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The wait had been incredibly painful. Six moons of waiting for this day to finally arrive, and now that it was here Sootkit could hardly hold still. She shuffled her paws against the ground, tail constantly flipping side to side and stirring up dust that was settling on her marbled fur and resulting in muttered grumbles from Skybringer, who nudged her repeatedly about sitting still for five heartbeats, Sootkit! and kept trying to lick the grit from her fur for the moment she would be in front of the Clan.

She was all too pleased to get away from the constant fussing, jumping upright when her name was announced and trotting toward the Boulder Ledge, not even giving a glance back at Skybringer as she left that part of her life well behind. She was going to be an apprentice! Her front paws kneaded the soil as she waited for the reveal of her mentor, and she turned to pick out the she-cat as her name was called. Hollystorm! One of the senior warriors and a fierce member of the Clan in her own right, and Darkstar had chosen her to mentor Sootk- no, Sootpaw- through the moons of her training until she was ready to take on warrior status.

Sootpaw accepted the touch and trailed behind her mentor as the next two kits were given their mentors, and then! It hardly seemed worth curbing her enthusiasm at the thought of getting out into the territory for the first time and she dived through the entrance tunnel ahead of Hollystorm before pausing and glancing back, bright-eyed and ready to begin this next stage of her life.
Fawn

[Fawn]

Baby I need light, I need fire

69 Moons Warrior NightClan

Being named a mentor was an honor, she told herself. It was a way to carry on the diminishing shadow of her father's infamous legacy as a harsh teacher, an aggressive warrior, and a staunch supporter of NightClan. But what about MY legacy? Whispered a little voice in the back of her head.

Hollystorm had curtly watched the procedings, letting her thoughts drift on a sea of discontentment hidden beneath her chilled exterior. In hindset, she was probably turning more and more into Starlingcry by the day - each season planting another bitter little seed in her heart. But surprise, no, astonishment and then suspicion at the sudden announcement of her name after Sootpaw's, had Hollystorm rising from her tidy sit beside her mate, Sunpulse.

Green eyes locked gazes with Darkstar, a she-cat with which so much history ebbed and flowed between them. They had been rivals before they'd been Clanmates, it felt like. A sense of mutual respect - or was that mutual tolerance? - had taken time to cultivate. That Darkstar had been chosen as deputy over Hollystorm, and had herself chosen Clovermask upon her ascension, wasn't lost on Hollystorm. Just when she'd thought the other she-cat had run out of ways to snub her, to sink her claws into the wound that was Hollystorm's sennse of self...

Darkstar had pulled the rug out from under her. Here was Sootpaw, one of Darkstar's own daughters, being entrusted to her. Hollystorm's gaze was narrowed, but Darkstar's returning expression was one of seriousness - and perhaps a warning. You can't afford to make mistakes with this apprentice, those eyes seemd to say. A part of Hollystorm shriveled at the thought of failure, but Hollystorm's spirit flared at the challenge. She brushed against Sunpulse's side as she finished the ceremony, touching her nose to Sootpaw's and letting the moment come to its natural conclusion.

Hollystorm's tail flipped and curled in thought, her mind springing to life as she worked through the sudden duty of mentorship. Sootpaw was already ahead, leading the way to a territory she had never been in only to look back with shining eyes at Hollystorm. Rather than hurry up, Hollystorm smirked a little and arrived a few moments after. "Try not to expend all your energy, or you're going to be too tired to learn every border."

With a brief stretch, Hollystorm let her pupils expand to take in the gloom of NightClan's pine forests. Like most NightClan cats, she came alive after the sun disappeared, and hunting through a moonlit wood was a comfort to her. "Would I be wrong in thinking you know which Clans we share borders with?" Hollystorm asked, not about to treat the new 'paw like a frogbrained fool. Sootpaw's head was hardly empty - a cat with that much drive and Frostjaw & Darkstar for parents had to have an education of some kind. Sootpaw's parents looked as if they had little patience for stupid questions.

Or wrong answers.

@sable 485 Words Notes

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Sootpaw didn't want to slow down, regardless of Hollystorm's warning; every breath of air seemed charged with a feeling that yowled for her to run ahead, pick up as many scents as she could, keep her paws moving and her mind racing with whatever new sight, sound or smell she could experience, as quickly as she could. It wasn't wisdom that stopped her from such a course of action, however- it wasn't the thought that Hollystorm might know better and have advice to share worth heeding. It wasn't Hollystorm at all, except for the words, but the thought that if she were to continue like this that she might really wear herself out, miss something important... risk the disappointment on her parents' faces at her being forced to return early because she hadn't paced herself.

