I Did A Big No-No(OPEN)

Maplepaw stood up and stretched. She'd been horribly sick for a while now, and had missed the gathering! According to Mintwhisker, she'd talked a lot in her delerium. But now, she was better enough to see her family and, well, anyone but Mintwhisker, Amberdawn, and the occasional sick cat. She grimaced and nearly teared up at the thought of how sick she'd gotten. A stone of guilt settled in her stomach. She could have died. Died! She remembered a few voices from that day. "Maplepaw! Talk to me! What happened!?" "OH STARCLAN! Maplepaw!" "Wake up, wake up, please..." "Talk to me! You're not just going to let one little poisonous berry kill you, are you?" "Don't tell me you tried to fight a dog and let this kill you... please..." She never did identify the voices. Regardless, she wanted to see her brothers. Heck, anyone was fine.

Training with Mistyrain and preparing for the Gathering had kept Lightpaw occupied, but nothing could fully take his mind off his sister. No other way to put it—Maplepaw was a pawful, and that hadn’t changed in the slightest since they’d come back from the mountains. It wasn’t surprising to find she was in the medicine den. That didn’t mean he was any less concerned. Had he been a bolder cat, he would have marched into the medicine den the moment Amberdawn and Mintwhisker had finished treating Maplepaw; instead, he’d gone to the Gathering and worried, gone hunting and worried, gone patrolling and worried. And Maplepaw had gotten better, though Lightpaw wouldn’t believe that until he saw it for himself. It was this that brought him around the elderberry bush and into the medicine den.

He had never known a SkyClan cat to be a liar; sure enough, Maplepaw was standing when Lightpaw entered the den. All the tension drained out of him. Of course. His sister was a pawful, but so far, she’d gotten out of trouble every time. If a dog couldn't kill her, a bunch of berries certainly wouldn't. (He hoped.) ”Maplepaw,” Lightpaw sighed, padding over to stand beside her and deliver the gentlest of glad-you're-okay nudges. "Didn't Mintwhisker tell you you can't eat everything?"

Sandpaw came right after, nearly trodding on his brother's tail. His pelt was freshly groomed and his tail plumed outward in a way that he decided was very handsome. Maplepaw was getting into bad touch more frequently than usual, and a bit of him hoped this would stop it all. 

"Hey, mousehead!" he jeered at his younger sister, "What do you have to go and almost die for?" He grabbed her reddish head in his paws and rubbed her ears teasingly. He had a laugh at the face she made and licked her cheek. "Are you done being sick, you dummy? I want to patrol with you!" 

In all his relationships, the ones he had with his siblings were the most important. On the mountain, all they really had were each other. They had no concept of clan or allegiance until their return to the forest. Some of them adjusted better than others, certainly, and given the choice between SkyClan and his mother and siblings... well, who would he choose? He hoped the day would never come. He cared too much about silly Maplepaw, quiet Lightpaw, and charming Swallowpaw. Even little Cypresskit, who wasn't around very long, was always on his mind. Shaking the fears from his mind, he cocked his head at his brother. "How's your training? It's probably better than mine."

Maplepaw smiled when she caught sight of her brother. "Hi, Lightpaw!" She smirked. Yeah, but it was a pretty light warning." She said, silently bracing herself for Sandpaw's rougher nature. Just widening her stance a bit, staying grounded. Like the trees. She made a face as he messed up her fur- not that she cared, it was just funner that way. "Key word: almost. I'm not dying anytime soon if I have any say in it!" She cleared her throat. "Regardless. Mintwhisker says that if I display no more sand-toms of sickness tomorrow, I can patrol again. " She explained.

"I hope it was more than that, she shouldn't be letting..." Realization dawned on his face in the form of a pained frown. Whatever comments he'd been about to make were swiftly abandoned. "Oh, you're definitely getting better." That was when Sandpaw arrived, with an approach that couldn't have been more different from Lightpaw's. Alarm flashed across Lightpaw's face as his brother grabbed Maplepaw, and he started forward, only stopping himself with the reminder that, if she was healthy enough to make horrible puns, she was probably healthy enough to roughhouse. Besides, Sandpaw wouldn't hurt her. Still, he couldn't resist a quiet warning: "Careful, she might still be sick."

Once the non-threat had passed, Lightpaw relaxed into a sitting position, giving Maplepaw one last bump with his shoulder before he settled. "We should bring Swallowpaw, too," he meowed, as if their future patrol was already set in stone. There was still the matter of wrangling a warrior to supervise them, but...a hunt alongside his littermates sounded nice. He hadn't been able to spend time with them in what seemed like forever. By now, Lightpaw had adjusted to SkyClan's true territory and found he enjoyed it (for the most part, anyway) more than the mountains, to say nothing of how much he preferred apprenticeship to kithood, but part of him still associated their first home with warm, comfortable days spent with his mother and family as much as it did with the dogs or the Sharptooth. It was strange to miss cats he shared a camp and a den with. The sooner he could put a stop to that feeling, the better.

"Better, now. I had to work really hard on hunting..." Ever literal, he changed tracks as soon as Sandpaw's words sank in, expression somehow more serious than usual. "You can't be that bad! I couldn't even catch a squirrel at first." Admitting that was easier now that he'd achieved consistency; as long as his prey stayed grounded and didn't spot his unfortunately eye-catching pelt, he had a chance.