Conflict of Interests - Warriors Fanfic

Chapter 1

It was early morning when Emberpaw woke, but that was her habit. She stretched carefully in the crowded apprentices den before picking her way through her sleeping friends and out into the clearing, shivering as dew that had collected on the leafy entrance was disturbed by her movement and dripped into her pelt. It was hardly lighter outside the den than it had been in it, but what rosy dawn had begun to creep through the trees was more than enough to see the bright pelt of her littermate, Snowpaw, where they were already picking through the fresh-kill pile. A dark shape she was too far away to identify clasped in their jaws, they looked up and met her eyes across the camp before they returned to the medicine cat den.

She yawned as she crossed the clearing, steps quick to avoid contact with the cold ground as much as she could. The fresh-kill pile was well-stocked that morning, and she took her sweet time finding favored prey for both her and her sibling. Satisfied with a muskrat and goldfinch, she retreated to a shady corner to wait for Snowpaw's return.

They didn't hurry about it, and she had already begun to gnaw at the muskrat's tail before they returned, stinking of herbs and running their tongue around their jaw. Snowpaw hardly murmured a greeting before they were fastidiously tugging yellow feathers from the breast of the bird. Emberpaw took a hearty bite of her own breakfast before she tried to start a real conversation.

"She's still sick, then?" Considering how long it had taken Snowpaw to give Poppyflight her meal and the green that clung to their mouth, Emberpaw figured this was a pretty safe guess.

Snowpaw nodded, but didn't speak, and Emberpaw didn't blame them if they were a bit surly; anycat would be feeling the strain if all of their mentor's duties were suddenly passed onto them on top of their own. She didn't say that, of course, and focussed on eating before any of the other apprentices were awake.

"We're climbing trees today," she said, finally. Snowpaw made a derisive noise into their bird, sending some down up in a puff. Emberpaw gave them a look. "What?"

"Not the Sky Oak?" When she nodded, Snowpaw rolled their eyes, icy blue catching the morning light like cold water. "Just don't break your neck, okay? You're not the Undying, so you better not act like it if you're going to be playing someplace you could get yourself killed."

"It's not playing, it's training." Emberpaw glared at them half-heartedly; this was an old argument.

"Yes, because climbing to the tops of trees is a very practical skill, applicable to hunting and battle and everything in between..."

"It's to build strength and endurance and courage!"

"It's to create artificial competition in an environment that punishes 'poor' performance with physical harm."

This was further than it usually went; they had had variations of this conversation so many times that they generally agreed to disagree and moved on as soon as the topic arose. "What's got you so wound up? Not Poppyflight, still?"

Snowpaw sighed and shook their head. "I had a dream last night."

Emberpaw perked up at that, and asked, "what, a dream or a dream?"

"Second one, might be. I'd ask Poppyflight, but." Snowpaw paused to lick one delicate paw and draw it over their ginger ear. "Mostly it was just... unsettling. Almost a nightmare, even."

Snowpaw wasn't one to throw words like 'nightmare' around without meaning; Emberpaw had a feeling that in their place she'd be a bit more than snippy, as much as she might be a future warrior and they a future medicine cat. She didn't ask them to tell her about it, though; Serious Medicine Cat Business was something that the two of them did not talk about.