Vol. 1/6 ✅️
"Your future - it is a path entwined with thorns. They try to grab you, to pull you into the deepest thicket - and they will succeed. You don't have the power to change your destiny completely, Larkpaw. The only thing you can do is not t...
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"Look!" Dashkit meowed. Her downy, silver-grey tabby fur bristled happily. With her left ear, the tip of which was torn, she flicked in the direction of the apprentices' den. "Willowpaw is here now." A joyful expression veiled her eyes. "He promised me yesterday that he'd show me this new stalking technique his mentor taught him the other day."
"Great!" Leafkit's voice had taken on a scathing undertone. "He should've done it yesterday. " He was a tiny kit, one moon and a few days of age, with red tabby fur that was still as soft as his three sisters'. Yet Leafkit had already gotten himself into more trouble than any other kit. He had been caught countless times trying to sneak out of the camp or enter the warriors' den. To the displeasure of the other cats, he never seemed to realise that his behaviour was unacceptable. Even after talking to Hailstar, what the leader said seemed to go right back out of his other ear. It already became a routine for the MoonClan cats to find Leafkit being in trouble.
"Well, he's an apprentice, after all, so he's been a little busy," Dashkit admitted as she stepped sheepishly from one paw to the other. "But now he can teach us how to hunt. Come on!" Whooping with joy, she pattered through the tall grass that would have reached almost to her shoulder had it not been flattened by countless cats walking around here for moons.
Larkkit rose trance-like and followed her siblings with long strides. "I don't like Willowpaw," the tortico she-cat murmured in a hushed voice so that her sister wouldn't hear her, dragging herself with her tiny white paws across the meadow. "I'd rather share a nest with ticks and slugs than put up with him."
"Right?" Leafkit called from the front. The little tom dropped back a bit and settled into a loose trot beside Larkkit. "He's so arrogant!"
Larkkit flattened her ears. "Be quiet!" she snarled. "Don't say that when Dashkit is near!"
However, Dashkit only held her head up high and got faster. "Willowpaw is already an apprentice. Be a little bit more respectful."
He's not a warrior yet, though. Larkkit sighed. I want to be a warrior now. It's so unfair that I'm still a kit. Filled with jealousy, she thought of her older denmates, Stormkit and Firkit. The two toms were almost six moons old and would soon be made apprentices.
Dashkit had already stuck her head under a scrubby, wildly growing bush that was the apprentices' den. "Willowpaw! Don't sleep! You were going to teach me how to stalk upon prey, remember?"
Willowpaw, a dark ginger tom, had settled down in his nest lined with blades of grass. He looked up and shook his head. "Not now. Blazedew has made me do some morning swim training."
Rudely, Larkkit pushed Dashkit aside and took a quick look into the den. It was larger than expected, but had a relatively low roof with holes gaping in it. Several nests were dug around the trunk in the middle, all unused now except for Willowpaw's and that of his littermate Heatherpaw. They would, until Junipertail's litter became apprentices, also remain alone.
