Splintering branches grew over Marshpaw’s head, casting reaching, looming shadows over the forest floor. Her white fur was stained with dirt, and she didn't dare rest weight on her back leg. She couldn't imagine how mangled it looked based on the way it ached and burned from her tumble down the cliff.
She turned her head back to gaze at it, and her ankle was twisted in a horrible way it definitely should not be, and her fur was sticky with blood and spotted with burrs and sticks. She hissed as she pressed her weight to three of her legs, heaving herself to her paws, craning her head to look at the very top of the cliff, where her home resided just a few paces down.
Perhaps this was why she wasn't allowed to leave the camp without Paintedflame.
There wasn't any way she was going to be able to make it back up the cliff. Surely there was a way around it, she thought, or a less steep way up. There was a divot where she had slid down the cliff, disturbed dirt and rocks, and no matter how sharp her claws were, the dirt was soft, and it wouldn’t give her leverage.
Marshpaw began to limp forward, unsure of where exactly she planned to end up, but staying still would surely get her nowhere. She dragged herself past nettles and thorns that snagged her fur, and, in trying to unstick herself, she slipped and tumbled onto her side again. Pain thumped dully and snapped furiously through various injuries, and she tried to heave herself back up to her paws again.
“Hello?” she mewed quietly, hearing her own voice echo off trees and rocks. “Is anybody there?”
There was no response besides the singing of birds. Not even mice skittered along the forest floor.
“Just great! Now I’m all alone. Just like Applepaw was! Oh, I don’t like feeling so guilty…” she rambled to nobody in particular. She froze when her ears caught the slightest sound of twigs snapping. A squirrel, she told herself, a rabbit, a mouse, a rat, anything that wouldn’t be dangerous to her.
Her maw raised to pick up the scent. Ears perked and her tail swished behind her. Now all she could hear was the crunching of leaves as whatever was out there approached her. She scrambled back into the bushes, cursing her bright white fur that contrasted against the green. She was so easily seen, and would be so easily killed—
A head popped into the bushes and without a second thought, Marshpaw screamed.
“Mar- Marshpaw!” came a familiar voice. “Stop screaming! It’s me!”
The apprentice closed her maw, and in front of her face was a particularly frazzled tom. Oh, it was only Floatstream. He helped the injured she-cat from the bush, revealing Paintedflame, Blackpaw, Redwind, and Morningpaw.
Morningpaw rubbed the top of her head on the white she-cat’s chin and rumbled with a purr. “Hi, Marshpaw! We found you! Good thing you aren’t dead!”
“Gee, thanks,” Marshpaw replied unsurely with an amused smile. Her eyes immediately lost their sparkle when they caught her mentor’s disappointed expression, and her face fell. Their ears airplaned to the side and their fiery eyes were narrowed.
“Sorry for leaving without you, Paintedflame,” Marshpaw said sheepishly, averting her gaze.
They huffed, gazing down at her. “Let’s go back to camp and get you fixed up. I can yell at you when you’re not injured.” Paintedflame promptly picked Marshpaw up by the scruff of her neck, and began carrying her back to camp. The walk back was tense and silent; only broken by the crunching of pawsteps and the scuttling of prey animals.
Until Blackpaw’s ears perked and she froze. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” came Morningpaw’s meek voice.
“It sounds like… squeaking,” she mused confusedly, raising her nose to the air.
“It’s probably not important,” dismissed Paintedflame tiredly. “Come on, Buzzingstar will be ticked if we’re not back home soon—”
“No, I hear it too,” said Redwind.
Paintedflame let out a muffled groan as Blackpaw and Redwind dispersed, annoyance sparking through their claws. They shot an unsolicited glare to Floatstream, making Morningpaw squeak and cower further behind him.
Redwind followed Blackpaw toward the mewling, pointed ears strained in the direction, and suddenly the she-cat paused, maw lowered to the earth. Redwind could see the gears turning behind her eyes, as the scent and the direction it blew sorted themselves out in her head.
“It doesn't smell like…a clan cat,” she murmured. “It's a cat, but not one of us.”
“Like a kittypet?”
“No…almost like a Sharptooth. But it’s not…” She trailed off for a moment, tentatively stepping forward. Redwind’s muscles tensed and he followed behind her, as she nudged foliage away – and froze with a gasp.
“What?”
“A kitten!”
Redwind was immediately intrigued – and a little concerned. He came up behind Blackpaw and peered into the bushes, and sure enough, laid a little orange kitten, with a black muzzle, folded black ears, and a short bobtail.
“It’s so small,” Blackpaw murmured in disbelief, as Redwind picked it up by its scruff. The kitten mewed in surprise, squirming in his grasp, and he shushed it through a mouthful of fur as the two warriors swiftly made their way back to the patrol.
Morningpaw let out a soft gasp, and even Paintedflame’s eyes widened as Redwind returned with a kitten in his mouth.
“What are you doing with that,” they asked suspiciously.
“Saving it.”
“You don't think its mother was maybe out hunting for food?”
“And left a tiny, defenseless kitten unprotected in the middle of the forest?”
Paintedflame scoffed again, ears drooping, and gestured for the patrol to follow them. “Whatever. Don't come crying to me when you get killed by an angry queen accusing you of kit-napping.”
Redwind tightened his grip on the kitten’s scruff, falling behind to walk by Blackpaw. She could see the way his eyes stayed trained on his paws, and his brows furrowed, that he was nervous.
“You don't think his mother's out there?” he asked through a mouthful of fur. “And I just doomed our clan to the wrath of a furious queen and she's going to kill us all in search of her kitten that I stole?”
“Uhh..” Blackpaw’s ears airplaned to the side. “I’m not sure it’d be that intense. If anything, she'd follow its scent and demand it back. And, I mean, who are we to say no?”
Redwind’s shoulders seemed to lower at her sentence, and the patrol began to smell the familiar air of their camp. Buzzingstar sat dwarfed by Ebonyspark, talking over something Redwind assumed was important, until the deputy’s striking purple eyes caught the patrol – and the very obvious ball of bloodied white fur in Paintedflame’s mouth.
“We’re back,” declared Blackpaw, “and we found her!”
“Wonderful job,” mewed Ebonyspark, beaming. “I’ll take her to the medicine den.”
Paintedflame set the apprentice down near Ebonyspark, and he took her scruff in his maw, lifting her with unsurprising ease, and padding over to the medicine den, leaving the patrol to disperse – and Buzzingstar to stare awkwardly at the kitten in Redwind’s jaws.
“That kitten isn't Marshpaw,” he deadpanned. “Where’d you get it from anyway?”
“We—”
“You know what? I don't want to know,” he interrupted, closing his eyes exasperatedly. “I’ve had enough drama for today.”
“Buzzingstar, if I may,” came Ebonyspark’s voice as he returned from the medicine den, “bringing such a young kitten back to our camp and not knowing its origins could lead to discord between the clans.”
“I’ll keep it until the mother returns,” Redwind replied, and left the gaggle of cats to presumably the nursery or the medicine den, where Marshpaw lay, with Sneezestep tending to her leg, and Applepaw purring so loud her body vibrated.
