Warriors on the Prowl: Tumbling Shadows

Chapter 1: A Warm Welcome

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"We rise and fall together, our hearts still beat below. You can't stand by forever, you're a kid with a bullet soul. Are you ready to go?... We are children of the spark, we got to start from the start." -Switchfoot

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    Sunlight lazily licked across the land with claws of white fire, setting the forest aflame with light and announcing the day's beginning to all the animals that dwelled within. Birds sung their noisy salute to the sun, bugs hissed and buzzed in greeting, and predators stalked out of their Dens already in full hunting mode.

    One of the predators was Sanguine, a thin blood red tom that lay outside a Twoleg dwelling in a pile of leaves. His throat was painfully dry and his stomach growled greedily for sustenance. He had gone what felt like moons without food, and was getting tired of having to compete with other stray cats for the smallest morsels.

    His plan now was to get into the house once the Twolegs opened the cat flap, and eat all the food he could find. It was a reckless idea, but Sanguine was a reckless cat and danger was his best friend. His only friend.

    The cat of the house finally slid out of the flap and stared at the straggler in confusion. The cat yowled something, but its language was foreign to him. Sanguine snorted. None of the house cats he had met spoke the Feline Language because they had grown up with Twolegs, and so simply spoke in incoherent mews instead.

    Sanguine rolled his eyes and roughly shoved past the cat and into its' warm house. The sweet scent of milk drifted towards his nose and almost immediately, his mouth began to water. He cautiously followed the scent, looking around every corner to make sure no Twolegs were around, until he reached his destination. The Food Haven. He made a wild dash towards the bowl full of the milk that he'd previously only been able to fantasize about, his alertness melting away like snow that been exposed to the intense sun for far too long.

    He attempted to skid to a halt in front of the bowl but ended up sliding on the slippery ground and spilling some of the precious contents onto the cold, smooth floor. Another cat had apparently been following him and it yowled in protest as the milk splashed out of the dish.

    "Quit screeching! They'll just get you more milk later." Sanguine hissed at the cat but since she did not understand, she kept rambling and mewling like an abandoned kit.

    It wasn't long before the sound of the cats unpleasant cries made it's Twoleg come running to its' rescue. The Twoleg made a dramatic chocking sound once it spotted Sanguine and promptly snatched up a strange stick that had bristles at the end of it.

    Now Sanguine could not understand much of the venom that the creature began ferociously spitting at him, but he'd been yelled at by Twolegs enough in their alien language to understand when they meant serious business.

    The Twoleg swatted at him with the peculiar tool, but Sanguine ducked, quickly lapped up some milk, and then hauled tail out of the house with the Twoleg still tossing vulgar insults at him.

    Sanguine did not stop running until he reached the edge of the forest that surrounded all of the houses in the area. When he was just a kit, his father had told him stories of feral cats that lived together within the forest. He'd spoken of them as if he'd known them personally, but, whenever Sanguine asked him if he had been a Clan cat, he would remark with a rueful expression that he'd not had the privilege to but his mother had.