Beast of the Sea - WARRIOR CATS

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"You're not a cat!" I snarled, taking a step back. "How dare you act as ShoreClan leader?!"

The wolf stared down at its paws, they were massive and a russet colour. Then, sighing visibly, the wolf began to shrink. Its muzzle shortened, while its stubby tail lengthened. Within several heartbeats, I found myself staring at a rather small ginger tom with pale blue eyes.

"Better?"

The old cat blinked slowly at me, eyes still twinkling with bemusement. They looked far less ominous now that they weren't glowing bright blue, but I still felt uneasy. The tom, seeming to sense my reluctance, gave a half-hearted shrug and began to munch on the crab.

"I'm glad we're finally meeting," he mumbled around a mouthful of beige-red flesh. "You know, there's a lot I have to say to you."

I flexed my claws in and out. "There is?" I muttered. "I'm pretty sure you're just gonna make me a Bottom Feeder, talk some elaborate nonsense, and send me on my way."

The tom laughed. As I continued to glare at him, he quickly took out his tail, and wrapped it around his muzzle. After a moment, he continued, his posture suddenly tightening.

"Look," he didn't meet my gaze. I was used to that. "You being a Bottom Feeder...It's more complicated than you realise." He glanced down at the crab. "There are cats who would kill you right now if I don't do this."

A tremor of shock ran down my spine but I hid in quickly. The old tom took another bite of his crab, chewing on it annoyingly loudly. He smelled of salmon that had been left in the sweltering greenleaf sun for days.

"Kill me?" I retorted. "Well, then I guess I'll just claw them back."

The old tom abruptly stopped crunching on his crab. There was a moment's pause before he slowly lifted his pale blue eyes, and turned to face me with a piercing gaze.

"What?" I mumbled.

The cat shook his head slowly as though dislodging a flea. Still, he kept his gaze trained on mine. "The words you just said," he murmured slowly, "are the exact words your mother told me the day she was made a warrior."

I didn't know why I leaned forward at that moment, towards the cat who had previously been a wolf. Perhaps it was his eyes, or the way he seemed to purse his lips after each sentence, as though he wanted to say something. Or perhaps, it was because he was about to tell me something about my family.

"Ocea...Er, Ferretkit," Seastar murmured. "Do you remember anything from that night? The one in which your mother was murdered, and you received...your markings?"

"My markings?" I twitched an ear in confusion. This cat had spent so much time underground eating half-rotten lobsters that he'd lost his common sense. Sighing as Tornslice the elder had done to me many times, I meowed, "cats don't 'get' markings. We're born with them."

Seastar turned away. He moved very slowly as he turned his scrawny russet frame until his back was on me. Then, he waved his paw so as to motion me forward. I glanced down at my paws before bounding over the crab to see what he was looking at.

"You must want to know," Seastar murmured as soon as I got up to him, "why I hide in the shadows. Why ShoreClan has not seen my pelt since I was made leader, four moons ago." His whisker twitched faintly as I glanced up at him. "I know," he rumbled. "You must have thought I was some ancient leader who'd lead this clan for seasons the way the cats talk of me. The truth is, I was a wise old cat, and they decided to toss the burden of leadership onto me after everything went wrong."

He wrapped his tail over my paws as he went on. "With leadership comes nine lives, although they just made everything worse." He shook his head ruefully. "The wolf you saw when you arrived...that's one of my many forms. As a young cat I wanted to have it all, the swiftness of a hare, the cleverness of the raccoon, the endurance of a wolf...And I got all those forms, but they corrupted me. Consumed me."