The Hawk and the Lily [c]

With the storm rolling in, it didn't look out of place for there to be mud on his paws and around his legs. Klaus was on a mission to find that pretty black she-cat he'd met not long ago. He managed to avoid a Thunderclan patrol by silently scampering up a tree, and the mud on his paws would hide his scent for the time being. Using his Skyclan talents, Klaus was practically a hawk himself moving from tree to tree. He would hide on the other side of a tree trunk whenever a Thunderclan patrol approached and listened for them to be gone before moving again. Now where could Waterlily be? How would she react to him being so deep inside Thunderclan territory? There was only one way to find out. He paused on a branch and listened carefully, trying to pick up any noise that could signal another patrol. He heard none... which wasn't a surprise since the sky was looking quite dark and nasty from the storm clouds rumbling closer.

A tree suddenly seemed like a bad idea, remembering that Beechface was struck out of one recently. Klaus climbed down to the ground, leaving hardly a disturbance on the bark as he did so. He put his nose to the forest floor to scent which cats had gone by in the most recent patrol. He recognized two... Minkstar and Waterlily. It took him a moment to remember exactly where he'd scented Minkstar... and then he remembered the battle at Fourtrees. He'd been Minkstream then, if he recalled correctly. All the more reason to be very careful with his own scent... He'd lost a bit of hope that he'd run into Waterlily at all if she was with a patrol... and at least one other cat knew who he really was. However, he followed the trail long enough to realize, much to his delight, Waterlily broke off from the patrol at some point.

Klaus immediately tracked her like a bloodhound. He picked up the scent of rodent as well... Couldn't resist one more quarry... He thought as a smirk played across his face. Her scent trail lead him to the Stony Hollow, not that he knew what it was called, and he spotted her dark form nearby. He gave the air one last deep inhale to be sure they were alone. We seem to be... And that was the confidence that he needed. Hopefully the mud around his paws and half way up his legs wouldn't be an issue.

"Hello again Water-"

A flash of yellow light followed by an immediate thunderclap shattered the air around them.

Klaus hardly remembered getting into the stony hollow he'd moved so fast. His fur stood on end and his heart beat wildly in his chest. His fear scent was... embarrassing to say the least. He hadn't been injured at least... and stars knew where that lightning had actually landed. The pale tom peaked his head carefully out of the hollow, his claws unsheathed.

"Hey, Waterlily! Hide in here with me." He didn't think lightning could break stone... and the fact that storms seemed to like frying Skyclan cats lately he wasn't taking any chances right now. Hopefully Waterlily would squeeze in with him. They could both wait out the storm that was swiftly coming. Hopefully Thunderclan would stay in camp and look for her afterward.

The storm was unnecessarily vicious that day.  Dark clouds loomed in the sky.  Threats of rain, storms and maybe even harsher weather came.  Waterlily did not exactly love that she was going hunting in this weather, but she did anyway.  She walked throughout the territory with Minkstar, looking for anything that moved.  She found a squirrel and started to chase it.  She ran for it, going away from Minkstar and towards Stony Hallow.  She caught the small creature in her paws and killed it quickly.  Waterlily decided to stay out there though.  There was quite a few small creatures that she could easily catch there.

Waterlily had been looking for Klaus every now and again, however it was not her top priority.  She was always just a little disappointed though when she never found him.  It had not been that long, so she did not know why exactly she was disappointed.

That's when she heard the cat start talking.  She turned around to look.  That was when a giant sound of booming thunder hit her ears.  She jumped.  It was pretty close to where Klaus was and she wanted to make sure that he was okay.  She watched the tom sprint to the Stony Hallow.  Her eyes went wide.

She did what he suggested and trotted over to the Stony Hallow with the squirrel in her mouth.  Once she was close enough to see that he was okay, she was relieved.  She then chuckled a little bit and dropped the creature out of her mouth.  "Well, that was certainly graceful of you," she joked.  Then she immediately looked serious.  "You are okay though, right?"

He was surprised with how calmly she reacted to the sudden noise. He felt even more sheepish as she pointed out, with sarcasm, how graceful he'd just been. He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, his mouth set in a hard line. Only a moment later his eyes softened and he chuckled shortly, clearly still embarrassed by his reaction to the thunder.

"I'm alright. I probably just shed what was left of my greenleaf coat." He joked back. Seriously though... there was probably fur on the ground that he would either need to collect later or hopefully the wind would scatter it enough that it wouldn't be noticeable. The winds began to whip through the forest in a manner that reminded him of newleaf storms.

"I guess that makes sense that a Thunderclan cat wouldn't be afraid of thunder. Do you get these storms often?" Was he... actually talking about the weather? He was out of practice, clearly. He blamed it on the storm throwing him off of his game. A shrike suddenly called out... what an irritating noise for a bird! Shrikesong... He just remembered that he hadn't scented her at all the entire time he'd been in Thunderclan territory. He wanted to ask, but how could he do that and keep his identity a secret?

