Diagnosed with a developmental disorder at a young age, Duskelle Waterlee has always been special - but not necessarily in a good way. Even at the age of fourteen, she is still unable to truly grasp human ways of life.
Her only relief is River, a st...
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Graysplash's face seemed to transform in front of Duskelle's eyes. His expression went from anxious and slightly curious to shocked to extremely worried.
His voice was low and urgent. "What? What are you saying, Shadowflight? Missing? Missing? How could she be missing? How is Icebreeze? And the other kits? They are being watched, right?"
Shadowflight's expression was as troubled as Graysplash's.
"I just returned from hunting when Icebreeze found out that she was missing. She's not doing very well, Graysplash. After all, it is her first litter. It appears Hawkkit wandered off this morning at the time of the Clan meeting, when everybody was listening to Minnowstar."
Duskelle was confused for a moment. Clan meeting? When had there been a Clan meeting? And then she realized that Shadowflight meant the gathering of the cats that had taken place at the time of her apprenticeship. Of course. The cat - which Duskelle could make out was a kitten - would've easily been able to sneak off when Minnowstar was making her an apprentice. All the other cats would've been engrossed in the ceremony, what with it being very different from normal.
Of course, a kitten wandering out into the forest all by itself would be very dangerous, but really, there wasn't much of a threat to it. Even if it wandered onto another Clan's territory, they would probably return it to the camp. Duskelle had made out from Seapaw's rambling the first day that part of the warrior code, the set of rules that these cats lived by, was to never let a kit get hurt, no mater which Clan it was from. So why were they so worried?
"Come on, hurry up, Duskpaw!" Duskelle looked up to see that Shadowflight had disappeared into the camp and that Graysplash was just short of doing so. She snapped out of her thoughts and scurried after them.
The camp was in an uproar. Cats were running around here and there, Frostmist was trying to give unheard orders, and Duskelle could make out some cat calling out, "Where has she gone? Find her, find her, we have to find her!"
"RiverClan!" A commanding voice rang out in the air and the cats froze. Slowly, they all turned to face the middle of the camp.
Minnowstar was standing on the rock that she apparently used for addressing all of the Clan.
"Stop behaving like this! What do you think you are? Weak WindClan cats, running around like rabbits? Well, you're not, so stop! You are RiverClan." Her furious blue gaze spent the clearing.
"We are RiverClan! All that has happened is that one of our kits is missing. And she will be found soon, so it is nothing to worry about!"
"But it is something to worry about!" a cat wailed from the group of cats that the Clan had formed.
"There's a fox out there! In RiverClan territory! There are never foxes in RiverClan! And the one time there is one, a foolish little kit picks that time to sneak out of camp before she's apprenticed!"
