To The Sky (open)

Owlkit wanted to know more about the world. For so long, she had been stuck in the nursery wondering what was out there. At the same time, she was left shaking in her nest thinking about all the stories she was told. Foxes prowling the brush, badgers lurking in dens... even buzzards in the open moor of WindClan. It was a terrifying world out there for a kit as small as her, yet she wanted to explore every inch of it.

The first step was leaving the den.

Timidly, the small grey-and-black kit set one paw after another until she pulled herself out into the open. The whole of ThunderClan's camp was ahead of her, bustling with the activity of her Clanmates. She almost burst from excitement the second it hit her. Owlkit's eyes went wide and her tail went straight up in the air, twitching. This was it! Now she could start towards her dreams! Then, of course, another thing hit her.

The world was big.

Very big.

Immediately, her tail drooped and she turned around to go back towards the nursery. That was when she bumped into another cat. "S-sorry!"

Shrikepaw was wandering around ThunderClan camp, something that was actually quite common for the young she-cat to do. When she wasn't cleaning out the moss for the elder's dens, or on a patrol outside camp, she was prone to being engulfed in her brain, not noticing where she was going. Which obviously led to collisions.

Surprisingly, she wasn't the one to bump into someone else, and rather, a cat bumped into her. "Oh no, you're fine," she said in response to the cat. She turned to the cat who bumped into her. If she had to guess, it was a kit who decided to sneak out of the nursery. That made even more sense when Shrikepaw realized that she was right in front of the nursery. "Hi there. My name is Shrikepaw. What's your name?" The apprentice didn't want to frighten the young kit, so she sat down, trying to act as non-threatening as possible.

Laurelkit watched from the inside of the nursery as Owlkit tumbled out of it, following a few pawsteps behind - she wanted to see what happened next, and the best way to do that was to tag along on whatever little adventure her denmate was embarking on. Owlkit fell into an apprentice she wasn't familiar with, and Laurelkit took the last few steps out into the camp herself. It always felt a little special, though it wasn't the first time she'd seen it: she always took a moment to look around, to remember that this was her home, though she only spared a second now when there was something else to keep her attention. "I'm Laurelkit," she offered up her name to the apprentice, sitting up as tall as she could - which was, admittedly, still quite small. She was only a kit, after all.

Big, round orbs of yellow, much like the predatory eyes of her namesake, stared up at the apprentice. She was only some odd moons older than her, being of the age to train and learn the ways of ThunderClan, but she still felt so large to Owlkit. The puffball was only old enough to eat prey and hardly any older. A dubious look was cast in Shrikepaw's direction, as if she were expecting to be gobbled up for her insolence. Did bigger cats do that? She knew ShadowClan liked to eat kits sometimes...

As her body shook and trembled, another kit decided to give her company. A friend of hers named Laurelkit, although friendship between nursery kits was ubiquitous. They had very little reason to hate each other like the adults did.

Finally, she gulped down the invisible toad in her throat and said, "I'm... Owlkit. I was just looking around... but everything's so ginormous and scary."

Shrikepaw saw another kit walk to her, answering the question that she had asked the kit that bumped into her. I wasn't exactly asking you, but I guess that's fine. "Laurelkit and Owlkit?" she said. "Your parents did a good job naming you two. Those are wonderful names!" She knew that Owlkit was still very afraid of her, despite the she-cat trying to calm the kit down. I could have done a little bit better on comforting Owlkit. Then again, she didn't even know why Owlkit was scared. Possibly because of the how big the world was for the young kit, possibly for something else entirely. "Hey, Owlkit?" she said to the tiny kit. "I just want to tell you that you are safe in this camp. It is much bigger than the nursery, but ThunderClan will make sure that you stay safe." Perhaps that would really help ease the young kit's fear, perhaps not. But it was certainly worth a shot.

Laurelkit blinked at her friend, wanting to help her feel more comfortable. The camp wasn't scary, after all, she had nothing to be afraid of! "It's not so scary, Owlkit, I promise!" She took one step, then another, to distance herself from the nursery's entrance without going too far. "See? Nothing bad's gonna happen to us while we're out here!"

Her eyes twinkled with the mischief characteristic of kits as she glanced over at Shrikepaw once again. "And if something does happen, we can hide behind the bigger cats. We'll be fine!"