sage | a warrior cats fanfiction

chapter forty eight

The days following were interesting.

As days went by, he found that cats were willing to talk to him, and some even were willing to help him. Some offered prey whereas others just stopped by when they were able to and tried to hold a conversation. That never worked because he'd always just sit there, and he would worry about what he was to say, and they would end up leaving, and he'd be alone again.

But he supposed that the thought was nice. It was nice of them to try harder to get to know him — particularly, Nova, who he found often dropped by to talk to him about the different rogues in the group. The slim and beautiful silver she-cat was named Aurelian, and she had been one of the ones to kill Cougarstar.

Milo was the tom with the sooty fur, and Dandelion was the sandy-pelted she-cat. The large white tom with large and patchy leopard markings was Nimbus, and he was Nova's sister. That hadn't been too much of a surprise to him. They looked pretty similar, at least Adderheart thought so.

August was the slim ginger tabby, Maya was creamy with off-white patches and Wasari's trainer, Lyra was the she-cat with the ivory-gray pelt alongside darker tabby stripes — she trained Salem. And of course, despite all the other cats, Nova had given him quite the description of Faevyli and Emesan.

There was nothing inherently wrong with either of them. They were polite, respected cats and had strong opinions. Faevyli, particularly, had trained Emesan never to step down and never to be repressed; Nova supposed this was because Faevyli's sister was a Clan cat.

"Juniperflight or something," she had said nonchalantly. Yet immediately, Adderheart's skull had lifted as he peered over to her. "Do you know that name?" Of course, that had been the follow-up.

"She— she was my mentor," he explained, "and died at a fight near the border."

"Really? She didn't die from that, as far as I was aware," Nova commented, a frown twisting itself across her features. "She had been pregnant with a third litter, and we think it was with some tom named Fox. He wasn't really associated with our group but everyone thought he was, so Juniperflight went out to go and attack him."

Confusion had so quickly risen that Adderheart had nearly missed the words she had said afterward.

"She found him and he'd been upset that she didn't have any of their kits. She went to attack him, yet he killed her first and managed to kill her entire litter, too. We think she had two others with him and kept getting pulled back because he was like Cougarstar."

"Marigoldcry, Fluffyflame, Dustshade, and Streamfang," he mewed in a quieter tone, "those were her— other litters. As far... as far as I know. Juniperflight was my mentor."

So that day he had learned something he'd believed for so long was a lie, and such was now common. It seemed as though the group harbored all sorts of secrets that were hard to see from the perspective of a SageClanner, and Nova was willing to share a lot of them with him.

Nesro, a broad-shouldered and long-limbed dark brown tom with white spiraling marks, was the father of a litter in SageClan. The rogue considered himself more of a fluid loner, Nova had explained, in that he thought he could come and go whenever he wanted while still providing for the group. It was a nice exchange, the she-cat supposed.

Somehow, Adderheart managed to figure out that if nobody knew the litter, it had to have been Willowdapple's. He had seen the tom around camp and it was an easy connection to the two now-deceased kits. If nobody knew the kits or the mother, and all were dead now — this was an upsetting fact to say aloud — then that meant the kits were too new, and Willowdapple's litter had definitely been new.