Despite Current Events [open to tc AND rc]

"Now, watch your step, Jaypaw, it looks like the shore might be a bit mucky," a pretty thick-furred tortoiseshell meowed helpfully to a pale-and-dark-patched tom following close in her pawsteps.

Dacedream turned to face the river again, the roar of the high waves slapping the shore sounding like a melody in her tufted ears. In some places, the river had been frozen completely, but now it was free and racing hungrily, ceaselessly, down the river bed. Some shadowy places were still gripped by frost and ice, but anywhere that the sun touched was thawed and damp; chunks of ice extending from stepping stones or the shore, fully sheltered by the tree-line, let out a toneless, breathy howl as water flooded over and was sucked underneath the ice. Every few pawsteps, Dacedream could hear a fracture as more pieces of ice broke away to be swept downstream. Any cat, RiverClan or otherwise, knew the dreadful danger that the leaf-bare river could cause.

Only a RiverClan cat, however, could know that a dangerous river wasn't necessarily off limits. Dacedream had not been a RiverClan cat in a long time - nor would she ever be again, as she'd vowed to ThunderClan and all the ancestors - but the knowledge she'd gained hadn't left her. Sharing some of her experiences as a freshly named apprentice had reminded Dacedream of all she had once known. Since then the thoughts had been bouncing in her head... and at last she had decided to bring her thoughts into the open. Today, she had told Jaypaw, she would teach him about the river.

She would teach him to fish.

Dacedream found a sharp bend in the curve of the river and made her way to the stony shoreline. Outcroppings of rocks upriver and downriver shielded the bend from the rapid currents, causing the icy water to just swirl slowly before them. The ThunderClan cat glanced over her shoulder to her apprentice, green-hazel eyes sparkling.

When he'd asked to be taught how to fish, Jaypaw had been full of wonder and intrigue, certain that he could master this new type of hunting that practically no other cat in ThunderClan practiced. He would be a cut above, an elite hunter, a master of all things predator and prey! The rest of the clan would be in awe of his prowess and expertise! Those are the thoughts that had been running through his head... before they got to the river.

It had been a long trek, through parts of the territory that Jaypaw hardly knew, and the river itself was much, much more... well, loud than he'd ever seen it. Every time before now, it had been frozen over, a solid sheet of flat white ice and snow, but now parts of it writhed and roared, and it was enough to make his fur stand on end in fear. Dacedream seemed unfazed, though, and so he tried to let her calm confidence inspire his own as he followed her to the river's edge, wide blue eyes meeting hers in search of further instruction.

While her son's face wasn't quite as awestruck as it had been when he'd asked about fishing in camp, Dacedream knew that he was ready and willing for what was to come. The river was loud, but thunder was louder. Jaypaw could conquer anything that he set his mind to, and, moreover, Dacedream would be there to protect him if something should go wrong. As his mentor and also as his mother, it was her duty to prepare him for everything that life in the wild could throw at him. Her sparkling eyes gazed into his for a moment as she stopped, the icy water lapping the tufts of fur at the ends of her broad paws. Dacedream gave him a grin and nodded with approval before looking back to the water. "Isn't it beautiful, Jaypaw?" she trilled, gazing into the swirling depths, a myriad of black, murky green, and inky blue with flecks of foam.

She took in a deep breath or the river breeze and then let it out with a content sigh. "It's cold, too - very cold. It won't do for us to try swimming or even wading, not on our first outing. We'll both catch a cold that way, I think," Dacedream told her son. Her green-hazel eyes were scanning along the shoreline, and the queen began to seemingly aimlessly meander just along the edge of the water. She explained, "There are two ways to fish: diving is one way, but it requires us to swim. The other way is hooking. That's what we're going to do. We'll get a little splashed but it's worth it once you catch your first fish!"

Dacedream stopped with a short "Ah, here!" as she waved her tail towards the water. A large boulder beneath the water provided a dull, glimmering backdrop beneath shadows of some silver-black fish. The sun was to their faces, casting their shadows away from the water's edge. The she-cat's eyes sparkled, and she looked excitedly between the fish and her son as if watching his face for amazement or approval. She meowed, slowly getting herself into a poised position over the edge of the water, "Okay, sweetie, fishing is very simple once you get the hang of it. Crouching to fish isn't too different from a hunter's crouch, only instead of keeping all your weight evenly distributed you need to lean more on your haunches. If you put too much weight forward your shadow can hit the water, but more importantly you might lose your balance and fall in."

