Leafpool's Choice

Chapter 19

Nearly six moons had passed since Leafpool's kits were born. Leafpool was comfortably settled in the center of the camp, letting the sun's golden rays warm her pelt.

Leafpool's kits were goofing off near the camp entrance, so Leafpool turned her attention to her mate.

Crowfeather had entered the camp with his jaws full of prey, as was expected in the perfect Greenleaf weather.

Crowfeather purred and touched noses with his mate, content. Leafpool turned her back to the kits, trusting that Hollykit's good judgement would steer them away from trouble.

Sure, Hollykit may have had too much respect for the warrior code, but Leafpool had just made a horrible mistake.

***

"This is a bad idea!" Hollykit exclaimed.

"Pfft. We'll be fiiiine," Lionkit mewed.

"I'm with him," Jaykit mumbled.

"Okay, fine, but as soon as we see something interesting, we turn around and come home," Hollykit decided.

"You're no fun!" Lionkit pouted.

***

"You know, it's been really wonderful raising these kits. Hollykit keeps them in line, Lionkit has the best games, and Jaykit keeps the peace. I don't think we've ever once ran into a major problem," Leafpool purred.

"It's too bad that we're making them into apprentices soon," Crowfeather meowed.

"I know. It's such a huge step for them... WAIT, WHAT?! Apprentices? We never talked about this before!"

"You don't want to train them?" Crowfeather asked, confused.

"Of course I want to train them." Leafpool glanced back towards her kits. Wait, where were her kits?

"Crowfeather!" she yowled. "The kits are gone!"

***

"This was a wonderful idea," Jaykit spoke up in his usual quiet mew.

The sun warmed the three kits' backs as they padded through the tall, soft grass.

"We don't know what dangers are out here, so we should head towards something familiar," Hollykit reasoned.

"We've all heard the story of Squirrelflight and the badger." Jaykit shuddered.

"Crowfeather says we'll be apprentices soon!" Lionkit began to make small talk.

"Shut up and sniff the air," Hollykit hissed.

The other kits raised their noses up to sniff.

"It smells like Leafpool, but more of her," Lionkit noted.

"You're right," Jaykit meowed. "If we're looking for a safe direction, then that's it."

Hollykit set off towards the scent, beckoning with her tail for the others to follow. Lionkit and Jaykit scrambled to keep up.

Hollykit walked with confidence and grace, her head held high and her tail in the air. She didn't like Lionkit's idea of fun, but it had become her job to keep her brothers from becoming idiots. (Not that it made much difference. In her mind they were both considered idiots already.)

Lionkit bounced along cheerfully, chattering mindlessly to whichever others were willing to listen. The other kits ignored his rambling for the most part, but they both shared his excitement about becoming apprentices.

Jaykit padded forward carefully and warily, using Lionkit's constant stream of chatter as a guide. His ears swiveled back and forth quickly, trying to pick up every little bit of sound that they could. He stumbled over tree branches many times, but he used this information to his advantage. Tree branches meant forests.

"Stop!" Hollykit hissed. "I hear voices."

The kits froze, and even Lionkit stopped talking. Hollykit darted into a clump of thickly woven brambles, and the others followed her lead, huddled together silently.

Three cats came into view, two she-cats and a tom. A ginger she-cat with mischievous green eyes and a single white paw was in the lead. She was having a friendly conversation with a white she-cat with orange spots. The kits could only see part of her face, with a beautiful blue eye, but she turned, revealing horrible scars and gashes down the side of her face. Worst of all, there was an empty socket where her eye should've been. The third cat, a golden-brown tabby tom, was busy marking the border, and seemed uninterested in the she-cats' conversation.

"That's Squirrelflight!" Jaykit whispered.

"Shh!" Hollykit hissed.

For once, Lionkit stayed quiet.

Squirrelflight's eyes perked up, and she spun around, looking directly at the kits' hiding place. "Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?" The one-eyed she-cat glanced at her friend curiously.

"Voices," Squirrelflight explained. "What about you, Brackenfur, did you hear them?"

"Nope," the tom replied.

Squirrelflight padded towards the bushes. "Aha! There are kits in here!"

Squirrelflight stuck her head into the brambles and dragged Jaykit out by the scruff of his neck.

"Hey! Put me down!" he squeaked.

Hollykit and Lionkit emerged from the bushes a moment later.

"We're sorry. We'll go back home now. Leafpool will be worried sick!" Hollykit hung her head in shame.

"Leafpool?" Squirrelflight asked.

"She's our mom," Lionkit piped up.

"Come on, let's go back," Hollykit meowed, heading towards the border.

"Oh no you don't." Brackenfur blocked the kits' path with his tail. "You three are coming with us."

A/N: Hi again everyone. Thx to everyone who voted or added my story to their reading lists. I got at least 5 different voters and was added to 3 new reading lists last night alone, so I'm too lazy to list everyone. Thanks for the support.

Sorry about the cliffhanger. You must feel like I'm torturing you, but the next update will be posted soon.

Hint: The main character hasn't been born yet at this point.

Can I just rant for a second? I hate, hate HATE Jayfeather. So many people are saying "Jaybae," and "I love Jayfeather," but he's the worst! No offense, but he treats everyone like fox dung, and he's supposed to help people. There's "grumpy" and then there's "Jayfeather". He was just horrible to other people, and he took what he had for granted. Jayfeather was blind, but he was lucky that he had a purpose in life and a wonderful family that loved him. Briarlight, on the other hand, couldn't do anything, and was so badly injured, but she was always so happy. Jayfeather was none of that, even though his whole purpose was to help others!

Do you like Jayfeather? Did I change your perspective on Jayfeather a bit?

Thanks for reading. If anyone read my whole rant, then you deserve a gold star. <3

Bye!

~Hollyfeather

A/N part two: my feelings have since changed, I still do find him annoying but he has his funny moments too, your opinions on him are all valid as well. Overall though I just felt that the power of three characters weren't as well-written and their personalities tended to fall flat, and for me as a reader it was unfortunate that the one cat with personality had a personality I disliked. As a character, he was well-written, but as a cat he always just made me annoyed. Like he has his good moments but if I read too much of him I just get sick of it. I will say that most of this stems from the weirdos on the internet who would call him "jaybae" and be creepy, he's not badly written overall and if you like him, cool! That's pog too!