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destinyclan · 1 year ago

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Before Moon 0 (6/8)

Bouncerise instinctively felt a growl rumble up in her throat. She lowered herself into a battle stance, as the other cat merely rolled her eyes.

"Yes, it's nice to see you too, Bouncepaw."

"It's Bouncerise now!" Bouncerise replied after a heartbeat of confusion. Right, she remembered. Shortgrass never witnessed our warrior ceremonies. A strange thought. It made her feel old for a moment, she knew it had been forever since she'd seen the other she-cat, but her warrior ceremony still felt like it was just yesterday.

"Bouncerise? That's cute. Did Lionstar pick the name for you?" The mockery at the mention of her leader aggrevated Bouncerise further, but it also send a shiver down her spine, as she recalled the exact circumstances of her departure from the clan. Departure? No. Banishment.

"Tallspike! No, Tallspike!" Bouncepaw heard the disraught voice of her older sister, Whistlewind, die down to a devastated whimper as she cowered over the body of her mate. Bouncepaw let her head drop. All of this felt incredibly unfair: This was meant to be the happiest day of her life so far, the day she was made an apprentice. Having Lionstar's kind eyes lock with hers as she was given her name and apprenticed to Tallspike felt amazing, like she had finally earned a place among her clanmates. Soon, she would learn how to fight and hunt! Yes, one or the other chore was a given, but it was going to be worth it! She knew Tallspike was going to be a great mentor; Whistlewind assured her so, and her sister was rarely ever wrong about anything!

And it took only one cat to take it all from her again.

Bouncepaw and the other apprentices retreated to talk to their new mentors. Tallspike told her how happy he was that she was her new apprentice, but before she could tell him she felt the same way, an angry cry of objection disrupted the crowd that was about to depart to pursue the regular clan duties. All eyes turned to her: Shortgrass.

"This is it! You promised me an apprentice moons ago, Lionstar! I have been taking twice the workload of a normal warrior, even organizing patrols when your deputy didn't feel like it! Where is my reward?!"

Lionstar, who was still seated where he held the ceremony prior, seemed like he was about to reply, but Tallspike cut in, fed up with the way Shortgrass was acting, and had been acting for moons now. "You don't get to talk to the leader like that! And how dare you disrespect the deputy!"

"The fact that you of all cats got made a mentor before me is a joke! You couldn't hold your own against me!" Shortgrass was pressed low to the ground as she hissed at him, tail lashing furiously. Tallspike extended his claws. "Why don't you prove that before you open your big mouth!"

And it only took those words to seal his fate. The battle was fierce, but Shortgrass ultimately came out on top. Bouncepaw didn't know how long the battle lasted for, only that it felt like an eternity between hearing Tallspike's last howl and her sister's weeping. The rest of the clan was shocked, unable to move. Except for one of them.

"See? You might as well make me Bouncepaw's new mentor, Lionstar! I can certainly teach her more than him!" Did she grasp the impact of what she had just done? The sort of wounds she had caused him? The clan was horrified. What kind of cat would go this far to prove a point? To get back at another cat? To get an apprentice? By StarClan, they were clanmates, they slept in the same den, they laughed together, they shared prey... Bouncepaw felt sick.

It was the last day she ever saw Shortgrass. Of course Lionstar did not make her her new mentor, but banished her from their clan, with the notice that the next time they saw here thread these grounds, they would kill her on sight. And it seemed she wouldn't dare cross paths with her now former clanmates again.

Until now.

A rustling of the bushes behind her made Bouncerise flinch and Shortgrass twitch her ears. "Oh, you brought Oriolepaw too..."

"Oriolespeckle!" Bouncerise defended her clanmate. The tom in question did a double check upon seeing the black she-cat, a very baffled expression in his face, eyes huge. "Shortgrass?! What are you doing here?!"

"I should be asking you." Shortgrass stalked closer to the tom, "As far as I know this isn't clan territory. Or else, what was it... you were going to kill me?" The lightheartedness of her tone made Bouncerise sick to her stomach. "Is Lionstar extending the boundary or something?"

"What do you care?! That's none of your business!" Bouncerise yelled, tail lashing. Shortgrass' ears twitched, she really didn't seem to care. "Well, he's not enough of a mousebrain to send the two of you alone out for such a mission..." It looked liek she wanted to say something, but her gaze dropped below their eye level.

