“I will have Seedpaw forever.
Ha!”
Lilypaw writhed
and squirmed, but no matter how hard she tried to get out of that mess, her
paws only remained pasted to the ground with sticky, bubbly mud.
“No, no! I won’t
let you!” she screamed, straining her neck in the strange cat’s face.
The cat was a
dark tabby tom with a deep, menacing voice and fur that stank of dead, moldy
leaves, dirty rivers, and season-old wet moss. Lilypaw hated him with all her
might- but he wouldn’t leave her alone! This was the third night he had visited
her… now Lilypaw dreaded whenever the sun went down.
Finally, the tom
started to fade. Lilypaw stared pointedly at the mist of a cat. Then he was
gone.
Lilypaw awoke
with a shudder. However, it appeared that she wasn’t the first apprentice to
wake up that morning.
She locked gazes
with a weary Seedpaw. Behind her sister, Amberpaw, Snowpaw, and Dewpaw blinked
their eyes open, looks still bleary with sleep.
“Er… sorry,”
Lilypaw coughed. As innocently as she could, Lilypaw sat up and smoothed down
her fur with a prickly tongue. Awkward… She
could still feel irritated stares fixed on her.
“Sorry? Sorry is all you have to say?” Seedpaw
demanded suddenly. Her sibling stepped forward until Seedpaw’s hot breath
wafted around Lilypaw’s scrunched-up face. “I wanted to know if you knew that this has happened the two
previous mornings as well. Huh?”
Lilypaw bit her
lip. Lately, she and Seedpaw hadn’t been getting along well. She didn’t know why.
“Okay. I’ll… pay you back or something like that. What do you want, a free
piece of fresh-kill? Or I could request a day off for you.”
Seedpaw rolled
her eyes, green irises glancing at the roof of the den for a heartbeat. “Like
that would ever happen,” she scoffed once her gaze was refocused on her
littermate. “Let’s get more serious. How about I…”
But, Seedpaw was
interrupted by the sound of Brightheart’s voice calling into the den. “Come on
now, Seedpaw and Lilypaw- Millie and I would like to talk to you two.”
Lilypaw’s stomach
twisted. What was her sister about to say? And, what did Brightheart and Millie
want to speak with them about?
Lilypaw and
Seedpaw exchanged a nervous fleeting look with each other; then, argument
forgotten, the siblings bounded out of the apprentices’ den in a flurry of dark
tabby and pale ginger pelts.
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