way of the wolf ☾ // warrior cats

five - an attachment

     For the next few days, his attention was thoroughly divided. First came the wolf in all its haggard glory. Its jagged muzzle startled him from dreams more than once, but it haunted him at a distance rather than in the flesh, as if two encounters in one day was enough for a lifetime. Really, just one meeting ought to have been plenty, and Drift could feel his bones rattle when the wolves cried to the moon late at night. He felt called.

     It made him feel reckless, this call. It didn't belong to him, and by his ancestors, it should have repelled him, should have sent him running for fear of his life. But it didn't, not anymore. Truth be told, it couldn't.

     Curiosity made a fine shield up until it shattered, and Drift found himself determined to make the most of it. On a whim, a sly impulse, he began to seek out the dusk and night shifts on purpose. He volunteered for them when Poolteller struggled to cobble together a fair schedule with so few hollow-guards, and when she failed to do that, he traded shifts behind her back, relieving his fellows of the worst of their duties.

     Hawk Passing Over Stream was the first to catch on, when Drift offered to pick up her night shift for the third time. "Do you have a death wish?" she asked.

     "Hardly," he answered, telling the truth. He wasn't after another tragedy; the Tribe had seen enough for nine lifetimes over at this rate. Answers, on the other hand, had been lacking for far too long, and clearly the Tribe of Endless Hunting had no intentions to share the truth of things with their beleaguered descendants.

     So Drift made it his mission to seek the answers himself, even if it meant his denmates calling him moonstruck. Someone had to find the wolf again, and someone had to learn why after generations of peace, it was so thirsty for Tribe blood. Drift would be that someone. He would find the wolf before it found him, and then he would understand. At least, that was what he hoped, but the corner of his mind that guarded his fear until he would need it again insisted that he was rushing.

     What if it's an entire pack? it asked him every evening. What if it's not the wolf? But it had to be that ragged beast, and Drift swore he would make it tremble in its awful red pelt once he finally caught up with it.

     There was, however, one obstacle, and she had been named Print of Wolf in Sand.

     To everyone's relief, especially Flight's, the kit had shaken off the shock of her ordeal in the woods and adapted to life in the Tribe nursery with impressive ease. Some cats still regarded her with disquiet in their eyes, wary of the history she refused to share and of the name she carried.

     When Print hadn't given her name, Flight had taken it upon herself to give her one befitting a Tribe-born kit. Traditionally, Print should have been named after the first thing her mother saw after her birth, but without that information, Flight had thought back to the first thing she'd seen after spying Print huddled in the rosemary, and that was that.

     Dawn had respected the choice and agreed to nurse Print alongside her own son, but the hollow-guards were particularly nervous. Print's name had been selected in the traditional spirit, but a fair share of cats thought it an ill omen, naming an innocent kit after the very beast that was set on picking the Tribe's bones clean.

     Print's salvation lay in her innate cheer. Perhaps a little too old to be around the other kits, she attached herself to Drift and Flight, whoever was available at the time, and she asked questions constantly. Truly, it was a wonder when she stopped to breathe, and her enthusiasm for Tribe life was infectious. Print made every effort to integrate herself, unafraid of mistakes and always willing to try again. She joined the to-bes in sprucing up the elders' den with new moss, and made it her personal duty to greet hunting parties as they returned, carrying prey to the fresh-kill pile whenever they allowed her to.

     She learned about the Tribe of Soaring Oaks every moment of every day, but it was only a matter of time before she learned that life in the Tribe was not as idyllic as it had been during her short stay.

     Drift was with her when it happened. Once again, her eager nature had charmed him into surrendering a shift meant for pursuing the wolf; breaking a promise to play moss-ball before bed was a cardinal sin, after all. So he let Peak prepare to face the coming night, while Print swatted at the moss, eyes gleaming with the instinct of a young hunter in the making.

     Tucked against the nursery, neither one of them realized anything was wrong at first. The camp's entrance was curled behind the edge of the hollow-guards' den, just out of sight, especially with the bramble fringes of the nursery further blocking the way. Mourning wails, though, could be heard from any corner of the camp, and the instant they went up, Print dropped the moss ball and pinned her ears flat against her head. "Drift, what's happening?" she asked.

     Drift looked toward the camp center, where cats began to gather. He knew what his Tribemates' cries meant, but he didn't want to believe it, not until he saw it. "Go to Dawn," he muttered, sweeping her behind him with his tail. Instead of going into the nursery, though, she peered out from around him.

     When she gasped, Drift knew she needed to know about the wolf, about what it could do and what it had done. He also knew he didn't want her to get too close to the body. Not now. Not yet.

     Before Print could witness anything more, Drift took her scruff in his jaws and brought her to Dawn, who had already pulled her son close. She gave Drift a look loaded with fearful questions, but he had nothing to offer her. Instead, he spun around and hurried out to join the throng.

     One of the last to arrive, he couldn't see through the heavy press of fur, and the cloying scent of death nearly choked him. Even the cats closest to him seemed to lose their individual scents with the thick stench of blood washing over everything.

     Eventually, there was a break in the crowd, and Drift slipped into it, only to find his heart lodged firmly in his throat. There was black fur ahead of him, slicked back with too much blood, far too much. "Peak," he breathed, voice splintering. Except she threw her head back in a yowl that split the sky, revealing Shrew Hiding in Holly Bush just beside her, massacred beyond recognition.

     Revulsion rose in his throat, bitter and scorching. How easily he had forgotten what the wolf could take from the Tribe after it had spared him twice. Shrew's death suddenly appeared to be a price rather than happenstance, especially because he was a prey-hunter. He was supposed to be safe from a senseless death.

     The faintest movement between Drift's forelegs drew his attention, and his stomach twisted as Print, trembling and speechless, stared at Shrew's body. Somehow, she had escaped Dawn's protection, only to learn the worst of the world was a part of her home.

     For the second time, Drift carried her away to the nursery. He was no more able to continue looking on than Print was, not when he was short of breath and caught between rage and shame.

     The wolf had left its mark again, this time on someone was who never meant to be marked in such a way, and Drift was certain he would go mad if he didn't do something, really do something. No more sitting at his post all night, waiting for a sign of the wolf worth following. Maybe, he thought, if he had put more effort into finding the wolf before it came to this, maybe Shrew would not have met such a gruesome end. Maybe this was his fault.

     "It won't happen again," he told Print when she clung to his leg at the nursery entrance. "The wolf will never touch us again."

     "How do you know?" she whimpered, her amber eyes flitting back to Peak when another cry rang out.

     "I just do."

     He left out that he was willing to die trying to prove it.