Shifting Seas

a fanfic by misty

Books

SEA

*"Are you going to hide in* that old, dirty house again?"

I was heading back to her temporary 'den', a deteriorating shack in the collapsed house of an old Twoleg. It was just after sunhigh and the sun was warm on my thick silver tabby pelt, making me pant slightly as I bounded through Twolegplace. I would have avoided the various nasty kittypets in the backyards of the Twoleg nests if I hadn't decided to return through this street. I normally would have taken the abandoned trail deeper in Twolegplace, but I was un a hurry to get back to the shack; I had caught a scrawny-looking finch and a mouse to add to my small prey-mound. Now I regretted her choice to use the 'shortcut'. The dumb kittypets were snickering in their Twoleg gardens, laughing as I altered my pace slightly.

A ginger tom sneered at me as I passed. "Do you really eat those scrawny things?" he mewed tauntingly. "You hadn't been such a bad pet that your housefolk didn't want you anymore!"

I had learned to ignore them and flicked my tail evenly as I passed, my claws itching to slash the tom's muzzle. I strode past two kittypets who tried to suppress their laughter and settled on whispering, their eyes fixed on me.

"Who was your mother again?" a white she-cat named Crystal called. "Oh, yeah. That dirty forest fleabag." The cats exploded into laughter at her mocking words. She poked her nose through her barbed wire fence to sniff at me. "You smell like dirty bags of trash." She wrinkled her muzzle distastefully, her malicious yellow eyes glinting with pure disgust.

I could take it no longer, being a sensitive cat. "You - stupid - Twoleg - pet," I hissed through clenched teeth, stalking forwards with my sea-green eyes, for which I had been named, narrowed dangerously.

Crystal blinked mockingly. She yawned to deliberately show her sharp, white teeth. "You don't scare me," she taunted.

"Oh yeah? Well, this will." I lashed out with my paw before she could spring back. Kittypets sure were slow to my taste. I clawed her muzzle before leaping away, satisfied.

Crystal glared at me as her muzzle oozed blood. "What was that for?"

I answered by nipping her sharply on the nose. She stumbled away, still sneering at me, but her smirk was more forced.

The kittypets' whispers seemed to come directly from the shadows as I left the Thunderpath where the Twoleg nests were. The soft flea-brains had made my pleased mood cease. The finch and mouse in my jaws suddenly felt tasteless. My mouth stopped watering as I slowly padded through a darker street, occasionally sniffing the air for any signs of other cats.

Finally, I arrived at the rotting shack, a perfect haven for me. My friend, Sunny, visited from time to time, but mostly it was lonely in this Twoleg shack. I ducked underneath a crumbling iron doorway and entered the shack.

Half of the makeshift 'den' had caved in a few moons ago, since the shack was quite old. The other half was just large enough for me to have built a slightly damp moss-and-stones nest in the corner. In the middle of the den was the tiny prey-pile, which currently consisted of two mice, a brown squirrel, and a hare. I gloomily padded over and let go of my prey, letting the scrawny finch and mouse tumble from the top of the pile to its edges.

I didn't realize how hungry I was until I curled up in my mossy nest. I yawned widely, showing my teeth, before my stomach grumbled in protest. I had spent most of the day hunting, only to catch the finch and the mouse, but hadn't eaten a meal since yesterday morning.

I sighed. If I could catch only two morsels from the start of dawn to a bit above sunhigh, then I figured my pile wouldn't grow very quickly. I tried to ignore my stomach, but finally, I gave in to its protesting and fished the hare from the pile. I distastefully tore a bit of meat off its skinny brown body. I didn't particularly enjoy eating or chasing hares. They were far too fast, would require at least two cats to quickly capture and kill one, and tasted stringy after running over the wide, treeless moorland. Still, it wasn't much prey to satisfy my hunger.

It was leaf-fall at the moment, so prey was becoming scarcer by the day. Soon, leaf-bare would arrive. Sunny, who usually took cover during leaf-bare, wouldn't visit as much as usual, and I'd be left all alone again.

I tried to force back my misery at that thought. I had spent my entire life along, catching prey on the dirty streets of Twolegplace, returning to my shack every dusk to sleep. I tried to convince myself companionship was not for me - especially of Sunny, who would be frightened at the sound of a monster. But still, being alone didn't feel right for me. I had a distant memory of a spotted brown tom with warm, gentle green eyes gazing down at me when I was a kit.

