Into the Great Unknown [open]

It was nearly sunhigh, and Blizzard, after almost an entire morning's worth of travel, was starving. For most of the morning, he'd wandered through a dense thicket of pine trees, batting acorns and chasing butterflies, but now he found himself at the edge of the forest, staring out into a marshy wetland that he'd never been through before. His Twolegs had only started allowing him to leave their nest for a few sunrises now, and the majority of what he'd explored had been the pines, so this was new to him, and exciting! Lifting his nose to the wind, Blizzard scented the air, mouth watering at the scent of prey. But there was no time to stop and hunt, now! There was new territory to explore! He padded forward through the damp ground, unbothered by the wetness that clung to his legs, until he reached the edge of the river. His ears flattened in concern as he stared at the rushing water, and he backed up a fox-length, deciding that it was probably best to explore that another day. Not that he was scared or anything.

By now, the rumble in his belly had become uncomfortable, and his number one priority was to hunt. So he made for a cluster of large rocks in the distance, eager at the prospect of a meal.

He slunk towards the rocks, sinking into a crouch as he approached, ears pricked forward. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he spied a vole at the base of the large stones. Hello, lunch, he thought to himself. Another step forward on light paws brought him closer to the vole, who hadn't yet spotted him. But his hind leg kicked a stone. Muttering a complaint, Blizzard dashed forward at the same time the vole fled, almost certainly to freedom... but, no! It took the wrong path, and ended up cornered against the stones. Frantically it tried to scale the rocks, but as it came back down, sliding against the rock, Blizzard was waiting for it. He dispatched it quickly, and then leaped up on to the top of the rocks where he swallowed the not-quite-deserved meal in several hungry bites, and then lay, grooming his stark fur in the sun.

The tom paused mid-stroke of tongue against his leg, forepaw still curled near his mouth in surprise. Of all the things he expected to find here, another cat was not one of them, despite the many, many scents of other cats he'd passed on the way here. Blizzard had just assumed they were pass-throughers like himself.

"Hello!" he meowed. Rising to his paws, he arched his back in a friendly greeting, leaping down to pad towards the stranger. The clan cat's words confused him, so after he padded forward, he attempted to touch noses with the gray tabby, then pull back and curl his tail around his forepaws. "ThunderClan? RiverClan?" he repeated as a query.

"Why would any cat want to claw me?" he asked, blinking in confusion. "I haven't done anything to hurt any cat. I'm not like that." Blizzard had heard of mean cats before, from the other cats who lived with the Twolegs, near his own Twoleg nest.

"I'm not from too far away," he explained, pointing with his tail in the general direction of where he thought Twolegplace was. "Just over that way. I've got a nice garden, but there's so much to explore out here it makes my head spin! I'd only ever been in the pines before, but today, I ended up here. Hey!" he leaped to his paws a little suddenly, "are you hungry? I can try to catch you a fish!" He'd learned how in a Twoleg garden that had fat, golden fish swimming around in a small pond. Those were easy, the ones in the stream couldn't be too different.

The offer to join a clan fell rather on deaf ears - Blizzard didn't know what it meant to be a part of a clan, and he was happy just roaming the forest on his own. "Or, you could come back to my garden? My Twolegs are always willing to feed another,"

That, too, went over Blizzard's head, and he gave a purr of amusement. "Claiming the land? But there's so much of it! Surely there's no issue with me soaking up a little sun here and there." The tom licked his lips, the taste of vole still on his breath, and pointed with his nose towards the top of the Sunningrocks. "Up there is a good place to bask." As if the ThunderClan cat didn't already know that.

But seeing as the tabby seemed to have no intention of coming closer for some reason, as if there was some invisible barrier standing in his way, Blizzard sank to his belly, forepaws hardly a smidge away from touching Mistwalker's own. "I don't know what a Leadad or a Momtor is," he confided gravely. "But if you are happy in your home, who am I to convince you otherwise?" Compared to the other cats Blizz had met in the Twolegplace, Mistwalker seemed thin, and, well... underfed, probably. But if he was content...

Blizzard flexed his claws into the dirt, enjoying the sun on his pelt. "Who else lives out here? Aside from you and your family?"

The house-cat twisted his head to lick his shoulder, a bit perturbed at the forest cat's lack of an answer. Certainly there was some reason... and if there wasn't, didn't that just make his point? Senseless fighting was wrong, for sure.

"Do you have no friends in the other... clans, you called them, right? Does every cat hate each other, if they're not from the same clan?"

Blizzard wasn't sure if "kittypet" was an insult or not, but he chose not to take it as one - he heard his twolegs say the word "kitty" at him sometimes - it was one of the few things that he understood from them. So he supposed it stemmed from that.

He nodded, once. "Having friends is good!" he mewed. "I have lots of friends," the apprentice-sized tom puffed his chest out proudly, though, that wasn't really the truth - he had met a few cats around the Twolegplace, but not really enough to call them friend by most standards.

"And now we're friends now too, right?"