Strange World

Continuation of https://warriorclancats.forumotion.com/t40122-the-road-goes-ever-ever-on
By the time Lynxtail came to, the sun had begun to rise. He groaned. His head ached, and his legs felt heavy and numb.
He tried to sit up, but was hit by a sudden wave of nausea and quickly returned to the cold, rock-solid ground. Fighting the urge to vomit, he slowly flexed his legs, trying to bring feeling back into them.
Was he dead?

Suddenly, his limbs exploded with pain. It felt like there were millions of ants marching through his fur, biting every inch of skin they could find. He grimaced. He was clearly alive, at least.

Lynxtail couldn't remember exactly what had happened the night before, but the painful bruises on his scruff and the heavy Twoleg scent clinging to his fur assured him that he had once again been taken deep into Twolegplace.
The young tom scanned his surroundings, trying to discern where his captors had taken him. The solid grey earth beneath him was almost like the alleyway where they'd left Sharptooth moons ago, and he felt his heart jump. There could be another one somewhere nearby.
After a moment, he relaxed. This wasn't an alleyway– the den walls were the same solid grey stone, and the roof above him was made of dark brown, perfectly shaped branches.

A sudden noise from above caught his attention and Lynxtail's ears perked. There was a click, and a beam of light shot out from underneath a trunklike slab of wood, momentarily blinding him.
He blinked rapidly as the slab began to move, and suddenly shut his eyes tightly. The scent of Twoleg had grown stronger.

He held his breath as the Twoleg approached him, and was grabbed by the scruff and lifted into the air. He saw flashes of darkness and light through half-closed eyes and caught a glimpse of the rest of the Twoleg's nest– painfully bright, lit by what looked like several miniature suns, and full of strange-colored objects– before being stuffed unceremoniously into a cage.

Frostpaw slept fitfully, her face contorting into expressions of terror, her narrow chest rising and falling irregularly, sometimes speeding up until she was almost panting, and sometimes slowing so much that she appeared to not be breathing at all.
This wasn't sleep caused by exhaustion– this was self-defense, her body shutting down instead of facing the traumatic pain that she would've experienced had she managed to hold onto consciousness after being tossed into the depths of the Twoleg's nest.
Mercifully, she had instead sunk into a dreamless sleep of sorts. She wasn't at peace, and a low red haze hung over her, but she was blissfully unaware of her surroundings and the events that had so recently transpired.


"Wake up."

Slowly, she began to wake up. At first, all she felt was pressure on her left shoulder, like when her mentor nudged her awake for training each morning. Only her eyes didn't open as easily as they did then, and she was confused by the amount of effort it took to prop them open halfway, and then focus them on her mentor's smiling face.
A dull, buzzing ache, echoes of pain unimaginable, further stirred her confusion. As her eyes focused, she suddenly became aware that the cat looming over her was not her mentor.

And then it all came rushing back. The creature's iron jaws snapping shut on her leg. The explosion of pain, so sudden, so indescribable, that she felt her throat burn at the thought of it. She remembered it slowly growing numb, gnawing at it in desperation.
She remembered the Twolegs, being shaken. Nothing more.

The return of her memory brought with it a sharper, more persistent pain. She glanced down at her injured leg, saw it, bloody, mangled, her paw hanging limp and twisted, and began to cry.

"Wake up." The words fought on their way out, scratching at his throat and stretching the thin cut on his neck until beads of blood formed at its edges. He nudged the warrior again, shuffling backward as far as he could as she stirred.
Her eyes– one yellow, one green –barely opened. She blinked several times, squinting up at him.
Lynxtail mustered a faint smile, which quickly became an expression of horror as the she-cat began to cry. He patted her head with one paw awkwardly, trying to say a few comforting words, but only managing to gasp out a muffled-sounding squawk.
This she-cat was far younger than she first appeared. He thought she could've been his age, perhaps a few moons older, but now that he saw her face, he wondered how he ever thought she was a warrior. She was tall, perhaps as tall as he was, and strongly build, but her chest was narrow, and her face was delicate and angled– closer to a kit's than a fully-trained warrior. She must be an apprentice.

He shook his head, at a loss for words. What would his father say?
It's okay.
It's okay.
"-okay," He choked, feeling a drop of warm blood roll down his chest.

It wasn't. He was as far from Thunderclan as he could possibly be, trapped in a cage with a dying apprentice, with no clue where he was going or if he'd ever make it back home again.
He felt tears sting the corners of his eyes and withdrew to the edge of the cage, crouching there his head bent. It's okay. It's okay.