Warriors: Rosetail's Promise

C H A P T E R   3

Ravenwing bolted awake. The first thing she did was check her neck. No cuts, though it was painful to touch it. Then, the time of day. It was still before dawn.

That was easily the weirdest dream I’ve ever had, Ravenwing thought. She looked over to Moonkit, who was still asleep, though she sounded out-of-breath. It didn’t seem bad to Ravenwing, so she went out for a walk.

Ravenwing padded around the clearing and to the hill at the back of the SunClan camp. She didn’t think about where she was going, just walked. It was her way of calming down.

Eventually she stumbled upon a drowsy Scarletfur. “You still awake?” Ravenwing whispered. Scarletfur almost never slept, it was just something odd she did.

“No. You?” Scarletfur mewed.

“Oh, you know, nothing out of the ordinary, I just got my neck cut off in some sort of vision.” Ravenwing made an unconvincing smile.

“And you complained at Cherrystar about sarcasm.” Scarletfur didn’t inquire about the “some sort of vision” part. She respected the medicine cat’s privacy.

“I just tend to get that way when I don’t have enough sleep.” Reminded of what she wanted to do earlier that night, she added, “Is she awake, anyway?”

“No, but I can wake her up if you like.”

“You don’t have nine lives, are you sure you want to do that?” Ravenwing joked.

Scarletfur stifled a laugh. “I can handle it. Cherrystar doesn’t either, you know.”

“No, I guess not. Y’know, we should probably try and go back to sleep.”

“Maybe. See you in the morning?” Scarletfur yelled as Ravenwing walked away.

“You too.”

_______

She tried, but couldn’t get a wink of sleep. It was now nearly dawn, Ravenwing could hear the other SunClan cats preparing for the patrols. Ravenwing walked out groggily and nearly into Dustclaw

“You still dreaming?” Dustclaw said.

“No, no sleep,” Ravenwing yawned. “You seen Cherrystar?”

“She’s still asleep.”

“Who’s still asleep?” Rabbitleap interjected as she walked over to the talking cats.

“Cherrystar,” Ravenwing said deliberately. “Please mind your own business.”

“Well, someone’s cross today,” Rabbitleap said. “An’ I just saw her over on the far side of the hill, so she isn’ asleep.”

“You’re as fast as a rabbit if you can wake up, go past the edge of the camp, and back to the middle before dawn patrols are even assigned,” Dustclaw marveled.

“They don’ call me Rabbitleap for nothing,” Rabbitleap said proudly. Ravenwing chuckled. The smaller cat was practically overflowing with energy, and it was refreshing to Ravenwing.

“No, I guess they don’t,” Dustclaw agreed. “Let’s go see what Frozentail wants us to do.”

“Race you there!” Rabbitleap said as she took off.

“Are you a kit?!” Dustclaw yelled back. He ran after Rabbitleap anyway.

“You’re both kits,” Ravenwing said with a weaker chuckle. She walked over to the hill, if Rabbitleap was right, Cherrystar would be over there.

“Now you’re the one that’s looking tired,” Cherrystar remarked as she walked out of her den. “What’s up?”

“I…I had a vision last night. Before you interject, it wasn’t a prophecy, it wasn’t from StarClan, and it was honestly the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

“Ooookay,” Cherrystar said. “Not from StarClan? What was it about?”

“Oh, y’know, Rosetail. In a place that looked an awful lot like StarClan, but certainly wasn’t.”

“Heh, sounds more peaceful than my dreams. Remember the one where the forest was burning?”

“Yeah,” Ravenwing stifled a laugh. Cherrystar had woken from that one, ran around the entire camp yelling “Fire!” until Ravenwing stopped her. That was how Ravenwing knew about the dreams in the first place.

“A false StarClan is much better than that,” Cherrystar repeated.

“Yeah, except Rosetail sliced my neck open. And it still hurts,” Ravenwing said. She was doing a good job of hiding it, but turning her head was painful. And since she was the medicine cat, she couldn’t do anything about it.

“If you’ve turned into the next Ivypool…” Cherrystar started.

“No. I wouldn’t be here if I did.”

“Good point.” Cherrystar sighed and turned toward the rising sun. “Does that mean she’s attacking soon?”

“It’s gotta,” Ravenwing said. “If Moonkit really is Rosetail’s kin, then she’ll definitely have missed her by now. Moonkit said something about Rosetail searching for her…”

“It’d be just perfect if she attacked with the morning sun,” Cherrystar thought aloud, completely ignoring the bit about Moonkit speaking. “Think about it.”

“She isn’t Sol.”

“You don’t know.”

“Neither do you.” Both cats turned away from each other. Neither one spoke for several moments.

