C.uriousity

[apostophe]

Macy

“Come on kitty…come on, you can sleep somewhere else…”

Macy’s eyes flickered reluctantly open. A twoleg kit was standing in front of her, looking more than slightly impatient as she gently tried to shove Macy out of her sleeping position. Her leaf-green gaze narrowed with irritation. She’d been dozing contentedly on a pile of soft, red blankets she’d found in the tack room, warmed by a most conveniently placed patch of sunlight. And now this twoleg had roused her for apparently no reason at all, unless it was intent on preventing her from having a very warm, very comfortable nap.

Defiantly, she curled up again, so that the tip of her tail covered her nose. But the twoleg continued to prod her with cold, large hands, growing increasingly insistent as she ignored it. Finally, Macy’s annoyance got the best of her; she sprang up with a hiss, feeling a twinge of satisfaction as the twoleg stumbled back in fright. With an indignant flick of her tail, she stalked to the end of the blanket shelf and leaped lightly to the ground.

Her fur was still bristling with irritation as Macy slipped out of the tack-room, into one of the many narrow aisles of the stable. That was the third time that week she’d been woken up by some twoleg or another, cooing to her in a most pacifying way as they pushed her out of her sleeping place. What was it with them, anyway? Perhaps even more vexing was the fact that most of the time, Macy didn’t even understand why she had to move.

“Twolegs getting to you?”

A familiar voice broke into her internal rant. Macy’s gaze flicked upwards to see Fudge, a fat, brown tabby, emerge from the room where the twolegs kept the horse food.

“Yes,” Macy grumbled, glancing irritably at the tom. Fudge had been living at the stables when she arrived, and she had hoped to find a friend in him. Sadly, he didn’t exactly…meet expectations. Yes, he was friendly enough, and even offered to show her the ropes of Harehill Stables. But he was also painfully lazy and unadventurous; Macy had long since stopped asking him if he wanted to join her on one of her many escapades beyond the stables, knowing he would decline with an amused chuckle.

Feeling the need to take her anger out on something, Macy stalked over to one of the horse stalls. With practiced ease she sprang halfway up, and then scrambled to the top. She perched herself on the rusty, steel bar, her tail, hanging down behind her, still twitching irritably.

“They made me move again,” she complained, knowing that Fudge would understand what had annoyed her; she’d gone to him to vent the past couple of times she’d been so rudely woken up. “I was having such a nice nap on those comfy red blankets in the tack room, and this twoleg kit made me move. I don’t even know why!”

Fudge scrambled up the stall, with significantly less agility, to sit beside her. He took a moment to catch his breath, his rotund belly heaving with exertion. Macy’s ear twitched with new, perhaps unfair, irritation at his lack of fitness.

“Well,” he finally began, licking a paw thoughtfully. “I know that the twolegs use those red blankets when they ride the horses.” He pointed with his tail to where one kit was preparing a horse to ride, placing a blanket identical to the ones in the tack room onto the animal’s back.

“But that’s stupid!” Macy protested, watching the kit with narrowed eyes. “Why would a horse let one of these twolegs put all that…that…junk on their backs?”

“They let the twolegs sit on their backs, don’t they?” Fudge pointed out idly. “A few more things wouldn’t make much difference.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, in no mood to investigate the new development as she normally would. Her annoyance having yet to ebb, Macy leaped back down from the stall and started towards the wide, slightly opened doors of the stable.

“Where are you off to?” Fudge called after her, a touch of concern in his tone. Not enough concern, however, to make him go after her.

“Out,” came Macy’s vague reply, before she slipped out of the building.

Outside, an overcast sky stretched over Harehill Stables. Rain fell lightly but consistently, as it had been for the past week. The drizzle had long since cast a grumpy mood over the stables, it’s gloominess affecting even Macy, despite her sleek, generally water-repellent pelt.

Wetness aside, she was grateful for the clean, fresh air after the mustiness of the stable. So it was in marginally better spirits that Macy wound her way deftly through the maze of paddocks and rings, her paws moving with a confidence gained by growing up at Harehill Stables. Soon Macy reached the edge of the largest paddock, and leaped up to sit on one of the wooden posts. A nearby horse eyed slight form warily, before returning to the grass.

A seemingly endless moor stretched out before her. Without any buildings or trees for shelter, an undeterred breeze buffeted Macy, and she had to dig her claws into the soggy wood to steady herself. The air was fresh and clean, and free of the musty smell of horses. And yet, something else seemed to taint it. Another smell. Experimentally, Macy gave a sniff. There it was again. But it was so jumbled with seemingly hundreds of other smells-the rain, the grass, the horses-that it was impossible to try and pinpoint what it was. Frustrated, the femme sniffed again, but nothing became any clearer.

She was beginning to feel a little bit stupid.

Annoyance renewed, Macy sprang down from her perch. The ground was spongy and wet under paw as she started forward, out onto the moor. She’d never ventured much farther than the end of that last paddock, but curiosity drove her onward; she was determined to find the source of that strange scent.

[Fernpaw]

((Fang needs to ruin somebody's day, why not Macy? xD))

A battle scared tom trudged through the rain soaked grass muttering to himself about the weather. The rogue's back right leg was bother him today as it had been the better part of the moon. Thanks to the damp and slightly chill weather it had made his leg sore. The brown and grey tabby hobbled along with no real destination in mind. Perhaps today he could cause a little trouble in the Clans, or maybe just find somewhere warm and dry to rest for a bit. Fang sighed, tomorrow would be a better day for that, right now he needed out of the rain for a little while. His leg was starting to throb now.

