There's Someone In Your Nest (short story)
First: Sprouting Thorns - Magpiepaw and The Thorn-Tom (Magpie POV) - Wattpad
Previous: Sprouting Thorns - Thorn Den - Wattpad
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Thankfully, it wasn’t too long before Myrtlewing caught Alderstar’s scent on the wind, mingling with Hootpetal’s. Their voices danced with the breeze as they spoke together, growing as they neared the thorn-entrance.
Hootpetal noticed Myrtlewing first, and she blinked at him in surprise. “Did you wait for us?” she asked. “Were we supposed to meet?”
“No,” Myrtlewing told her.
“Grousemane’s not keeping you up, is he?” Alderstar scratched at an itch behind his ear. “Or has he returned and snoring louder than a dog’s empty stomach?”
“She’s not snoring much.”
“Then why are you–” Alderstar stilled, brows furrowing and eyes narrowing in confusion.
Hootpetal looked much the same. “‘She’?”
Myrtlewing nodded. “She.”
Alderstar cleared his throat. “I think five’s a bit of a crowd–”
“She’s an apprentice,” Myrtlewing explained, “probably a few moons older than a kit, if I had to guess. Stumppaw brought her.”
“An apprentice?” Hootpetal repeated, shocked. “Here? How? She must have gotten lost–”
“How could she become so lost that she wound up in the Dark Forest?” Alderstar questioned. “It wouldn’t be the first time an apprentice found themselves here,” he grunted, then looked to Myrtlewing. “Is she safe?”
Myrtlewing shrugged, “I didn’t lay a claw on her, if that’s what you’re asking. But you should know, she’s laying in your nest. Unless she decided to sneak off, that is.”
Alderstar shared an uncertain glance with Hootpetal. “What do we do? Just walk in and frighten the daylights out of her?”
Hootpetal shook her head. “Or the alternative–avoid our own nests because a young apprentice is sleeping in them?”
“One of them,” Myrtlewing pointed out, unsure why they were making such a huge deal out of this. “She already knows that you’re coming anyway. I’ll just tell her now.” He turned around and ducked inside, ignoring the ‘wait!’ and ‘Myrtlewing!’s called after him.
Following the trail he had initially led Magpiepaw through, he entered the hollowed den, shaking out his pelt for no other reason than to make noise to tell her that he was there.
Though the noise was quiet, Magpiepaw jumped from the nest, twisting in the air, and scratched herself on one of the protruding thorns. She squealed in pain, rubbernecking to assess the damage.
“Great, bleed all over the floor,” Myrtlewing chuckled, amused. He padded toward her, looming over her head so that he could lick at the scratch on her back until the droplets stopped flowing. “There,” he said as he walked away, “now there won’t be a mess.” It wouldn’t bother him, but Alderstar would complain about it getting in his nest, Hootpetal would fill the space with fret after fret, and Grousemane–he’d probably be fine. The thought of the three reminded him of what he needed to tell the young cat, so he looked over his shoulder at her. “Alderstar and his mate are back. They’ll be coming in soon.”
Magpiepaw nodded quickly, curling in on herself.
Myrtlewing, meanwhile, sat down calmly and observed her subtly. She seemed strange. There was a spark of fear–no, stronger–terror in her eyes that flared up at the very mention of more cats around her. As a young cat in the Place of No Stars, wariness and fright were to be expected, but Myrtlewing suspected something more. The terror began before her death, while she was still alive. He tilted his head. But not throughout her whole life. If it had been a long time, he thought, she wouldn’t be acting the way she was, like the situation she was in was unfamiliar and strange. Well it was, but–
Myrtlewing’s path of thoughts were cut off by the shuffling of branches. “We’re coming!” Alderstar called a warning a few heartbeats before he stepped out into the hollow, followed by a wide-eyed Hootpetal.
Hootpetal was first to hurry to the young cat’s side, sniffing all along her pelt. “Are you okay, little one? Are you lost? Did you die? Are you hurt? Is there someone you want me to take you to?” Magpiepaw’s pelt visibly fluffed further at the onslaught of questions, but Hootpetal didn’t seem to notice.
“I hear you’ve taken my nest,” Alderstar stated. It was clearly an attempt at jest to ease the air and calm the she-cat down, but the apprentice apparently took it as anger.
To Alderstar’s surprise, to Hootpetal’s, to the surprise of everyone who might hear about this, to the surprise of every dead or living soul, and most of all, to the surprise of Myrtlewing, Magpiepaw ran across the den and to him, huddling in a ball and burying her face into his side.
Unable to form a coherent thought for what was probably the third overall time in his entire life and death, Myrtlewing could do nothing but stare and blink, and then stare and blink at Alderstar and Hootpetal.
They blinked at each other for who knew how long before Grousemane made his entrance, stumbling slightly on his paws. He opened his mouth, lips quirked upward to likely crack a joke, when he noticed Alderstar and Hootpetal hadn’t moved their attention from Myrtlewing. He followed their gaze and saw the bundle of black fur pressed against him. “Uh..” He tilted his head, words slightly slurred. “Is Myrtlewing a dad now?”
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