Alone (A Warrior Cat Story) (Book 1)

Chapter 2: Wake Up

I heard the same words that I had heard telling me to do certain things all day. I almost wanted them to go away, but I needed a friend and she had helped me get through that day. I just didn't understand how her and all of her friends could just disappear so easily like that. She had been with several cats and I had seen Tristan. Its almost as if those cats were dead. But I shook my head, I must have something going on in my head. I must just have the some crazy dream that just seemed to be an inner thought inside of my head. There no way a cat could just disappear and then no my name like that.
"Im here to help you, to teach you how to hunt and many other things. Things you will teach many others and how you will rebuild the clans from the ground up." Squirrelflight said to me from the other side of the river. I looked towards her after lapping the water. Just finally happy that I had something to drink after a long day like that. I was also hungry though, and I was ready to learn how to hunt. I did have one serious question for her though. I had never seen a cat just walk up into my dreams like she was ever before. It kind of scared me but at the same time I thought it was amazing.
"Um... Im just wondering..." How should i really say it to her? I really had no idea and I didn't really want to sound crazy. I thought it was maybe just something in my head. Maybe something cats got from older generations. I never really believed what Tristan had told me about cats always having owners and never really getting to live out in the world like I thought a normal cat should.
"What is it? Speak your mind Moon, I will not laugh at you for having what may seem like a silly question to you." Squirrelflight responded to me. It made me feel a lot better about myself. Maybe it wouldn't seem like some sort of joke to her. But it did seem like a joke to me. I wouldn't even believe it if someone said it to my face.
"You aren't dead are you? I mean, I know Tristan died a long time ago, and yet I saw him on that tree with you yesterday." I said to her. Then she smiled at me. I knew you would think it was a joke. Maybe it was all a big dream like it was right now. I had just never seen a cat in a dream, or ever seen a cat period. Besides the ones that went by our house from time to time, or that one cat that I swear I had seen in the woods several times... No matter how many times Tristan told me I did not see one.
"I am whatever you imagine me to be, so to you i might be a dead cat. But to others i might be something altogether completely different." Squirrelflight said back to me. That didn't really help me but I still assumed she was a dead cat. And that was why I had seen Tristan yesterday on the branch with them. The only difference was he didn't have stars on his pelt and he didn't look as though some of those other cats were just looking almost like they were invisible.
I just nodded my head to her. I knew every question I would ask her I would got a response that made 0 to no sense. We sat the for a few more moments and she nodded at me to get back to drinking, I was so thirsty and I knew that I hadn't drank anything in over a day. I was just so afraid of what if I never woke up because I had fallen from that branch. Or maybe the dogs had somehow gotten up to me and torn me apart while I was asleep... What if I became like her.
"Stop thinking and just keep drinking we don't have all that much time left. And I cant come every night... Sometimes you will have to learn some things on your own..." Squirrelflight told me. I got up from the stream and then hopped over and through it going over to Squirrelflight. I had always knew how to swim, my female owner had always given me baths and I had easily been able to swim. Squirrelflight looked a little surprised but then she tried not to show it but I had already seen it.
"Alright I need you to watch carefully, this will be the first step to learning how to catch mice." Squirrelflight said to me. I nodded my head and watched, I noticed looking at something but I couldn't see anything there. Then suddenly a mouse just appeared from nowhere and she slowly began to go towards it making no sound and having her body aimed low, as if she didn't want anything to hear or see her at all. It was amazing as the mouse was just picking up things from off the ground, it had no clue that she was about to kill it. Suddenly she jumped on it in a flash, I had never seen a cat go that fast in my life. She dug her claws into its body and it screeched for a few seconds until she ended its miserable life.
She looked back at me triumphantly, and i smiled. "That was absolutely amazing! I had never seen anything like that in my life! I knew Tristan was crazy when he had said cats didn't hunt." I said to her, she laughed and then walked over to me, then she nudged for me to eat the mouse. For a few quick moments I had almost wanted to say no because she was the one who had cat the mouse in the first place, but I was just so hungry so I ate into it in just a quick few minutes. She just watched me the whole time. Nodding her head as if she was trying to tell me I was eating it the right way.
