🌓 11.7 Moons Old 🌓

The moon was half-full that evening, pale and ivory above a luminescent blanket of waving switchgrass. The two apprentices wondered if anyone was currently at the Moonpool. Maybe a medicine cat from another clan had tried their luck tonight and made it there. What a profound hope that was.

As they pushed their travels quite farther into dusk they discussed the threat of the wolves with Cheetah. She listened patiently and was mostly silent, which Crescentpaw thought was uncharacteristic of her.

The last night before the trio of she-cats reached Clan territory they shared a nest among the roots of a lone elder tree. Before settling, Crescentpaw had caught a wood mouse with just her jaws in the same relative area. They had been feeding on fallen seeds in the gathering evening. Underneath a purple twilit sky, she had snatched one up and thanked the Starclan warriors above.

Wow. I would've thought hunting impossible.

But learning how to do that was initially difficult. She'd first lost a starling by instinctively trying to jump on it with her foreclaws. The second piece of prey, a squirrel feeding on the moonlight-dappled forest floor, had moved too quickly for her to grasp with her teeth. Turning back towards their makeshift den, she had taken a different path and found the exposed mice amongst the scattered leaf-litter.

She'd have to learn to improve it on her own, and tell Tinypaw the tips later. At least she'd found out that she could catch something. (If only mice, and on the third try.)

Crescentpaw knew she would have serious problems for herself if she couldn't hook a fish with her forepaws. Riverclan's main source of prey was trout and carp.

Worry about that later. Just like she'd told Tinypaw to do.

Falling asleep had been easy. Walking across the pastures had taken up most of their day. When she woke the next morning she found her muscles refreshed and exuberant. Her paws had completely stopped hurting over the past three days; and now, even if she ran as hard as she could, the empty sheathes no longer hurt.

As the young she-cats set off again Cheetah began rambling with her profound illusion that all of the Clan cats would love her. That they would have to, because all she simply wanted was to help out and be friends with everybody! It was almost as though she was reassuring herself. And soon enough Tinypaw got tired of hearing it.

"Can you hush? We've only got a bit longer until we get there, and I can't even be excited to see my clan through your rambling!" Agitated, Tinypaw fluffed out her thin black tail.

"Besides, you can't just chatter on so loudly like that! There's prey and wolves out here, you know. And sometimes they attack at daylight instead of pre-dawn. You need to be paying attention to your surroundings. Scenting the air and listening behind you!" She spat.

"Hopefully you'll have a mentor to teach you all of that soon," Crescentpaw tried to help diverge the negative atmosphere.

"That's the least of our worries, Crescentpaw. We can't even climb a tree if the wolves come. Have you really thought this out?" Tinypaw mewed, halting and then swaggering back to her taller sister on small paws.

"You realize that we could be taking Cheetah back to her death as well as our own? This is serious, not a quest to make new friends."

Crescentpaw smiled nervously at her friend over her kin's shoulders. But then Tinypaw shot up and into her eye frame, locking gazes with her. "Don't you see that we could be kicked out the second we walk in? We'll never become warriors if they find out! And walking into camp with a kittypet as well as our missing claws... what we usually catch FISH WITH- is crazy!" She spat, her thin shoulders shaking. "This is all crazy," Tinypaw sighed with frustration and turned away. She rarely took her anger out on others for very long, if at all.

"I understand that, sister. I'm stressed too. And I know what we're walking back into. But you've got to stop taking it out on Cheetah. She doesn't understand what she's getting into until she sees it," Crescentpaw pointed out. Tinypaw whipped her head back towards their traveling kittypet companion. Her long spotted neck was stretched toward them.

"Yeah. I sure hope you're ready to see what a wolf is really like," her littermate mewed dryly, but Cheetah did not respond. Her eyes were wide, curious, and apprehensive at the same time.

"For now we'll try to avoid telling our mentors; at least until we figure out if Smallstar is going to accept Cheetah." Crescentpaw blinked her yellow-and-blue eyes at her spotted friend. "That means don't tell any cat that our claws were taken by the Twoleg yet. Don't even mention it to us, unless we bring it up first- and in private."