*"How did she survive the fox?" his hazy voice murmured. It echoed around my mind as if the memory was present in a cave.*

There was a long pause after that. A cat came out behind the spotted tom - a beautiful, silver tabby she-cat with fierce, blazing amber eyes. "She's a warrior, no doubt."

A warrior? I had thought.

The spotted tom shook his head. "We should give her to a caring Twoleg that will take good care of her. We can't accept a loner into our ranks, especially when its mother might be searching for her."

"O-okay," the silver tabby agreed. "But first, we need to give her a name. A loner name."

The spotted brown tom warmly stared down at her. "She's as fierce as the ocean - most cats call it the sun-drown-place. Her green eyes are the color of the ocean."

"And?" the silver tabby prompted.

"She should be named Sea."

FERNPAW

*Lush, sharp blades of grass pricked at* Fernpaw's pads as she silently crept through the meadow. She had recently scented a mouse nest not far ahead and didn't want to lose the smell, much less alarm her prey with heavy paw steps, so she stalked through the grass as lightly as her paws could take her. The occasional twig cracked under Fernpaw's sharp claws, but she stifled her growls of frustration and continued sniffing.

The scent of the mouse nest was much stronger now that she'd arrived halfway through the flowery meadow, and the scent of prey in the air seemed thicker and more tasty. Fernpaw cautiously glanced around, then looked down at her paws to make sure she wouldn't stumble upon a dead leaf, or worse, a rabbit burrow covered with grass. She had once strayed across one of those and had fallen into the pit, unable to scramble out until a patrol managed to drag her out. Willowpaw had added to the embarrassment by asking if she were a hare.

Fernpaw was so lost in thought she hadn't noticed the mouse nest was right in front of her. It was on a woolly-looking redwood stump that had possibly been cut down by a Twoleg long ago. As she shook the thoughts away from her head, she averted her eyes, saw the mouse nest, and glared at the ground. Her mentor, a strict tom named Birchfoot, wouldn't approve if she announced to him that she hadn't exactly been 'concentrating' on her work, but instead, on embarrassing thoughts that she hoped to forget one day.

*Not again!* Fernpaw was irritated further to think that she still wasn't focusing, and hastily shot into the air. Most of the mice in the nest scattered, squeaking in panic. Nearly all of them shot into the trees, fleeing from Fernpaw with surprising speed. But Fernpaw was quick. As one tried to escape from her, she lunged and killed it with a single paw-swipe. She pounced on another mouse and bit into its neck. The mouse went limp, its head lolling to one side. Fernpaw forced back her disgust at the scrawny bodies and concentrated on more mice. Soon, not one furry gray rodent was left in the nest. More than three quarters of them had managed to escape. Fernpaw had caught five mice. She picked them up by the tails and started back over the meadow. She found a good shady spot underneath a beech tree and dug a hole in the loamy soil, forcing all five mice into the pit. She scraped earth over her catch and stepped back with satisfaction, turning her head for more.

Before long, she found a plump, fluffy gray-brown squirrel nearly the size of her eating a cob nut at the other end of the meadow. Fernpaw stalked it, her nose quivering with excitement as she drew nearer and the squirrel didn't notice her. *Dumb prey! They can't even tell that -*

Fernpaw tripped over a small birch bough and crashed down onto the blades of grass. Her paws crunched on leaves as she struggled to return to her paws, and the squirrel glanced up and stared at Fernpaw. For a moment, it was frozen in terror; then, its gray-brown shape shot over the meadow towards the nearest tree it could find.

*Fox-dung!* Fernpaw cursed herself for being so careless, not even noticing the brown end of the bough that poked out through the tall grass, and grumbling, she chased after the squirrel.

Fernpaw was gaining on the squirrel, the wind combing through her fur. The smell of fresh pine-scented squirrel in the air was nearly enough to assuage her hunger; she hadn't eaten since yesterday. Panting, she made a huge leap for the gray-brown shape when it shot up a tree and disappeared into the leaves, dropping its cob nut in panic.

