MARTENFUR

Despite drinking what felt like a moon's worth of rain from the stream, the bitter taste of traveling herbs remained fresh in Martenfur's mouth. The upside to the amount of water he'd drank was that it helped keep him cool in the sunhigh heat. The longer they traveled, the worse his already sticky and sweaty fur became.

Up ahead, Beetlewatcher conversed with Otterheart and Gentlefern, which left Martenfur in the rear with Asterpaw. He gave her a sideways glance, watching her constantly shifting face with curiosity. One moment, a look of curiosity would appear, replaced by hesitation a second later and, right after, something akin to suspicion. Throughout all of this, her nose remained the only constant, twitching uncontrollably. The warrior thought the movement of the little pink bud quite adorable.

"I know you're watching me." The she-cat's voice interrupted Martenfur's thoughts, catching him off-guard. The tom, being the confident warrior he was, recovered quickly.

"My apologies, I was only admiring your physique." He winked at her and saw her roll her eyes at him in dismissal, but felt the heat coming from under her light fur all the same.

"I didn't mean to embarrass you," the warrior quickly added, not wanting to make the apprentice feel awkward with his advances. "It was only a small compliment."

"I'm not embarrassed," Asterpaw replied cheerfully. "I've just never really been complimented before." At this, Martenfur gave her a shocked look.

"A pretty thing like you? The male apprentices should be all over you!" While he was genuinely surprised that the she-cat did not regularly receive compliments, he played it up for the sake of theatrics. At the head of the patrol, Gentlefern looked back to give him a scolding look.

Asterpaw laughed softly. "Well, one of those apprentices is my brother, which is hardly appropriate. The other two are Whitepaw and Littlepaw; one is very much like his father, the other immature. I don't really have anyone to receive compliments from." She shrugged, seemingly unbothered by this fact.

The warrior snorted. "Don't let those two get to you. They may be the sons of Palethorn, but I'm sure they're half the apprentices you are." This time, Martenfur saw the she-cat's demeanor brighten. It served to lift his own, though the comment had been made out of spite for the older warrior, who he believed to be arrogant and loyal only to himself.

The comment caught the attention of Gentlefern, Palethorn's kin. Only their physical similarities hinted at their relation, both being pale in colour and sporting light-coloured eyes. In personality, the two were very different, with Palethorn known for his strictness with apprentices, harsh words and generally disagreeable nature. Gentlefern, on the other hand, looked for compromises, patiently played with kits and held a mother-figure role in the Clan.

"I'd like to remind you that kits do not always turn out like their parents," Gentlefern mewed, glaring at Martenfur with piercing green eyes. The red-brown tabby bowed his head to his mother. Beside him, Asterpaw watched on curiously.

"Perhaps it would sometimes be best for kits to turn out like their mothers," Otterheart pitched in, glancing over at Gentlefern. The medicine cat, along with their new leader, were kits from the warrior's first litter, making them Martenfur's half-siblings. Martenfur rarely remembered this fact, as everyone in the Clan felt like family, though not blood-related.

"The duty of raising kits is not left solely up to the mother," Beetlewatcher said in his usual calm tone. "It is the duty of the Clan." The finality of the words led Martenfur to believe that the tom was quoting the warrior code. It felt like such a long time ago when he learned it himself - the edges were beginning to blur.

Trying his hardest to remember as much as he could, he kept his amber eyes locked on a point far ahead for the remainder of the journey to Moon Cliffs, reciting the warrior code silently.

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Night fell not long after the patrol passed Big Rock, stopping to hunt before continuing on. Asterpaw caught most of the prey for their group, leaving the young warrior to be teased good-naturedly by Gentlefern. The teasing did not bother him; he was more of a fighter than a hunter.

The little she-cat seemed apologetic that she had outdone him and brought him the mouse she caught. He almost caught one himself, but the scraping of a lizard's claws scared it away before he had a chance to pounce. His own catch consisted of two lizards, still warm from the sun they basked in before becoming the patrol's dinner. Martenfur refused Asterpaw's offering at first, but upon seeing that Asterpaw would not relent, finally offered to share it with her. This, at least, was a fair compromise.

They walked the last leg of the journey to Moon Cliffs in companionable silence, the padding of soft paws filling the air around them. Before long, the moon would be up at its highest point and Beetlewatcher would receive his nine lives. The idea of having someone other than Sparrowstar as leader was slightly disconcerting to Martenfur, the tortoiseshell being the only leader he'd ever known. Stories of Falconstar and Hazelstar had been told to him as a kit, but the tom hardly remembered those. The warrior liked experiencing things for himself, rather than hearing about the greatness before his time.