"You two look hungry. Come." With a waving of the tail, she ordered them to follow. After hesitating for a moment, Oriolespeckle began moving, before Bouncerise halted him with a low hiss. "Seriously?!" The tom hissed back in defense: "We haven't eaten since last night! Whatever she found it's all we're going to get until we reach those 'promised grounds' or whatever."

It was true, the path here was as barren as Bouncerise assumed their neighbouring clan's territory to be. Nonetheless she was cautious, since after all what reason did Shortgrass have for feeding them? She went after Oriolespeckle and met Shortgrass again, as she hauled out a rather skinny hare from underneath a pile of dirt.

As the three cats feasted, and the two young warriors stuffed their mouths with as much as they could, Shortgrass asked: "So... who became your mentor in my absence?" Bouncerise almost choked on the hare when she heard that. She felt the anger bubble up in her again, the more memories of Tallspike resurfaced, but she pulled herself together, since she did not want to give up the meal she was having right now. At the same time... was it smart to draw the ire of Shortgrass and pin it to someone else? Someone who, maybe, Shortgrass would then seek out? Bouncerise got a grip again, realizing she was thinking too far. If Shortgrass attempted anything she'd kill her right here and now. "... Bluebellheart."

"Bluebellheart!" Shortgrass parroted with clear ridicule. "Well I hope for you that some other cat stepped in, because if she taught you how to fight, then you're gonna be as good of a fighter as a squirrel!" Shortgrass then took another bite from the hare. Bouncerise felt how hard it was to contain her anger, especially when Oriolespeckle laid his tail on her back, not exactly reassuringly, but afraid she would soon combust with rage. There's no point in killing her, she told herself. You'd be just as bad as her.

"And what about Reedstalk? There's no way that old foxheart is still alive anymore, who took his place?"

"Snakefur." Oriolespeckle replied almost immediately, causing Shortgrass to now be the one to almost choke on her meal, though not from shock, but from amusement, as she was purring with meat between her teeth.

"Snakefur... oh, that's a good one..." she forced out between purrs and coughs. Once she got a hold of her voice again, she continued. "If he becomes leader your clan is more doomed than before... Is that the reason why the two of you are out here?" She got up and mustered the two with her cunning eyes. "It wouldn't surprise me, is all."

Bouncerise finished up and got up too, to look Shortgrass directly into the eyes. "What our business is out here is ours, not yours!" she yelled, gaining merely a simple change to a bored expression from Shortgrass, before the black she-cat rebutted in her usual manner. "Is that any way to treat someone who just gave you food? You're not scared of me, are you?"

Bouncerise flinched and bristled her fur up further, gaining another amused purr from Shortgrass. Whilst Oriolespeckle got up too and joined Bouncerise's side, Shortgrass began pacing around, monologuing, even going as far as turning her back to the two.

"You know, Bouncerise is such a silly name for you. If I was the leader I would've named you something like Bouncestrike, or Bounceclaw. You've showed potential as far back as the day you took your first steps." She turned around, looking the other she-cat straight in the eyes. "You still do."

Bouncerise didn't move, still ducked to the ground in a battle stance. But she did begin shaking. Why is she saying this? What's her plan? Does she actually... mean all of this?

"Fearing me would be foolish. After all, you could always call Lionstar to send a patrol out after me, couldn't you?" Shortgrass questioned, making Bouncerise shift around even more uncomfortably. Her tone... It was almost like she knew they weren't going back to their clan...

Then, she backed off again, purring in an unusually kind tone. "But if that's not the case, you two could use any helping paw you can find. Just saying..." No, it wasn't a kind tone. There was something so off about it...

A hit to her flank almost made her lose balance. It was Oriolespeckle, who had pushed her slightly. "Come on, let's get lost!" He said, before he let out a half-hearted "Thanks for the hare." into Shortgrass' direction.

Bouncerise followed him into the thicket as fast as she could break out of her position. Shortgrass stared after them for a while, toward the bushes they fled into. Not before long, she would be on her paws too, becoming a shadow in the woods, stalking them...

#destinyclan #clangen #before moon 0 #prologue #bm0 part 6 #animal death #<- descriptive

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