//Un//marked

// chapter 18 //

    Sunlight filtered through the bare branches high above, dappling the snowy forest floor. Lightpaw's own dappled pelt moved over it, silent as an owl, one paw carefully in front of the other. Ever since her last stealth session with Flamestrike, she had decided that leafbare was her favourite season. No rustling leaves on the ground or big bushes to push through. Only snow, pristine and cold against her paws.

    The scrawny squirrel did not even squeak when her claws pinned it or when her fangs broke its neck. She pushed aside the temptation to devour it there and then; others needed it more than she did. Lightpaw buried the squirrel and continued her hunt.

    Somewhere nearby, Rainpaw and Beetlepaw did their own hunting. The three apprentices had been delegated by Flamestrike and Dapplefrost, who needed the day off to visit Reedpaw. The she-cats did not complain – it gave them all a chance to practice their skills before the final assessment, which would be announced any day now.

    By the time the sun was nearing the horizon, painting the sky in swaths of fire and plum, Lightpaw had not had any luck. Her front paw ached from the thorn stuck in it, and her rear paw stung from the buried branch she had tripped over, scaring away the bird she'd been stalking.

    "Catch anything?" Rainpaw asked when she caught sight of her.

    Lightpaw nodded. "Just need to retrieve it." Then, through clenched teeth, "I forgot how much thorns hurt."

    "I haven't," Beetlepaw said, joining them. She proudly dropped two mice to the ground. "I constantly have thorns in my side."

    Lightpaw did not dignify her littermate's words with a response. She limped back into the forest to retrieve her squirrel.

    //

    The healer's den was a lot more crowded and loud than usual. The coughing hit Lightpaw first, then the sharp smell of a herb she did not know. Her mouth watered around the squirrel and mice she held in her jaws.

    Reedpaw was nowhere to be found and Lightpaw cursed internally as the thorn in her pad throbbed. She decided to drop the freshkill off, laying one of the mice in Reedpaw's den – his favourite freshkill – and bringing the other two pieces carefully over to the sick lying at the back of the den.

    Minkfur sat with her tail curled around her tiny kit who, every so often, coughed and stirred in his sleep. Her face was worried and her shoulders sagged. She hardly had the energy to thank Lightpaw as the apprentice dropped the other mouse before her. The squirrel she lay before Spiderthorn, who was curled up in a tight ball of black fur. She lingered, looking down at the steady rise and fall of his sides. In his peaceful state he didn't look sick at all.

    "Lightpaw, please move back." Reedpaw's voice startled the she-cat and she jumped back, landing awkwardly on the thorn.

    "Get it out," she cried, clenching her teeth tight against the pain.

    To her surprise, Reedpaw's face almost brightened. Minkfur hissed angrily at the noise, curling her tail tighter around Antkit.

    The healer took a quick glance at Lightpaw's pad. "Oh, it's only a thorn. I'll have it out in no time."

    He disappeared, returning with a branch and some herbs.

    "Bite down on this." Lightpaw dutifully took the stick between her teeth.

    Then, quick as a flash of lightning, the thorn was out and Reedpaw was applying a poultice of herbs on her pad. He wrapped it swiftly in cobwebs, nodding once at his handiwork.

    "Now, I really have to ask you to leave," he said, glancing back at his other patients. "I don't want you getting sick too." If not for his pleading gaze, Lightpaw might have stayed.