Warriors #3: Shifting Shadows

Chapter 5

Lilypetal's POV

I sat quietly in the middle of camp as the sun began to set, and the stars of Silverpelt began to emerge up into the sky.

Thornclaw had been chosen to keep watch tonight, so he had left to take a nap after we shared a meal together.

So now, I was alone, and was drifting off into my own thoughts. So I froze, startled, as suddenly a shadow hovered over me, and I looked up to see my mother, Mistpelt, padding up to settle down beside me.

"Beautiful evening, isn't it?" she asked, following my gaze to look up at the sky. Her light blue eyes looked beautiful reflecting against the evening light.

"Yes, definitely," I meowed, looking down and giving my mother a warm look. "There's nothing like newleaf weather. It's absolutely perfect!"

Mistpelt returned the warm look, and then sighed as she looked back up to the pink sky. "I remember back when I lived in ThunderClan, in the old territory," she murmured, seemingly starting to get lost in old memories. "The sunsets there were just as amazing as they are here."

I met her gaze once again with wide eyes, realizing all over again that my mother had had such an adventurous and crazy past. She had lived and been born in the old Clan territories, back at the forest where I had originally been a kittypet. I had been born just before the BloodClan battle, and had only been a kit in ThunderClan for a couple of moons before Mistpelt and I were taken by a fox-hearted Twoleg.

Sure, I knew all of this and more, but I realized that I had never truly inquired my mother about all of the things that were going on in the Clans before I came along!

I began to lash my tail back and forth eagerly. "What was your life like back there?" I asked her, suddenly very eager and curious. "In the old territories?"

Mistpelt purred as I had asked the question. "Well, it was pretty hectic, actually," she answered, sighing with exasperation as she was brought back. "When I first arrived there, it was pretty soon before the BloodClan battle had taken place, so cats didn't really have time to pay attention to me!"

Wait a moment...

My eyes narrowed as I was suddenly filled with suspicion and even more curiosity. Something Mistpelt had said had hit a nerve with me. Why did she say she arrived in the Clans?

"Wait a moment..." I repeated out loud, narrowing my eyes. "Arrived?"

Mistpelt's eyes suddenly grew into two round blue moons. I knew immediately that she had just realized she said something that she shouldn't have. I tried to suppress a suspicious and irritated hiss as my mother tried to find her words.

After a few heartbeats, she finally did. "Um... well, when I was first born! That's what I meant by arrived. I misspoke," she explained, but her gaze was staring at her paws as if she wanted to blow off what had just happened as soon as she could.

I didn't care though, not one bit, so I continued to press. "But you couldn't have been born just then!" I realized out loud, trying to recall all that Mistpelt had told me in the past. "You said that you fought in the BloodClan battle, and that you remember it so clearly!"

Mistpelt stood up and started to back away, clearly not wanting to deal with this confrontation anymore. "I have to go now," she meowed nervously, then beginning to run to the Clan entrance.

There is no way in StarClan that I'm letting her run away from this conversation! I realized. I began to pelt after my mother, desperate to finish what we had started. I was finding out that after almost two entire seasons that my mother was hiding things from me, and I wasn't going to let her prolong it any more.

"Wait!" I shouted. I caught up to her as she was about to crawl through the tunnel. "Where did you live before you came to ThunderClan? You clearly haven't always lived in ThunderClan."

I then narrowed my eyes once again and flicked my ears, pacing back and forth in front of Mistpelt. "Unless you just keep misspeaking, which I'm sure isn't the case..." I muttered, beginning to become very impatient and annoyed that Mistpelt was clearly hiding things from me, and was being as persistent as Thornclaw was whenever we went to sleep for the night in our nest, saying that he was protecting me by sleeping on the side closest to the den entrance.

"None of that matters!" Mistpelt nearly shouted. As she had said this, I suddenly could feel the eyes of many ThunderClan cats on the both of us.

"Yes, it all does!" I demanded, wanting to whimper out loud with how confused and concerned I felt. "I need to know who my mother is!" I insisted, stepping up closer to her, trying to calm down.

Mistpelt then sighed and locked her gaze with mine. My heart felt like it was suddenly beating at triple the speed. I had no idea what I was about to be told. Watch, I'm going to find out that Mistpelt was a savage murderer or something... I joked, trying to calm myself down. I took a deep breath, nodded and tried to listen closely. Obviously there was going to be something that Mistpelt was going to say that was going to shock me, considering she had tried to dodge revealing all of this to me in the first place.

"Lilypetal, long before you were born, I lived in the old forest with my mother and father," she began to explain, ignoring the watching cats around us. "We were very happy, but one day the dogs that Tigerstar had sent out killed my parents, so I was on my own." I then put my tail tip on Mistpelt's shoulder as her eyes closed. "I started to wander through the Twolegplace, and I found a great group of cats to live with for a while, and I seemed to forget about the loss of my parents."

I blinked and took a deep breath. I certainly had had no idea that Mistpelt lived in the Twolegplace, but clearly that wasn't the terrible secret she had been trying to hide from me. "Okay... but what made you come to ThunderClan?" I pressed, getting more and more nervous with every heartbeat that went by.

Mistpelt then looked down at her paws. "It's complicated," she meowed. Then she almost immediately looked up at me again. Her eyes were clouded with emotion and sadness all of the sudden. "One cat there just... didn't respect me, and he did something that wasn't right. He wasn't the cat that I thought he was."

I looked at Mistpelt, trying to hide all of what I was feeling as it all built up. "Where did you and this cat live?"

Mistpelt then looked like she wanted to bolt out of camp. Immediately noticing this, I narrowed my eyes and hardened my tone as I meowed, "And you're going to tell me."

Mistpelt looked back up at me with her clouded eyes, proceeding to run her tail along my flank. "Before I lived in ThunderClan, I lived in BloodClan, with Scourge," she nearly whispered.

My mouth dropped. BloodClan?! I repeated to myself. Great StarClan, Mistpelt sure knows how to bury the lede!

"BloodClan? Why?" I asked, trying to control my anger once again. I couldn't fathom my mother living with BloodClan cats. I had heard several stories of the fierce group of cats that lived in the Twolegplace. Their leader was Scourge. He was very dangerous, and he had ripped all nine of Tigerstar's lives at once. All four Clans had nearly had to fight them to the death to get them to leave the forest.

Knowing this made me even more nervous that I could have ever thought possible, and my heart nearly stopped as I realized that Mistpelt was answering my question. "...because that is where I met your father," Mistpelt murmured, her gaze suddenly seeming even.

She probably realizes that there's no backing out now... I thought.

Then, as Mistpelt had finished speaking, I realized one question that I had never asked her. I almost seemed to lose my breath as I looked over at the nursery where Berrynose was flanking Poppyfrost, whose belly was beginning to swell with new kits. Then I looked over to where Dustpelt was talking to his son, Birchfall, underneath the Highledge.

I took a long, deep breath, and then turned to Mistpelt again.

"Mistpelt, who is my father?" I asked her, the words ringing through the now very silent camp, sharply and clearly.

She answered the question without hesitation.

"Lilypetal, your father is Scourge."