Warriors: The star lake fanfiction

Chapter 28

Smokestorm waited among her clanmates for the kits' apprentice ceremony to commence.
In the moon she'd been back, she'd been spending almost all of her freetime with the kits. She'd gotten to know them much better.
Maplekit was energetic and bubbly. Sparrowkit was excited and sweet. Spottedkit was calm and smart. Lightkit was sarcastic and clever. And Gingerkit was quiet and thoughtful.
Lightkit and Spottedkit sat by their mother while Maplekit, Sparrowkit and Gingerkit were sitting beside Smokestorm. They were asking her about her apprentice ceremony and if it was cool.
Hoverstar stepped onto the highrock, still seeming quite paranoid about the potential WindClan attack, but trying to hide it for the kits.

"Gingerkit, Maplekit, Sparrowkit, Lightkit, Spottedkit, please step forth." Hoverstar commanded. They did as he asked, Sparrowkit and Maplekit practically ran over to the highrock. Hoverstar looked at Gingerkit first.
"Gingerkit, you have reached the age of six moons, and it is time for you to be apprenticed. From this day on, until you receive your warrior name, you will be known as Gingerpaw. Your mentor will be Fawnheart. I hope Fawnheart will pass down all she knows on to you."
Hoverstar turned to Fawnheart.
"Fawnheart, you are ready to take on another apprentice. You have shown yourself to be tough and skilled. You will be the mentor of Gingerpaw, and I expect you to pass on all you know to him." Fawnheart stepped up and touched noses with Gingerpaw.
"Gingerpaw! Gingerpaw!" Everyone cheered.

This repeated for each apprentice.
Maplepaw's mentor was Wrenfeather, Smokestorm thought they'd make a great team.
Lightpaw's mentor was Spiderclaw, those two would get along either extremely well or extremely bad.
Spottedpaw's mentor was Hollowfang, which was perfect.
And finally, Sparrowpaw's mentor was Smokestorm.
She was excited about receiving her first apprentice, but she was nervous that she might fail him as a mentor. Almost half of her life had been away from ThunderClan, there was a chance that she could teach him wrong.
She pushed that fear away and cheered for the new apprentices politely.

...

Stop him. Stop him. Before it's too late! Smokestorm! Smokestorm!
"Smokestorm!" A voice pulled her out of her dream.
Lynxtail stood over Smokestorm with a worried expression. Smokestorm looked around, seeing that it was nearly sunhigh.
"What? Why's it so late?" It was ironic, she felt like she'd just had the shortest sleep of her life.
"You were having a nightmare I think. You were mumbling something about Hollowfang I'm pretty sure. I didn't really catch it. But, you need to get up. Your apprentice is waiting for you." Lynxtail walked out of the warriors' den, leaving Smokestorm alone and confused.
Her weird dream could wait, she needed to take Sparrowpaw out for his first day as an apprentice.
She remembered her first day as an apprentice, how excited she was to be independent for once. She made sure that she would use everything she'd learnt from her life's experiences to teach her new apprentice.

She stumbled out of the den, still half asleep. Snow fluttered down from above and there was barely any wind.
She saw Sparrowpaw sitting by himself, waiting for her.
"Sparrowpaw, I'm so sorry I woke up late. Let's not waste any time. Come on." She led him out of the den, with Sparrowpaw bounding behind her.
She pushed through the exit with her apprentice and allowed him to take in what it looked like outside of camp for a moment.
"It's pretty cool right?" She asked.
"Yeah." He replied, still looking around.
"I'll show you ThunderClan's borders. If you're going to be patrolling and hunting, you'll need to know where you need to stop." She remembered when Fox showed her the borders of DuneClan, she figured that doing that was a smart move.
The two walked in silence, occasionally Smokestorm would point out a landmark or Sparrowpaw would ask a question, but she could tell he wanted to have a proper conversation.

"Is there something you want to talk about?" She asked.
"Yeah...how can I be the best apprentice for you? I don't want to be a burden."
That surprised Smokestorm. In the moon she'd gotten to know the apprentices, she'd never seen Sparrowpaw express any kind of insecurity. But then again, he was always around his sister, Maplepaw. This was Smokestorm's first time interacting with him without her around.
"All I can ask for is that you approach every day ready and excited to learn. I have a lot of tricks to teach you when you become more advanced but until then, training might be a little boring and repetitive. But we need to repeat things in order to get better. I just want you to cooperate with me and maybe be a little patient if I mess something up. You're my first apprentice so I don't really know how this is supposed to work, I'm basing my training off of that of my friends and mentors." She responded.

Sparrowpaw nodded eagerly.
"I will! Was being a rogue cool?" He snapped back to his usual chipper self.
She thought about that for a moment. She wanted to say that it was cool and she met some friends there, but she remembered that she was a mentor now. She needed to say the right things, even if they weren't completely true. She didn't want her apprentice thinking that being out in the world alone was a good thing just because she got lucky finding the clans.
"It was lonely. I missed my clan and my family. When you're there, nobody gives you help. You have to hunt for yourself from a kit's age to an elder's age. You don't get a break. There are no medicine-cats so if you get sick, you might die. Rogues are also very competitive and territorial, that means that they fight a lot."
Part of the stuff she said was a little exaggerated, but she didn't want Sparrowpaw wandering off to find the rogues by himself.

"Wow, you must be super tough to have survived that for four moons." He beamed.
At least he didn't think it was cool to be out there.
"Sure, you could say that."
Suddenly, among the smells of animals and plants, she smelled WindClan. There was only one scent, and it was not strong. It wasn't an attack, but maybe an apprentice or a warrior in their territory.
She decided to check it out.
"Sparrowpaw, go back to camp and tell Hoverstar and maybe two other warriors to come out to the WindClan side of our border." She could tell he was about to question why, but her serious glance shut him up.
He scurried away back to camp and Smokestorm went closer to the scent, making sure to be quiet and stay hidden. She crept closer and closer to the scent. She heard weak mews grow louder. Until she was finally at the source of the WindClan scent.
There was a small golden and black-striped kit who's eyes hadn't even opened yet.