With a sour look on his face the cat lifted his head and spied a barn not far away from him. A barn would be warm and dry, but would have a lot of twolegs roaming around, not to mention cats for the abundance of prey. Well he could keep all who approached away easily enough so that he could rest for awhile.

Having decided what he was going to do today the cat kept alert for any danger. The scared tabby approached the front of the barn, but quickly shied away from it. The place was full of sleeping and growling monsters with twolegs walking all around. Fang snuck around to the back keeping close to the side of the barn, thankful for the over hanging roof. His amber eyes followed a fuming she-cat as she walked out of the barn. Well he didn't care, he meant nothing to her. That just meant one less cat for him to worry with.

As Fang rounded the corner into the barn he came face to face with a horse and its huge clomping paws. He had forgotten to look for them because he had been watching the calico. The short cat hissed with surprise and scrambled out of the horses way before he could be crushed under their enormous feet. Quickly he scaled the top of a stall door with his fur fluffed up. The dusty brown rogue gave his chest fur a few quick licks to settled hid ruffled fur. When that was done he looked for a way down that would be the most kind to his aching hip and leg.

[apostophe]

Macy

With an annoyed sigh, Macy took a few paces back in the direction of the stables. Her patience with trying to pin that infernal scent was quickly waning, and although her irritation was not yet spent, chatting with Fudge seemed a lot more appealing than getting soaked to the bone over a stupid smell.

She was just about to break into a bound when something stopped her short. The scents that she had been trying to sift through had all been bleak and unclear, apparently watered down by the fresh muskiness of rain. A lazy breeze, however, carried a new smell to Macy's nose, one that was by no means bleak nor watered down. No, despite her obvious lack of expertise, it didn't take much to realize that this new scent was fresh.

Excitement and curiosity washing away her annoyance, Macy inhaled deeply. The smell was pungent and acute compared to the second-nature scents of the barn, and she couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction as she was able to more or less decipher where it was coming from. Eager to explore this new development, Macy started off in the direction from which the smell had come from.

As it turned out, tracking a scent proved all together much more difficult than simply pinning it down. Her progress was frustratingly slow, due mainly to a frequent need to stop, check the scent, wonder for no more than a heartbeat if she was going the right way, before continuing on. Finally, finally Macy came to the source of the smell-or at least, she thought. She emerged from behind the haphazard row of trees that surrounded Hare Hill Stables to see a mottled brown cat rounding the corner of the main barn, out of sight.

Giddy with her find, Macy sprinted after the cat. She halted abruptly at the wide stable doors. Apparently too abruptly; her small paws skidded in the soft mud, and she toppled over with a soft thud. This, however, was not enough to deter the young she-cat. She sprang back to her paws and headed around the corner, just in time to see the mottled tom narrowly avoid being crushed by one of the horses.

Macy gasped in surprise, and followed the cat into the barn. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom of the building, after the brightness outside. When they did, they quickly settled on the stranger's tabby form, not much more than a dark shape in the weak light of the barn.

"Are you alright?" she asked bluntly, scrambling up to perch next to the tom. Closer, she could make out a pair of amber eyes, and the faint scars that laced the tabby's body. "Oh!" she gasped quietly, blinking at the reminders of past injuries. "How on earth did you get so scarred? Do you try to get squished by horses as some sort of hobby?"

Her words were colored in their infamously bold, brash tones, paired with sarcasm on the last part. Surprisingly, she did not eye Fang with wariness, but simply morbid curiosity. Macy was like that with a lot of things; merely interested in things that most sane cats would be suspicious of.


[Gah, I'm sorry this took so long! D= It took me a while to notice that you had replied to this thread, and then I got sort of swamped with school starting. But here it is, and sorry, again!]

[Fernpaw]

((Its okay, just look at me! Someone has stabbed my muse, so sorry for the rotten post that is to follow))

Fang cursed himself inwardly for having been so careless, after all this was not his first trip to a barn. He paused to think for a moment, it was like his...fifth time? Yeah that sounded right. The loner minutely shifted his heard forward and back. With that out of the time it was time to settle his rumpled fur before some cat noticed how startled he had been.

Just as the brown tom bent his head to lick his chest fur back in to place there was the scramble of claws on wood and a thump as another cat climbed its way onto the bottom half of the Dutch door beside him. Fang just ignored the other feline's presence while he pretended to be casually grooming himself. Then the she-cat made it impossible to ignore as she started to chatter with him.

"Are you alright? Oh! How on earth did you get so scarred? Do you try to get squished by horses as some sort of hobby?"

With a heavy sigh the older cat looked up at the calico. Gruffly he replied: "I'm perfectly fine, thanks for your unwelcomed interest. It’s all a part of life on your own, besides I live for the thrill of life. That's why I ran under those big clumsy paws, just to get a rush." The last part he said rather sarcastically. Amber eyes locked onto the pale green of Macy's.

"Well it was nice meeting you," Fang turned from her and began searching for an easy way down, which of course there was not. Preparing himself mentally for the pain he bunched his muscles in preparation to jump down to the concrete floor about four and a half feet below. The battle scared tom jumped lightly from the door but landed very awkwardly on the ground.

When the older cat landed he landed heavily on his back legs. Fang stood there for a moment stunned in shock by the sudden spasms of pain, but then just put on a grimaced and limped off into the dim interior of the barn. With each step he took there seemed to be a new wave of pain. To bear the pain Fang bit his lower lip exposing his yellowed and broken teeth. Jumping down from the stall door was certainly not beneficial to his aching leg.