Forest's Fate

Chapter 17

My mind gains consciousness again. Everything is completely silent.

Where am I? What time of day is it? My head is pounding with pain, and so is my back. I keep my eyes closed for a moment. My insides of my eyelids look slightly red from the dim light seeping through them, so it must be daytime.

I almost open my eyes to try to see where I am, but right before I do, a voice startles me.

"Are you awake yet?" It's a female voice. Strangely, I can't bring my mind to recognize it. The voice purrs, "Oh, come on, stop pretending that you aren't awake. I saw you jump at my voice."

Who is she? I cautiously open my eyes. When I do, relief automatically spreads throughout me. It's just Rain, and by the looks of it, we are the only cats around here.

"Wait..," I blurt out, "where are Mirage and...Ice?" At the last moment, I decide to call the shady camp leader by his actual name, not his strange nickname that Rain might not know.

Rain snorts. She lowers her head towards me. "They're long gone. After you passed out, I took you away from them before they gave you the blue-leaf thing, or whatever they call it."

        I briefly back away from her to sit up. My mind clears a little bit, and my eyes fall into focus. I don't know where we are. There are no dens around- just the field and the melancholy, gray sky that I have gotten used to.

"You look clueless," Rain comments, leaning in closer to me so I have no choice but to look at her. "You sure you haven't swallowed any of the blue stuff?"

I close my eyes for a moment. Who am I? Where did I come from?

Luckily, the answers come quickly to my head. My name is Forest. I come from planet Earth. Name kidnapped me to Gardinia.

My eyes open back up as I nod. "I'm okay," I say to Rain, "I guess I'm just still recovering from last night."

        Rain sits down. She lifts a front paw, licks it, and runs it down her face a couple of times.

After a short pause, I ask, "Why were you there last night? I mean, you weren't really just taking a walk, right?"

        Rain stops washing her face to look at me. She loudly snorts, "Oh, of course I was taking a walk! I don't know what you do on Earth, but in Gardinia, we like taking walks in the middle of the night."

        She pauses, looking amused at my confused expression. I stammer, "Is that really tr-"

        "No, obviously not. I was actually planning to steal some Earth cats from that particular enemy camp to add to my rebel group."

        "Oh," I meowed, "I didn't know the rebels do that."

        "Well, it's actually just my rebel group that does that, as far as I know. I'll elaborate on that later because that's going to take forever to explain, and we have no time to be standing here forever yapping." Rain flicks her ears, not letting me ask about the rebel groups. "So anyway, I went there not thinking of the possibility that there would be two cats practicing their fighting outside of the enemy camp." She gives me a cross look, as if she's blaming me for not being able to steal the amount of cats she wanted.

        I retort, "When I agreed with Mirage to meet her there to practice, I didn't expect a shady rebel cat to come strolling by." Before she could reply, I continue, "But I've never been so happy to be kidnapped in my life. It was horrible there."

        "I know it was horrible there. I spied on many camps to see how they work, and they're pretty strict. Ice is stupid for doing all of this just to try to defeat us. It already backfired a long time ago, so why try it again?"

        "They kidnapped Earth cats here before?"

       "Yep. Another long story that I'll tell later. Ugh, we're getting off-track here, aren't we? Now, before I show you around, I have to see if I can trust you first."

        My ears shift downwards. "And how are you going to do that?"

        Rain seems to catch on to what I'm thinking, because she shakes her head and quickly meows, "Oh, no, it's not an actual test or anything. I just want to tell you what our only rule is here."

        "Oh, okay. What's the rule?"

        "You need to be completely loyal to us. If we see you being involved with the Superiors or being suspiciously friendly with any of them, you will be executed. I've never had to do that before except for maybe once before the rule was actually created, but the rule still stands. Since you seem to hate the Superiors so far, you will agree to abide by this rule, am I correct?" Despite the flowery sweetness that lingers in her voice, I see a hint of challenge in her bright blue eyes.

Surprisingly, I don't feel any fear, even for the punishment that comes with breaking that rule. After all I've been through with Name and his rules, this feels like freedom to me. Without any hesitation, I state, "Yes, I agree to follow that rule."

The challenge in Rain's eyes has been replaced by satisfaction. "Good. Now that we've got that settled, let me show you a little bit of our lives." She stands, turns around and scampers away, leaving me to follow her.

Just about a minute later, we come to a feature in the ground that fills me with some dread: a hole.

"We don't actually have a set place to live, since we travel around a lot. However, we usually sleep and eat underground, like in this hole here. The Superiors occasionally use these underground tunnels for shortcuts and stuff like that, but we mostly make use of these." She casually gestures her tail towards the hole. "I can show you around. Do you want to go in first?"

A shiver runs down my spine. "Uh..," I stammer, "how about you go first?"

        Rain must see the fear in my eyes, or maybe it's the way my fur stands up when she says that, but she tilts her head at me and meows, "What's wrong?"

        Heat spreads through my chest in embarrassment. Ugh, why do I show my stupid fear so openly? "Sorry," I respond with my ears all the way down to my head, "I just don't like tight spaces very much." I glance away from her, casting my gaze towards the ground.

        "What?" At first, I think that Rain is angry, but when I look back at her, she is purring with laughter. "Ha, I've never seen a cat who hates tight spaces in my entire life!" she exclaims in between the purrs.

        "Sorry about that.."

        "Aww, come on, nothing to be sorry about! I thought you were worried for a more serious reason." Rain shakes out her gray tabby fur and gazes at me. "Fine, I'll go first. And for now, you can be scared of tight spaces, but I'm going to have to teach you out of that fear somehow. Let's go!"

        With that, she enthusiastically leaps into the hole, leaving me with the only choice that stands: follow her.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading Chapter 17 of Forest's Fate! Sorry that it's a short chapter.

I can't believe how far I've gotten with this book! We're about halfway through the entire plot-line. Thank you for the people who have read this far through the book. I love you guys!

-Midnight