Fun to Fish

[Fernpaw]

A small brown tom slunk through the reeds away from the RiverClan camp toward the fresh water streams. Today for once it was not raining. Today was actually rather nice outside for once. It was partly cloudy with a slight breeze. It felt good to finally go outside and have the sun warm on your fur.

The RiverClan apprentice was bouncing up and down with excitement as he walked down the familiar path. Finally Silkgrass was going to be able to do some training with him. The young tom hoped that they would be doing some battle training rather than hunting lessons. Down by the streams was a nice place for combat training or a fishing lesson.

Twigpaw hated to fish because it was so boring! All a cat ever did was sit there and wait for the stupid fish to swim right into your claws, bada bing bada boom, you had a fish. Hurray for you, *throws confetti* . Yawn, Twigpaw was ready for the action of battle training where a cat had to be quick and always on the move. This was perfect for a cat like Twigpaw. The young cat always seemed full of energy, he was like the Energizer bunny, he just kept going and going like there was no tomorrow.

The RiverClan cat got to the streams first and sat down to wait for his mentor. A few heart beats later and the lanky brown tom was up and pacing around in circles waiting for her. It was a perfect day outside and Silkgrass was going to take her sweet time getting here, great.


Drip, plunk. Drip, drip, plink.

The young tom started violently as cold water splashed on to his nose. All of the warm from the imagined sun as the young cat awoke to another rainy day in RiverClan. It had been raining so much recently that the roofs had begun to fail in some of the dens. Twigpaw made note to tell his mentor that the apprentices' den was leaking again. The apprentice sighed, his dream had been so nice compared to this reality.

Twigpaw stood up and stretched each of his legs before padding out of the shelter of the apprentices' den. His amber eyes searched the sky for any sign the sun still existed in the sky, but as usual there was not a glimpse of the sun to be seen, just dark and foreboding clouds. Suddenly a jagged claw mark of lightening tore through the sky, followed a few heart beats later by a loud clap of thunder, great. Just when he thought this day couldn't possibly get any worse. The brown cat let out an exhausted sigh and padded over to the warriors den to see if Silkgrass was up, or even wanted to go out and train today with the weather like this.

((Sorry Fernie, I didn't know, I just based it off of the weather on the sidebar. Cedar, that's fine with me!))

[Fernear!]

Lithe paws let her fly across the damp territory she called home. It had been too long since she had attempted to catch land-borne prey, but today she was right on the tail of a fleet water vole. Much faster and conniving than she had first assumed, Silkgrass still had more experience than the vole. She turned whenever it did, ducked under whatever it proceeded to move under and in the end, jumped to where it had not yet been. The hunt was exhilarating and the she-cat was in a good mood. Her recent bout of depression was a thing of the past. She made sure it would be, at least. Now that she had come to a slower pace, the rain had started its equalized beat down on her back and head. She let out a sigh when she looked at the muddy ground. She would have to bury the rodent in it if she stayed in her place. Determined not to ruin the prey, she searched for a spot of dry land before burying it. Her daily routine of catching three pieces of prey continued on through most of the morning before she headed back, successful and satisfied with herself.

There were only a few pairs of eyes that stared on at the warrior as she dropped her catches on the fresh-kill pile: mostly kits and their paranoid mothers. With the summer almost over, greencough was sure to be lurking in the cold. She nodded to the resident felines and then began her search for Twigpaw. Her search wasn't long lived, for he was right under her nose. He seemed disheveled, most likely for the raging storm battling above their heads. The rain was like bloodshed from the stars. She pondered on the thought for a few moments and left it for the archives of her mind. Surely StarClan wouldn't be fighting and creating all this awful weather, right? StarClan could never predict or change the weather. She had been taught it was so.

Her great mood had yet to fail her and as a great smirk grew on her maw she trailed behind her unknowing apprentice. Her paws were as quiet as any hunter in the forest, her prey in sight and mind. A few moments passed when giggles began to sound faintly in the dens that we had heard about earlier. Taking this as her cue, she then leaped to the future position of her apprentice, just as she had done while hunting the water vole. Not meaning to inflict any pain, Silkgrass landed precisely beside Twigpaw. Her point clearly made.

"Now Twigpaw, had this been during a battle you would have been knocked over and attacked. What if I had been a WindClan cat from an ambush?"

