Heart Of A Fighter (Book 3): Home Is Calling

Chapter 13: Telling Tales

"My breath is going to smell for moons," moaned Lionpaw as he belched. Honeypaw and Streampaw gagged, and Cootpaw muttered sourly, "Maybe if you didn't eat more than you train it wouldn't be that way."

"The fish was disgusting anyway," Lionpaw snorted. "What do you mean?! You tried to take all our fish and scarfed down any extras left!" Snapped Hazelpaw.

Goslingpaw rolled her eyes as the duo began to banter, and started to groom herself carefully, parting her fur with her tongue to get to any bits of fish that may have stuck there.

From the corner of her eye, she watched as Splash Sprint and Russet Rush carefully discarded most of the bones back into the sea before bundling the remaining ones into a piece of cloth to give the Latros.

Suddenly, Mousekit called out, "Russet Rush, is the Tribe of the Blooming Valley the only tribe in the Stormfast Isles?"

"Of course not!" Russet Rush gave a laugh. "You already know there's the Tribe of The Blooming Valley, but we also border with the Hearts Of The Restless, the Golden Rose Cult and the Guild of Freedom."

By now, a lot of the apprentices has gathered around the russet tom to hear his stories, and most of the BlazeClan cats were listening with interest.

"Are you trying to scare the young cats with the tale of the Phantom Soul Snatcher again?" Splash Sprint let out a purr of amusement as his mate affectionately butted heads with him.

Russet Rush's neck fur spiked up slightly and in a flustered manner, he replied, "No I'm not! That was so long ago!"

Splash Sprint laughed and gracefully hopped onto the crate his mate was perched on, then after giving his red-furred mate a lick to the ear he slumped down into a comfortable lying down position.

"Just making sure you don't scare them into the sea like you did to poor Fern and Elm Weaver last moon," he joked with a playful smile. Depthpaw tilted his head in confusion. "Phantom Soul Snatcher?"

The grey water manipulator chuckled and responded, "Just a silly old horror tale Rus spun up to frighten the tribe apprentices for sneaking out of camp at night."

The blue gray tom snuck a glance at his embarrassed mate and chuckled, "Ended up frightening two tribemates, one a senior warrior and the other a young apprentice so badly, they got stuck in the muddy part of the river."

He paused and laughed before adding, "This dolt got frightened when he couldn't find them after making scary sounds and whistling to scare them, and actually started to believe his nonsensical story was true."

He couldn't help but laugh as he added, "Ran back to camp screaming in the funniest manner when he then heard Sonata from the Hearts Of The Restless whistling for backup."

Russet groaned in embarrassment and covered his head with his wings. "Sonata? Who's that supposed to be?" Chanterellestreak asked.

"A friend from the group that resides next to us. We were lucky she was out on a solo moonlight patrol and saw them in time to whistle for help. Russet ended up confined to camp for two weeks," chuckled Splash Sprint.

Russet Rush groaned and begged, "Please, Splash, I thought we said no more bringing that up."

The grey-pelted tom laughed and coiled their tails together and replied, "Alright, love. Tell them about whatever you were talking about earlier."

Russet shuffled his wings down and lay next to his mate before he resumed with his earlier story about the Valley cats of the Stormfast Isles. "Anyway, as I was saying, we border with three more groups in the valley."