The smoky molly was born to run over the maze of roots, her short powerful legs and long thick tail made jumping in motion and landing just as neatly. Easier than breathing; this is what she was meant for!
High above the canopy, the sun sat heavy on the spine of the sky its bright light filtering warmly down through the leaves. Wolfwhisker was deeply enjoying the heat, even under the cooling touch of the shade-bearing leaves.
Winter was never too far off- it’s biting teeth would take hold of the air and the leaves soon and strip the world barren once again. One had to enjoy summer while it was here and a warrior could be sure her clan’s bellies would be full and the kittens born would be strong enough to face the cruel cold times.
Wolfwhisker was broken from her thoughts by the slow petering out of the roots she ran along, jarring her slightly as her broad, pale paws hit dew damp dirt instead of warm living bark. Dear FogClan, I hate that feeling, the way hard packed ground felt against her pads. It reminded her of bad dreams, rocks caught between her toes and endless layers of shifting slate.
The fog held a chill in the earth still, its cooling tendrils leaving dew in its wake to feed the earth as it reached about. FogClan is active today, Wolfwhisker thought wonderingly. It was odd for her ancestor’s paws to reach so far into the forest when the sun was this high.
Padding forward into the more open spattering of sunlight, Wolfwhisker looked around curiously. She hadn’t been paying as much attention as she perhaps should have been, rushing about the woods in her glee over the beautiful afternoon. Now, finding herself close to the border, she roped her attention back in. Ears pricked, the molly moved towards the soft trickling of the river, the opposite bank marking SlateClan’s border.
It sounded muffled somehow and Wolfwhisker grimaced, hoping she wasn’t showing signs of white-cough. It always made her ears feel full of spider webs.
Rocks shifted underpaw as the young warrior padded all the way out of her leafy trees, the sunlight now pressing its full weight against her dark spine. Coat rippling in discomfort, Wolfwhisker increased her speed towards the merrily singing stream in front of her. Despite the dark slate piled all about the pebbled water and soaking in sunlight, it always managed to stay ice cold, and Wolfwhisker was very much looking forward to dunking her parched muzzle into it.
Being out from under the trees was uncomfortable and far too hot on her dark striped pelt, and the rock under her paws weren’t helping matters any as they ate up sunlight like greedy kittens with the first mouse of the morning.
Still, she couldn’t shake off an almost eerie feeling.
It shifted under her fur and she wondered if that was what was really making her so uncomfortable. Was that FogClan? Glancing down with tawny eyes she stared at the mist swirling around the rocks, it’s body laying heavy on the stone now that it was in the open under the sun. She watched it for a long second before turning back to the stream.
Everything was fine. If FogClan is watching it can only be a good thing, Wolfwhisker thought firmly.
Leaning forward she paused upon catching her eyes in the river. She gasped. A different face looked up at her, blue eyes wide in shock.
Wolfwhisker stared down in confusion at this reflection that was not herself. The not-her cat’s face was pale silver but their stripes were the same, dark and looping. CinderClan. Jaws parted, the stream cat started to speak, voice rippling with the water and dragging in Wolfwhisker’s spiderweb stuffed ears.
“Watch the forest,” It called, whispering through her own mouth. She could feel It’s voice pressing past her throat. It vibrated her soul that sat against the back of her tongue. Just like the elders always said, Wolfwhisker thought in awe.
“Watch the forest, Wolfwhisker.” It’s blue eyes blinked slowly up at her and suddenly Wolfwhisker found that she may recognize this other cat. It was familiar. She could feel it in her throat, a deep realization she couldn’t sink her claws into like a chaffinch out of reach.
“Wolfwhisker.”
The image in the river shuddered the face darkening strangely. Patches forming across the muzzle; something hungry. Fur starting to stand up along her spine, Wolfwhisker staggered backwards. Those are burns, aren’t they? How is that possible? No one went into the fire’s territory anymore, it wasn’t allowed, Poplarstar would lose his whiskers! Those were burns-
“Wolfwhisker!”
The world was ice cold when Wolfwhisker snapped awake, gasping so hard the air in front of her muzzle fogged up.
Looking around wildly, she focused quickly on a massive shape huddled in the only source of light. It was just a dream, Wolfwhisker realized as she panted. She’d been sleeping in SlateClan’s warrior den. Where she was supposed to be.
Sinking her claws into the moss underneath her the young warrior lifted her body slowly; squinting at the dark shadow looming in the starlit mouth of the den. Oh, it was Cavefoot. Ratwhisker’s mate. We… we’re on the dawn patrol, aren’t we? Oh twin stars…
Cavefoot blinked at her, his eyes round and concerned, but Wolfwhisker shook her pelt out, hard. “I’m fine, just a dream!” She called quietly. Just a strange dream. She was grateful her stirring hadn’t woken Blizzardpelt.
Wolfwhisker winced at the annoyed grumble her noise kicked up from her denmates before hurrying towards the large grey tabby. “Sorry Cavefoot,” She apologised, touching her muzzle against his chest in remorse as she slipped around him. Straight onto hard ground, the warrior hissed quietly with irritation as the cold stone woke her up.