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[c e d a r *]

A silvery pelt streaked through the reeds, water spilling onto his pelt, annoying the tom immensely. He tried to keep his spirits up, but the rain that was pushing the reeds down was pushing his spirits down just like the poor reeds. He was shaking, chilled to the bone, his ears flattened against his head. He was in complete concentratio, his who body on high alert. His green-gray eyes raked along the reeds, trying to find the stream, the low, overhanging clouds dimming the world all around him.

Soon, he found himself splashing through water. Oh, how the banks had swelled in size! The stream now looked like a raging river. How was he ever going to find any sort of fish without being able to see what he was doing? The current seemed to be moving faster than he had ever seen it move, and he dreaded thinking about taking one step further. When would this dreaded rain end? Sure, he didn't mind a little bit of water, but this rain was too much.

The lake was up, and he was wondering if he could go there where at least it would be a little bit calmer, but he doubted it would be easy to catch a fish with these clouds hanging threatiningly low above him. It was like running around in a muted darkness! The tom sighed and shook his head, turning sharply, to run back to the camp. He was nearly there, streaking through the reeds and splashing through puddles, when he heard an oddly familliar voice.

Was he already close to camp?

Whose voice was that...was it the voice of Silkgrass?

But..she was talking to someone else, and then her voice stopped. He pricked his ears, trying to find out where the voice had been coming from. Obviously inside of the camp. Was there another cat in the camp? He hadn't really had time to talk to anyone lately, being busy trying to find more food for everyone in the camp. It was so hard to find anything in this sort of weather, so he'd been trying his best to do anything in his power to make the life in the clan just a little bit easier on these cloudy and overbearing days.

His heart beat wildly and his mind raced as his wide eyes scanned the reed infested area he had nestled himself into. He worked his way through the reeds, finally setting paw into the puddle infested camp. His eyes narrowed and his ears were pricked sharply, to see what she was saying to her apprentice, Twigpaw.

[Fernpaw]

Not having any luck finding his mentor in the Warrior's den the hyper tom decided that she must already be out there and waiting for him. Stepping back out into the torrent of rain once more the tabby tom shook his water logged fur to try and dry it out some, but of course that was a frivolous idea. The tom turned his gangly limbs toward the entrance of the RiverClan camp. Twigpaw was caught off guard when he heard the thrum of paws for a heart beat, then nothing. The apprentice swung his tabby stripped head around and saw nothing. There was a loud squelch of some cat landing in the mud next to him. Twigpaw once more turned around to see where the nose came from and jumped backward a tail length or two as he came nose to nose with his mentor.

Twigpaw paw gave his ruffled chest fur a couple of quick licks as he waited for his hammering heart to slide back into a more normal rhythm. Twigpaw eyed his mentor with an upset look for scaring him like that, but decided to keep his mouth shut as his mentor began to talk to him. Clearly they were going to start their training here and now.

"Now Twigpaw, had this been during a battle you would have been knocked over and attacked. What if I had been a WindClan cat from an ambush?"

"If you had been a WindClan cat I could have heard you a fox length away," the apprentice sniffed indignantly. WindClan cats have no stealth, only speed on their side because no cat can hear over the gusts of winds that buffet the moor."

The young tom flattened his ears back against his head apologetically with a stern look from the brown she-cat. "What I really meant to say was I should have been more alert for danger. For a battle move I would have used my attacker’s momentum to roll me over and out of harms way hopefully, and if that fails a good belly kick to knock them off."

The brown tabby waited for an answer from his mentor with amber eyes filled with hope, but a rustle in the reeds distracted the RiverClan apprentice for a moment. The long brown tom narrowed his honey colored eyes in concentration as he tried to distinguish the feline shape from the color of the reeds. In the rain all of nature seemed to have the same hues now more than ever. The grey cat seemed to almost vanish in the drenched reeds. Only a pair of green-grey eyes gave away the fact that there was actually a cat there and not a trick of the mind.

Completely forgetting about Silkgrass and their battle training lesson, Twigpaw wanted to know if there really was a cat hiding out in the reeds. Twigpaw's one track mind and over active imagination turned the RiverClan warrior in the reeds into a warrior of ShadowClan, come to spy on the weak RiverClan and lead an invasion, well not on this tabby's watch!

The apprentice dropped to his belly fur and glided along the ground on silent paw steps. His brown pelt blended with the boggy mire that lay under paw. When Twigpaw was a couple of tail lengths away he began to bunch up his muscles in anticipation of launching himself on top of the "ShadowClan" warrior.

((I've got to stop with these ridiculously long posts xD))