Hello :3
Quick note: This part will *might* be a bit boring to some of you; I'm not sure, though. There's a lot of dialogue, and not much happens, but hopefully it will still sate some of your hunger for reading x3 This is also a tiny bit more than 3,000 words, so prepare yourself, and enjoy Part 3! :D
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The warm scent of fresh-kill hits my nose, causing it to twitch. I slowly open my eyes and see that a dead mouse lay a few whisker-lengths in front of me where I am sprawled out on the ground. I soon realize that it is not just my vision that is dark, but that it is actually night. Gently turning my head to look upward, I see the claw-sliver of the moon mildly casting its light down between the leaves overhead. It is around moonhigh.
And then the stinging comes in, first on my muzzle, and then, more painful, on one of my front legs. The memory quickly revives itself in my mind of the fight with the fox as I look at my leg. However, instead of the bloody mass I am excepting to see, all the blood is cleaned from my fur and the wound is white, covered in cobwebs.
"Guess I will have to stay with you now."
I snap my head to the source of the murmur and see that Scamp is sitting next to a tree a couple of tail-lengths away from me. Even though he is practically invisible in the darkness, I can still barely make out his ruffled black fur, but the single white patch of fur on his chest stands out bright as day.
I then glance at the fresh-kill again and realize that he must have caught it. For me. My fur begins to bristle and I feel the anger boil in my chest. "I don't need your help!" I hiss at him through the dark. Even from where he stands by the tree, I see him flinch a bit at my harsh tone. I feel no remorse as I carry on. "Why should a kittypet take care of me, who has been living in the wilderness my entire life? I can catch my own prey, thank you very much, and without you getting in the way."
To prove my point, I shakily push myself up, rather forcefully. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Scamp take a couple paces forward, but I ignore him. I am pleased when I do succeed in standing straight. I take a step forward and place my first paw down.
Pain shoots through my injured leg and spreads throughout my whole body. It buckles beneath me and I fall - only to then be jerked back up as Scamp grabs my scruff between his teeth. He pulls me upward and I scrabble to find my footing. When I eventually do, he releases his grip slowly, as if with caution that if he were to lay one hair on me I would fall right over. Not knowing what to do, and to cover up my great embarrassment I feel - curse my glowing white pelt, fluffed up visibly in these shadows - I growl deeply, but softly, and await his retort.
It is completely different from what I expect, however.
"Tell me about your Clan," the tom says to me quietly. Almost genuinely.
His order takes me by surprise and my head snaps to look at his glistening amber eyes in the night. "What?" I quickly come up with some fighting words; I will not let him get what he potentially wants that easily, if at all. "What makes you think that I will willingly inform you about my Clan?"
"You told me some about it not even a full sunrise ago."
Fox dung. Curse my scattered head.... I cannot mistake the slight humor that twinkles in his eyes, either. StarClan, I hate this tom. Why did that fox have to cross my path?
Or, rather, why did this tom?
He continues, "Like, what does everyone do? You said something before about going on patrols and hunting. Is that all?"
I glare at him for a long moment, contemplating whether I should give a truthful reply to him or not. He's a kittypet - does he really care about all this? For all I know, he could be daydreaming about that disgusting, infamous slop his kind stuff their bellies with all day. But as I look once again into his eyes, I see something that looks like concern. Something shifts inside of me, but I do not know what.
Fine. Why not? It's not like I will be able to sprint away from him, considering it seems that we always run into each other one way or another.
A strange pang emits in the depths of my belly. What was that? Fear? Excitement? I have not a clue.
"Well, first of all," I begin monotonously, "there are different roles each cat has. I am - err, was a warrior," I stutter, "so I would have done the hunting and fighting for the Clan, like when a badger or something strays into the territory. There is a leader, and they have their deputy to help them with decisions and such. Apprentices train to be warriors once they are ready, and elders are great entertainment for kits when the queens want to rest. Lastly, there is a medicine cat, who takes care of those who are wounded or sick." I choose not to tell him about StarClan and potential prophecies; I figure a cat like him would find all that hard to believe.
"Seems all very organized," Scamp comments simply.
And you seem very nosy, though I have the kind heart to not say that aloud.
He then muses, as if to himself, "If I were in a Clan like that, I think it'd be pretty neat to be a medicine cat."
But it is not to just himself, as I hear him. My eyes widen with surprise and I turn my head to stare down at the cobwebs on my leg. "You mean - you know how to use herbs?" The shock is plain in my voice.
He takes a step closer to me to admire his work. "Who else would have done that all the way out here? Unless you did it while you were unconscious, or another group of cats similar to yours lives around here." I glance up at him and see humor glinting in his eyes, like always.
