Different Birds [Paledove]

Beechfang wove among her clanmates, a thin bird in her jaws. All around the sounds of hacking coughs and cats wheezing, struggling to breathe filled the air. For the moment, Beechfang was healthy and seemed to be unaffected by the odd illness raging through the clans, and she would do as much as she could for Skyclan in the meantime. Riverclan might have known about her existence, but they held no power over Skyclan and she would fight: fight to stay, fight for her clan, fight for her family. When she wasn't offering Smokepetal her help, she was hunting or finding other things to do. Her ribs showed beneath her pelt and she was tired, but the feeling of exhaustion was nothing new to the warrior. She would endure, as she always had.

Today she had gone hunting with another warrior, and while this newfound territory by the lakes was unfamiliar, the prey was the same as they knew back in the forest. The bird was a small thing, but it would feed someone, at least. Her gaze found one of Skyclan's queens, and Beechfang padded toward her.

"Paledove, how are you feeling?" The bird was dropped and unceremoniously pushed toward the queen's paws. She was pregnant, Beechfang knew, and that was... Mostly it. She vaguely remembered the she-cat from days before her own exile, but the two had seldom crossed paths much. Still, she was a clanmate and someone to look out for.

Paledove was staring out at the distance, huddled in on herself, when a voice broke her out of her thoughts. Probably a good thing.

“Like I got hit by a falling tree,” she answered bluntly, uncurling and glancing up at the other cat. Beechface, or Beechfang, now, she supposed, although that really wasn’t any better. A bird… a dove, actually, like her namesake, but just the thought of biting down on something bloody made her insides squirm. “I… appreciate the thought, but no. No thanks. Better give it to someone who can keep it down.”

It was stupid and horrible, that she couldn’t even stomach the thought of biting into a dove, her who had sunk her teeth into life-blood before, but that was how it went. Moons of misery, spent holding onto the hope that it would all be worth it in the end. That things would turn out differently, this time. Beechfang had her kits, plump and happy and safe, and here was Paledove, about the same age, holding onto a hope that might never materialize.

She took the jealousy squirming in her heart and shoved it down. No use, that. She could hardly be offended by other cats’ existence. Rude. “Prey’s running awful low, isn’t it? That’s all you could find?”

The feeling of being hit with a falling tree was certainly something Beechfang could sympathize with. Having kits was far from the easiest thing on the body, she knew that first-paw.

"I've never seen prey as scarce as it has been recently. Reminds me of the territory just after the fire. The empty forest was eerie." The silence was unsettling, and the lack of prey in their bellies just as unnerving. She couldn't recall if Paledove was old enough to have experienced the fire or not, though she had known the queen in passing even from her days as a medicine cat. "I suppose we should be grateful the air doesn't smell of rancid smoke... Forget I said that, the stars might take it as a challenge."

"If you don't think you'll keep it down, I won't push. Not much else to pick from, unless we start eating like squirrels." Nuts and plant matter... Hardly proper food for one cat, let alone an entire clan full.

“Yeah,” Paledove agreed, twitching her nose at the reminder. “That was about when I learned to hunt; fun times.”

She let out a quiet snort, something bitter and agreeing. “Oh, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to not tempt the stars. They get bored up there and decide to enliven our lives with a few disasters, huh? A fire here, a flood there, a couple earthquakes every now and then. Builds character, huh?”

Eating like squirrels… she’d almost lived off insects and carrion last deadly leaf-bare, and Paledove had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience. She’d worked hard for her retirement, and starvation on top of everything else would probably beat her into the grave. Not an early grave anymore, but an unwelcome one. “Mm. Don’t want to raise this generation on maggots and frozen toads, do we? Might be worth hunting down predators just for the meat at this rate, eh?”

"Mhmm... Simpler times, almost." Though life had seemed anything but simple at the time of the fire, age and experience had taught her that at least some of her problems back then had been nothing compared to what she faced since.

"What, you mean to tell me you don't like maggots and toads?" The whiskers on the not-ruined side of her face trembled, a hint of amusement in Beechfang's eye. "Honestly... Predators might not be a terrible idea. Wouldn't be the first time either, I'm sure." The meat off of an eagle's or owl's corpse was a bit different than that of other birds, and foxes were disgusting creatures unfit for the honor of feeding a clan... But if the clan ever became desperate enough, it would be something. Assuming there were predators to even fight still, with how starved the cats themselves were.

"Still... I don't think it'll come to that. Skyclan'll find a way through, like we always do."