She held her crouch just over the water, her long plume of a tail stretched behind her to add extra balance. Dacedream gave Jaypaw an encouraging nod, wanting to see his crouch and adjust him if needed.

Mossbloom shook off her paws, the chilly water falling from her white paws in glistening droplets. The water was still cold, but the sunshine and warming air was encouraging the sprouts of herbs from the ground slowly but surely. She had taken the chance to leave camp in a quiet moment and head to the river, wondering how the currents were and how the herbs that grew along the banks were growing. She hadn't meant to go wading, but a rock shimmering with dampness had been far more slippery than she realized and before she knew it her paws were covered by the bitterly cold water. She was thankful for the sunshine, but as she turned to head back to camp the sound of familiar voices raising over the roar of the river drew her attention back towards the shore.

Making her way over slowly, trying to stop herself from shivering as her damp paws seemed to penetrate her bones, she smiled softly as she recognized the silhouettes of Dacedream and Jaypaw. She watched as the warrior took up a position over the water, and she quickly caught on to what was going on. Curiosity building (it had been moons since she last saw a cat fish after all) she sat and drew her tail over her paws as she waited to see what would happen, simply a shadowed figure among the undergrowth for now.

Despite his fear of imminent death, Jaypaw trusted his mother, but even so, the fur along his back was spiked, and his claws gripped the ground like his life depended on it as he slunk towards her. He'd never been so close to the river, and it was loud, but Dacedream's voice in his ears allowed him some measure of comfort. "It... uh... yeah, beautiful," he'd hardly looked at the water itself, too concentrated on making sure he put his paws in the right place. As he drew closer to the water's edge, icy water seeped into his paws, bubbling up from the pebbles beneath his feet.

"It's cold," he whispered in agreement, looking up at her as she continued to explain how they were supposed to hunt. It seemed much different than how they hunted birds and squirrels, but he was eager to learn.

The moment Jaypaw saw the fish moving below in the water, he dropped into a crouch, eyes darting back and forth to follow them. Following Dacedream's advice, he shifted the weight back to his rear paws, one forepaw slightly lifted off the ground as if he was battling the urge to swat at the fish already. "Like this?"

Dacedream saw Jaypaw's frame adjust ever so slightly, muscles on his hindquarters bunching while his shoulders relaxed. She smiled at him and mewed, "Good, Jaypaw. Wonderful." She could see the moment that his eyes caught the flickering of sun off scales; immediately he was enticed, and his electric excitement was infectious. Dacedream barely kept her tail still as eagerness buzzed through her pelt. She lifted one paw to match his, commenting, "You've already got the instinct! Now, when you go after a fish, it's just like hooking a mouse or vole. You want to slice your paw underneath the fish and pull it out of the air." She mimed the action, swooping her paw down at an angle before twisting it up, hooking her razor claws as she did so. She paused in the final position, again checking that he was watching her.

She lowered her paw and finished, "The more we practice, the better you'll be able to aim the fish. Just know that you want to throw it towards the shore; if it falls back in the water, it's really hard to catch it!" Dacedream turned her sharp green-hazel gaze to the water again, focusing on the glimmering shapes. More distractedly, she informed her son, "You can't slash right where they look like they are - water moves in strange ways. You have to go a little further than they seem." The she-cat flashed out a paw into the water. It had been moons since she had gone fishing - she couldn't even remember if she'd caught anything on her first outing - and it showed. Though she felt the pads of her paw slap against the spines and scales, she could tell her claws were way off.

Dacedream attempted to lift the fish out of the water, but it toppled around her paw as it emerged. A thrashing tail was all that showed her near success. An instant later it disappeared back into the ripples. Silver sparkles of water splashed on Dacedream's pale puffy chest, and despite her failure she was delighted and exhilarated. She looked to Jaypaw, setting her dripping foreleg down on the shore. "Do you wanna try, or do you want me to show you again?" She wasn't too crestfallen about failing to hook a fish; she'd get it next time!

Dacedream attempted to catch a fish and failed, using 5 stamina.

Dacedream
60/60 HP
195/200 SP (-5)

The member 'sumashira' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Hunting Dice' : 4

Strom wandered by the shore of the river. Part casual patrol, part hunt, he hadn't really meant for it to come alongside the place of his birth, but now he let his gaze drift across with a mixture of curiosity - maybe even a hint of nostalgia. How were the cats he'd known doing? Were they even still there, or had they gone the way of everyone else?