How is he always so lighthearted, after I have snapped and hissed at him so much? However much I am curious, I brush it away for now and turn back to the shocking matter at paw.
"How did you learn of how they work, or have access to the forest to gather some?" I am too awed to keep the surprise hidden.
Scamp snorts. "Do all you wildcats think that we 'kittypets' are trapped in our homes?" He doesn't give me time to reply, though I don't feel like giving him an answer, anyhow. "My housefolk and I lived right on the outskirts of the Twolegplace, where the forest stretched almost immediately once you left the gardens." I have no idea what these so-called 'gardens' are, but I leave it be. "They usually allowed me to go into the forest as long as I came back not long after." His gaze slowly drifts away from me as if in some sort of reverie, and his head droops in a kind of longing, I assume.
After quite a while of him doing so, I clear my throat and repeat, "How did you learn their uses, though?"
Snapping out of his thoughts and shaking his head to clear it, he perks up again and answers, "Oh, yes! A - rather old - she-cat who lived with her housefolk a couple houses away from mine would go into the forest, and she taught me how to use all the herbs we found for healing. No one really knows how she herself learned about herbs, but it's been a rumor for quite some time now that she was once a wildcat." He pauses, staring at me with round, mischievous eyes - much like a kit's. "Like you."
The sudden, uncalled-for insult causes me to hiss and bare my teeth at him, rage returning in my bones. "Will you stop calling me a wildcat?" I screech fiercely. "If anything, call me a warrior."
He takes a step backward, but his happy expression stays the exact same - unless, if it did change, it was only a heartbeat that I missed before returning to its initial face. "I'm sorry, warrior. Hey, maybe someday you and I could start a Clan together? I could be the medicine cat, and you could be the leader. It could be called CedarClan, or ScampClan.... Which sounds better to you? I personally like ScampClan."
I gaze at him in silence, my burning anger gradually cooling off. I like to think that it is the night air that is doing so. But again, he dodged my outburst at him so simply, like a fish slithering out of the paws of an untrained apprentice. How is he able to keep his blissfulness so easily? For a moment I am slightly envious of his ability, while I am practically raised upon anger and grief and... I realize, envy.
How ironic.
But with my rambling thoughts, and the talk of Clans, my hatred for Rosebreeze and my ache for Hawkstrike reoccurs.
"I'm sorry, Scamp, but I honestly have had enough of Clans to my liking." Slowly, and consciously aware of the black tom watching me warily, I settle myself down on the ground. The hotness and coldness I feel right now inside of me swirl around each other, like a storm is about to break out and shed its tears of anger and sadness.
It is exactly how I feel at the moment.
Scamp then closes the small distance between us and lies down next to me. My skin tingles uncomfortably where his fur brushes against mine, but I stay put. "Don't be so sad, Cedarfrost. That was is the past. Everything is in the past once it has passed. Like the words I just said to you, they are now in the past! Time just keeps moving on and on and on, and as it does, things change. And as things change, they get better." He pauses and sets his chin down on one of his paws. "Things always get better. Eventually."
I turn my head away from him and stare out into the darkness of the trees. The words he just said were ramblings from a crazy cat. "That's easy for you to say," I murmur to myself, and pray he did not hear me. If he did, he gives no sign of it.
I feel like I am trapped in this endless rotation of distraught. Of vexation. Of despair. It has been not even a full sunrise, as Scamp said before, that I have been with him, a full night since Hawkstrike forced me from the Clan, to be alone with Rosebreeze for the rest of their lives, yet it feels like several moons. My claws dig into the cool dirt beneath me and I hiss out a breath, a fresh wave of all these horrible feelings crashing down on top of me.
There is a slight rustling beside me as Scamp gets up from where he was beside me. The sudden rush of cold air meets the side on which he was on, but I do not turn my head to look at him. A heartbeat later, he reappears in front of me, and the small whiff of the mouse causes me to look in his direction then. He sets the dead mouse down in front of me and nudges it forward.
"Here, eat," he says softly. "It's growing cold, but the food will help your wound heal a bit quicker overnight." He glances up at the sky to where the moon is steadily falling down the starry expanse above the forest's canopy. "Or overday, I guess."
A quiet mrrow escapes from my mouth, but only lasts half a heartbeat. I take that it is from the madness that I feel faintly pressing at the edges of my consciousness, lingering, as if waiting to pounce once the time is right. With no word, I begin tearing into the tender, rather cold meat, but my belly is thankful still.
