jacks and uno cards [Bubble/Hedge] (solo)

Hedgepaw had a lot of things to think about, these days. Her postponed appointment to the position of warrior. Her friend Fishpaw still learning the ways of the Clan, and what had led him to join them now instead of the first time she'd suggested it. The awful fight and the sickness of Wolfpaw, which she tried to push from her mind whenever necessary. And... perhaps most interesting to consider, the newest addition to ShadowClan. The she-cat that her older brother Silver and her basically-brother Hawk had invited. Fluffy gray, scarred but soft, smelling less and less like leafy trees these days: Bubblebeam. Even the name sounded a little strange, compared to those she was used to--but nothing super weird like Cherish or Steadfast. How were the nomads doing these days? That was beside the point; the point was that there was someone new in the Clan, and Hedgepaw wasn't quite sure what to think about her. So she thought about her lots.

Ever since she was a kit, raised on scary stories and dragged far away to live in the mountains for a few moons, she'd been taught to be terrified of the unfamiliar. Strange things were scary things. Strange things could be monsters or predators, strange places could be full of danger. Strange things could hurt or even kill her. However, she knew now from her life so far that strange and scary did not always mean bad. Fishpaw had been strange to her at first, for example, but now they were very good friends. Cherish and Steadfast and the others had been strange, but they had been very kind to her and even helped save her life when the owl had attacked. And now, Bubblebeam was strange--but Hedgepaw did not think she was bad. She did not seem bad. A little bit scary due to being new and different, perhaps, but if she was bad then Leopardstar would not have let her in. If she was bad, then Silverhawk and Hawkmist would not hang around her and look at her with that bright glowiness in their eyes. Well... Hedgepaw was not a hundred percent sure about her own ability to judge between good and bad, these days, after Wolfpaw had... after the incident. But she felt relatively confident in deciding that Bubblebeam was someone she could safely approach, when they were within the security of camp--and if anything went wrong, she could just run away and hide.

It was easy to decide that. It was not easy to act on it.

Thankfully, she didn't end up having to make the first move.

Bubblebeam had always been an extroverted, social creature. Shyness did not come to her with great ease; rather it had been a gradual change, caused by the shattering grief and slow, self-imposed isolation that she'd been sinking into for the past several moons. The disappearance and death of most of her friends and family certainly had not helped. But now, when surrounded entirely by strangers aside from the very few cats she knew, it was not easy to try and find her former habits. Part of her wanted to introduce herself to every Clanmate, to try and get to know those who she would hopefully be living with for the rest of her life, but another part of her felt an unfamiliar awkwardness and self-doubt that dragged behind each of her attempts to speak. Exhausted from training in a completely new way of life, still recovering from the losses she'd suffered, making small talk was more of a struggle than it had ever been. So instead of using her free time to seek out more friends, like she should have been, she more often than not kept to herself or used the time to see Silverbird and Hawkmist.

However, tonight both of them were off on different patrols when she had a moment of respite. Camp was full of cats--she ought to take a piece of prey and go speak with them, attempt to share tongues with her Clanmates... but she could not bring herself to walk forward towards the gathering of cats, and besides, she was not even hungry. No one would miss her if she went to take a nap. But on her way to the warrior's den, she nearly tripped over another cat. Gray paws barely kept their footing as she stopped short and turned around to look at who had made her stumble. A small cat--a kit? No, an apprentice, judging by her proportions. A tiny brown she-cat with luminous, wide green eyes that Bubblebeam recognized from the first time she'd stepped foot into camp. They'd peered at her from behind a wall. The warrior searched for a name, but it escaped her. An apology tumbled forth from her mouth instead. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to. Are you okay?"

The small apprentice simply blinked at her for a few moments. Was she stunned? Surprised? Offended? Before Bubblebeam could ask and clarify, a wide smile grew on the she-cat's face. "'Sokay! I'm fine!" Stars, her voice was so high-pitched it almost sounded like a bird's chirp. "I'm Hedgepaw. You're... Bubblesomething, right? Bubblebeam?" Hedgepaw's eyes shone even brighter now, and her short tail waved behind her. "It's nice to meet you! I'm Silverhawk's little sister. He's proba'ly mentioned me before. He never told me about you, though."

Bubblebeam had a bit of trouble keeping up with the sudden switch from silence to chatter, but she couldn't quite suppress an answering smile of her own. This little ball of brown fur reminded her a bit of herself at a younger age, but with something far more charming about the innocence with which she spoke. "Yes, I'm Bubblebeam. Nice to meet you, Hedgepaw! Your brother did tell me about you. You must have grown since he told me, though. I met him at the lake when you were all kits."

