A Frigid Newleaf Morning [Open]

The warm rays of sunshine were barely starting to show on the far horizon, the ShadowClan camp covered in the shadows of night that only they knew how to take advantage of, minus a couple of faint light beams that fought to reach the pine-needle covered ground. The camp was submerged in silence as most cats slept peacefully, only disturbed by the muffled paw steps and hushed meows of the morning patrols as they exchanged info with the returning night patrols as they got ready to leave camp.

Everything was so calm and quiet that it would be very easy for anyone to completely overlook the two tiny glowing green spots inside the nursery.

Frigidkit’s eyes carefully scanned the nursery as he jumped off his nest, being as silent as possible. He didn’t want to wake up any of the queens or other kits, foiling his chances of sneaking out. This was the less active time of the day, something he had learned through many sunrises of carefully studying the patterns of the clan members, so this was his best chance to try and sneak out unnoticed.

Through a perfected silent step, relying on the muffling properties of the soft pine-needles that made up most of the camp’s flooring, and staying as close to the ground while trying to mimic the grownups’ ability to hide in plain sight through the use of shadows that he had seen some warriors teach to their own apprentices, he started to make his way towards the thorn tunnel that separated the camp from the clan’s territories, staying as close to the bramble wall without touching it, not wanting his fur to get tangled on it like last time…

After making sure that the guard on turn wasn’t around thanks to shift exchange, he tried to quickly take this tiny window of time to slip from the warriors’ and apprentices’ grasp and go out to explore on his own. He wasn’t sure of how many heartbeats this window of time would last, so he tried to make haste, even if that meant sacrificing the silent approach to this operation he had earlier.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Unfortunately for Frigidkit's escape attempt, Galekit was already awake, piercing yellow-green eyes locked in a serious stare on the silvery kit. "You're going to get in trouble," she stated quite matter-of-factly, and rose on little paws to follow him. "It's too early in the morning to be getting in trouble, and don't make me tell your mom on you." In Galekit's opinion, rules like "don't leave the nursery without supervision" were there for some reason, and as best she could tell, it was to keep her and the other kits safe. So she couldn't understand why one would want to break that rule. Besides, the queens would probably wake up soon and then they would be allowed to exit the nursery. What was the big deal, anyway?

Galekit swiftly padded after him, blocking his exit, and gave him her best stern mother stare in an attempt to persuade him to go back to bed.

Mistyfalcon padded into camp, giving the poor cats who had been chosen for dawn patrol duty a brisk nod as he passed them. The dark black and silvery tom had every intention of curling up in his nest for the day, he wasn't a morning person, or even a daylight person. The vast majority of his hunting and patrolling was done at night, and it suited his dark fur and quiet nature.

And then he spotted the kit that was definitely too far from the nursery and far too close to the camp entrance.

"Going somewhere, kit?" He asked, whiskers twitching. He understood the desire to get out of camp and explore all too well. He sympathized with the kit, at that age he'd wanted nothing more than to be an apprentice so he could go out into the territory.

A quiet laugh escaped the scarred tom's muzzle as another she-kit scampered over before he could say much else. "Your denmate is right, you'll be an apprentice and allowed to leave camp soon enough."

The strange smells coming from the end of the thorn tunnel were already caressing his nose like a subtle, silent encouragement to keep going and find out the secrets of whatever could lie beyond the walls that made up most of the borders of ShadowClan’s Camp. His tail was standing high with its fur bushing up in excitement. Tiny legs paws barely touching the ground as he almost bounced towards the exit as his plan seemed to come into fruition…

Only for everything to come to a sudden bitter stop as the voice of his clanmates reached Frigidkit's ears.

Unable to properly stop himself thanks to how quickly he was going thanks to his now crushed excitement, he tripped with his own paws. The bramble wall soon greeted him as he fell into it thanks to how close he was to it, causing him to yowl as he jumped out from its prickly embrace, but not without taking several small thorn-covered twigs with him as they got tangled with his fur.

‘Mousedung…’ After the initial startle wore off, he turned to look at Galekit and Mistyfalcon. It was just his luck that they wouldn’t be sleeping at this time…he silently also cursed at himself for not perfecting the whole moving unnoticed between the shadows as he thought he had done.

His gaze first went towards Galekit “You’re also out of bed early, by that logic you would get in as much trouble as I!”

With a huff Frigidkit allowed his rump to drop, sitting on his haunches, knowing this was a battle he couldn’t win, not this time “Not fair…cats only a couple of moons older than us are allowed in and out with little to no supervision and we are bound to be stuck at camp at all times” His meows were full of frustration, though to be honest, he was more frustrated by being caught than the fact that he could not go outside. He started to try and pull the tangled thorny twigs off his fur, as they were starting to become quite bothersome.