Small laps of icy cold water brushed his paws from where he padded along the very edge of the bank, across a small stretch of pebbly shore on the rocks beside the river. It still feels strange to be on this side of the river. He let his paws carry him onto one of the rocks sticking out into the blackness of the swollen waters, his gaze falling to the middle of the rushing current, its dark depths dangerously intriguing in an almost intoxicating way. Flickering through his mind, memories of his first hunt with Mottledspark stirred. That had been a little earlier, in leaf-fall, but he could still remember the feel of the water swirling through his pelt, and the helplessness of being tugged under by a stray current. Somewhat like how he'd been sucked along by the currents of life.

He closed his eyes for a moment. What was that Mistlepaw said? The words, slightly fuzzed by time, but still blazed into his memories, whispered back to him. The floods don't listen to our pitiful cries. The shouts we make that get drowned under the roar of the current crashing against stones as it carries our fragile bodies.... The crack our hearts make as they collide with stone. His eyes opened to search those depths once more, his tail winding around his paws as he recalled all the times his heart had been cracked, until it seemingly broke into a thousand pieces. But just when we think we're about to sink and never come back to the surface, there's someone there, grabbing you and pushing you onto a sturdy log. Even as the flood destroys all around you... somehow, you're safe.

Batbite, her green eyes vibrant and full of life and determination, crossed his mind, and he smiled, turning his eyes back up, the warmth of the sun playing across his back, the roar of the waters swelling in his ears. But... that wasn't the only sound his ears caught.

They twitched as voices rose over the rushing roar beneath his paws, and he turned his head, searching for the source of the sound. Somewhere to his right. Curious, he rose to his paws and hopped across the stones, his eyes catching sight of two pelts as he approached - one a mottled calico, and the other with dark patches, and both of them well-known.

He slowed to a stop slightly behind them and a few rocks to their left, the postures of both immediately recognizable as Dacedream explained something he could only half-catch to her son. A gleam in his eyes, he watched curiously, nodding along to what he could hear. Her mentor had taught her well. As she flashed a paw forward into the water, he found himself tensing slightly with anticipation. An anticipation that leaked out in a quiet breath as her fish fell back into the water.

They don't say fishing is hard in leaf-bare for no reason, He admitted to himself, stirring and moving forward to join them, calling out ahead of himself to hopefully not startle either. "Doing a bit of fishing?"

Crouched there by the riverside, Jaypaw watched his mother go into hunting mode, studying her intently and attempting to mimic every single movement she made. He adjusted his stance as instructed, trying to normalize the position so that it would come more naturally the next time. This was significantly different than every other thing he'd ever hunted - with the fish, he couldn't hear or smell them, and would have to rely only on his vision and instinct to guide him. But the RiverClan blood that flowed through him was strong... he'd inherited both the webbed paws and the water-resistant pelt, so it stood to reason that this, too, should come naturally to him.

Jaypaw froze as Dacedream leaned forward, his eyes widening at the rapidity with which she struck the water, scooping the fish up and attempting to fling it towards shore.

But it slipped away..! and fell with a wet plop back whence it came. Jaypaw had to stop himself from leaping into the water after it. "Wha..! Youalmostwhackedthatfishrightoutofthewater!" he gasped! "That's amazing, I want to -!" he was caught offguard by Strom's sudden appearance, and for a moment his pelt fluffed in alarm before he realized who it was. Smoothing his hackles, Jaypaw cleared his throat, replying coolly, "Yes! Mother's teaching me! I want to go next - can I?"

Stormbringer didn't know what to think. She wasn't sure what was going on. Well she knew what was going on, but she didn't know why exactly Thunderclan cats were fishing. It was interesting to see them attempting to try it. The gray warrior stood on the other side of the River carefully padding closer but not enough to even cross the border.

The riverclan deputy noted that they had already caught one thing. Huh.. It seemed Dacedream still retained some of her skill from the short time she was apart of Riverclan. Amber eyes looked t the number of Thunderclan cats on the other side of the border. "What are you few doing?" She asked, her tone curious.

The look of amazement on Jaypaw's face was just another thing that made this outing more than worth it. Dacedream felt her heart swell with pride at her son's outburst of awe. He was eager to try it for himself, but the sound of rustling in the nearby foliage caught Dacedream's attention and the two of them whirled. Strom's disarming, friendly tone called out and the tortoiseshell queen met his gaze with a cheery chirp. "Uh-huh!" she confirmed his question happily at the same time as Jaypaw, though she noticed he had gathered some of his excitement. Dacedream looked back to her son and nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, of course, dear! And we're in a safe little spot; I'll be right here if you need a paw."