Fernpaw cursed again, muttering under her breath, and had to resist the urge to scrabble up the bark, but she didn't know how to tree-climb; after all, she was one of the newer apprentices, and most of the learning she'd done was about hunting and stalking. She really wanted to start combat training like the older apprentices; Birchfoot had promised that they should start the basics tomorrow.

*Great, I'm not focusing again.* Fernpaw took a deep breath and stopped marching through the field of flowers. She stretched her neck to sniff the air, but all the delicious scents of mouth-watering prey had vanished. Perhaps they'd been scared by Fernpaw's racket, storming through the meadow, or maybe it was just that they sensed the leaf-bare cold starting to come and had decided to hide in their 'dens'. Fernpaw tried to convince herself the fresh-kill were gone for that reason.

Fernpaw padded back to the beech tree and uncovered the mice. She picked each mouse up by the ends of their tails and started back towards the ThunderClan camp. As she forced her way through the thick curtain of gorse and ferns that served as a barrier into the clearing, the first sight she saw was Birchfoot sitting in the middle of the clearing, glaring furiously around. As he turned his pale yellow eyes, tasting the air, and saw Fernpaw, he marched forwards with his expression as frightening as before towards her.

*That's not good,* Fernpaw thought, wondering what she'd done wrong this time. Maybe she had crossed the ShadowClan border without noticing it again.

"Where. Were. You?" Birchfoot demanded, halting in front of her. "The whole camp's been searching for you! Don't you know how worried your mother has been?"

Fernpaw took a stepped back, alarmed. "What? I was hunting." She let the five mice roll onto the ground.

Birchfoot snorted, his eyes glittering with disapproval. "It's after sunhigh, Fernpaw! Didn't you see that? Hollyheart's orders were to return before sunhigh, not long after!"

Fernpaw stared at him, then at the sky. The sun had begun its descent towards the pale horizon. She lowered her head. "Sorry, Birchfoot, I didn't see it. I was too intent on following the mouse trail."

Birchfoot sighed and shook his head. "There's good news and bad news. Firstly, I'm not a senior warrior yet, so I can't decide whether I should punish you or not." He fixed his serious gaze on Fernpaw. "Cloudsky suggested that we should confine you to cleaning the elders' den for a few days - three, at the least. The good news is," he added quickly, "that's a lot of mice, so you get the first pick of prey for the apprentices today. The others haven't caught as much."

Fernpaw tried not to roll her eyes and groan. Cloudsky - the fluffy white she-cat had suggested that she should be confined to the elders' den? The elderly warrior never forced her own apprentice, Silverpaw, to clean out the elders' den.

Foxflight, a mottled ginger-brown tom, came up behind Birchfoot, followed by a pretty silver tabby that Fernpaw recognized as Rainbreeze. "You're strict and disciplined as always," he mused, tilting his head.

Birchfoot glanced at him as if he were speaking fox. "She's my apprentice. Besides, Deerstar has never given you an apprentice yet. What do you know about training?"

Foxflight rolled his eyes. "A lot of things. I may have not had an apprentice, but I have watched multiple training sessions. You're a first-timer too." He shook his head. "Sometimes you're *too* strict."

"You dare say that to me?" Birchfoot glared at his Clanmate. "I have my own ways!"

Rainbreeze mewed in defense of her mate, "He's right. You shouldn't punish a first-time apprentice when she didn't realize it was after sunhigh. I had to teach Meadowfoot how to tell whether it was sunhigh or not before he participated in that kind of hunting events." Her bright blue eyes sparkled mischievously as she added, "Maybe you should teach Fernpaw that too."

Birchfoot sighed with exasperation. "Fine, fine, fine!" he snapped. "She won't be punished like that. But I'm not going to teach her fighting tomorrow!"

Fernpaw's heart sank. *I've been looking forwards to a lesson on fighting ever since I was a three-moon-old kit!* she wanted to whine. "But - " She glanced desperately at Foxflight and Rainbreeze, but the warriors only dipped their heads in agreement and padded away.

Birchfoot gazed at Fernpaw. "After a quarter-moon we'll start fighting," he promised before following the mates, who were disappearing into the warriors' den. "You can visit the kits, by the way. Oakshade says that Brightkit and Berrykit need company, since Leafcloud's three charges are so young."

*To be continued*