Green is My Favorite Color {closed}

A gust of wind carried through the naked willow trees, sending stray leaves and low hanging branches clattering over the landscape. Billie's unkempt mottled tabby fur provided some comfort against the leafbare cold, but it didn't answer her mysterious question. Why wasn't the grass green? The icy wind didn't bother the loner as much, but as she narrowed her blue eyes and pawed at the dried brown stalks of plants beneath her, a small worm of disappointment crawled into her heart. Well, ratdung. Either Jupiter was lying, or she was terribly lost. Billie was from the twolegplace. Somewhere across the river, over the fences, and far out into the neighborhood was her home. She enjoyed walking on top of the twoleg's buildings, scavenging for scraps. Billie had never once gone hungry, well at least, not really hungry. Her friend Jupiter, a large older cat always came through when her stomach started to growl. Jupiter was somewhat of a big brother to Billie, watching her since her birth in leaffall. His watch over Billie was loose, and as the she-cat began to grow, eventually they extended their friendship over borders. Billie had told Jupiter this morning that she was going to go to the green part of the forest, something Jupiter had told her about many a time. Billie had had enough of leafbare, and decided to find this fabled green grass and fat prey for herself. But the issue was, she had followed Jupiter's directions. She'd crossed the river, over the stepping stones. But why was it cold? Where was the green stuff?

Wrinkling her nose, Billie sniffed and cut between a patch of reeds bordering a stream. She gazed at her reflection in the water, grinning handsomely at the nick in her ear. Boy, she looked tough. No cat would dare mess with her! Blue eyes blinked back at her, and Billie stared at herself for a while, until a scaly thing disrupted her mirror. Could it be? A fish! Billie had eaten fish once. About a moon ago, Jupiter had taken her to a place behind this building. What he called a res-taur-ant. Quite a funny name if you asked her. However the food there, in the big green bin, was the best thing Billie had ever eaten. Smiling, she burst from the reeds and ran along the bank, following the fish as it swam downstream. How would she catch it? Would she bite it? Claw it? Eyes fixated on the river, Billie failed to notice the white tom in her path, and ran face-first into his pelt. She rolled for a while, sitting up with a jolt and rubbing her nose. "Oww..." After Billie's head stopped spinning, she finally noticed the cat that had halted her chase. "Oh hi! Who are you?"

It was an honest mistake, really! Though he hadn’t minded at first, Snowpaw hadn’t intended to wander off. From the moment he’d been made an apprentice, hardly more than a sunrise ago, he’d devoted his attention to one thing and one thing only: making Stormbringer proud. And trying to surpass his older, more experienced siblings. And proving to Addershade and Lightsong and everyone else that he could be their best apprentice, as bright as his namesake. Well, he’d never been the single-minded type. It wouldn’t have been a problem if RiverClan’s territory hadn’t been so wonderfully new, full of so many tiny detours. First, a flat, pretty rock nestled partway into the snow had caught his eye; then a trail of prints so tiny he had no choice but to follow; then a flash of scales in the ice-cold river, gone before he could reach out. He marveled at them all, one by one.

As the fish’s tail flicked out of view, Snowpaw realized two things. First, that he couldn’t hear his patrolmates even when he turned in a full circle, straining his ear as hard as he could—and second, that he couldn’t see them either. A jolt of fear shot through his stomach. Guilt followed soon after. Hadn’t Ivystar said not to go anywhere alone? If he got in trouble… They couldn’t make him a kit again, could they? He stumbled back from the riverbank, twisting around again. Maybe they hadn’t noticed. The white-furred apprentice set off at a pace two notches below sprinting—and something charged right into him.

Upon scrambling to his feet, he gave himself a quick once-over. The clumps of snow he’d picked up hung heavy off his back and legs, but they blended in, sort of, so he ignored them in favor of the cat who’d run into him. Any thoughts of her being dangerous vanished as abruptly as they’d appeared; she looked about as old as he was, if that. Like most scents, hers was strange, something Snowpaw had yet to learn the name of. ”What’s that scent supposed to be?” Whoever this was, she didn’t smell like RiverClan, which meant she had to be trespassing, yet he couldn’t put half the necessary aggression into his tone. More than anything, he was curious, his panic discarded as easily as the patrol had been…and besides, Stormbringer hadn't covered much about fighting yet. ”I’m Snowki—Snowpaw. Who are you?” After a moment, he added, "Are you okay?"

