Path of Peril

-Chapter 1: Advent-

☻Iriskit's point of view [p.o.v]☻
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"Run, mousebrains!" she hisses.
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Her breath is a bright, sizzling sparkle of spice hitting my ear, the last I feel of her before hearing her fairy-light feet scamper away, almost into the evergreen. "Pantherkit!!"
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"Wait up, you silly!" I say, grabbing Dustkit's tail in my teeth, exploding through the feathery wall parting home and this fantastical mystery, this place I've never explored.
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Pantherkit spins around and sticks her pink tongue out at us. "Catch me, slowpokes!"
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For a moment I want to turn back. We aren't supposed to be here, and that cat-scent we smelled heartbeats before this chase definitely saw us...
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But, suddenly, I trip over my too-big paws and tumble and Dustkit squeals as he hits the ground beside me before scrambling up. I just feel so alive. I can't stop laughing, and I won't stop running.
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It's so lovely here!
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ShadowClan's forest is a flurriful of flowery pine scents and spruce shade. The scenery around us all just blurs by 'cause we're tripping over our paws trying to run.
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I can't wait till we're apprentices and can explore even more! I sigh, and the little hesitation in my step causes my littermate to accidentally crash his muzzle into my feet. Just two more moons.
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"Iriskit, where's Pantherkit?"
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The bubbly laugh in my throat catches as Dustkit gazes at me, his huge kaleidoscope eyes filled with fear, making my stomach sink. Where is she?
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Tiny round pebbles cradle my paws instead of the forest floor. There's this little, sparkling stream in front of us, but-
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"Pantherkit!" Little black ear tips poke from the fizzing bubbles of the water and my sister surfaces like lightning, her head tipped back in laughter.
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Once she's done with her amusement, she asks quietly to me and Dustkit: "You thought I'd leave you?" Her expression is the most serious I've ever seen on her.
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"More like we thought you got lost!" Dustkit snickers, stretching his long legs in a warm puddle of pure sunlight.
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"I may have fell in," she mumbles sheepishly. "But it's really nice in here!"
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I tap her ears with my tail tip. "When did you learn how to swim, dude? Any cat would've thought you were RiverClan!"
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She giggles mischievously "Iriskit, it's like, half a tail-length deep. But seriously," her voice raises to yell at Dustkit, too, "at least put your paws in, you two, it's amazing!"
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"I'm not a fish!" he mews, flicking the tip of his tail in an indecisive superiority. Dustkit's ears are rosy, shelled lenses for the misty lighting.
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Suddenly, sharp little Panterkit-size teeth seize my tail and I squeal as I'm dragged into the small torrents of water; they swirl around me. "It's cold!" I gasp, and Pantherkit nods, causing chilly sparkles to hit my body.
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She raises a lithe black paw to splash me, but I dodge, which causes my whole self to be submerged down...
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into the wintry water
(even though it was warm leaffall!)
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The slight breeze now is an arctic biting at our ears, though Pantherkit doesn't look troubled or cold at all. Her face is flushed and alight, her dark pelt clings to her frame. She looks like Losthope, just for a moment, all tiny and lively.
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I want to pause this moment, keep it tucked away forever, to take pride in what will never happen again. But we stumble out onto the icy, water-glazed pebbles, shaking out pellets of cold from our pelts on Dustkit, and I think that it was okay even if it didn't last, because I could just live in the memories.
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"Maybe we can see a RiverClan patrol or somethin' if explore more!" Dustkit says, breaking the moment.
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Uneasiness swirls in my tummy, and I shift from paw to paw. "We should head back before Parrotfur realizes we're gone..."
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Pantherkit opens her mouth. My ears flatten, I'm going to be told to 'live a little' or something... But she replies, "Iriskit's right, c'mon Dusty." She turns tail and pounces back into the foliage.
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"'Dusty'!" snorts Dustkit in annoyance.
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I snicker and flick my tail to speckle earth onto his sleek fur. "Suits you."
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"My pelt is..WAS perfect-!" he cries, running a tiny pink tongue over it as he flounces into Pantherkit's wake alongside me.
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We fell skidding into a backwater area of the mostly empty ShadowClan camp. All the cats were out on duties and otherwise, I suppose; scents stale, neither a whisker nor tail in sight.
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"At least we didn't get caught," Pantherkit mumbled.
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I nod gleefully, skipping into the nursery. "At least the water from the stream covered our scent paths!"
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The marshmallow miracles that were piping puffs across the sky had began to turn pastel lavender, the way it did in ShadowClan when it was almost evening, and soon our Clanmates would come padding back with prey and happiness.
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ShadowClan is honestly so nice, I muse, swishing through the lacey pine needles into the nursery, nobody sees what we see in ourselves. We're a family
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Parrotfur isn't here, thank StarClan... The trouble we'd be in would be skyrocketing.
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The sky was blotting with the stars when our somewhat-mother was just scolding us gently for playing outside in camp (little did she know! swimming like a RiverClan cat, running through the forest like a real warrior...)
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I'm standing at the nursery door after playing with my littermates. Their fragile, full eyes had fluttered shut, the darkness holding their dreams.
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The musky scent tells me it is moon-high. The heavens are full of tiny pools of silver, spanning farther than I could squint.
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"Those are our ancestors," whispers a voice. (Mintflower, I sense.) Her light, feathery feet are coming from behind. "That band of stars is called Silverpelt, and the souls of the deceased go there."
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I shake my head, and try to say as unharshly as I could: "We just die, Mintflower. It's a fairytale,"
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There was silence, then when the she-cat speaks again, her words are soft and heavy, "it's not."
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And then she tells me of the way the leaders and the medicine cats spoke to the ancestors, from pressing noses to the liquid starshine. And it would be nothing you could ever even imagine, the whispers of the wisdoms of the cats with stars in their pelts, and the moons for eyes. And it was beautiful.
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"Why don't they speak to us anymore?" I speak, hushed, fearing I said the wrong thing.
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"We lost our faith. They did, anyways," the wisest cat I knew continued. "A sad thing is the needlessly-spilled blood." She tells me a bit about the riffs between ThunderClan.
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"...but the true war was between ourselves."
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"Why?"
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"Iriskit, you should sleep. It's almost moonhigh."
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"Parrotfur won't mind, I'm learning. I love hearing about it. Really."
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"Well...it started with a misunderstanding..."
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I froze, captivated. Mintflower's lost history, the one nobody wanted to talk about to us kits, covers over me like a song. Honest and pure, limitless, as the tale of our Clan spills from her words. My mother's naming ceremony. My ancestor's silence. It's wondrous, until...
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She pauses, then meows in this strange regret:
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"And the cats of ShadowClan began to die."
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\\ A/N: hi my October pumpkins! (I tried) if you were expecting something more like the beginning of the first installment of this mini-series, I decided to try a more cute and peaceful start.

I had an idea too. We should do something like a song recommendation club here. So we tell someone else a song we really enjoy at the moment, and then you trade song recommendations, listening to theirs, and then recommend one for them to listen to. It's a way to get to know each other (:
My recommendation for whoever comments their song first is Mad Hatter by Melanie Martinez. Tell me songs you like and talk to other people about their songs.
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Okay bye! \\