying to cover it up with coughing. Brambleflower, the blissfully ignorant and kind medicine cat apprentice who happened to be sitting near us, offered to go get me some fancy-named leaf for my coughs, but I declined. The whole Clan glared at us, but this was normal. I didn't really care, not back then. Goldenpaw cared, but I didn't know it. The one thing she never shared with me was her true feelings. I usually shared mine with her. She shared some of her feelings with me, but she never told me her deep ones. Her feelings of insecurity and anxiety and how she could never sleep at night and how she hated everyone staring at her. She's the only cat I know who didn't like her warrior and apprentice ceremonies.

She's a warrior now, Goldensky. It's a beautiful name. I told her so, but she just turned away. At that point we were in our long, long fights that marked the beginning of my perilous future up ahead. She was my first friend, my only true friend, or so I thought. But at some point, she stopped being true to me.

It started late during our apprenticeship, when she started seeing a tom from another Clan. WindClan, to be exact. To this day I have no idea what she ever saw in him. I've met him a couple times at Gatherings. We were apprentices at the same time, so when all the apprentices gathered to talk and compete and brag and complain about chores, I met him. His name is Silverstorm. Sunfire found that sadly, ironically funny, when the whole Clan found out. Golden and Silver. Sky and Storm. Maybe they really were meant for each other. She was joking, but Foxstrike, their father, slashed her shoulder. It wasn't that deep of a cut. He was angry and couldn't take it all. He always had a temper, but that night was the worst I've ever seen him.

I tell myself Goldensky doesn't matter anymore. She has problems and depressions of her own. She was punished after the incident with the WindClan tom. Icestar put her on apprentice duties for two moons and forbade her from going on WindClan border or battle patrols, which must have been humiliating for a new warrior, especially with her anxiety about how everyone sees her. She was punished even more by how Foxstrike avoided her, how her mother, Dawnbreeze, is disappointed in her, how her sister Sunflame is so much more distant. How the Clan treats her nowadays. She's mostly been forgiven. It's been moons. But nobody wants her for a WindClan border patrol, and if she goes to Gatherings everybody freaks out if she talks to someone from WindClan.

I was never really affected by it in that way. My hurt ran as deep as Foxstrike's, but I handled it better. I moved on. The next couple moons were rough. My brother never wanted to be friends with me, and that didn't change after Goldensky betrayed me. She was my first friend, my first crush, and that one always hurts the most.

But then I found them.

Their names are Lilyfeather and Jaysong. They're sisters. They're not as close as Sunflame and Goldensky once were, but they're close enough. They're friends, which is more than my brother and I can say. Lilyfeather is beautiful, petite, charming. She's graceful and skilled and everything a stereotypical she-cat is. She's the one everyone falls for. Including me.