The SkyClan Family Business

Adderpaw was Spottedstar's granddaughter. Frankly he should have known her much better, or at least been at her birth, but many things demanded his attention. The SkyClan leader often found himself wondering how Oakstar could handle having so many kits, biological or otherwise. Now he stood in the middle of the pine forest, Adderpaw tagging alongside him as he led the way to a peaceful clearing. "This looks like a good place." He meowed, pausing and looking at his apprentice. "Let's start with telling me what you can smell. Hunting always works best when you've got a target." Spottedstar meowed with a good-natured smirk.

OOC: apologies for the lazy writing, it's 1:20am and I'm on mobile

Adderpaw was, as usual, silent as her mentor led her out of camp. It was her first time outside of the confines of the camp, and she couldn't help but lag behind as she took in the sights and smells around her. She made sure to remember each and every detail. For future reference, you know. She continued noticing and mentally cataloging everything around her until Spottedstar abruptly stopped. They were in a clearing now, surrounded by tall grass and bushes. It looked like a great place for prey to hide, and by extension a great place to hunt. She'd have to come here later, when she was a warrior.

She turned to her mentor as he spoke, raising an eyebrow at his wording. Tell him? Hardly. She supposed she couldn't blame him for not knowing, he was a busy cat. Adderpaw just hoped he could lip-read better than some of her littermates, trying to tell them anything was a living nightmare. She didn't enjoy speaking to them anyway, but still. She took a deep whiff of the air, trying to find a scent unlike the others. There was the overwhelming scent of pine, of course, but there was something else. A faint smell, almost like... Feathers? She turned back to her mentor. "Bird?" she mouthed, making sure to exaggerate to eliminate any chance of him not understanding. It was tedious and infuriating having to repeat herself, and she wanted to avoid that in her first training session.

His head tipped to the side, betraying his confusion. He had understood the mouthed word quite clearly; it was hard to misunderstand the word bird, even when soundlessly mouthed, plus he had already known what she would discover since he scented it as well. "Huh. Yeah, plenty of birds around. When you get more experience, you'll be able to tell them apart by smell, but their calls and feathers will also tell you what they are. Anyway, let's start with the most basic way to catch something." He crouched low to the ground, his long tail held steadily just a mouselength off the ground. He set one heavy forepaw in front of the other, demonstrating his stalking technique, then sat up and looked back at Adderpaw. "The hunting crouch lets us get close to prey animals before we pounce on them. For us, though, we've got real strong legs so we can jump from greater distances and reach higher places than cats from other clans. That means we don't even have to get that close. For example..." He lowered his voice at the last bit, nudging Adderpaw with his shoulder and glancing up at a branch above them where a plump blackbird landed. The instruction to catch it was unspoken but quite obvious.

Adderpaw huffed quietly with annoyance at Spottedstar's confusion, though she tried her best to stifle it. It wasn't his fault he didn't know. It's not like she could have told him. Though a small wave of irrational anger began to wash over her, she tried to shake it off and instead focused on her mentor's instructions. He dropped into a hunting crouch and stalked forward a few paces. It was clear that Spottedstar had moons more experience than Redfall; although the latter was good at crouching and stalking, the SkyClan leader was on a whole other level. It was probably muscle memory for him at this point; he didn't even seem to be thinking about his movements. Adderpaw wanted to be like that too. When her mentor turned back to her and gave the unspoken signal to follow his example and catch the blackbird, she tried her best to emulate his fluid movements and dropped into a hunting crouch. She crept forward a few mouselengths, though she didn't have far to go until she was at a good angle to jump. She has practiced on leaves back when she was a kit, and although her technique was far from perfect Adderpaw thought she had a good sense of the correct jumping distance and angle. Well, only one way to find out. She unfurled her legs, launching herself into the air. Her tail swished slightly behind her, helping her keep her balance. Claws outstretched, she reached the apex of her jump. Luckily enough, she happened to find herself directly above the blackbird. Wasting no time, she hooked her claws into its inky black plumage and threw it up into the air. It was only as she caught it in her jaws that she realised she hadn't actually planned her descent. She flailed about rather ungracefully, her efforts in vain as she plummeted towards the ground. She landed on her feet, fur windswept and tail twitching in repressed anger and embarrassment. She stalked over to her mentor and dropped the bird at his feet, looking pointedly at the ground. She definitely had to practice that landing.

The member 'Snickerdoodle' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Hunting Dice' : 5

He watched closely, pleased with her natural jumping instinct. She scored her first catch, bringing the bird down with her in a spinning mass of fur and feathers. It was rather ungraceful. Spottedstar couldn't help but laugh, only managing to stifle his outburst after she dropped her catch at his paws and hung her head. "No, no, Adderpaw, that was great. It's the landing that's the hardest part. You'll get the hang of it!" He meowed, tapping her ear with his nose. Even as he spoke, he felt the walls around his heart beginning to crumble. The leader had spent so much time alone in the past several moons that he hadn't had much of a conversation with anybody, let alone taught an apprentice something. He had always enjoyed mentoring; there was something about the youthful spirit of apprentices that reminded him of how he used to be before responsibility ground him into metaphorical dust. To see Adderpaw's self-consciousness at her mistake was even a little bit endearing. Suddenly he was grateful that Wolfcall trusted him with his daughter even if their relationship had become rather rocky lately. The leader purred, remembering a few of his own less-than-graceful landings. "Here, I'll tell you something that not many cats know. When I was an apprentice, I went hunting in the trees near the ThunderClan border. I snuck out alone, of course, because I didn't like rules and I thought I was tough enough to handle whatever was out there. Well, I saw this great squirrel - big, fat, and calling my name - just sitting not even a foxlength away from me in the tree over. So I jumped for it, right? And do you know what I forgot?" Spottedstar purred, his bemused gaze traveling over the branches above as if he could see his younger self. "The landing! I hit the ground so hard I sprained a paw!" He waved his right forepaw in the air as though Adderpaw might see the injury if she looked hard enough. It had been a while since he spoke of his own misdeeds as an apprentices and the consequences that followed, but he found that there was some joy in sharing his mistakes with others. Maybe Adderpaw would not feel so bad about her own mistakes. She was just an apprentice, after all. "Well, the other thing I forgot was the border. I hit the ground on ThunderClan's side of the markings and the ThunderClan deputy himself taught me a lesson I'll never forget." He meowed with a smile and twitched his shredded ear.

"I suppose the next step is learning how to hunt from trees. It's part of what makes us different from the other Clans, after all, so it's an important skill." Spottedstar found himself in a talkative mood, which was bad for hunting, so he lowered his voice and moved to the trunk of the tree that Adderpaw had snatched her prey from. "Bury that, then follow me up." He clawed at the trunk and pulled himself to a decently high branch, one that was covered nicely in foliage and sheltered him from view both above and below.