It was coming up on a year since the founders of WarrenClan had reached the valley. Their leader
Aspen had started the pilgrimage from a place unknown, and had recruited stragglers — loners, outsiders, discontents — along the way. The trip was rough and dangerous, and oftentimes Aspen’s only direction between direct messages from StarClan were leaves in the wind, migrating crows, and nightmares. Most cats that had joined would later abandon the journey to settle elsewhere, yet Aspen did not waver. Their visions were stubborn, and so they were too.
Eventually, Aspen and their small group of followers finally arrived at the lands Aspen had been dreaming of for years. A valley surrounded by low mountains, with vast grassy plains between patches of sparse forest, winding rivers filled with fish and waterfowl, where prey ran wild and predators seldom grew hungry. They spent the next moon or so simply exploring, playing in the rivers and grassland in the waning Greenleaf. When the leaves began to change colors, they easily found the stand of aspen trees featured prominently in Aspen’s visions; the very grove that Aspen had fashioned their name after long ago. There was an abandoned cluster of rabbit burrows among the trees, and the cats used those as dens, expanding them as they saw fit.
The group’s first night among the aspen stand, Aspen received a final vision from StarClan, telling them that they had succeeded, and earned both their nine lives and their new name, Aspenstar. After some thought, Aspenstar christened the newly founded clan as WarrenClan, after the rabbits who had unknowingly created the clan’s first home.
The cats of this fledgling WarrenClan were small in number, but their respective journeys had made them resilient. They quickly carved out their territory, camouflaged their burrows, adapted to the strange new prey and predators. Their burrows protected them from the harshest of their first Leafbare, and when the snow melted that Newleaf and the rivers rose on the floodplain, making their home inhospitable, the adaptive WarrenClan moved to higher ground, finding a lone-standing aspen copse surrounded by open meadow, digging burrows from scratch to make their summer home.
Almost a year since Aspenstar received their name, WarrenClan was thriving. They were still very small, but they had grown some in the way of recruiting outsiders. The newest of which had come only a couple of moons ago at the end of Newleaf, a young she-cat by the name of
Figbreeze.Figbreeze was a friendly cat. She had arrived battered, bruised, and exhausted from her lonely journey, but WarrenClan had welcomed her with open arms (legs? paws?) and accepted her as a full warrior.
Though their kindness was readily apparent, Figbreeze couldn’t help but feel out of place among this tightly-knit colony: their shared pilgrimage had bonded them deeply, far past the idle chit-chat and surface level pleasantries that were Figbreeze’s go-to, and she doubted she’d ever have as close of friendships as these cats did, even if she had a lifetime to chat.
There was one cat, however, who seemed to have made no friends throughout the journey, and treated others like acquaintances at best.
Larchfreckle was a thin, surly medcat with a penchant for rolling his eyes whenever he’s mildly inconvenienced. During a hunting patrol a moon ago Figbreeze tripped and thought she sprained her ankle, and when she limped to Larchfreckle in tears, he looked at it for about a second and then gave a very loud, very disappointed sigh.
“You bruised it,” he said curtly, before he quickly, but meticulously, cleaned the area, applied a poultice, and bandaged it in a way that wouldn’t interfere with her day-to-day, all in under a minute. Then he rushed her out of the medcat den.
Figbreeze wasn’t quite sure why, maybe she was a sucker for a challenge, but this brief and all-but-friendly interaction made her determined to befriend him.
She would go out of her way to greet him every morning despite the weird looks she got, from both her clanmates and Larchfreckle. She volunteered to bring him his freshkill whenever he was too busy to grab it himself (which was nearly every day) and through trial and error figured out that while he absolutely loved marmot and hare, he refused to eat anything with feathers, and he had a crippling phobia of fish. When she overheard Larchfreckle admitting to Aspenstar that he was hoping no one needed a garlic treatment anytime soon because they were running low and he loathed collecting it, Figbreeze went out of her way during her hunting patrol to grab bushels of wild garlic, and returned to camp, reeking, with a grin on her face and garlic between her teeth. Seeing Larchfreckle’s confused grin was worth going noseblind for a week. It took all summer, but eventually, Larchfreckle began to greet her back when she said hello. They didn’t talk much beyond that, besides whenever she’d drop off his freshkill, but Figbreeze was happy with their progress.
One morning, at the very end of Greenleaf, Aspenstar was assigning patrols. When it came time to assign Larchfreckle a warrior “bodyguard” for his patrol, Figbreeze didn’t think much of it. From what she heard in whispers, Larchfreckle didn’t need a bodyguard to defend him, and the job usually consisted of simply carrying the herbs Larchfreckle collects. Oftentimes Larchfreckle would just turn down a warrior helper altogether, but if he decided he needed one he’d always let Aspenstar pick them. So it was a shock when Larchfreckle spoke up and requested Figbreeze to help. So much of a shock, in fact, that for a few seconds Figbreeze just stood there dumbstruck.
“Are you coming?” Larchfreckle’s voice snapped Figbreeze out of her stupor.
“Oh, uh, yeah!” She quickly padded to catch up with him, ducking her head slightly at his side. “Sorry.”
The two left the short shrubbery that acted as a guild line for the camp’s borders, and Larchfreckle explained shortly that they would be traveling down to one of the seasonal ponds to collect water-based herbs like marsh marigold and celandine poppies before it dried up in Leaf-fall.
As the duo made their way down the hill, away from the aspen copse, the silence made Figbreeze increasingly fidgety. She had never talked to Larchfreckle outside of a social setting, and never for more than a few minutes at most; she got the feeling he wasn’t a cat for small talk. Now, one on one for a half-day patrol, she had absolutely no idea what to talk about, and found herself lagging slightly behind him.