"Whoa! You knew him that long?" Hedgepaw's mouth fell open. The lake... that was the awful faraway water-place, wasn't it? All the Clans had traveled together. It had been terribly overwhelming for her, but it might've been fun if she had been older and not too scared to make friends. "That's a while ago. I wonder why he never mentioned you to me."

The way Bubblebeam's fluffy gray tail twitched was decidedly guilty. "Well... it's probably because we weren't supposed to be friends." She could mention the even more illicit, forbidden side to their relationship--but Hedgepaw didn't need to know that. "I mean, you were there at the meeting, weren't you? Leopardstar was very mad at your brother for vouching for me. She thinks that cats from other Clans shouldn't be friends. I've never agreed with that, personally--but, uh, maybe keep that to yourself. I don't want to cause any more trouble. I'm trying to blend in, not stand out."

Hedgepaw nodded eagerly. "Don't worry, I'm pretty good at keeping secrets! I'm real sneaky." As if to demonstrate, she dropped into a quick hunter's crouch and stalked behind a nearby bush.

Bubblebeam watched with interest, noting how much more quiet and low to the ground her movements were compared to the SkyClan crouch she was used to. She blinked at some point, and then Hedgepaw vanished. She knew logically that the small she-cat must have found a place to hide in the bush--but she couldn't see anything, not even a glimmer of green eyes in the darkness. "Wow, you are pretty good."

"Yeah!" A muffled exclamation of joy came from the bush. Moments later, Hedgepaw emerged, shaking leaves from her short brown fur. She sat down and puffed out her chest slightly, only strengthening her resemblance to a bird. Bubblebeam held back a laugh. "I said I was sneaky! That's, like, the one thing I can do. I'm not a great hunter or fighter or an'thing like that, but I can hide super good. If only hide-and-seek was what they 'ssessed you on to become a warrior." The pride drooped away a little bit, leaving Hedgepaw's ears pinned slightly back. "Say... how long did it take you to become warrior? I know you're from a differ'nt Clan, just... wondering. It's--what does Fernpaw say?--hypoth'ical."

Her mispronouncing of the word was cute. "Hypothetical? Well, let me think." Bubblebeam tilted her head, trying to remember the exact length of time between her ceremonies. It was hard to look back into her memories without the pains of loss and fear--getting her scar, dragged halfway across the world, losing her sister, fleeing from wolves--striking her heart anew, but she did her best to ignore the unwanted thoughts. "Well... it took a while, honestly. I became an apprentice a couple months before the journey, and then got my warrior name a couple months after, and the journey was pretty long... But it wasn't super fast. I don't know if I was exactly a normal case, though. I had a lot of work to do before I was ready to take my oath." The oath I just broke. Guilt gnawed at her heart again.

Hedgepaw looked at her with complete, unfeigned interest. It made her feel a bit better to know that someone as cool as Bubblebeam hadn't become a warrior instantly. Maybe it was normal to take a long time, and cats like Nettleweaver were just the exception. "A lot of work? You mean, like--you weren't super good at hunting and stuff, either? Or something else?" She shouldn't get ahead of herself, though. Maybe she was seeing similarities where there were none.

She had just met this apprentice; why did she feel so comfortable opening her heart and talking about her past like this? Bubblebeam wasn't sure. Something about the little cat just put her at ease. She had a charm and a kindness that was unpretended, and felt welcoming. Being Silverbird's relative didn't hurt either. "I had some problems to work through. You see this scar on my face? And here, on my belly?" She raised a paw to the gash over her eye, also revealing the healed-over slivers that were barely visible through her thick blue-gray fur. "I was on a patrol that got into a fight. I didn't have the chance to do anything before some cat injured me so badly that I passed out. It made me scared of fighting for a long time, so... I had to learn to stop being scared. That was one thing. There was other stuff, too, but... I think that's the biggest reason. I got in my own way a lot. It took me a while to learn."

Green eyes traced over the scars as they were mentioned--not with horror or disgust, but a mixture of awe and sorrow. She'd been a bit scared by the scars the first time she saw them, but the softness around them had eased any scariness. Now she didn't find them scary at all. They were more like the scars Silver had--only some larger and deeper. "Wow... you got hurt that bad, and you still went on that whole journey? You're so brave."

