Smoke Storm [open]

As Smokepaw neared the border with Riverclan, she felt her prickle with unease. Borders were necessary, and she had no problem marking them. She wanted to defend her clan. But something about this particular border made her more than a little uneasy.

That something, it turned out, was the river. How did Riverclan stand it? How could they swim with such strength and bear the stench of fish? Smokepaw, quite frankly, found it horrific. Abhorrent.

Gingerly, she stepped forward, bending her head to lap at the water. Water sustained life, but Smokepaw wanted drinking it to be the extent of her interactions with it. Yet, the apprentice paused as she trotted up the bank to safety. She couldn't help but feel like she was being watched, and she scanned the river uneasily. Just because she couldn't see a cat in the undergrowth on the other side, didn't mean that a cat wasn't there.

Streamtail was patrolling the borders once again, marking her scent every now and then. Suddenly, she smelled something...someone. A cat. Sniffing deeply again, Streamtail found that it was SkyClan scent...curious, the blue gray she-cat dove underneath a bush, watching the intruder carefully. A smoke-colored apprentice lapped water from the river and looked around uneasily. Sighing, Streamtail got out from underneath the bush and said, “You’ll get in trouble with RiverClan, you know. Best to leave now while you still can. Don’t worry, I won’t tell on you, but if you stay here for longer, some other cat will.”

At the sound of female's voice, Smokepaw's fur bristled slightly."I'm still on the Skyclan side of the border." She pointed out, perhaps a touch more defensive than she should've been. Foxdung, the Riverclan cat (and what else could the unknown she-cat be, when she reeked like the rest of Riverclan?) was definitely not an apprentice like Smokepaw. "Unless Riverclan has the idea that the water in the river belongs to it?" Smokepaw... Didn't quite manage to suppress the derision in her tone. Oops.

Smokepaw warily took another step back, just in case. She knew full well that she wasn't quite prepared to fight a fully grown warrior. Yet if the silver she-cat attacked, she wasn't about to be a coward and run, either.

((Sorry for any formatting/obvious spelling mistakes, on mobile~))

Streamtail shook her head, sighing. “I don’t want any trouble. Some cats may just pick fights because...well, they’re sensitive. Careful though, you do not want to fall in there. I had to save three kits from drowning some time ago.” She shuddered as she thought of Mottlekit and Shadekit. They were so bold...to dive into the river when there were such strong currents. “I haven’t seen you around. Are you a new apprentice?” Streamtail certainly had not seen this cat during the fight with the Righteous Few before. That was last moon, when Streamtail was still rather young.

Realizing the other cat wasn't going to attack immediately was a relief. "I don't want any trouble either," Smokepaw admitted. Aside from being one of the younger apprentices of her clan, her mentor, well... Maybe his overly cautious nature was a good thing? Of course 'overly cautious' might've been a slight understatement, but it wasn't like Smokepaw was going to say that for any other cats to hear. He was still her mentor, after all. "And the lot of them are stupid furballs... Not everything needs to be escalated into a fight immediately." Smokepaw scoffed.

"Kits fell into the river?" Smokepaw's eyes widened in disbelief as a shudder ran through her. She shook her head. "I don't even like being soaked in the rain. I don't think I'd make for a strong swimmer." And really, that last was only half a joke. Smokepaw was developing strong hind legs like most Skyclan cats, and that made them well-suited for climbing trees and bringing down birds. Smokepaw was perfectly okay with not testing her skills in the water. Different clans, different territories. Skyclan wasn't meant to swim, and Riverclan could keep that to themselves, as far as she was concerned.

"Yeah, I was made an apprentice after the last gathering," Smokepaw responded. She'd heard bits and pieces of what happened, enough to paint a rough idea in her head of what went down. In all honesty, she was okay with having missed that. Would the next gathering be like that? Were they always so tense and full of bloodshed instead of peace? Maybe things were changing.

"I'm Smokepaw, by the way." She added.

Streamtail nodded, guessing that the apprentice was rather young. “I’m Streamtail.” The warrior smiled kindly, before cocking a head in question. “Is there a question you’d like to ask me? I know that last Gathering was rather...negative, to say the least.” “Negative” was not how Streamtail would describe last moon’s Gathering. There was tension so thick that she doubted even a tree-cutter could cut through it. It made sense, though, since the fight was rather traumatic. No cat would fully recover from that.

"'Negative' is one way to put it, from what I've heard." Smokepaw agreed. "What even happened for a gathering to go like that? I've only ever heard bits and pieces of the full story." Smokepaw wasn't trying to pry or be insensitive; she knew nothing good had happened, of course, but it seemed like something that should be remembered if only for the sake of preventing similar situations from happening in the future, as painful as those memories might be.