Squeaky[CLOSED for Rhin]

Mountainkit came barreling out of the nursery, tripping over her paws. She had been sleeping until recently, but then she heard the tell-tale thumping of adult paws that signified a patrol was back and that woke her right up. She wanted to go on a patrol! She was so big, she was practically an apprentice now. In fact, she sat at every meeting with bated breath, hoping that it was a ceremony for her. Going on hunting patrols would be so exciting! She ran at full speed into one of the apprentices in the patrol, almost knocking her over. She shook out her head and grinned from ear to ear.

"Did you just come back from a patrol? Did you catch anything? Can you take me on a patrol???" She was practically buzzing, looking up at the grey she-cat with expectant eyes.

After pawning off the blackbird she’d caught on the patrol’s Asylum observer, Jaypaw had allowed her mind to wander. This was a mistake. Exactly two steps past the camp’s threshold, she caught sight of a brown-and-tan shape rocketing toward her. She scrambled back just before impact. “Hey—!” A deluge of words from the shape drowned out her complaints. Jaypaw shut her mouth. Who was this cat? She’d taken pains to learn her new denmates’ faces; this wasn’t one of them. Though the cat stood almost (a very important almost) as tall as Jaypaw herself, something about her features was decidedly kitten-ish. At last, the squeaking stopped. Jaypaw snorted. “Of course n—”

The kit’s eyes were awfully big.

“—Nnnnot now.” Jaypaw blinked, wiping the last traces of hesitance off of her face. “Do you know how far you have to walk on a patrol? I need to rest my paws first. Then we can go. It’s gonna be a secret patrol, though, so you can’t tell anyone. Except Asylum, I guess.” Leaving camp without a SkyClan warrior’s supervision was tricky, but not impossible; Asylum, however, had eyes everywhere. At least they didn’t care about boring old rules so much. “And for your information, I caught a whole blackbird.” She tipped her head toward the fresh-kill pile, where the badger-pelted Asylum rogue was dropping today’s unfortunate prey on top of the rest. “See?”

Mountainkit smiled even wider. "YAY!" She remembered it was a secret and covered up her mouth with her paw. "I mean, yaayyyy," she giggle-whispered. She was so excited! A real life patrol! And it was a secret one, too! She liked secrets. She was good at keeping them, she thought. It was nice when people told her their secrets, because it meant they knew she was super duper good at keeping them.

She bounded over to the fresh-kill pile, sniffing at the blackbird, and then trotted back to Jaypaw. "Are you un-tired yet? I'm not being impatient! I just want to go right now. Ma says I'm impatient, but I'm not. So can we go now? Pretty please?" Speaking of Ma. She'd completely forgotten her manners! "Oh! I'm Mountainkit. It's because I'm big and strong, like a mountain!"

The kit gave a shout of delight. Jaypaw, wincing, pulled her tufted ears back. “Secret, remember?” Still, she cracked a smile when the kit corrected herself. Over her (very brief) apprenticeship, SkyClan’s territory had become as mundane to her as the nursery walls once were—but as Jaykit, she would’ve fought Wolfstar himself for the right to venture onto it. The kit bounced off, presumably to admire the blackbird…only to launch right back into rambling about the patrol on her return. Jaypaw’s smile faltered. “Your mom’s a smart cat.” She paused. Though she didn’t know any warriors aside from her own parents, she would definitely know if any of them acted like this. Besides, the longer she could keep the kit's mind on something else, the more time she'd have to rest. “Who is she, anyway?”

Finally, the kit stopped long enough to realize she hadn’t introduced herself. Jaypaw had never seen a mountain, but she’d heard stories—accurate ones, apparently, seeing as this “Mountainkit” could nearly meet Jaypaw’s eyes. “I’m Jaypaw, like the bird. Though I don’t really look like one,” she added, picturing the brown-feathered birds that occasionally popped up in the fresh-kill pile. At least they tasted good.