"Even apprentices can't leave camp alone. Our territory has its dangers, especially for the untrained." Mistyfalcon mewed, settling onto his haunches as he regarded the tabby kit in front of him. His face was heavily scarred, proof of those dangers. The kit tried to shake off the thorns that were caught in his fur, and Mistyfalcon reached out a paw to brush one of them aside.

"I'm Mistyfalcon, what's your name?" He figured it was only proper to introduce himself now that he'd caught the kit trying to escape.

Frigidkit’s ears twitched as the warrior spoke, his mind quickly scrambling for an answer to it “Shouldn’t they train us BEFORE we leave camp then? As kits?” He flinched slightly when the older cat started to help him to get rid of the thorny twigs on his fur, but he didn’t move, accepting the help

“I know that because of that whole code thing you grownups are always yowling about you can’t train us to become warriors until we are 6 moons, but if the outside is ‘Oh so dangerous’ that untrained apprentices are at such at high risk, then shouldn’t you warriors AT LEAST teach us how to not get killed by it while we are still safe within camp walls? What to look out for and how to react to it? By how you describe things, it almost sounds like you are deliberately sending apprentices out just to see if the mentor can teach them all that in record time, putting the life of their apprentice in jeopardy in the process!” The bluish-gray tabby almost jumped as he spoke, tail standing on end, as if trying to add emphasis to his words through it even if he was still too young to appear intimidating or express importance through words alone. Honestly speaking, he was trying to subtly derail the subject to dodge punishment or a scolding, even if he wasn’t about to admit it out loud.

His rant was mostly interrupted by the older cat telling him his name instead of trying to drag him to the queens as he originally expected, causing him to freeze for a heartbeat or two as his tiny brain tried to process this “O-Oh…uh…Frigidkit, my name is Frigidkit”.

Mistyfalcon blinked slowly as the kit... went on a tirade. Well... He... Had no idea how to respond. His whiskers twitched as Mistyfalcon stared at the kit in bemused silence. The kit went on for a bit until stopping, and only then did he seem to remember that Mistyfalcon had asked his name. An amused snort escaped the warrior in response. Frigidkit seemed like a misnomer, with his temper. But then, maybe the kit had been trying to distract from the half-tailed scolding Mistyfalcon had given him.

"Trying to avoid punishment? Honestly, I think most would be more annoyed by the tirade than a failed attempt to sneak out of camp." He commented mildly. "You'll be an apprentice soon enough. I know I was about as impatient as you at that age."

Frigidkit blinked before sitting down, grumbling under his breath and curling his tail around his tiny paws “Most cats tend to try to argue back and forget why the argument started, though…or at least that’s why I often see that happens when I see the older ones sharing tongues and hit a point of view that conflicts with their own…”.

Frigidkit just sighed, looking at the camp entrance, one of his ears twitching lightly “Why time tends to move so slow? It’s not fair…then again, I keep hearing that life never is…wonder if that’s why everyone talks about StarClan so much” He turns to look at Mystifalcon after saying that, clearly looking for answers through the silent message his eyes transmitted.

Frigidkit's grumbling made Mistyfalcon's whiskers twitch, lips curving into a quick half-smile. "You aren't wrong. And most arguments tend to be petty and pointless." He shrugged.

"Time feels slow because you're bored and stuck in camp. Soon enough you'll have more things to do than you know, and you'll be wondering where the time went." Mistyfalcon nodded at the comment on fairness. "Life isn't, you're young. We all learn that the hard way eventually, whether we want to or not." Blunt and to the point, Mistyfalcon didn't believe in sugar-coating or honeyed words. Some of the queens would likely scold him for it, but he wasn't going to treat a kit any different than the rest of his clanmates.

Frigidkit’s long whiskers twitched ad he tilted his head “And how did you learn that life wasn’t fair?” The question probably could hit a sensitive topic for Mistyfalcon, but Frigidkit hadn’t stopped to think about that…all he thought was a story, an experience, something to learn through the eyes of another cat.

He had heard plenty of stories from the queens and elders, and honestly had snooped on other stories he wasn’t supposed to hear in the past, eavesdropping, sometimes hiding in plain sight. It was surprising how little grown-ups used to care about kits wandering the area when sensitive topics were discussed as if they thought they wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t remember, wouldn’t understand. How often they were underestimated just because of their age used to be both amusing and frustrating...how often they forgot that just because they were younger, several of them had also had been forced to face the unfairness of life one way or another.

The kit wanted an answer... And Mistyfalcon wasn't one to sugar-coat things. There was simply no point in doing so. Frigidkit would learn that the world wasn't fair anyways, and there was no reason to not be blunt about it.

