Taking Flight

The past moon had been hard on Jaydream. Growing up in ThunderClan, during a season where prey was plentiful, he'd never really known hunger. Now, though, it gnawed at his belly like a thousand angry ants. There was no hunting here, in Twolegplace. Not the kind he was used to, anyway. Sure, there were birds, and squirrels, and even the occasional mouse, but in a sea of Thunderpaths and Twolegs and Monsters, it was nearly impossible to catch something before something else scared it away. As a result, the thick, muscular tom had grown slim. His fur was ragged and dull, and dark blue eyes that once held the gleam of superiority were now lusterless and weary. What food he could manage was mostly scraps, things thrown out by the Twolegs, the occasional squirrel or bird killed by a Monster.

But what hurt him most wasn't the hunger, or the thirst, or the fear. It was the loneliness. He had two sisters. Two stubborn, obnoxious, annoying sisters that he missed so much that they were painful even to think about. But he had abandoned them. He'd abandoned ThunderClan. And he could never go back... not while the murderers who killed his mother still watched over them from the stars.

Jaydream padded slowly along a fenceline, shoulders slumped, ears back. He knew this section of Twolegplace well, and he didn't even have to really pay attention as he walked. He didn't have a destination, but he was too restless to sleep.

The past moon hadn't been hard on Summer - no harder than any other moon of her life, at least. She still needed to rely on all her experience to locate viable food sources just as she always had during her travels, and she still needed to find places to rest and friendly (or friendly enough) company to enjoy. Some parts of the territories were easier than others; the upwalker settlements were always a bit of a gamble, really, but Summer loved the thrill. She had to contend with loose dogs, strays, housecats, cars, upwalkers and their weird trash, and other less than savory things that were less prevalent - or non-existent - in the forests and moors.

There were no Clan cats in the upwalker territories, though. Summer had learned of the distaste that the forest Clans held for the housecats and upwalkers. Though a pawful of them ended up in the expanse of houses for prey, they considered it an unpleasant and undesirable place. That suited Summer well enough. Housecats usually couldn't fight, and didn't desire to; strays were a toss-up, as some were like scavengers and others were more like settled drifters. At least she wouldn't need to worry about offending a Clan cat here, for she'd learned in no time what skilled and purposeful fighters they were. Warriors, in fact. That was what they called themselves when they were considered fully trained. It was an interest way of life they lived, but right now Summer enjoyed the simplicity of the upwalker settlement.

The flame-pointed cream cat lay on her side at the base of a slender oak tree, perfectly manicured by upwalkers over time. Her sky blue eyes were half-closed against the sunlight as she basked, forepaws curling and uncurling lazily while she dozed after a pleasant breakfast earlier in the day. She heard the faint scratching of skilled paws walking along the wooden fence-line nearby before she saw or scented the approaching cat. Summer's eyes opened and her head turned, gaze landing on a weary and bedraggled looking calico. The pale she-cat's lips parted slightly, trying to find the cat's scent in the faint breeze, but it was behind her. Summer, still laying, called up to the approaching cat, "Excuse me, darling - are you feeling quite alright?" It wasn't uncommon to see a thin cat, or a weary cat, or a morose cat, but to see a cat who was all three at once was something of a concern. Cats who drifted mindlessly were caught unprepared.

The sound of a cat he wasn't expecting to hear should have set him on edge, head snapping towards the sound, fur bristling in preparation for a possible fight. Only, it didn't. Jaydream was so used to all the noise of Twolegplace that the she-cat who called out to him was just another piece of background noise. There was no shortage of cats around here. The Twolegs owned cats, he saw them sometimes in their gardens, or just beyond, and often they scattered at the sight of him. There were others like him, rogues - unkind cats that would flay you without the honor of the Warrior Code to sheathe their claws from a killing blow. So far, he'd been lucky enough to avoid those types.

This pale she-cat didn't seem a threat, so he was tempted just to ignore her and move on, but the kind, almost worried lilt of her voice spoke to something deep inside him, the companionship he so desperately craved, and that stilled his paws. Almost reluctantly, his eyes slid over to meet hers, sky-blue on cobalt. His ears slicked back as he registered the question. Was he feeling alright? No, no he wasn't, but why should she care? She didn't know him.

"I'm..." he began, but the 'fine, thanks,' died off before the words could pass his lips. Jaydream's head dropped, the unexpected burn of tears forcing him to quit eye contact. What was wrong with him? Was he so weak now that the barest hint of amiability sent him into a fit of sorrow? The mottled tom swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe normally as his quickening heartbeat demanded otherwise. After a long, probably awkward silence, he was finally able to respond. "No. I guess I'm not."

The admission surprised even him, and before he knew what he was doing, his haunches were sat firmly on the ground, head hanging low beneath slumped shoulders. Why he was telling some random she-cat this, he didn't know, but the dam had burst and it was too late now to retreat.

