herd instinct (c)

Translucent cattails brushed against each other as Frostpaw slunk through them, sending faint clouds of stardust into the evernight air.

The swamp stretched out around her, louder than she’d ever heard it, full of crickets and cicadas that sent noise echoing through the pools and tussocks. At the sound of nearby pawsteps, she flicked an ear.

She had heard the faintest of whispers amongst the Star-lit realm of a visitor. Deerleap had been worried when she heard the visitor was a young apprentice, no older than 9 moons old, and yet she lingered on the border between life and death. She had tried to search for the little visitor, in the case that she stepped too far forward and could never return to the living world. The deaths of apprentices and kits were not uncommon, but always a tragic moment of a life cut short.

She halted when she spotted a star-less pelt moving amongst the marshes. Was that her, the little visitor? Deerleap emerged slowly from the undergrowth so as to not startle the apprentice. The StarClan warrior stood before the apprentice, worried eyes flickering over the dappled she-cat's pelt. "What brings you here, little one?" She prompted at last, daring to take a step forward to greet the apprentice. The faint scent of familiar pines lingered around, coated by the fresher scents of shore. They must be missing their old home.