“Let’s not speculate,” Cherrystar finally said.

“Yeah, that only leads to paranoia,” Ravenwing agreed.

Both cats walked back to their respective dens, waiting for something to happen.

And that something was not much later. It was Moonkit running in and trying to get Ravenwing’s attention soon after sunhigh.

“Moonkit, what’s wrong?” She was trying to drag Ravenwing somewhere, but was only strong enough to nearly pull out Ravenwing’s fur.

“That hurts,” Ravenwing said. Moonkit made a small whimper as she let go. Ravenwing felt bad, she was trying the hardest she could to bring Ravenwing to the problem sans tongue.

“Aw, c’mon,” Ravenwing said. She walked outside, Moonkit running in front of her. Eventually she came to a limping Ashenheart, with Rainwhisker trying to help her walk back to the medicine cat’s den. There goes the border patrol, Ravenwing thought.

“Good, it’s you,” Ashenheart panted.

“A loner attacked,” Rainwhisker said matter-of-factly. “She says she pulled a muscle in her left front leg.”

“What did the loner look like? Long fur, snowy pelt, blue eyes?”

“A large dark brown tom.” Well, there goes wishing it would happen soon. The suspense is killing me!

“Well, come on,” Ravenwing told both cats. “Can you move or feel this leg at all?” Ravenwing asked Ashenheart.

“Yeah, it feels like hell, and I left a trail of blood the entire way back here.” She could see it, it looked like it was done bleeding.

“Great, now that loner can find its way directly to the singluar cat in SunClan with the least warrior experience,” Ravenwing complained.

“I wasn’t trying to!” Ashenheart yowled defensively. At that point, all four cats had made it.

“I hope we’ve got the resources for this,” Ravenwing said. “Let’s see here...marigold, cobwebs...that could’ve been a lot worse,” Ravenwing said, relieved that she had enough of everything. She addressed the she-cat’s wounds before trying to get more information from Rainwhisker.

“It wasn’t Viridian,” Rainwhisker said. “Looked almost just like him, though.”

“Why did he attack?” Ravenwing said.

“He thought Ashenheart was trying to take his food, when she was just killing a mouse we happened to stumble across.”

“Great, so he’s made the border into his personal camp,” Ravenwing said. “I’ll need to tell Frozentail all that.” Rainwhisker nodded. Ravenwing dropped to a whisper, “Will you stay here and make sure Ashenheart doesn’t mess with her leg?”

“I heard that!” Ashenheart yelled.

“Good, then you probably don’t need Rainwhisker to help you with it!” Ravenwing said as she ran out to find Frozentail. Or rather, have Frozentail find her.

“What’s with all the yelling from over here?” Frozentail asked.

“Oh, just Ashenheart getting a cut and the camp being too small and there’s a loner that’s turned the border into his camp,” Ravenwing said quickly.

“Okay, slow down,” Frozentail said. “Ashenheart ‘got a cut?’”

“A couple more than that. Her leg is torn to shreds. She said she bled a trail from the border right to my den.”

“Got it. And there’s a loner living off our border?”

“Yes. He attacked Ashenheart over a mouse. Rainwhisker said he didn’t recognize the cat, but it was not the rogue.”

“Okay, that’s...good, I guess. Well, not good that Ashenheart’s down for the next couple days, but good that it wasn’t Rosetail.”

“Yeah…” Ravenwing said.

“I’ll go send Dustclaw and Lilyfrost to check it out at dusk. Thanks for warning me.”

“Are you sure? If he could handle both Rainwhisker and Ashenheart, he could probably handle both Dustclaw and Lilyfrost.”

“This is just to see if he’s really sticking to our border. I doubt he’d try to tempt us like that for very long,” Frozentail said.

“If you say so,” Ravenwing said. “I think he’s there to stay until we tell him off, but you’re the boss.”

“I know he could be there for a while, but I’d prefer to be optimistic,” Frozentail explained.

“It’s hard to be optimistic when he attacked a SunClan warrior over something as small as a mouse that wasn’t even outside the border,” Ravenwing warned.

“I’ll worry about showing strength,” Frozentail said. “You worry about making sure we can make good on the threat.”

“O-okay,” Ravenwing stuttered. What Frozentail had said sounded like a demand rather than a suggestion, which Ravenwing didn’t like. “I’ll have to go make sure Ashenheart hasn’t done anything mouse-brained with that bandaged-up leg, then,” Ravenwing said.

“Okay. And keep a lookout for anything indicating Rosetail,” Frozentail said.

“Got it,” Ravenwing said as she walked away. So much to worry about, she added in her thoughts.