Impatience flared hot in Sootpaw's throat and she lashed her tail, fidgeting as Hollystorm took her sweet time approaching. But her ears perked at the question and she nodded vigorously. "Of course! Only a stupid kit wouldn't know that- we're bordered by TreeClan and RainClan- and RainClan is bordered on the other side by StoneClan, and between StoneClan and TreeClan is LightningClan. Right? Am I right?" She leaned toward Hollystorm, waiting for her reply, green eyes wide. She had to be right, and she didn't particularly care if Hollystorm thought she was showing off by giving more than the short answer to the question she'd been asked. "Which border are we visiting first?"
Fawn

[Fawn]

Baby I need light, I need fire

69 Moons Warrior NightClan

The sheer eager intensity Sootpaw stared at her with - desperate to know if she was right or not - sent a strange thrill through Hollystorm. It was a small pad to her ego, that Sootpaw's sense of progress would hinge on what she told her. Not about to feed Sootpaw's ego in return, however, Hollystorm nodded once, as if the apprentice's knowledge were trivial at best and not better than what cats her age usually knew.

Some outright neglected the world beyond the nursery, and that included ignoring any information about it whatsoever. Oh, they all knew enough to play 'NightClan versus TreeClan' but sometimes that was the extent of their knowledge. In Hollystorm's eyes, some parents let their kits be empty vessels to be shaped and filled by the mentors left picking up the slack.

"RainClan first," said Hollystorm. "But before we do that, you are going to practice being quiet and stepping lightly. I am going to teach you how to hunt once we reach the RainClan border. For now," the velvet-black she-cat curled around Sootpaw and took the lead, her footsteps soundless on the chilly, frozen ground. "Step where I step. I'll know if you veer off."

The sound would be a dead giveaway.

@sable 207 Words Notes

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Hollystorm's nod was enough to swell Sootpaw's chest. She hadn't expected much more than that anyway; neither of her parents were particularly demonstrative, and a nod or a single word of praise was plenty. Probably worth more than someone gushing, even, over how smart she was for knowing the locations of each Clan on her first day as an apprentice. She didn't need that, didn't want it, and she rocked backward with a flick of her tail- pride in herself for getting the answer right.

Then it was on to learning, and Sootpaw's ears twitched at the instruction. She didn't want to walk quietly, didn't want to have to watch her steps to avoid twigs and leaves. She wanted to be moving, and she quivered in a moment of pent up excitement, the quick thought of disregarding her mentor's guidance flashing across her mind. It took effort to hold herself back, claws curling from their sheaths and eyes squeezing shut as she took a couple deep breaths. It was all new and exciting, this getting out of the camp to be trained, but the idea of training itself wasn't new at all; Frostjaw had been testing her and her littermates since they'd learned to walk almost.

There was a promise of hunting at the end of this if she did well, and Sootpaw's eyes snapped open, gleaming at the challenge. She'd have to have something to come back to camp with, something to prove to Darkstar and Frostjaw that she hadn't wasted this important occasion by acting foolish. "Okay," she agreed, her sharp gaze fixing on Hollystorm's paws, her own following to settle where her mentor's had, her exuberance no less now than it had been, but fixed on mastering this instead of charging about, exercising her senses but learning nothing as a result. Following was a simple task- following while keeping herself from making any unnecessary noise? Not quite so simple, but Sootpaw was determined to master the skill.
Fawn

[Fawn]

Baby I need light, I need fire

66 Moons Warrior NightClan

Hollystorm did not make it easy for her. Keen green eyes found difficult patches of terrain - including fallen boughs and overturned roots - that required careful navigation even from an experienced warrior such as herself. But Sootpaw was keeping up. The noise the apprentice made was minimal, acceptable, for someone new.

But you won't be satisfied with just that, will you? Hollystorm purred in private amusement over the ambition she could read in every whisker on the kitten's face. "Alright, we're here." A dark feathery tail raised and signaled for Sootpaw to stop, while Hollystorm let the marshy border with RainClan speak for itself.

Leafbare was a bleak season, and that bleakness was especially clear in the marshlands. Thin filaments of ice trapped dead or slumbering reeds in their wet, peaty beds. The scent of stagnant swamp-water was not as strong as it was in warmer weather, but it was there. "It's too cool for frogs, they hide deep beneath the water's surface until it thaws." Hollystorm parroted information her mentor had once shared with her; it was not a topic she went out of her way to debate or confirm. The black she-cat didn't have the time nor the patience to poke around frozen puddles in search of slumbering frogs. That there was a distinct lack of frogs in wintertime was evidence enough for her.