"I was nearly killed by a dog towards the end of my apprentice training. I watched an experienced warrior die to one a few moons later. When the Asylum occupied our camp, one of our warriors was dragged out of camp and imprisoned, starved for the crime of being nice to someone." He spoke bluntly, recalling the dog attack that had left his face permanently scarred, and recalled finding Brighteye's dying body in the pine grove, pale fur soaked in red. Murkystrike being dragged from camp while all he could do was watch, helplessly pinned by other rogues.

"Do you want more examples? I could go on." Doubtless some of the queens would be horrified by his words, furious at his matter-of-fact way of speaking, but Mistyfalcon did not care about what feelings might be hurt by him stating facts. Frigidkit was old enough to ask a question, and so he was old enough to receive an honest answer.

Frigidkit’s ears twitched slightly as he heard the summarized tales of Mistyfalcon, images produced by his imagination playing before his eyes. While he had never really seen a dog, he had heard tales, and he had created a monster in his head that came as close to how one of them could look like…or at least that’s what he thought.

The most likely reason why he didn't react too badly when Mystifalcon mentioned she was almost killed was because, even if he had a basic understanding of the concept of death due to how often it was touched around camp, thanks to his still young age and lack of experience, as well as the constant protection of the queens that wouldn't want such dark subjects reaching the ears of any kit, he couldn't fully grasp the concept just yet.

Yes, he understood that StarClan existed, and he understood that the cats no longer walking among them has joined their ranks, in a territory between the stars above where the burdens of life became meaningless...but he still didn't fully understand that StarClan wasn't just another clan that one could simply travel to and then back, or how serious death actually could be, that it was permanent.

His ears, however, perked up at the mention of the Asylum, the evil band of powerful rogues that several cats talked about all the time. His eyes went from the space before him, where his imagination previously formed the scenes he had been told about, to Mistyfalcon’s. He had been rather blunt to him so far, he wasn’t going to hide information nor sugarcoat things for him, even a kit like himself could catch up on that quickly, so he decided this could be his one only chance to get some real answers for some delicate questions.

“The cats from the Asylum took many cats, didn’t they? Did you know them all?” There were hidden motives between his questions, that was obvious…but he was being as careful as a kit of his age could when trying to hide them.

"Not all of them, no. They took many more cats aside from the few of our clanmates. I was part of a group of cats that called themselves the Mousehunt, and we banded together to raid fourtrees, where Asylum had imprisoned their captives. There were... 9 of us that undertook that mission, and over a dozen Asylum guards. With those they held captive, we wound up outnumbering them two to one. Three to one when the kits they had stolen from us fought alongside us. If they hadn't, the battle might have gone the other way entirely with how weak the captives had been." That battle had been chaotic, to say the least, and once Mistyfalcon had found Murkystrike and Emberleap, that was where his focus had stayed.

"Beecloud, a Thunderclan warrior, was the one I was most familiar with outside of our own clanmates. He killed the Asylum head, Eris, and gave his life in the process." A shame, that. Still, the massive tabby had fulfilled his promise; Asylum had been vanquished before the first blooms of newleaf, even if he wasn't alive to see it.

Frigidpaw’s ears flicked again, once more imagining the battle happening at fourtrees…though probably a bit more romanticized than it truly was due to usual kit imagination and never being outside of camp, so not knowing what Fourtrees looks like.

The kit bit his tongue, thinking, unsure if he was even supposed to ask given how the queens at the nursery used to dodge or change the subject whenever he did in the past…but it was now or never at this point, most likely. Even being as young as he was, uncertainty was something he was familiar with, especially when given half-answers that only added to it instead of easing it.

“Did you…meet my parents, Mistyfalcon?” Most cats started to grow wary around that question, some even immediately trying to change the subject or distract him, but the warrior hadn’t tried to be elusive so far, why would he now? “Were they between those cats?”

He kneaded the pine needles under his paws, making them crunch “A queen once let slip that the Asylum cats took them too, but when I asked about it, she pushed me towards the other kits to play mossball and would ignore any further questions”

Mistyfalcon twitched a tattered ear at Frigidkit's question. His parents... If he'd been more involved with the nursery, he might have known that the kit might have asked. As it was, Mistyfalcon had to actually think for a moment; Frigidkit's parents were not cats he'd known well, only in passing. They hadn't been a part fo the mousehunt, nor were they a part of anything Mistyfalcon usually found himself involved in. Of the Shadowclanners that had been recovered from fourtrees, he'd been mostly focused on Murkystrike, and Ebonysong had found Crowcall. Those had been the only two to have been recovered from that wretched prison, as far as Mistyfalcon had been aware.

"No, I didn't." He stated simply. "If they were taken by the Asylum, they were not among the prisoners that had been kept at fourtrees." They wouldn't be the first cats to simply vanish without a trace, nor would they be the last, Mistyfalcon knew.