"Okay." Cheetah nodded quickly. The dark spots around her face accentuated her long, tapered muzzle.

However, she sort of looked strange. Something about her markings were unlike any clan cat's pelt she had ever seen. Caracal had mentioned something about bloodlines and having all spotted-cat kin. Oh well. Maybe she'll be popular for it. Maybe the clan has a teeny tiny chance of accepting her, at least for the fact that we need more cats to help defend the camp.

Crescentpaw then felt like she was kidding herself. Any level-headed Riverclan leader would deny a kittypet's request to join right now. Despite that little follow-up thought in the back of her mind, she carried on padding through the wild and overgrown grasses. The sun was baking the fur atop her head and back, but she hardly minded. Her paw pads were sweating through the earth to cool her down, and she could pant if she so desperately needed to.

"After this forking Thunderpath we'll be coming up on the Horseplace!" Crescentpaw announced, keeping her head high and eyes sharp on the land ahead. She stiffened when she heard a dog bark from close to the road, then realized it must have been from inside of a Monster. Poor dog.

"Right, no worries." They continued on at a slower pace, then halted at the fork in what Caracal called a 'road.' With Tinypaw's detection of vibrations through the pavement, and Crescentpaw's keen eyes trying to look both ways at once, they safely crossed it. Though Cheetah kept conversing, the apprentices were too excited to remember what she'd said. Tinypaw mostly ran ahead of them, but her long black tail was easy to follow.

As a deep-citrus sunset began to stain the horizon they finally passed Riverclan's borders. Tabby-and-white Crescentpaw expected a patrol to stop them along the way; even if it had been a small one of only two or three cats. But there was none.
Reassuringly, though, multiple riverclan clanmates' scents swamped the familiar worn patrol paths. They glided over the trodden-down grass and bounded beside overhanging foilage. Skirting some rocky outcrops, the three cats leaped the stream and skulked under the pooling shadows of huge willow trees. Cheetah stepped on twigs and knocked her knees against the terrain the entire way there, stumbling through grass clumps and over termite mounds.

"It's going to be great if they let you become a Riverclan apprentice, Cheetah!" Crescentpaw wanted to encourage her enthusiasm for the proposal. "You'll get a mentor and learn how to hunt, and we'll help you learn all the newbie battle moves that we've learned." She lifted her head high, determined not to show any doubt.

Besides. If Smallstar argues, I'll vouch for her. She's definitely got the determination for what it takes. The least we can do is ask.

"That's amazing! When do you guys think you'll be warriors?" Tinypaw stopped and tossed her head over one shoulder, looking at her kin. Crescentpaw met her eye levely and found worried anguish there. She felt it, too.

"Well... we'll get an assessment as soon as possible. That's another thing we have to ask about," Crescentpaw said with so much uncertainty that she nearly abandoned the sentence. She dejectedly watched as Tinypaw gave a nimble nod. Deep down, both sisters knew that their assesment could be the end of the road for them. If and when their mentors found out about their claws, they'd tell Riverclan's leader. And he might either re-assign them to medicine cat roles or banish them from the clan completely.

What use is a cat without its claws? Juggling such negative and comparably optimistic thoughts were tiring. And yet she lifted her head and tail high, pushing away the doubts. Maybe if they were lucky nothing would go wrong.

"It's sad that we would've had our pre-assessment training already, if that stupid Twoleg hadn't of caught us in a trap." Tinypaw sneaked a look over at Cheetah, as if expecting her to get offended. But the other she-cat simply trotted through the sun washed grasses, the wind tugging at her gold-and-black ears.

"Smells like it'll rain soon," Crescentpaw changed the subject. "Let's pick up the pace. We're almost there."

The tabby-and-white apprentice hadn't needed to say anything. The she-cats were mere minutes away from the heart of Riverclan. They approached the most well-trodden path that led up to the barrier entrance, and spotted Alpinefog on guard.

As they fully emerged from around a clump of seagrass Alpinefog's jaw fell slack.

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Some of the characters we've seen so far