"Now did you smell the mouse from before i had caught it? The first thing you would need to learn if you are going to start learning how to hunt is, smell all your surroundings and then slowly go in that direction." Squirrel told me. I had smelt something a bit strange that I had only smelt once before when I was really young. I had remembered that Tristan had told me that there had been mice that had gotten into the house and I needed to stay back or else they would try to kill me. It almost scared me for a second just eating the mouse, because of all the horror stories Tristan had told me about them.
"Yes, A very long time ago, I don't remember it all that much I was so young." I told her. She smiled at me and all was silent for a short while before she finally responded to what I had said to her.
"Excellent, you are doing better than most cats from the clans did right away, but then again... You are a bit older i suppose. Anyways Moon, that's all I can teach to tonight, its time for you to wake up." Squirrelflight told me. I wanted to say something else but she had already disappeared and I was alone with just the mouse in front of me. I had so many questions for her but not enough time to ask any of them.
Suddenly I was back at the branch I had been at last night. I felt a little tired but i just shoved myself off of it. It had been a long night and I had learned a few things that would help me live out here on my own. The dogs were gone from the spot they had been under my feet last night. I felt relinquished just thinking about it, I knew those nasty things would have tried to kill me in a heartbeat.
I jumped down from the branch and began walking in the opposite direction that I had come through the other night. I did not want to come through there again, now that the fence was broken I knew I wasn't as steady as I had been yesterday. I thought I had slept pretty good last night, but my body felt otherwise. I tried sniffing at the air seeing if a could maybe smell a mouse I could try and kill like Squirrelflight did last night.
But there were none to be smelt from anywhere nearby, I just smelt so many other nasty things and no really animals I could smell. And even if I could, Squirrelflight had only really taught me how kill 1 type of animal. And I still had never tried it myself, so I wasn't too sure if I could even get that in the first place.
I failed to realize what was ahead of me and had to stop back from heading into it, I was too busy thinking about all these other thoughts that were in my head to realize that there was a big group of those machines heading towards me. Just a huge group that kept coming and coming. How could i ever get through that I would die if I even tried it.
"Go in the other direction Moon, where the sun goes into the sky early in the day and you will find the way through." Squirrelflight said to me inside of my head. Every time she did that it would always scare the life out of me, but this time I was more scared about those Machines going of their trail and then trying to kill me. It seemed like they were too busy following the trail to even think about me in the first place. I still did not want to get into a fight with any of those things. They would kill me faster than those dogs would have.
I listened to what Squirrelflight had told me and I headed in the direction that she had told me. Just followed where the sun had opened up every morning. I used to love just thinking about being out there in the hot nice sun, I could feel it through the windows of my old place. And it felt so nice I had always wished that I could be out there and feel the sun for myself rather than just be inside an owners place and sitting next to a window.
Be quiet Moon, stop thinking about it. If that owner actually cared about you she would not have left you and gone into that machine. I knew that male owner would definitely not have let me back in for sure. He had always hated me and Tristan... And when we tried to love on him he would throw as off or kick us and then start a fight with the female owner. Im out here now, and now I can feel the real sun shoving through my pelt. And it felt so nice that i just put myself on the ground and let it flow through me.
I then looked up to notice that the woods were gone, now there was a field with no trees at all really and it looked like it was all wet and muddy. Beside that there was a big place not like the one i had been in before. There were way bigger and better looking houses and I thought of maybe going over to those and finding a home there. I shook that thought from out of my head though. I knew that Squirrelflight was looking up to me for some sort of hope that I had no idea what it was really about. She had kept saying something about clans. But it was something that I had never heard of. And apparently I was supposed to rebuild them from the ground up. I thought about it for a few seconds wondering if it was such a good idea to go in such an empty area with no where to run. What if another group of dogs got to me and there would be no branches to run to this time. But something in my head was telling me to go towards that way. It seemed like a bad decision but my head kept telling me that was what I needed to do.
