all roads aren't straight (c)

War. Whispers, kept between high ranks and passed down to warriors, had inevitably reached Bubblepaw's ears. She tried to ignore them, flick them away as if they were falling leaves or buzzing flies, but they snaked into her mind and wouldn't leave. And when they resurfaced in any quiet moment, she found her eyes drawn towards one cat in particular. A scarred behemoth of a tabby. Beechfang. She'd never talked to the she-cat, but she'd heard plenty of hushed rumors. Birdstar and Wolfblossom's mother--which meant they were related. Grizzled whiskers spoke of age, and many things seen that Bubblepaw couldn't even dream of. She'd always found the she-cat intimidating, if not downright terrifying.

But a lot of things were terrifying lately.

Foxes breaking into camp. Empty trees where birds should be. Claws aimed straight for her eye, a flash of red blood that she saw in her dreams every night. Compared to all of those things, a Clanmate covered in scars and shrouded in words like "murder" and "lightning" should mean nothing to her.

Bubblepaw wanted very much to be brave... and this was a place to start.

So the next time she saw the enormous shadow of Beechfang cross her path, Bubblepaw did not feign excuse or flee. She turned to face her, trying very much not to quail in the wake of the single, glaring green eye she saw. "...Hi," she said instead, hoping that her voice was more of a meow and less of a squeak. "How are you doing?"

With the clans settled at the lake, Beechfang found herself strangely withdrawn even as she split her time between hunting and offering what help she could to Smokepetal. With so many of their clanmates sick, the clan needed everything it could get, be it prey or health, and that meant Beechfang's paws were rarely still and rarely seen in their camp. The illness had not struck for her, and the former medicine cat had taken it as a sign. She would do everything she could to help Skyclan while she was capable of it.

She had returned from another patrol when one of the apprentices approached her. Bubblepaw... Nervous, Beechfang could tell, but trying to hide it.

"I'm alright, Bubblepaw." She answered softly, "There's a lot going on... Nothing I'm not used to." And that was the truth of it. Soaring tensions, alliances broken and whispers of war, while the clan was thrown into chaos... This was more familiar to Beechfang than the moons of peace she had returned to.

"You holding up alright?" She hadn't spent much time around her... great-grandkits, but when one of them approached her she was willing to sit and talk.

The softness of Beechfang's voice surprised Bubblepaw. She'd been expecting something deeper, a bit more gravelly. The apprentice blinked and sat down as well. That had been easier than she thought it would be. For a cat surrounded by such rumors and controversy, there was very little abrasiveness or anything of the sort... or maybe it was just held in check because she was young, or a family member. It would be impossible to tell without further conversation. "I'm well enough," she responded. It was true--she could be a lot worse off than she was. A scar was nothing compared to the debilitating illness that was running its rounds through her Clanmates. "Not that it's a great time for anyone right now. But I mean... yeah, I'm okay." Well... normal pleasantries were over. Now what was she supposed to do? Bubblepaw paused, unsure of where to direct the conversation next. It wouldn't be polite to just bring up the rumors immediately, would it?

Bubblepaw seemed almost... surprised, though at what Beechfang was unsure. Her answer to the question was a reasonable one, even if to Beechfang's guess it wasn't quite the whole story... But Beechfang wasn't a close confident to expect Bubblepaw to answer in full. She was compassionate enough to consider others in her answer, something Beechfang could respect.

"Things could be a lot better... We are surviving, we are... okay enough. Count that as a victory, even a small one." She nodded at the apprentice's words. Bubblepaw fell silent, and the awkwardness that settled between them could be cut with a claw. Beechfang was not a cat known for her social graces, but for one of the clan's apprentices - and family - she would at least try. Rarely did cats approach one another without a reason, she had learned, even if the reason was just to have a bit of company. Which was not something most cats often approached the scarred, abrasive she-cat for.

"Is your training going well?" She and her siblings had been apprentices for some time, she knew. Longer apprenticeships weren't exactly unusual, but she also knew some cats could be prickly about it, their pride easily wounded by not keeping up with peers.

Her own pride had never suffered such... No. Not at all.