“Nice…nice weather,” she tried, failing to not visibly cringe at her attempt.
“Not bad,” he responded, and after a moment’s hesitation he added, “Cloudy.”
Slightly emboldened by his somewhat positive response, Figbreeze walked a little faster to catch up with him, matching his brisk pace. “Think it’ll rain?”
The black tabby glanced skywards for maybe a second before responding, “Nah. They’re grey, but stretched too thin. Figure they’ll dissipate by sunhigh.”
Figbreeze racked her brains trying to think of something else to say, but to her surprise Larchfreckle beat her to it. “We’re here.”
They had reached a level section of the grassy hill, and a few thin trees broke up the otherwise unbroken field of late summer wildflowers. A few paces in front of them was a pond Figbreeze initially didn’t see, as it was obscured by weeds and tall grasses, and past that the hill continued downwards into thicker woodland. Looking again at the pond in front of them she realized that there was a small concealed stream feeding into it, and Larchfreckle must’ve been following it this whole time.
Figbreeze sniffed at the edge of the stream, before looking back up at Larchfreckle. “How did y- Whoa,” something past him caught her attention.
Larchfreckle glanced back at Figbreeze, and followed her gaze to the treeline below. The scattering of trees around them condensed into a thick forest not far down the hill, but it abruptly stopped. In its place was scorched earth and blackened trunks. From their camp high up in the hills, it looked like a rather small patch of oddly-colored trees in the distance, but close up Figbreeze could see just how expansive the destruction was. “What happened?” she asked with soft awe.
“I don’t know.” Larchfreckle’s tail flicked as he considered the burned land. “It was like this when we got here. Aspen figured — sorry, Aspen
star figured it was a couple of years ago.”
“How do…how do they know?”
“Beats me. I was a city cat before all this,” Larchfreckle turned and flicked his tail at Figbreeze. “C’mon, before we lose daylight.”
It was like two hours before sunhigh, but Figbreeze bit her tongue and followed.
City cat? Moseying on up behind Larchfreckle, the she-cat watched as he sniffed at the murky surface of the pond, and gingerly touched his paw to the water with an odd expression on his face. “Okay, okay. I’m going to show you how to collect the herbs in the water. It’s time-consuming, but hard to mess up. While you do that I’ll collect the ones that grow on the edges of the pond, got it?”
“Okay!” Figbreeze perked up, excited to be useful, and Larchfreckle looked almost relieved at her eagerness to help. “Can I ask you a question though?”
“Yeah?”
Figbreeze pointed to the center of the pond. “What’s that giant thing moving in there?”
“
Wha—” Larchfreckle’s head whipped around so fast
Fig felt dizzy, and sure enough, there was a large shadow in the water, and it was
moving. “GAHH!”
Larchfreckle jumped back a fox-length, his back arched and teeth bared, and he braced to make a run for it, but when he turned to his companion he realized in horror that she had put her paws
in the water.
“Figbreeze!” he hissed,
”What are you doing?”But the she-cat payed no attention to him or his frantic tone. Instead, she remained crouched over the water’s surface, swirling one of her paws in and…
cooing? “Here, fishy fishy fishy…”
“F-
ha!“ Larchfreckle scoffed in frantic disbelief. “F-
Fig this is
not the time for hunting!”
“Shhh, you’re going to scare him away,” Fig whispered, barely giving a flick of her folded ear. “And I’m not trying to hunt him, I’m —
aww, there’s the lil’ guy!”
Larchfreckle could’ve had a heart attack right then and there, but instead he watched as Figbreeze waggled her paw to lure out — a
turtle?Yes, it was a 🐢. A somewhat flat terrapin with an intricately marbled shell, slowly meandering his way out of the water and towards Figbreeze’s paw, as if in a trance.
Hackles lowering, Larchfreckle let out a huge sigh of relief, but stared as Figbreeze seemingly bewitched the terrapin into following her. The tom watched, utterly perplexed, as Fig then dashed away into the grasses. He and the terrapin awkwardly made eye contact with each other for a moment, before Larchfreckle looked away with… embarrassment?
What in the Dark Forest am I supposed to do right now? Introduce myself? Am I supposed to introduce myself to a turtle? What is happening? Then Fig came back (
Thank the stars) with a mouthful of dandelions, and dropped it in front of her new friend.
“There you go!” She purred as the terrapin began to snack, and then her face dropped when she saw Larchfreckle staring at her, jaw agape. “Ah, sorry Larchfreckle, I got distracted,” she gave an embarrassed chuff of laughter.
Larchfreckle shut his mouth. “No that’s… alright, I’m just a little shocked is all.” He stared down at the oblivious terrapin happily munching on yellow blooms. “Why… Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Oh, well,” Figbreeze gave a somewhat flustered laugh. “I just— well, my Two-legs had a pond at home, and sometimes a terrapin would wander in. I, um,” she shrugged, and looked away. “Didn’t really have a lot of other cats to talk to. So I’d talk to whatever wandered into the garden.”
“Did…” Larchfreckle blinked, wondering how stupid this question would sound. “Did they talk back?”
“No, not really,” Figbreeze tilted her head, thinking for a moment. “They all had stories though. I could tell.”
Larchfreckle nodded, not quite understanding what she meant by that. But Figbreeze looked embarrassed, and so he didn’t push it. Even though he had a huge load of follow up questions.
Figbreeze laughed to break the silence after a few seconds. “Anyways, um, how do I do this again?”
It took Larchfreckle a moment to realize she was talking about the herbs. “Oh! Here, let me show you.”
[ 2161 words ]