When I am finished eating, I look up to barely see Scamp a bit away from me in the thick darkness. It seems that he is searching for something in the trees, but I cannot guess what. I have just eaten; I don't need anything more. Maybe he is hunting for himself? But from the quick scans and straight posture compared to the focused crouch for hunting, that throws that out of the question. However, before I can ask, his figure perks up in the minuscule moonlight and he lunges forward behind a tree, now out of my view. After a few long heartbeats of him not reappearing, I decide to get up and go -
Renewed pain bursts alive in my leg, and I am forced back to my initial position, biting back a yowl. Curse that fox!
But my attention is immediately returned to Scamp and his sudden disappearance. Is he... all right? He didn't run into a badger or another fox, did he? No, because there would be sounds of battle piercing the night air. Where did he -
"This is perfect!" His gleeful mewl interrupts the silence a moment before he appears from behind a tree and trots toward me. "Come on, let me show you!"
Before I could say anything in my shock, he nudges me to my feet, taking practically all of my weight on the side of my injured leg. As we slowly make progress to his discovery, I ask, "What exactly did you find that is so perfect?"
We then get to the tree and round it, and I see that there is a gaping hole opening itself up on one side, large enough for at least two cats to crawl inside. Scamp did not have to answer me, for I knew now that he is talking about a den. Then a brand new fighting thought strikes me, and I turn my head to him. "Why do we need a den? I am not planning on staying here forever." In this forest, with all my life memories, I might add. The thought causes my all too familiar problem to resurface on my mind, but as Scamp talks again, it is brushed away. For now.
"I know, but it is going to take a while for your leg wound to heal, don't you think?" He says this with a gentle kindness, like a queen telling her kit that hurting their littermate is not the most affectionate thing to do. "It will be at least a couple more days until it's healed well enough to go back to your normal routine, but for now, we might as well be comfortable where we currently are."
I do not know if I begin to grow embarrassed about how I didn't think of that on my own and angry at his suggestion of staying here for at least two more days. But then I realize that he said we might as well be comfortable, not you, as in me.
He must have caught that, too, for when I am still contemplating whether on bringing that up or not, he urges me back onto the ground, my belly now touching the grass and dirt beneath, while a strange awkwardness twists around in it like a worm.
"I'll be right back," he announces quickly as he retreats a few fox-lengths away into the forest. "I'm going to find some moss or ferns for nests."
Leaving me alone next to the apparent den - to our apparent den? - I have only me and my own rambling thoughts to keep me company. The thought of the awkward wording from before quickly shifts to the fact that he knows how to build a nest, and to find a den. Confusion engulfs me then. He is a kittypet, is he not? He still bears the blue collar that his Twolegs claimed him with. Then how could he possibly know all this stuff that the Clan does?
I eventually figure it must have been the old she-cat who had also taught him of herbs. Yes, it must have been; it's the only possible way.
Before long, Scamp returns with a huge wad of moss and ferns - just what he promised he would retrieve - and sets them next to the tree. I watch in silence as he begins to create two nest inside of the tree den, as perfectly as any Clan cat would have done. Almost as if he feels my gaze upon him, he glances at me, and I quickly relocate my gaze up to the sky. It is then that I notice the first light of dawn as the sun gradually begins to climb above the horizon. Some stars have already begun to fade away, waiting patiently for them to continue their sparkling the next night.
"Done!" Scamp chirps merrily. He exits the den and stands beside me so we can admire his work together.
I have nothing to say, but a yawn erupts from me.
That gets Scamp's attention, as he again is gently thrusting his shoulder beneath my flank to bring me upward. He guides me into the den, down the slight slope in the earth, and settles me on one of the nests. I am surprised at how comfortable it does feel, and brings even more memories of the Clan back to me. Again, however, before I can speak what my mind wants to vent, Scamp beats me.
"Get some sleep, okay?" Scamp gazes down at me, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say rather... fondly. "You'll wake up when you wake up. I won't stray far."
He lingers for a few heartbeats longer before finally leaving the tree den and lying down himself a couple tail-lengths in front of the entrance. As if he were guarding me from any danger that dares threaten to hurt me, like a lover -
I abruptly shake my head. Where in StarClan's name did that come from? Holy frog, I must be very tired.
With that, I rest my head between my front paws on the soft moss beneath me and close my eyes, urging any lasting thoughts from my head to dissipate and give me a restful sleep I desperately need.
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My gosh, I love writing this story. Just writing in general. *happy sigh* /).w.(\
I hope you are enjoying this story, as well! I am planning and really hoping to finish this by the end of October, which I would think would be doable, as there are only thwo parts left, but each would most likely be more than 2,000 words. :)
Thanks so much for reading! Don't forget to vote, comment, add, and share! It really does mean and help a lot <3