He supposed he'd find out sooner or later.

"If there was one bird I could go the rest of my life without hearing... it would be that one..." His ears rotated back and away from the direction the shrike was calling from. Even crows weren't as detrimental to his ears.

Waterlily watched his eyes harden for a moment and was about to apologize before he joked back.  She smiled, weirdly almost laughing but not quite.  To his question, she looked a little surprised.  "No," she responded.  "If you have lived in this forest most of your life, you have probably seen the same amount and severity of storms that I have."

When the shrike called out, Waterlily turned her head towards it.  She did not love the noise that they made, but she did not care all that much.  "Yes, they are annoying."  She looked down.  "It's kind of funny though, my sister was named after one of them."

She looked down at the squirrel she had caught and batted it towards Klaus with her paw.  "You can have this if your hungry."  She looked out at the rain water pouring down on the earth.  She like the rain generally, but she was not about to go out from under that rock just yet, considering that she was close to seeing a cat be killed by one a second earlier.

Klaus shivered as he watched the rain pour... and it came down with a fury. They'd be stuck in the stony hollow for awhile, it seemed. Typically thunderstorms passed quickly, but even the rogue didn't want to be out in that mess. The real danger would be the colder temperature at night if his fur wasn't completely dry by then... and he had more fur than a short-haired cat to dry out.

It took every ounce of will power to not react strongly to Waterlily's revelation... she was... Shrikesong's sister??? Or was it a different shrike? Shrikes were going to be the absolute death of him.

"Wow that's mean..." He chuckled though, doing his best to make it sound as natural as possible. "I'd never name my kit after a nuisance animal." Sure, they did cool things like impale their prey, but the singing was so awful that it ruined any hope they had of him liking them. She pushed the squirrel toward him and for a brief moment he wondered if she was testing him. Did she really not suspect a thing? Shrikesong and him fought at Fourtrees when the Asylum disbanded... Not to mention they'd met at the border and he'd tried to put moves on her too. Did Shrikesong neglect to tell her family anything... important? Or was this all one big trap?

"I'll have a little bit. You caught it, you should eat it too." He bent his head down slowly, aware that the side of his neck was now exposed as well as his scruff. If she made a sudden move for it, he'd have no choice but to cut her pretty throat.

...

Why did that thought make him feel a bit disheartened? He pulled a piece of flesh away from the squirrel and swallowed it. "It's really good. You must be a skilled tree climber to catch a squirrel." Thunder rolled outside again, though not as loudly as last time.

Oh, shut up.

"Same," she responded to the first thing he said. "I have no idea why my adopted mom named her that."  She laughed a little, but that was only followed by a quick wave of sadness.  Her biological parent were dead or doing stars knows what.  Most of her adopted family was dead too, the only one she was not sure about was Kitefire, but they were never really close and she had no idea what ended up happening to her.  None of this sadness showed on her face though.  The only indication could be how quiet she got for a minute.

At his offer, Waterlily ripped off a piece of flesh from the animal and ate it.  She was not actually all that hungry, but she could eat a little bit.  "I try to be good tree climber.  I'm definitely not as good as a Skyclan cat or anything, though."  She told him honestly.

"So, were you born as a rogue?  Or were you like a kittypet turned rogue?"  She asked this suddenly, but she was pretty sure that there could be some interesting stories about the rogue life.  The worst of the storm appeared to be passing, but thunder could still be heard fairly close.

Maybe because she thought she was annoying. Klaus thought to himself, but didn't dare voice his thoughts. He instead gave a shrug, and was at least a little relieved that she and Shrikesong weren't blood related. It probably wouldn't have stopped him from hitting on Waterlily necessarily, but he would certainly be very careful to never leave his scent on her.

"Do you and your sister go hunting together a lot?" He again thought of her lack of scent in the territory... where was she anyway? At the mention of Skyclan his tail twitched. Beyond that, he refused to say anything further.

"I've always been a rogue as you call them. My family always called them Free Folk." Now to see how convincing his lies really were. He wasn't worried that she'd pick it out really but of course there was always a chance. "I imagine you were born in Thunderclan?"

"We used to go hunting together quite a bit," she said to his question about her sister.  "But not anymore.  She died a little while ago.  There was no sadness that could be detected in her voice, she purposely tried to cover it up now.  It was not that she wasn't sad, but more so that she did not want to be comforted about a death by a cat that she did not know all that well.

She nodded at his answer to her question.  "No, I'm not originally a Thunderclan cat.  I was born a rogue.  My adopted mom, Cedarheart, took me in when I was a kit." There was a lot more she could say, but she left it at that for now, not exactly feeling like sharing her life story on the second meeting with Klaus.