Movement on the other side of the river caught Dacedream's attention, and she sat up quickly, her eyes landing on a familiar sleek gray pelt. "Stormbringer! Good morning!" the ThunderClan cat called over. Her tail waved to her son at her side. "I was showing Jaypaw how to fish! He was curious 'cause I was talking about growing up in RiverClan. He's my apprentice, plus it's an honor to show him some of his heritage." She beamed at the RiverClan she-cat and then gasped, calling out, "Oh! Congratulations on becoming deputy - I'm so proud of you! Honeytongue is, too. I'm sure you'll be great for RiverClan!"

Dacedream turned her head back to her son and encouraged, "Alright - a bunch of the fish have come back towards the surface, give it a try!"

Jaypaw tuned out as the warriors started talking, his attentions all back on the fish, watching them as they flitted back and forth with their silvery little bodies glittering in the sun. His mouth watered. His eyes narrowed. He would catch one of these obnoxiously out of reach little creatures, if it was the last thing he ever did.

His ear flicked back towards Dacedream as she gave him permission to try, and Jaypaw resumed his crouch near the bank, tail tip twitching ever so slightly. He tracked a single fish with his eyes, head unmoving as he calculated what it would take to coax it out of the water, and when finally he thought he had its path and movements memorized, he struck! Unfortunately for Jaypaw, his motion was a "slapping" one rather than a "scooping" one, and he succeeded only in thoroughly drenching his foreleg from the elbow down as the fish darted away. With a grimace of annoyance, he shook the water from the offending limb and gave his mother an affronted look. "That was just practice, right?"

The member 'JJ' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Hunting Dice' : 6

Dacedream watched as her son turned readily back towards the river, his eyes focusing intently on the shadows moving beneath the surface. She watched for any tell-tale signs of poor balance. Thankfully she saw none as Jaypaw readied his paw, held it still over the surface, and then lashed out. She saw how his paw seemed to simply bat at the surface rather than trying to cut through. Dacedream nodded knowingly, and she met her apprentice's disappointed face with a reassuring smile. "Of course, Jaypaw, it's all practice - fresh-kill or fail, we learn something every time we pounce!" the warrior told him with a purr that ruffled her whiskers. Dacedream looked at his wet foreleg and suggested, "I think you might've tried to crush the fish, like a vole you've cornered, when it's best to fling the fish, like a vole that's running away."

The tortoiseshell turned to look at the water again; already the fish were reconvening. Dacedream continued to explain, her eyes on the darting shadows beneath the surface, "You wanna stop them from swimming, but you can't trap 'em to the earth, so you have to throw them in the air! If you can catch em before they land back in the water that's okay, but it's safer to try to fling 'em onto land if you can." She lifted a paw slowly and waited for several breaths. Suddenly she lashed out again, cutting through the waves. Dacedream felt her broad paw grasp against a small fish and she felt her heart beat faster with excitement as she flung it up into the air.

It sparkled as it flapped desperately in the sky before Dacedream's eyes. She could tell almost immediately that she hadn't followed her own advice; she had certainly thrown it outward rather than inland. Dacedream couldn't resist letting out a moan of disappointment as river-water and the hopeful prey rained down, splashing into the rushing water further away. She smiled at Jaypaw and meowed, "Like, um, that was practice too! I haven't fished in a while, so I know I gotta work on pulling it towards myself." Reeds downriver crackled, and Dacedream straightened up. "Mrrp? Did you hear that?" she asked the cats around her as she looked towards the sound.

Dacedream attempted to catch a fish and failed, using 5 stamina.

Dacedream
60/60 HP
190/200 SP (-5)

The source of the noise revealed itself quickly; a large, sleek-feathered brown and white goose emerged looking disgruntled as they always did. It was quite annoyed, in fact. It had been bobbing for algae when the splashing fish had disturbed its feast. Dacedream bristled and said, "Oh, fox-dung... I don't know how I missed its scent earlier. I hope its nest isn't around. Strom? Jaypaw? Shall we chase it off?" She glanced to her companions, and as if the goose had heard the threat, the goose charged forward with its wings flapping. It buffeted the she-cat with wind, and as she winced it pecked hard at her chest, causing her to yelp with surprise and pain as she leaped back with a start.

The goose used Beaked Thrust at Dacedream, using 40 stamina and dealing 20 damage.

Goose
40/40 HP
90/130 SP (-40)

Dacedream
40/60 HP (-20)
190/200 SP

The member 'sumashira' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Hunting Dice' : 10