burning bright [closed]

Emberleap’s suggestion for Firepaw to focus on resting before her training started had been sound. Too bad he hadn’t followed it himself. He napped, walked the camp’s perimeter to clear his head napped again, groomed the fox pelt until his tongue hurt, took yet another shallow nap—over and over until all that remained of the sun was a pale glow on the horizon. Murkystrike’s lessons ran circles in his head. She’d helped him adapt and build on his preexisting knowledge; training someone from scratch was a different animal. What if he missed something? What if he taught Firepaw to be more Asylum than ShadowClan?

…Of course, if he stood here dwelling on that long enough, Firepaw wouldn’t learn anything at all. He could certainly do better than that. With a soft huff, Emberleap dragged himself toward the apprentices’ den. He poked his head inside, waiting for his eyes to adjust from shadows to the near-complete darkness before he spoke. “Firepaw? It’s time to get up—the sun's almost gone.” That said, he wasn't going to pull her out of her nest; ShadowClan's territory was too dangerous to navigate while fuzzy-headed.

Firepaw was having a lovely dream of the cool wash of river water running through her paws, the feeling of smooth stones shifting under her feet, and the warm sun toasting her fiery pelt. It felt wonderful, especially watching the vague shapes of what she thought were fish swimming, their scales shimmering against the sun. So when she was snapped awake by her mentor, she didn't feel very happy to have been. But she supposed that this was her life now, there wasn't anything particularly wrong with that though, waking as the sunset to go on patrol, and going back to sleep before the sun rose. Firepaw yawned drowsily as she got to her paws, shaking away the remnants of her dream. She had to be level-headed, and being a bit mad about a dream to her mentor wouldn't be fair to him. "Mm. Okay." She mewed, stretching her nest before she finally left her den and trotted up to Emberleap, looking up at him expectantly.

Firepaw straightened, awake enough not to need any more prompting. Emberleap backed out of the entranceway; she joined him a few moments later, looking about as lucid as he could’ve expected. “You can get some food before we leave, if you want.” He tipped his head toward the fresh-kill pile. A warrior like him couldn’t eat before hunting for the kits and elders…but Firepaw wasn’t a warrior, and this was her first-ever lesson. Surely it wouldn’t be a problem, as long as— “We’ll catch something to make up for it,” he hurried to add. “Just make sure it’s small, you’ll have to eat while we walk.”

With that settled, Emberleap made his way out onto the territory, testing the ground with every step as if he’d never set foot on ShadowClan’s territory before. There was never a good time to sink into the marsh, but today would be one of the worst. Once the camp and its commotion had fallen out of sight, he stopped. “Okay—” He pushed out a breath. “Okay. We’re going to start with hunting. First, tell me—can you smell any prey around here?”

Firepaw grabbed a frog and gobbled it up, she wasn't a fan of the marshy taste, but the soft squelch and oily flavour to it didn't put her off too much. She was quick to follow Emberleap, feeling a bit rushed, but she figured that Emberleap just wanted lots of time to train her. Firepaw was glad to be out of camp at least, there was just something about it that felt closed in, she knew she was supposed to be a Shadowclan cat, but it always seemed nicer to see the camp in the light instead of the shadows. She shook her head and tried to pay attention to what Emberleap was saying, she gave a sniff. Opening her maw and letting the scents wash over her tongue, then she pressed it to the marshy soil below her. "Mm... Earthy, warm, marshy." She mewed, struggling to convey what she was smelling. She could understand that one of the scents had to have been a lizard, she'd smell them on the fresh-kill pile but- some were weird. "Sour." She mewed again, sniffing as she walked distractedly. Now this wasn't a scent she was very familiar with, it was sour and rank and made her nose wrinkle but she was still uncertain. "I don't know..." She huffed sadly, frustratedly, refusing to meet Emberleaps gaze.

Firepaw wandered a few paces away, her white-speckled muzzle wrinkled with either disgust or frustration. Sour. In the marsh, that could mean any number of things. Carrionplace, a fox, a particularly strong clump of muck. “That’s okay—no one knows all the scents right away,” Emberleap said lightly, aiming for something in the realm of encouragement. “For my first moon of training, all I ever really smelled was mud.” Not as much of an exaggeration as it should have been. “I’m sure it won’t take you anywhere near that long, though! Warm is a pretty good start—a lot of prey smells like it does in the fresh-kill pile, but, um, warmer. More alive?”

At last deciding to do something more productive with his mouth than ramble at his apprentice, Emberleap stepped forward to taste the air. Sure enough—sour. He opened his mouth…and stopped short. It was as if every scent he’d ever learned had dropped clean out of his head. “That might be the Thunderpath.” Hesitance threaded through his tone. “It’s quieter after moonrise, but the smell still travels.” All fine and good, assuming that was the Thunderpath—

He squeezed his eyes shut for one heartbeat, two, three; then he turned back to Firepaw. “Uh—before we run into any actual prey, I should probably show you a hunter’s crouch.” That, at least, was too familiar to mess up. One small motion at a time, he flattened himself out into a carefully-balanced line. His tail waved just above the ground. “This is how it looks—it feels weird at first, but you’ll get used to it.” As Emberleap spoke, he began to creep forward, step by tiny step. “When you find a scent you know, you do this, and you sneak as close as you can, and then you jump”—he sprang; a nondescript lump of mud splattered beneath his paws—“like that.” He straightened up to meet Firepaw’s eyes, uncertainty flickering in his own. Iniko had taught him entirely by demonstration, and he’d already known how to hunt by the time his ShadowClan training began. How did one explain this sort of thing to another cat? For the second time in not nearly enough minutes, he attempted to reroute: “Do you want to give it a try?”