A lean white tom with long, brown legs, slipped from the shadowy alley of Twoleg-Place. He glanced around, tasting the air. He smelt cat, of course, but under that was the faintest trace of... Prey! Twitching his ear, he ignored the sounds of talking cats for the time being, focusing on a skinny mouse scuffling through some Twoleg trash. He instinctively dropped, tucking his tail to his side. Silently edging forward, the mouse suddenly looked up, not noticing him, but looking at a sparrow that had landed on a fence nearby. If I can't catch this dinky mouse, well, I'm more lopsided than a one-legged badger! Then, he sprang, finishing the mouse with a swift bite to the neck. Flicking his slim brown tail in satisfaction, he rubbed the blood from his red bandanna, picking up his mouse and trotting away. He decided to follow the voices of the cats.

"Hello?" The tom meowed, pricking his ears as he dropped the mouse. He hoped the cats where friendly, as he wanted to keep his pelt- and better- his prey.

He trotted closer to find two cats standing, gazing at each other. They both looked a bit ragged and skinny. One was a tom, he supposed, with jay-blue eyes. The other was a pale gray she-cat, who looked timid. "Hello." He repeated, flicking his tail in a friendly manner.

ooc; I sent Acorn a message that this is a private thread; I'm gonna have a different thread with them elsewhere. <3 To anyone reading, Apollo didn't arrive. Our bad. ^^'

ic;

The cat's head turned to her slowly, and the deep blue gaze that met her own was dark with apathy, exhaustion, and uncertainty. Summer did her best to put forth a passive and peaceful appearance, her expression softening against the other cat's. A short, deep voice cracked out a beginning of a word, and Summer's ginger ears angled forward to listen intently. The tom went quiet again, dropping his head, and the ginger-cream drifter perked a little higher with alertness. No, it was quite clear: if the tom wasn't ill or starving, he was otherwise unwell. Summer wished again that the breeze weren't against her so she could try to distinguish more about him and whether she ought to try keeping a polite but healthy distance between them. She was about to get up and try to shift somewhere to scent him better before he replied finally that he wasn't alright.

Summer sat up as the tom slid off the fence and trudged over to her, sitting heavily on weary, ragged haunches. His scent hit her quickly, and much to her relief he didn't smell sick - definitely unkempt and as miserable as he looked, though. "Well, I'm very sorry to hear that," Summer told the tom with a sympathetic murmur, letting her muscles relax once more and curling her thick ginger tail loosely around herself. "What's troubling you, darling?" she probed gently, allowing her gaze to take in the sight of the tom-cat more clearly. He really would have a beautiful pelt if it weren't so... untidy and dusty. His eyes held the darkness of ten dry seasons' storms, and Summer wondered what had set those maelstroms in motion in the poor cat's mind. She thought, for the briefest moment, that she smelled something like Clan cat - but surely it was only because they were so close to the border. Clan cats didn't wander in the upwalker settlement.

Why was he here? Venting to this stranger of a she-cat when he hadn't been able to bring himself to talk to anyone else about his problems, or anything else, since he'd left ThunderClan. In fact, the sound of his own voice was startling to him, he'd heard it so scarcely in the last couple of moons. The floodgates had opened, though, and he couldn't just walk away now. Jaydream lifted his gaze briefly to look over Summer, envying her effortless comfort, how cool and collected she appeared even in the face of a total stranger. He didn't figure he looked very much a threat, granted, but still, she looked like she belonged here, and it was painfully obvious that he did not.

"I... I don't know." That much was true... He didn't know. Where to go from here, both physically and metaphorically. He could stay here, but he wouldn't last. He was hardly lasting now. And without the warrior code to follow he was lost in more ways than one. "I've lost my family. And I don't know what to do, now. How do you do it? How do you survive out here?" He shook his head. "It seems so unkind... so cruel. There's no structure."

Was he giving away too much? He guessed it didn't matter. "Sorry. Didn't mean to unload on you. I can just..." he rose unsteadily to his paws, turning his head back towards the way he was headed, expression blank. "I can just go."

The tom glanced up at her with a look of deep sorrow, and Summer merely blinked slowly, sensing that she was about to get the answers she was looking for and granting him the patient time to gather his thoughts. What the stranger first offered was nothing useful. The ginger-cream she-cat continued to wait. The tom continued that he'd lost his family. That phrase could mean many things, but coupled with the grief that seemed to be wearing through the poor tom's face Summer suspected the worst and made a soft, sympathetic "tsk, oh" while he expressed his loss and aimlessness. He commented on the cruelty and unfairness and chaos of life "out here" - that phrase could mean many things as well. Did he mean the wild in general? Had he been a kittypet? Or did he mean the opposite - the upwalker settlement? Had he been a wild cat? Oh - had he been a forest cat? Had Summer truly picked that up, or what is a trick of their location as she'd thought?