"However," Hollystorm slowly began to crouch, taking advantage of the murky brown and black environs to blend in. "There are still birds and rodents. Watch and tell me what you see."

@sable 250~ Words Notes

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Tags: Fawn

[attr="class","soot"][attr="class","soot-content"]Sootpaw slunk after Hollystorm, focusing so hard on where her paws were meeting the earth that when she glanced up, she sometimes found herself falling a bit behind her mentor and had to pick up her pace a bit to avoid being left behind. That tended to result in a bit more noise than she liked, but it was proving difficult to balance keeping up with keeping quiet; her legs weren’t nearly as long as Hollystorm’s and she knew she didn’t have the experience of season upon season to move with the same skill. But she would! She had to.

She paused at her mentor’s side as they reached the border, nose wrinkling back as the stink of waterlogged fur, mud and fish rose around her, undiluted as it usually was from the pelts of her Clanmates. It almost made her want to gag- to shove her nose into her own pelt to block out the unfamiliar scents surrounding her.

It was almost a relief to turn to Hollystorm and focus on her, shoving aside all those gross smells and drinking in the information, filing it away to recall it later. And as Hollystorm crouched, Sootpaw copied her, trying not to press her belly fur too hard into the marsh because it was uncomfortable and she’d just have to groom it out later, but carefully balancing her weight between her paws and ensuring her tail stayed still. She’d never been allowed to train with actual fighting moves, but the crouch, the stalk; these little things she’d been taught and learned as soon as Frostjaw deemed his kits old enough.

Now she was getting to put them into use for real. Shoulder to shoulder with Hollystorm, Sootpaw glanced out over the marsh and watched, green eyes flicking side to side in hopes of finding something to share… The barest flicker of movement drew her eye to a water vole scurrying through the brown grass before sliding noiselessly into a puddle and disappearing; a moment later, it emerged with something in its jaws, climbing back onto solid ground. It shook out its fur and waddled off, only to jump skyward two feet on and double back in another direction. Dimly, in the moonlight, Sootpaw made out the snake that the vole had blundered into, tongue flicking as it scanned the undergrowth.

Sootpaw spoke quietly, sharing what she saw to Hollystorm- and wondering what her mentor was thinking about her progress thus far. "Vole, almost caught by a snake. It escaped and the snake is probably gonna try again?" Her paws shifted, and she went stiff a heartbeat later at the shadow against the pale glow of the moon, gliding over the ground. "Owl, hunting." Would it see her, crouched there? Her fur, while mostly dark, had plenty of white patches an owl might take notice of- but she wasn't alone.

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[Fawn]

Baby I need light, I need fire

66 Moons Warrior NightClan

”Never mind the owl. You’re big enough and hard to spot, the owl won’t risk making itself vulnerable when there are easier meals right in front of it.” Hollystorm’s green gaze tracked the shadow Sootpaw had pointed out. The warrioress continued to crouch, watching the laws of
nature play out before her as the owl swooped low. A mere heartbeat later, it held the writhing snake in its talons, bringing the flailing head up to its beak to put an end to its struggles immediately.

Hollystorm smirked. ”Sometimes the predator gets the luck. Most of the time, it’s the prey. Many of our Clanmates like to… boast about their hunting success, and how much prey they’ve caught. But it’s worth keeping in mind that prey is so numerous because predators, more often than not, fail. And that’s not something we can fix.” The she-cat’s tail flicked, her gaze sweeping left then right to indicate the area they were in. ”We can’t control what the weather will do, but we can control ourselves. Teach ourselves to be quieter. To recognize how to stay downwind of our prey. It’s a challenge, and it can be…unrewarding, but that’s what this life is about. To hunt is to try, fail and try again. With time, you can improve your chances, but for today, your goal is to catch a single piece of prey.”

The chubby water vole was gone. They’d have to keep moving and find something else. Hollystorm beckoned Sootpaw after her as she began to creep through more of the dense undergrowth of their black pine forest. Hollystorm slinked over tree roots like a living shadow.
”If you fail today, then you and I will be back out here the next night until you succeed.” Such a statement carried the promise of trying until you get it right, no matter the frustration that entailed. Hollystorm scented the air, going still in her moment to taste the subtle breeze blowing through the dark, looming trees. Another water vole was nearby…

@sable 353 Words Notes