Bubblepaw's tail waved behind her. Her eyes couldn't quite settle on any one place--it felt rude to stare at Beechfang's scars, strange to look her in the eye, and awkward to just stare at the ground or the sky. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting from this interaction, but this really hadn't been it. Not a single word about the war rumors. Did Beechfang not consider them important? Or did she just not want to discuss them with a mouse-brained apprentice? Finally the other cat asked a question, and Bubblepaw blinked slightly in response. Honestly, ever since getting mauled on the patrol, training had been the last thing on her mind. Rainfrost was one of those who had gotten sick--not impossibly so, but enough that patrolling had become uncomfortable--and she hadn't wanted to pester him. The idea of even clawless sparring had lost its savor completely. And though she hunted on every patrol she was assigned to, there was little joy to be found in it these days. Her ears pinned back. "I... haven't been training much," she confessed. "Not recently, anyway. Everyone's so sick that it's a wonder we get any prey from patrols at all. Rainfrost isn't feeling good, so I don't want to bother him. And everyone else, well... I dunno. I just don't feel like it." It was a lame excuse, she knew. A cat with battle prowess like Beechfang would probably think she was being a wimp.

"Too many warriors have fallen sick. Too many apprentices are healthy - that's a good thing, but it puts a strain on those healthy enough to still train you lot. Has to be done, though. This illness will pass, though. Sooner or later." She agreed. Sooner or later apprentices would start falling through the cracks, as the few who were healthy enough became overwhelmed. By Bubblepaw's words, it seemed that was already happening. She didn't know Rainfrost all that well, though he was Birdstar's son. "You might not feel like it, but you'll appreciate the training in time." She added. Learning to hunt and fight was necessary... And even more necessary in times like these. She wasn't going to cause panic by openly talking about the risk her presence meant for the clan, but she knew there had to be rumors about it already. Their leader hadn't gained new clawmarks across her cheek for nothing, nor would the leader of another clan demand to speak to her over nothing.

Hearing Beechfang express the issue as too many apprentices being healthy caused Bubblepaw's whiskers to twitch slightly. She didn't really know why. The brusque certainty that the illness would go away eventually was strangely comforting, though. Maybe because the grizzled she-cat was so old. She had to know what she was talking about, right? But those ideas fell away when she talked about appreciating the training. Bubblepaw couldn't help but let her face fall. Appreciating... She'd wanted to be an apprentice so bad when she was a little kit. But now, she was nearly through her training, and what did she have to show for it? Mediocre hunting skills and a hatred of fighting. She hadn't done well at all. She couldn't remember the last time she'd really enjoyed going on a patrol--it definitely hadn't been since they'd left the forest. She frowned. Maybe it was because Rainfrost was ill, but that wasn't really it, was it? It hadn't been all ThunderClan's fault, either. Had this problem always been with her? What had happened to her enthusiasm? She'd been quiet for so long that she'd nearly forgotten she was in a conversation. Suddenly she started, her eyes opening wide. That had been rude to just abandon talking like that. "Sorry, I... I was thinking." Her ears twitched a little bit. She had to ask something fast so she didn't seem thoughtless. "Did you... enjoy warrior training? When you were, uh, younger?"

"I loved it. Especially battle training." Beechfang admitted, "I wanted to be a great warrior more than anything, like my father and his father, and my kittish brain had figured that was the way to do it." Wolfstar had given Birdstar one of her lives, and it had pained Beechfang to know he'd died somewhere off in the mountains, without clan or family beyond Juniperlight. Bloodstrike's death had been more recent, a violent thing, the proud warrior he had been unrecognizable. Beechfang wasn't sure she had ever lived up to either of them, in truth. Beechfang watched the apprentice for a moment, thinking. She didn't seem the most cheery about training, though from what Beechfang had observed she was usually a cat who lived up to her name.

"When I became a medicine cat... I hated every second of it. The stars could not have picked a worse cat, truly. But I eventually grew to appreciate what I had learned doing that too, after Bloodstrike - he was still Bloodstar, then - released me from those duties and let me return to my original training. I viewed it as just fumbling about with herbs that didn't have much success in saving my clanmates - from rogues or predators or themselves, but there was more to being a medicine cat than that. There's more to being a good warrior than battles and hunting, but those skills are still the foundation our lives are built on."