Spirit's Journey

CHAPTER 42- Spirit: No Telling

"Do you think she'll come back with reinforcements?" Midnight said quietly by my side.

"Probably not," I mewed, convincing myself that it was, in fact, very unlikely.

"Hopefully..." Aspen meowed allowed, and I shared his doubts but I didn't want my pride to be worried. Even if the mountain cay did come back, she'd be heavily outnumbered.

"Cats are usually solitary, and we're a big group. Plus, she didn't smell like she'd had anyone else's scent on her."

"True," Midnight mewed while jumping up onto a small ledge, flattening herself against the rock carefully so as not to fall.

I grabbed her scruff and set her on a ledge that jutted out more, panting. We were currently going up the side of one mountain, to avoid climbing all the way up to the top. That would probably take like, three days.

"It's so hard and it hurts my paws!" Fallan moaned, and this time Hannah was the one to give a curt reply.

"It hurts everyone's paws."

Well, she wasn't lying there. We weren't made for this environment at all; and often my long legs would scrape up against rocks painfully. In a way, this was worth then crawling through a gorse thicket.

"How long do you think it will take to get through these?" Storm said as he came up behind me. Feeling some type of way but not hostile, I just shrugged.

"No telling," muttered Midnight. I shared her unenthusiastic stance on this, because we could barely see any grass, let alone any that would let us know we were closer to being out of this place.

To my surprise, Storm moved closer to me as we all moved carefully around the side of the mountain, but only for a second. I moved my head away a bit as he tried to whisper into my ear, casting a sidelong glance to show how weird he was being.

"What?"

"I smelled rabbit back there," he said, almost sadly. I turned my head away and looked at the ground, crest-fallen. What a shame we had told the mountain-cat that we were going to avoid hunting until we'd left her territory. No doubt everyone was starting to get hungry.

I looked up at the slowly sinking Great Paw, helping Midnight over a cluster of boulders and then jumping over them myself. As I landed, my paws skidded and one twisted awkwardly to the side. I winced and stopped to stretch it, raising my head again to observe that there was still a few more hours of light left.

"Let's get a move on," I said to everyone, urging them to go faster and shaking the ache out of my paw.

"We need to be out of the cat's territory before The Great Paw goes behind the mountains."

I padded a little faster as someone huffed and Fallan let out a long whine.

No doubt it would be pretty cold tonight; and someone would need to stay awake to guard because who knew what dangers lay out here. That cat would be me, I already knew, and got cold chills from thinking about the long, chilly night ahead of me.

"I'm hungry," complained Diamond, and nobody replied. The sullen silence dragged on as everyone walked, tired, undoubtedly hungry and probably bored out of their minds. I trudged on through aching paws until it hurt to touch my toes back down on the ground, but kept walking still.

"We're near the markers," Midnight meowed from beside me, and I'd forgotten she was there. Her small black figure almost blended in with the shadows of the huge stone rocks, and the Great Spot was hidden behind them.

"Finally," Fallan sighed and sat on her tail as soon as we stepped paw over them. I stepped around her and everyone followed, to my surprise.

"What are we doing? We're outside the territory now," she meowed as if confused.