A white blurb formed in Billie's vision, and she cocked her head to the side until the sky was up and the ground was down. That seemed right. The blurb began to talk - to answer her question. Billie blinked and shook her head, hoping to shoo the dizziness away. What did he say his name was? "Snoki-Nopaw? That's a long name!" She repeated, dumbfounded. Billie let her blue eyes fall to the white tom's paws. Well, she didn't know where the "Nopaw" came from, he certainly had four paws, but maybe this was some kind of weird forest cat tradition. "I mean! Cool! It's a long-cool name! Yeah. Cool." Billie chuckled and stood, regaining her balance. She sniffed at a dried leaf before "Snoki" asked who she was. Before Billie could answer, he followed up with an "Are you okay?" "Oh me?" She asked, as if forgetting they were having a conversation. "I'm Billie and I'm okay!" She resumed sniffing at the foliage, overturning reeds to try and get a whiff of this green grass Jupiter had told her about. Billie's mind lulled until her nose shot up from the dirt, aimed at Snoki. "Wait a minute!" Billie challenged, unkempt fur seemingly puffing up with her string of thought. "Why are you asking if I'm okay? I'm the one that ran into you! If anything I should be worried about you! I mean look at yourself Snoki! Can I call you Snoki? Yeah? Okay cool. Look at yourself! Your eyes are different colors!" Billie's mouth seemed to process things before her brain did. His eyes are different colors! Enamored now, the she-cat stalked forward to get a closer look, wondering if all forest cats were as mystical and crazy as he was. Did she stumble across a different species? Was this a Twoleg ploy to get her to eat those nasty dried pellets?

Billie stood for a long time looking into Snoki's pupils, unaware of the fact that this may be percieved as weird. She blinked and whispered to herself; "Oh wow this is rad." After what seemed like moons, Billie finally realized that Snoki was in fact, a cat, and wouldn't stay still for her curious staring like a plant or a rock would. "Sorry!" She gasped, realizing her mistake.

A torrent of words burst out of the striped stranger. Though Snowpaw hadn’t been on the offensive to begin with, he discovered that any part of him that might’ve challenged her had been suddenly, soundly disarmed. Mostly because he had no clue what she was talking about. Snoki…Nopaw? Nopaw was almost a name—an odd one. RiverClan wasn’t as large as some of the other Clans (if Snowpaw’s older denmates were to be believed; he’d never seen the other Clans’ borders, much less how many warriors they had), but he’d never met a cat with no paws. He managed to catch the stranger’s own name—Billie. Clan cats all had names that were (supposedly) things: plants, colors, weather. There was no such thing as a Billie, and even if there was, she’d only called herself Billie, not Billiekit or Billiepaw. Therefore, she wasn’t a Clan cat. Where could she be from, if not the Clans? The question made it to the tip of his tongue before Billie raised her head, bristling, and Snowpaw found himself faced with another flood of language. ”You don't need to worry about me. I’m a warrior,” he cut in, deciding to let the nickname pass without comment, ”so getting run into doesn’t bother me.” The snow, persistent, dangled off his fur; his side smarted where he’d hit the ground. ”Much,” he amended.

Then, silence. Billie moved closer and, for what could’ve been the first time since their collision, went still. Near the edge of his field of view, Snowpaw saw her mouth move in a murmur he didn’t quite hear. Finally, his mind caught up to his ear. ”Your eyes are different colors!” A grin spread across his muzzle. ”They are,” he said, as if this fact had only just dawned on him. ”They’ve always been like this.” This was more or less true; one of them had gone orange, the other had stayed almost kitten-blue, and a short time after it had been explained that some cats’ eyes just didn’t match, his nursery-mates had stopped finding it nearly as impressive. Billie yelped an apology, and Snowpaw’s grin flickered. ”Don’t be sorry! It’s fine, it’s—kinda nice, actually. Meeting someone who still thinks they’re cool. No one back home talks about them anymore.”

Disappointment rang a bit too clearly in his tone. The white-furred tom cleared his throat. Even if they weren’t going to fight, he couldn’t keep letting himself get sidetracked; this was still RiverClan territory, and he was still curious. ”Anyway, why d’you keep sniffing at stuff? Are you looking for something?” Not that he could help, seeing as he was lost himself—but Billie didn’t need to know that.