The large senior warrior turned to squint after her, but Wolfwhisker was already bounding away towards the farthest scrub brush from the warrior den. The sun hadn’t quiet risen past the horizon yet, and as the summer ended the mornings became chilly.
Stone walls rose up on two sides of camp. The steep northern path out of camp was shrouded in early morning fog, but the south sloping exit was warming up and had already burned away the mist. Wolfwhisker felt uncomfortabe watching it whisper about as she walked.
What had that been?
Wolfwhisker was so lost in her thoughts she very nearly ran into the sharp edges of the apprentice den, and she jumped sharply backwards in response. This was why Strawberryfoot thought she was a shrew of a warrior, because she couldn’t even watch out for a bush! Let alone show manners to the apprentices sleeping inside the bush.
Dropping to her belly, the sturdy dark pelted molly peered into the gloom. The new apprentices this moon were still working with kitten down, and they were all tucked so tightly together she could barely separate their brown and gray pelts. It isn’t even cold yet, Wolfwhisker winced, thinking back to her own time in the apprentice den. It hadn’t really been that long ago, only a pawful of moons.
“Sunpaw,” she called softly, tail tip twitching. The apprentice-shaped lump moved like a strange sleepy bear cub, and Wolfwhisker smiled slightly at the ruffled pelts and grumbled whines as a single form slowly lifted his honey colored head.
“Sunpaw,” Wolfwhisker purred, blinking kindly at the young apprentice when he turned to look at her. Under the pale halfmoon light the young tom looked almost tawny, his amber eyes gleaming a reflective green. He bubbled a greeting at her unthinkingly, wincing when an irate gray paw reached out to shove him.
“Sunpaw, this is our first dawn patrol and neither of us can wake up!”
That got the tom’s attention. He scrambled upright as carefully as excited apprentice paws could do and crawled out to meet his mentor, his enthusiasm waking up with the rest of him. Trust an eight moon old apprentice to get this riled up about wandering around on ice cold stone for the majority of the morning. “Sorry, Wolfwhisker.”
A laugh rumbled behind Wolfwhisker and she looked over her shoulder with a guilty expression, unable to help herself. Snakeheart stood beside Cavefoot now, and her father’s amber eyes narrowed with laughter. “Are you just going to let your poor apprentice fret, sweet-bird?” He asked the joke in his tone, rolling what she thought was supposed to be a stern voice into a playful purr.
“I was about to-”
“Oh leave the poor warrior alone Snakeheart she still woke up before the apprentices,” Cavefoot defended her, touching his muzzle to Wolfwhisker’s shoulder as he ducked down to call out to his own apprentice, Stormpaw- who also happened to be his daughter. Snakeheart openly laughed at that, his dark shoulders rising and falling with the force of his purr.
Feeling heat beside her Wolfwhisker turned her head to look at Sunpaw as he sat down close beside her, fur ruffled up in the cold now that the embarrassment of being poked fun of by a senior warrior was cooling out of his ears.
Smiling, Wolfwhisker gave the tom a quick lick over the ears before standing up. “Sunpaw was up before the others, and he didn’t even complain.” She offered, tone proud as could be. Sunpaw puffed up with the praise, ducking his head to groom his chest and lay the fluffed fur back in place. Snakeheart nodded knowingly as he ambled after Cavefoot.
Sunpaw’s littermates were already staggering out from their warm nests. Cavefoot sat beside the older warrior, blinking in the early morning chill as he watched the apprentices all huddle around Wolfwhisker’s side. Mother always told her that CinderClan cats had inherited the fire’s heat, and while she wasn’t so sure about that, the apprentices definitely appreciated the dark molly’s warm skin. It may also have something to do with the fact that apprentices always flocked around any cat that would let them steal their body heat.
Stagpaw yawned massively, but she clenched her teeth in an effort to hide it. Snakeheart for his part flicked his apprentice gently with a tail tip before moving past her. Wolfwhisker would never forget her own apprentice days.
She was lucky that, unlike these littermates, she and Claynose had been born in spring and avoided the longer wait until apprenticeship for winter kittens. Of course it meant that Sunpaw, Stormpaw, and Stagpaw were all large enough now at eight moons to brave the snows when it began to pile up… but it had also meant that their mother had been even more irritating than usual thanks to her self-imposed prison sentence in the nursery.
Not that she wasn’t glad to have her first apprentice, but Wolfwhisker couldn’t help the ripple of annoyed concern that flowed down her spine. What sort of queen had kits that would only have a moon cycle before their first apprentice snow? Ratwhisker that was who.
Wolfwhisker’s brother, Chubpaw, was also in the apprentices den, but he was nearly twelve moons himself and ready for his warrior name. No one could ever say Ratwhisker planned anything, not like Salmonblossom. To be fair Wolfwhisker may just dislike the molly in general but the point still stood. It was dangerous to send apprentices into their new den with winter preparing to close its claws around the valley clans.