I walked in that direction and the ground felt a little sticky as soon as a walked into it. It didn't feel bad but it was definitely not something that I would want to be in all day every day. But I just kept walking I knew that this was the way to go and Squirrelflight had told me to go in the direction the sun was setting. It was getting really hot but i just ignored it and kept walking.

It had already been a while of walking and I was beginning to feel thirsty again. But Squirrelflight was nowhere to be seen now to come and help me. Which meant to me that there must me a little stream of water or a lake nearby that i could get water from. But it was just hotter than it had ever seemed before and they walking along with not sleeping well last night was beginning to where me out and I just wanted to fall over and sleep.
But I wasn't too sure if I would wake up. And I was just so thirsty too I would die if I didn't get any water.
That's when i saw it. I little creek full of water. I immediately ran over to drink from it, happily lapping through the water as it rehydrated me. It was not the best tasting water I had tasted in my life, but I had tasted worse. There was a time me and Tristan had to drink out of the toilets when the owners had been gone for a few weeks, and they had left us with hardly any water.
It tasted like someone had peed in it and I knew what pee tasted like because Tristan made me drink some of his once before because I lost a challenge with him. But I knew I needed to stop thinking about Tristan. He wasn't exactly a young cat when he had died but it still hurt thinking about him. And I didn't know if seeing him the other day was real or if I was just stuck in some sort of never ending dream.
I drank it though just happy that I had something to help me keep going. I had seen some woods from far away but unless I was running, which would dehydrate me again it would take at least an hour to get through that way. So I would just decide to run. The sun was already beginning to set and I would have to get there soon anyways, I would not want to be out here with nowhere to go in case another dog emergency happened like last time. Or all those other horrible animals that Tristan had told me were out here. I didn't want to believe any of what he said was true but I knew some of it had to be. Those dogs from last night had scared the living daylights out of me.
I took a quick walk in that direction but then stopped as i saw something run past me. It was some sort of smaller animal almost the size of a cat hat a little bit smaller that had run past me. I had never seen anything quite like that before. And i wanted to go see what it was. It lucky big and tasty, something like that would feel me up for days. I could just carry it with me on the way to wherever it was that Squirrelflight had wanted me to go.
"That is a rabbit, I can not teach you how to hunt those but Onestar will teach you soon enough. You can try but I am afraid you will most likely not catch one of those." Squirrelflight said to me from once again inside my head. I was grateful for her help but at the same time. I didn't want her to be inside my head like that all of the time. And I hoped that she didn't here that because I still needed her help. I decided not to go after the rabbit however. It seemed like Squirrelflight knew what she was talking about more than I did, well not seemed like it, she had obviously been out there way more than I had and I didn't know if she was dead or not, if she was who knows how long she had been dead.
I kept walking towards the woods, looking back every once in a while just to make sure there was no big animals looking at me as if I was a snack or they wanted to eat me like those dogs did last night.
I had finally made it into the woods, where there would be a lot more cover and hopefully nothing would come after me. I wanted to take a quick brake because I had been walking all day and I had never walked this much before in my life. That's when suddenly I heard something that scared me half to death.
Something had jumped right in front of me as if it was trying to scare me on purpose. It made me do a little jump but then I realized it was just another cat. This was one of the first cats id talked to in a while... If you didn't count Squirrelflight. But I wasn't sure if Squirrelflight was real. I used to see a few cats that would talk to me through the window but other than that it had been about 3 or 4 moons since I last talked to a real cat and those were the final words that Tristan had said to me. I wasn't sure if that was the real Tristan that I saw yesterday or not.
"Hey there buddy! You look friendly I was just wondering what you were doing out here. You look like you were a kittypet or something. You looking for your home?" The cat said to me. What was a kittypet, I had never heard of that word before. And I just didn't know what to say back to him. It had been so long since I had seen a real cat. "Hey buddy! Wake up!"