[Fawn]

"I need your help burying a body."

Under normal circumstances, the anticipated reaction would be to gasp in horror and more than likely refusal to being involved in such a grotesque and immoral activity. Under normal circumstances, the shadowy black tom with the tufted ears and the cold cold soul wouldn't be the Medicine Cat of LightningClan. Steel eyes lifting from the newly separated remains of a ground squirrel. At first glance, it would look like the Medicine Cat was enjoying a meal. Upon closer inspection, any onlookers shouldn't fail to notice the careful method in which the creature had been opened, with as much surgical precision as a creature lacking opposable thumbs could manage.

The asker of such a grizzly task was a she-cat with fur as white as snow, the same pale alabaster hue of sun-bleached bones, though her eyes were more akin to congealing blood, the black pupils swimming in red oceans. It wasn't the countenance that made the medicine cat's steely eyes narrow in the shadows of his den, it was the question.

Cherrypool, as was her earned name, resisted the urge to fidget on the spot, her heart pounding with nearly deafening loudness inside her ears, and the she-cat faintly wondered if the healer before her could see the pink insides of her ears pulsing with every heart-throb. The silence was unbearable. It allowed the mind to play all sorts of tricks on you, to weave as many horrific, both likely and unlikely scenarios for how the rest of this night was going to pan out; would he refuse, then report this dastardly question to their leader or deputy? Or worse, would the dark task she asked of him put her in the black tom's dark, unpredictable debt forever?

The alabaster feline knew nothing of the atrocities Rookfrost committed in the name of science, or whatever it was that tom held sacred; all she had by means of warning was a gut instinct and a natural suspicion of toms considered of a higher intelligence than her – and perhaps just as many secrets.

Rookfrost picked the more beneficial poison, preferring to have the alabaster she-cat in his debt rather than have her constantly looking out for him, agonizing over when and to whom he would spill this dirty favor to. A nervous feline he could do nothing with, a begrudging feline press-ganged into quiet but efficient servitude should he have need of it, Rookfrost could work wonders with. Well, not wonders.

(C)