Jayfeather's Lesson

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 

            Jayfeather awoke to the sounds of cats screeching and yowling, not the way he would have liked to have been aroused. He turned his head towards the sound of the noise and realized that there were no cats in agony, but there were definitely some cats that were about to be in a heap of trouble.

            “Briarlight!” he screeched. “What on earth are you doing to cause such a racket this early in the morning?”

            Briarlight looked over her shoulder, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “It’s not that early, Jayfeather. The rest of the clan has been up and moving around for a while now.”

            Amberpaw peeked around Briarlight, quickly averting her eyes when she thought Jayfeather was looking at her, completely forgetting for a moment that the blind medicine cat couldn’t see, he just had an uncanny gift to make eye contact when addressing you. “Sorry Jayfeather, we were just playing.”

            Dewpaw bounded around the couple, a ball of moss in his mouth. He dropped it in front of Jayfeather and purred. “Briarlight is the best at moss-ball! She can throw it clear across the clan while lying down! And she said she needs the exercise so we figured it was our duty to help her stay active!” He nosed the ball closer to Jayfeather. “Do you want to play with us?”

            Jayfeather scoffed as he batted the ball away. “No I do not want to play with you! If you want to play you should be playing somewhere else.”

            Amberpaw approached Jayfeather slowly. “We didn’t want to disturb the kits.”

            “Oh, StarClan forbid the kits are disturbed,” Jayfeather spoke sarcastically, “it’s not like they won’t be keeping the rest of up and being underfoot for the next few moons. And aren’t you two too old to be playing? You are going to be made warriors soon.”

            Amberpaw and Dewpaw along with their brother Snowpaw have been apprentices for nearly six moons and were sure to be given their warrior names soon. The whole clan was excited to see Cloudtail’s and Brightheart’s kits be made warriors, but all Jayfeather could think about was losing moss-fetchers.

            Briarlight pushed herself up on her strong front paws and beckoned the apprentices. “Come on; let’s go see if there is anything left on the fresh-kill pile and get out of Jayfeather’s fur.” The other cats left as Briarlight dragged herself towards the entrance. “Would you like me to bring you something, Jayfeather?”

            Jayfeather shook his head as he stretched. “No, I will grab something later. I suppose I will go check on the kits now that I am up.”

            Briarlight nodded but cocked her head as she eyes Jayfeather. “Alright, but don’t forget to eat. You are looking rather thin lately.”

            “I will eat when I am hungry,” he responded gruffly as he turned to look through his herbs, pretending to look busy in hope that Briarlight would get the hint and just leave him be. He felt a little guilty about being sharp with her but he was not in the mood to listen to other cats today. It wasn’t Briarlight’s fault that she had to stay in his medicine den with him but having a cat around him most of the time was not what he would call an ideal situation. And if this was bad, imagine what having an apprentice would be like.

It had been a couple of moons since his talk with Firestar, and to his great relief, no cat in StarClan has mentioned the need of an apprentice again. His last trip too the Moon Pool gave him the wonderful insight that it was going to be a mild leaf-bare because Yellowfang could “feel it in her bones.” Of course Jayfeather silently questioned weather or not she had actual bones in StarClan, just as he questioned just about every other word that said to him lately. More and more he clung to the words that Mothwing, the RiverClan Medicine Cat that doesn’t even believe in StarClan, said to him a while back. StarClan is nothing but a bunch of Dead Cats.