Summer was surprised to see the tom's face go suddenly dull, as if he'd accepted he wasn't worth her time. Bedraggled though he was, he turned and began to walk away after apologizing for intruding. Summer's plume tail flicked and she shifted slightly, for a moment almost standing to follow him but then hesitating, deciding against it. She'd elect for another tactic. "Well, of course you can go, darling; you are the structure "out here", after all. I do wish you'd stay, though. It's not right to slink about these neighborhoods when one's distracted." She tilted her head. "Won't you keep me some company? " she asked in a melodious, gentle plea, blue eyes shining warmly at the tom.

She wanted him to stay?

Jaydream's head turned towards her again, a mixture of confusion and suspicion mingling in his gaze. What could he possibly have to offer this cat that would warrant her requesting him to stay, to keep her company? Was it truly this desolate and lonely out here for every cat, as it was for him? That was an option he hadn't considered before, and truth be told it made him suddenly feel just a tad bit better. Maybe he wasn't as weak as he thought - maybe his desperate longing for feline companionship was normal. His eyes brightened a little, and he let his haunches sink back to the grass. "I apologize," he repeated, one ear twisting back in embarrassment. "I've... been having a rough go of it lately and sometimes I just..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Anyway. I'm, uh... I'm Jaydream. Do you uh... live... here?"

The words were flat and awkward, a testament to the young tom's lack of socialization these past few weeks. The last real conversation he'd had was with his sisters, when he told them goodbye.

At Summer's request, the tom-cat paused, and his head turned towards her again with a look of veiled bewilderment and attentiveness. He was considering her request, weighing his options and her sincerity, no doubt. She merely blinked slowly, smiling faintly as she watched his expression shift and his muscles begin to relax slightly. After a moment he turned back to her again, his face brightening as he granted himself the opportunity to rest and take in the safe company that he'd found himself in. The calico tom murmured an apology for his actions, struggling to find words. Summer waved one ginger-tipped paw, trilling briefly, "Not a worry, darling." She smiled at the tom more fully now as he finally introduced himself. She couldn't keep a chirp of surprise from escaping her lips when his very Clan-like name registered. "That's a beautiful name, Jaydream," Summer remarked, yet electing to leave the suspicion of Clanhood unbrushed for now she responded, "I'm Summer. Pleasure to meet you, darling."

Her companion asked if she lived "here", and her pale whiskers quivered slightly as she chuckled and replied, "Oh, yes and no. In the sense that wherever I go, "here" is where I am, yes, I suppose I live here. I'm a drifter, Jaydream, like you seem to be. I come from days and days away - or maybe only a few nights, since I've crossed my own paths a few times." Summer lowered herself to her belly, straightening her forelegs out before her and relaxing as she gazed with a friendly expression at the bedraggled tom. "I have been venturing this upwalker settlement for a few turns of the moon now, though, darling. I'm surprised to have found any cat who knows this place less than I do." Her sky blue eyes sparkled; there was no judgement in her words, but a subtle hint that she knew Jaydream was struggling with some aspect of a drifter's life, whether it be loneliness or lack of desire.

"I was raised in the forest," Jaydream told her quietly, his eyes moving to stare behind Summer, where the trees in the distance thickened and clumped together, their crowns overlapping to create what he knew would be a shadowy, cool forest floor. He longed to hunt there now, to feel brambles tear at his fur as he ran through the underbrush, to taste the sweet, clean water of the creek, to fall asleep curled next to his sisters instead of alone, curled beneath a Twolegplace-bare bush.

"I suppose that explains everything... I didn't... I don't know how to survive here. It's harsh, compared to growing up there. And lonely." That last statement had been said in a lower tone, one he knew made him sound pathetic but couldn't bring himself not to say. "That's the part I've been struggling the most with, I think. I can tolerate the crowfood and the Twolegs, but I miss my family. My sisters." Jaydream shook his head. "But I can't go back."

He took a breath, letting it out with a shaky laugh, the first one he'd uttered in near a moon. It surprised him, but it also felt good, and his midnight eyes caught Summer's, holding them a moment before he looked away, flushed with embarrassed heat. "I'm sorry, I know you probably didn't plan to sit around and listen to some stranger mope your ear off today. I, uh..." his ears slanted back. "Thanks, though. For listening, I mean." Suddenly eager to change the subject, Jaydream cleared his throat. "So... what do you do? When you're not hunting, or sleeping, or..?" The concept of rogue life was a mystery to the former clan cat, one he hadn't yet solved. When he was with ThunderClan, any free moment was spent patrolling or training - something he was sure Summer didn't have to do. So what did she do out here with all her free time, if she wasn't struggling just to survive like he was?