Warriors Super Edition: Starlingcloud's Prophecy

Chapter 1

The musk of fallen leaves, the hidden mice scrabbling along beneath them, a faraway scent of clean, running water. A sign of prey nearby, the slow approach, and the terrifying moment that would define success. Starlingpaw let herself become lost in the sights and smells of the hunt. A small brown shrew sat sniffing at the ground a tail-length away from her. All she had to do was enact the methods she had been so dutifully taught and drilled on. She balanced lightly on her paws, trying to stay completely still to keep from alerting the creature to her presence.

All right, she thought. This will be easy. I just have to pounce and swipe. It's not hard. Starlingpaw hesitated only a moment before making the jump.

The sable-furred apprentice leapt forward, sailing through the thick Greenleaf air for mere moments before reaching the shrew. She lashed out with unsheathed claws, but missed by a mouse-length and found herself crashing to the ground head first, landing in an ungraceful heap on the forest floor. Starlingpaw growled angrily. She had fumbled again!

Deciding that there was no time to waste, she shook the leaves from her fur and stood up, turning around to find a new scent. She caught a glimpse of a slender black tail flashing out of sight between two dense ferns and felt herself flush with embarrassment beneath her fur. Her mentor, Darkfeather, had been watching at exactly the wrong moment! Starlingpaw was sure then that the rest of the assessment would not go well.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she continued to search for more prey. The woods were overflowing with mice and rabbits during the warm months, but Starlingpaw was so distracted with her failure that she couldn't catch onto a good scent.

Starlingpaw spat with anger and plopped heavily down on the ground. She buried her head in her paws, frustrated with her inability to hunt. The dark she-cat worried that she was missing some natural instinct that every other Clan cat had. Why did it have to be so hard?

When she finished mulling over her failure, Starlingpaw managed to catch a mouse- and an already near-dead one, at that- before sunhigh. Growling in disappointment and shame, she returned to the spot her mentor told her to with her meager catch. She carried the fresh-kill sadly to the sunny grove, dropping it at her mentor's dark-colored paws and hanging her head in shame.

Darkfeather, who had waited patiently for her apprentice to return, purred encouragingly, "A whole mouse! That's better than last time, when you only caught the tail of one!"

Starlingpaw huffed at the statement. "It's not much better at all."

Darkfeather shifted uncomfortably. "I did see your attempts, and you were trying your best. That's all we ask for from our warriors-to-be."

"You don't have to lie to me, Darkfeather. I'm horrible at hunting!" Starlingpaw yowled miserably. "I'll never be a warrior."

Darkfeather nudged her apprentice's cheek with her nose, purring. "Don't worry. If you keep practicing, you'll get there eventually. Hunting isn't easy for every cat."

"It is for most, though," Starlingpaw meowed, pulling away from her mentor's touch. "I wish I wasn't such a failure."

Her mentor's amber eyes swam with emotion, but she said nothing, instead motioning for Starlingpaw to pick up the prey and return to camp.

The pair of she-cats padded their way through the brightly lit woods and pushed through the thicket tunnel into DawnClan camp, which was sheltered from the rain by the towering trees that built a canopy over the dusty clearing. Starlingpaw's cheeks burned with humiliation as she placed her meager catch on the bountiful fresh-kill pile, and she padded silently to the apprentices' den. Her brother, Larkpaw, waited expectantly in the mossy patch of ground that the apprentices shared as sleeping quarters. His fur was a deep creamy color, and his face, paws, and tail faded into a dark brown similar to the color of Starlingpaw's fur.