Another long day on the tundra; Coniferstar looks up at the strange, bright sun. Eerie, how long it dallies in the sky.
The dawn had come very early; the dusk, he knows, will linger late. It must be almost High Sun; the tundra has exploded with life, plants taking full advantage of the too-short growing season, kits trailing prey-beasts from their burrows.
Coniferstar opens his mouth to taste the air; a fat, unwary groundsquirrel, just a rabbitleap away, snuffles at some grasseed. A meal and then some.
Coniferstar takes a slow step forward– and then his head pops up, at just the same time as the ground squirrel’s does.
It dashes for cover, and Coniferstar makes no move to catch it.
The wind had changed; and it carries, now, the scent of blood, and the yowling, hissing sounds of cats at war.
Downwind of the terrible racket, they wouldn’t smell Coniferstar coming- even if they weren’t preoccupied. He swivels, and stalks uphill, towards the noise.
The fight is already breaking up, as Coniferstar crests a small hill, and spies the cats facing off below.
Nearest him, a cat in marbled grey and gold stands, bristling and spitting, guard over another. The cat beneath her, cowering, is smaller; ginger, with blood matted a shocking, vibrant red into her fur.
Opposite them, a gang of rouges- and they must be rouges, thin and rough and ragged- lash their tails, claws still unsheathed. Four of them, to the two mollies. The tom in the lead, lean and ginger, has a deep scratch across his brow, and keeps blinking, hard, to clear the oozing blood from his eye.
Coniferstar purrs in private approval; one of the mollies must have landed a good hit, even as outnumbered as they are.
“I see you around again, Bolt, you’re getting worse than that.” The skinny tom's voice is a vicious, rasping hiss. “You ran off– you did. I never wanna catch you slinking back.”
The tortoiseshell- Bolt, Coniferstar supposes- doesn’t flinch. “We were just passing through, Boss.” Her voice is only slightly tight. “Trust me. I didn’t want to see you again, either.”
The ginger tom hisses, crouching as if to spring, and Bolt stiffens to meet him, her claws unsheathing. The injured molly tucks herself into a tighter ball, eyes squeezing shut, as though bracing for a blow–
but one of the other rogues presses himself between them, his tail bushed. “Boss, please– she ain’t worth the trouble, you know that. Ain’t that enough?” He gestures to the oozing bite-wound on the huddled ginger molly.
Bolt’s eyes narrow; so do the big rogues’- ‘Boss’.
He lifts his chin. “You’re right. Dirty sorta wound, that. You’d better find someone to clean it out.”
Bolt does flinch, now– only a little. Medicine cats must be hard to find, out here.
Coniferstar watches, thinking, as the two groups break apart.
Only once the rogues are gone does Bolt turn, and help the other molly to her feet. They speak, too quietly to hear, heads bowed close together. And then, hissing with pain, the ginger molly leans against Bolt’s shoulder, and the two of them go limping away, in the opposite direction of the rogues.
Coniferstar trails them, through the grasses, until they stop to shelter in a burrow; abandoned by some rabbit, no doubt, long ago.
Very interesting.
Coniferstar studies the burrow, for a long time, marking the place; until his growling stomach herds him back to the hunt.
But maybe he’d be back– the ginger rogue was right. That wound would have to be cleaned out; or infection might set in.