Looking at Beetlewatcher now, the red-brown tabby wondered if the tom would make a good leader. He was quite young, not yet having lived three full season-cycles, but the way he moved suggested otherwise. A strength rippled underneath the midnight fur, a sort of hidden grace in each and every movement. Martenfur remembered the way Beetlewatcher's eyes reflected calm, even during the announcement of Sparrowstar's death the previous night, and decided that perhaps that, if nothing else, would make the tom a great leader. If the Clan had a leader like Beetlewatcher, they would remain calm and collected during times of trial; and StarClan knew what sorts of trials awaited them.

Their arrival at the entrance to the Moon Cliffs cut short the tom's musings. Beetlewatcher dipped his head into the cavern first, squeezing past the walls that curved in on either side. The narrow passage forced Martenfur to squeeze his broad shoulders past the hard red rock.

The passage continued, a thin line of floor between towering walls on either side. At the very end of the dark passage, a steady light grew brighter and brighter. The tom kept his eyes on it, expecting it to flicker as the patrol made its way down the narrow walkway. He was so focused on it that he nearly stepped on Asterpaw's tail when the cats in front of him stopped abruptly.

"Careful," she breathed, whisking her tail away from underfoot and flicking him across the nose with it. Even in the dark, Martenfur could make out the black tip of her otherwise light tail.

Just when Martenfur began to think the small passage would never end, it suddenly opened up into what could only be described as an enormous cave. Tilting his head back, he stared up in awe at the giant walls around him, rising up as far as the cliff face did back at camp. There were niches in the rock, undulations where it moved further back into itself and cavities where it had crumbled away over the ages.

And there, at the very top, a hole in the rock ceiling. From Martenfur's viewpoint, it seemed small, but the moonlight filtering through it created a large pool on the floor of the cave. The light shifted and shimmered, and Martenfur stared at it in awe. For a moment, he wondered if scaling the walls would help him get closer to its source.

You're not a squirrel, he growled at himself, dismissing the notion. And you're not a very good climber, regardless.

Asterpaw seemed to have the same idea. She bunched her legs beneath her and sprang at one of the niches, landing squarely on the natural ledge. From there, she raised her head to look up at the light in wonder.

"Keep watch for me," Beetlewatcher said quietly. The two young cats nodded, continuing to stare at the moonlight as it danced into the cave and cast its steady light onto the walls.

Asterpaw shivered. "It's almost as if our warrior ancestors are here." She spoke softly, but her voice echoed quietly off of the walls before dissolving into nothingness. The tom listened, settling down beside her little ledge. Gentlefern and Otterheart curled up on the opposite side of the cave and Martenfur looked over at them thoughtfully.

"Maybe your blood kin is somewhere up there," Martenfur replied without thinking. Though he sensed a sudden wave of hurt and sadness fill Asterpaw, the she-cat did not flinch away.

"They may not have been from RockClan, but I've always felt they were good cats," she said. "I believe they left me, Pebblepaw and Starlingpaw to be found by RockClan for good reason."

They fell silent, eyes trained on the sleeping forms of Otterheart and Beetlewatcher. The tabby she-cat lay still, only murmuring the occasional 'StarClan' in her sleep. Their new leader, however, twitched continuously, rolling this way and that as he dreamed. Martenfur wondered what the tom was seeing and if their warrior ancestors would visit him. Would he see Shortwhisker, the medicine cat killed by a cougar while attending to his Clan duties? Would he be visited by Jayflight and Greywind, the tom devoured by flames and his loving mate who would not leave him behind? The great Hazelstar who he himself had only heard stories about? And, perhaps most importantly, would Sparrowstar herself come to see him off into his new life as RockClan's leader?

"Do you ever think that some things, even the unexplainable ones, happen for a reason?" Asterpaw's small voice cut through the moonlight filled air, the question heavy in the otherwise light room.

Martenfur pondered this for a while before replying, "I think only StarClan knows that."

The apprentice just nodded in response, accepting the words immediately. Before today, Martenfur spoke to the apprentice only once, but already he could see the immense faith she carried in both RockClan and their warrior ancestors. It made him hopeful that the Clan would see better days following the tragic event of Sparrowstar's death. If everyone believed in StarClan the way Asterpaw did, there would be no disloyalty in the Clan. The red-brown warrior pondered this late into the night, long after the pretty apprentice fell into a slumber and Beetlewatcher's - now Beetlestar's - movements came to a stop.

Much later, in the early hours before dawn, his amber eyes caught the movement of a shape along the red walls and his ears heard a soft shimmering sound like that of dew drops bursting. He caught a faint whiff of smells foreign to him, the sweet and dusty scents of pines and falling leaves and bushy undergrowth. And there, on the other side of the cave, the faint flicker of a tortoiseshell pelt as the sound of paws faded away.