Poor Spiky Boy (Open pls post pls)

The flood. It had not gone well. He had been washed so far down river. Half drowned, he crashed against rocks where he stayed for an entire night, the current shoving him further and further against the rocks. The hard, hard rocks. With a desperate, final push the young tom managed to crawl onto shore where he stayed for another night, drying out. Starving, he knew he had to get back, but the river had disorientated. Which way was home? The young tom was too new to this world to know how to get back. With a desperate guess, he followed the river back. For how long, he never could tells. Days and nights flew by as he walked and walked. Stopping frequently and only feeding on already dead animals along the banks of the river that essentially killed him. Finally, finally... he smelled it. RiverClan.

Rushing with every strength in his body, he made it into the territory. The effort was too much, and the grey tom fell over a root. Struggling to get up, he realized he could not. Porcupinepaw was nothing but a skeleton at this point and his fur was falling out in clumps. Desperately, he began to yowl a horrible screech of dying.

Sootwhisper walked calmly through the territory, his steps silent as a shadow as he enjoyed the relaxing ambience around him. These kind of lonely walks weren’t uncommon for him, being an aloof cat he liked these a lot more than any patrol the rest of his clanmates could come up with, and the relaxing sounds of the forest and river around him were more than enough to help him relax and give him time to think about the so many things that roamed his mind lately.

He, however, almost tripped with himself as the peace got interrupted by the desperate yowl of another cat not too far from where he was standing. Sootwhisper may be of the solitary type, but he wasn’t heartless, and so he rushed to see what was going on, his eyes widening when he saw the young cat on the floor. It took him some time to identify him, Porcupinepaw, an apprentice he used to share the den with right before his own warrior ceremony, which ended up getting delayed thanks to the flood, and that he thought had died during that terrible event. But this wasn’t the clanmate he remembered, he was nothing but skin and bone, and he would’ve thought him dead if it wasn’t for his yowls.

As usual, sootwhisper decided to take action instead of starting a random unnecessary chit-chat and waste time, running towards him and grabbing him by the scruff. Without even trying to start a conversation to calm him down, he started to run towards the well-known territory towards the temporary camp. Porcupinepaw needed food, water and urgent attention from the medicine cat, and trying to help him relax through words would only be a waste of time on his eyes, time that he was wondering if they had at all to begin with.

Porcupinepaw hung limp in the cat's jaws as he was dragged across the territory. His brain was too fuzzy to realize who was carrying. He could only make pitiful cries as the stones hit his skinny body.

Squirrelkit, a little ways from camp on Sunningrocks, off wandering again, had spotted the two and come bounding up within heartbeats.

"What's that?" she mewed, wrinkling her nose at the apprentice dangling from Sootwhisper's jaws. Her eyes were wide, excited. "Is that an overgrown mouse?"
The poor apprentice was so soaked and limp that the small brown tabby kit looking up at him couldn't quite tell what he was.
"Does it taste better than fish?" was all she could say, her eyes wide and excited.

Under normal circumstances, Sootwhisper probably would’ve forced the kit back to the safety of camp after giving her a short lecture and some advice, but this time he had something even more important to worry about. The young warrior placed the skeletal apprentice down with extreme care before looking at the small kit “His name is Porcupinepaw. Go fetch the medicine cat, tell him that it’s an emergency” Sootwhisper was sincerely worried for the dying apprentice, but he couldn’t just walk past Squirrelkit and this gave him a good reason to send her back to camp. His voice had a clear tone of anxiousness, something really rare on the usually emotionless warrior.

The slight racket from the outskirts of camp had caught Fracturedpaw's attention, he lifted his head from the rocks below him, only to find quite an interesting scene. In confusion, the apprentice got to his paws, and silently yet quickly made his way over to Sootwhisper and the drowned out Porcupinepaw.

"What's going on?" He asked, attempting to hide his slight worry. The clump of wet fur that the warrior held looked like an apprentice, he glanced at the kit to his side, who abruptly rushed off to find the medicine cat, leaving him and the warrior alone. He flicked and ear, and faced Sootwhisper again.

Squirrelkit's eyes widened with excitement and wonder. She had a duty! Like a warrior!

Nodding her head vigorously, fur puffed out and tail up with a racing heart, the tabby kit scrambled out of view, running as fast as her small paws could carry her towards the direction of Sunningrocks. Leafs littered the ground behind her; remnants of what Green-leaf used to be.

Icepaw's eyes widened as she saw Sootwhisper carry Porcupinepaw. "What happened?" she asked Fracturedpaw with her ice blue eyes. "How did this happen?"

“I thought the flood killed him, I was wrong…but he’s in really bad shape” Picking up the soaked apprentice, Sootwhisper started to walk towards camp once more, his paws moving as quickly as they could without actually running. Once he reached the temporary camp, he placed him on a dry sunny spot before looking at the apprentices. He was no medicine cat and knew little to nothing about herbs, but there was no time to wait for one to come around and he hoped to be doing the right thing “Fetch me some dry moss, please” He needed to find a way to help Porcupinepaw get dry, and moss seemed to be the best option so far…or at least he thought so. They used moss to carry water thanks to how much it could absorb, so it had to work.

Fracturedpaw padded up to Sootwhispers's side, "anything I can help with?" He asked, wanting to seem useful in at least any way.

OoC: I'm reading this yall but Porcupine's mostly dead so it'd be extremely redundant posts.

"Okay!" Icepaw meowed over her shoulder as she rushed over to a willow tree to grab some dry moss. She clawed at a clump and ran over to Sootwhiper and gave him the moss. Icepaw was shivering thinking that the poor apprentice was probably dead.