“Stop thinking and start walking, Wolfwhisker!"
Snakeheart’s loud chipper meow broke the younger warrior out of her anxious internal ramblings, and Wolfwhisker swung her head towards her father guiltily. He was watching her with gentle eyes but a firm expression on his face. Wolfwhisker recognized that look in a heartbeat.
All stuck up in her head again. She felt anger at herself now. Mother always told her she was too stuck in her head. It was like some terrible kitten story. ‘If you stick in your head too much you’ll get stuck between your ears!’
A gentle rumbling next to her ear caught the dark warriors attention and she turned her amber eyes on Sunpaw’s wide excited face. Smiling openly at the young cat, Wolfwhisker did her best to shake the discomfort and uncertainty out of her mind. Standing up and ignoring Stormpaw’s unhappy meow the large molly stretched herself out as best as she could in the slightly cramped apprentice filled space she had.
Careful to part her jaws and let her stress out of her throat in the exhaled fog, Wolfwhisker stood back up to make after her father’s retreating form as he padded off. How the tom always managed to look so completely carefree was well beyond Wolfwhisker, who’d once cried as an apprentice over it raining for three days in a row, and was only soothed by playing in mud puddles at Snakeheart and Blizzardpelt’s prompting.
But she knew the lesson Snakeheart was teaching now. It was the senior warriors who made sure the younger mentors knew what to do with their charges. Wolfwhisker didn’t know how it worked in the other clans but SlateClan took a very clanwide approach to their apprentices. She was Sunpaw’s main mentor, but Wolfwhisker’s old mentor, Cavefoot, would also be teaching him. Snakeheart would do his part too. The three of them worked closely together to give these apprentices the very best SlateClan had to give. After all, they were the very future of the clan, and as Poplarstar constantly said: the greatest gift FogClan had to give were lessons in the form of kittens.
So she would do as Snakeheart gently reminded her and get out of her own spider-web stuffed ears and show Sunpaw around SlateClan territory on his very first dawn patrol. The trio of warriors had already fallen into a comfortable rhythm in the last week of this litter’s apprenticeship and Wolfwhisker was more than happy to let her tired brain sink into the safety of it. She would stick to the back of the group in case there was any black ice on the rock and to use the hearing that gave her her hunting skills to make sure there weren't any autumn predators.
Cavefoot would lead the way as the largest strongest mentor so if there was ice he would be the one to either warn everyone or go sliding down the hill, which Wolfwhisker imagined was a better warning. Snakeheart, who never grew tired of talking, would stick in the center with the apprentices and explain. For the most part.
Cavefoot had already assumed his place at the front, his great sweeping tail droopingto make sure he had balance as he padded towards the sloping north entrance. Snakeheart followed, the apprentices mostly awake now and bouncing around his dark body in a mishmash of browns and tawny's. Wolfwhisker moved along behind, blinking slowly as the morning fog reached for her legs.
A shiver ran up her spine at the contact, but she was sure it had little to do with the cold. It felt as if someone was trying to stop her or get her attention with little ripples of contact against her haunches, even as she moved a bit faster to try and escape the sensation.
What had that not-her face in the river said? Watch the forest? What does that even mean? There isn’t any forest in SlateClan territory, Wolfwhisker thought, glancing pointedly at the fog as she hurried forward. A thought came to the forefront of her mind and Wolfwhisker felt the warmth in her veins go cold. They’d have to go past PineClan territory though, and there were plenty of woods there. Was something going to happen? Was that a prophecy?
Should she tell Snakeheart? Or Swiftnose... Wolfwhisker tail tip flicked rapidly along the slate behind her worriedly as she climbed the rocky path behind the others. No… it had to be nothing. Just a dream, right? FogClan didn’t send omens to lesser warriors. Especially not green warriors who’s deputy thought they were a waste of space.
Okay, so maybe Strawberryfoot wasn’t that bad, but that’s how it felt sometimes.
Sunpaw glanced back at her and Wolfwhisker everything she could to wipe the worry off of her muzzle, offering the apprentice a warm smile. Encouragement. This would be a long patrol for three new apprentices even if they were older than summer apprentices. Wolfwhisker was here because Poplarstar believed she could teach this apprentice to be the best warrior he could be. His confidence in her had gotten her excited for the moons to come.
Shaking off her worries and fears, Wolfwhisker focused firmly on her throat, pushing the fear out of her heart. Fog clings to everything it touches, Wolfwhisker reasoned, not just me. She hooked her paw pads carefully against the lip of stone at the top of the trail out of camp. The trio of apprentices stood pressed up against Cavefoot’s broad grey haunches, and Wolfwhisker squinted over her father’s shorter head to look at the rising sun in front of the five of them. It would rise and the fog would burn away, and with it Wolfwhisker’s anxiety would go.
Nothing would happen on the Pineclan border and she would stay out of her stupid cobweb head and train Sunpaw how to properly move around SlateClan’s dangerous slippery territory. And she wouldn’t even freak out if the fog was swirling just a little strangely at the edges of her vision.