Bubblebeam blushed. "Well, I didn't really have a choice; it was go on the journey or starve. There was nothing brave about it."

Hedgepaw shook her head stubbornly. "No. If that happened to me, I would have probably just curled up in my den and refused to go, even if it meant I would die. I get scared, too... I get really scared, and nothing that bad has happened to me ever. You had so much happen to you when you were proba'ly younger than me, and you're so strong now!" Her heart beat in her chest as she considered it. If she kept working hard, and she never stopped, then would she be as awesome as this tall, beautiful warrior one day? Maybe... maybe not the tall part. But the rest.

"I--I mean, if you say so, I guess. I'm not all that strong..." She bit off her protests. It would be more polite to accept, even if little Hedgepaw couldn't really understand the exact repercussions of what she was talking about. "I guess it depends what you mean by strong. I'm still not the best at fighting. I'm not a super great hunter, either. I'm okay at both, obviously, since I became a warrior, but I'm not a big fan of either of them. One of my strengths was climbing trees, but... that's not really useful anymore."

"You can climb trees?" Hedgepaw's eyes opened even wider. She'd heard someone say something about that once, but she hadn't really thought it was true, not literally. Only squirrels could climb that high. But apparently it was real! "Does everyone in SkyClan do it?"

Bubblebeam had never thought of that as something impressive, but she supposed that someone in ShadowClan might think the same about their ability to melt into the background. "Yeah. Everyone in SkyClan learns how."

"Wow! Can you teach me?" Her tail waved eagerly behind her.

Someone as tiny as Hedgepaw might have difficulty, especially with the thickness and bristliness of the pine trees for which ShadowClan was known. And the idea of teaching someone to climb reminded her painfully of Rabbitpaw. However, with the pleading in Hedgepaw's dark green eyes that were nearly the same shade as her brother's, Bubblebeam found she couldn't say no. She'd be careful about it--she wouldn't let anyone get hurt--and she'd ask Pineblossom if it was okay first. "I... I can try to teach you. But only if you teach me how to be sneaky. Deal?"

"Deal!" Hedgepaw leapt forward and placed a small white paw on top of Bubblebeam's larger gray one, as if to seal the promise. "We can play hide-and-seek together! And you can teach me how to climb trees!" She sat back down, eyes twinkling. "I'm not great at fighting and hunting either, but I'm super good at sneaking. And you're good at tree-climbing! We can share and then we'll both be good at two things."

The complete sincerity with which the small apprentice spoke--as if it were that simple, and physical skills were the only thing someone could be "good" at--was too precious. Bubblebeam threw her head back and laughed. It was so refreshing to speak with someone who was so unashamedly, uncomplicatedly nice. "Yeah. Yeah, two things are better than one. But you're also really good at making friends. You made me your friend just by talking to me, Hedgepaw. So don't forget that's something you can be good at too." Her pale green eyes shone warmly. "It's a more important skill than you think. If I hadn't been your brother's friend, then I wouldn't be here in ShadowClan. If you have good friends, it doesn't matter if you're bad at other things, because they'll help you. That's the greatest power of all. Okay?"

Hedgepaw regarded her with wide, thoughtful eyes. She seemed to be going over the words in her head, but eventually, she nodded. "Okay. Don't worry, I'll be your friend." More than friend--it would be nice if this cool, strong, kind she-cat could be even closer. Like family, like how Hawkmist was basically a family member. Like... an older sister. She'd never had a sister before. But saying that too soon might scare Bubblebeam away, so she kept it inside for now. "And friends play hide-and-seek. So I'm going to turn around and start counting to twenty, and you gotta find a place to hide. If anyone asks you, say it's training. Okay?"

Bubblebeam grinned--a wider smile than she'd given anyone other than Hawkmist and Silverbird for moons. Putting aside for now all her baggage about sisterhood, all the griefs she still bore in the quietness of her heart, all the difficulties she was facing... it would be nice to just play a game for a little while. It was probably exactly what she needed. "Okay. As soon as you're ready."

Hedgepaw returned her smile honestly. It was a nice smile... she began thinking of ways to make Bubblebeam smile more. It looked so nice that it was easy to forget the scar was even there. "All right!" She turned around and closed her eyes tight. Images of Hawkmist and Bubblebeam and Silverhawk sitting together appeared on the backs of her eyelids. If they were all friends... that meant she'd get closer to all of them. She liked this plan. Her grin widened.

"One, two, three..."