“Her large paws step through the woods with ease, trampling over the rocks as her body soars through the air. Climbing up an ancient redwood tree, she hops from limb to limb, until she is interrupted by a sound. A sound off in the distance, a cry, a cry from the wild drawing her near. As she bounds towards it, stamping trees with her sparkling paws, the goddess she-cat startles with surprise.

  “ ‘Sister!’ The voice cries, desperate in it’s ill. The goddess lands on the forest floor, coming to her brother’s aid, when she finds it to be a trick-

  “It wasn’t her brother at all, but a beast with massive claws and teeth! One which stomped through the grasslands and raised its head high. ‘Sister!’ It cries, snarling and baring its teeth. The goddess clamps her mouth shut, tucks her tail and begins sprinting through the trees once more, but the beast is onto her. There’s no time to plan, no time to climb, as the beast thrusts its claws upon her, scarring the flesh on her back. She tumbles down an embankment from the swipe to her hind, and rolls onto her belly as she falls into the water with a deafening Splash!

  “The creature is upon her, crawling down the embankment, but the goddess is smarter. With her godly powers, she closes her eyes tight and curls into a small ball, tail and ears flattening against her head to become fins and gills alike. As soon as the beast reaches her, she’s already halfway down the embankment, leaving him confused and irate, thrashing his claws into the mud and kicking up the soil.

  “With a sly laugh, the goddess returns to form, kicking off the silt from her paws, now out of sight, out of mind. As she begins to trot back towards home, she thinks of the voice she heard, and now, she knows she must be cautious because not everything is exactly as it seems…

  “Now, children!” Plumpaws stamps her front paws into the floor of their nest, covered in moss and soft feathers to keep the kits from their often too-rough play-fighting injuries. “What do we think the moral of that story is?”

  Silk and Rose think for a moment, the kits mulling over their answers. “Not to fight big monsters?” Rose asks, cocking her head to the side,

  “Not to leave the fort?” Silk returns, looking up to her mother.

  Plumpaws snorts, leaning her head down on her paws, kicking her hind legs to the side, tail flicking slightly. “No, not quite. Try again.”

  “That monsters can sound like we can?” Silk’s eyebrows furrow with worry.

  “Oh, I got it! Not to trust everything we see!” Rose springs up from her lying position, tail spiked up like a stick.

  “There we go! But, there’s another one. Battles aren’t always won with brute force. Sometimes, they’re won with wit and skill.” Plumpaws smiles.

  “Nuh-uh! She won 'cause she has superpowers!” Rose shoots back, but her mother fluffs the hair on her head and ignores her comment, turning her attention to a new face entering the nursery. Plumpaws widens her maw in a smile at his presence, but as soon as the brown tom sits beside her with a huff, she knows she shouldn’t be smiling.

  “Papa!” The kittens chime in unison, sitting up to their fullest heights. Their father was the herbalist after all, and a role as such requires respect. Silk dips her head down first, nudging her sister to follow suit.

  “I…don’t bring good news.” Their father admits. Asterfoot, despite his usual anxiety, seems much more sombre than on edge. “Rations are getting stricter, but I convinced Bayoudawn to let me give my rations to you and the kits and swap with yours.” His ears droop over her head as he leans on her shoulder, Plumpaws staring down at the floor in thought.

  “We can make it. As long as there’s any food, we can make it. Right, Rose?” The molly looks down at their kits, both a bit confused.

  “Does this mean we won’t get to eat as much?” Silk asks, though she already knows the answer. With her lithe body, she’s been keeping up with her sister in terms of feedings, and though Rose doesn’t seem as worried, she can still sense her sister’s panic.

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  “Maybe this should have been an adult conversation.” Plumpaws retorts, but Asterfoot stands back up, his tail swishing in mild disagreement.

  “The kits have a right to know. And, anyway, it’s my rations getting affected. You three will keep your portions.” He places his nose on the kit’s heads, before turning to his mate and lapping her cheek with his tongue. “I love you all. Now, I’ve got to get back to Barktooth, his face is going to blister if I don’t tend to his new wounds. I just wanted you to hear it from me and not someone else.”

  Plumpaws nods, but her cheerful attitude is gone. She lies her head back down on her paws, curling her tail around her hind legs. “C’mon, kits, let’s lie down for a nap, shall we?”

  The kittens seem a tad confused but follow anyway, curling up by their mother’s side. Silk hops over her mother’s belly and wiggles her ears at her father in a polite goodbye.

  Heavy rains have been hitting the coast recently, and in preparing for snow, the dens have been fortified with heavy braiding to keep them from collapsing. The sleet comes down heavy as Asterfoot makes his way across the sandy fort to his own den, his sanctuary, his true home. Pressing away the vines and leaves with his paw, the tom startles at the sight of more bodies in his den than he wanted.

  “-And who landed the blow?” Commander Bayoudawn sits in the herbalist’s den, sitting beside Asterfoot’s patient, Barktooth, whose face is red hot with blood.

  “I told you, it was Mockingsight! I’m not going to say it again.” The gray tom snarls though crinkling his nose makes the facial wound worse. “I saw him up close, it was him and that white cat, Swiftmist.”

  “What’s going on here?” Asterfoot steps forward, his paws trembling slightly.

  “Tell Commander Bayoudawn to listen to me!” The gray tom snaps, wincing from the pain in his side, a bruise that would surely form under his fur. “I know what I saw.”

  “Back up, what did you see?”

  “I saw Commander Mockingsight on a patrol around the Hideaway, he was threatening one of the Meadow Colony proxies and their mentor. I don’t know what else to tell you, he’s not even supposed to be on patrol this time of year!” Barktooth scoffs, turning to face the wall with his ears drawn back. “If he’s willing to go on patrol and fight children, he’s willing to attack our borders too.”

  “Nonsense, you must have mistook him for another cat. Maybe Blazesnout?” Bayoudawn chimes in, eyes drifting to the exit of the den where his own colony roamed. “Maybe one of ours.”

  “Why would an herbalist be attacking his own colony’s proxies!?” Barktooth shudders. “Are you trying to defend us or him?”

  “I’m not trying to protect anybody yet,” Bayoudawn admitted, which only made Barktooth whip around in a rage.

  “You said it! You’re not even on your own colony’s side!”

  “Calm down, calm down!” Asterfoot invades the two, staggering in between them. “Wait, how did you get the scar on your face then?” His paws reach out to touch it, but the officer recoils.

  “His mentor was down and nobody else was helping the proxy, so I jumped in and told him off. Swiftmist got me, but Mockingsight was a good few meters behind him.” The officer simmers down, twitching his stomach from the pain in his side, but he hasn’t complained yet.

  “And that’s not the first thing you said?” Bayoudawn interrupts and Asterfoot has to shoot him a disinterested glance for him to realize how much of a brat he was being.

  Asterfoot prances over to his medical wall, a long, tall clay structure that had been hardened in the sun before the ceiling of the den was curated with woven stalk. The wall is covered in little divots that hold small gatherings of herbs, some dried in the sun in woven pouches, and others fresh or even carried in clay/mud mixed water bowls.

  He returns to the officer with a bitter-smelling poultice, ingredients dried and chewed into a paste. “Tumeric and willow should do nicely.” He smiles, though Barktooth doesn’t return the favour. He scarfs down his poultice, knowing that the first bite would be horrible, and manages to finish it without vomiting.

  Asterfoot then soaks a piece of moss in clean water, squeezing it between his teeth as he gently presses it against the wound, letting the juices flow out and cleanse the dirt and bacteria from his skin. Barktooth winces once more, but eventually settles down and closes his eyes softly.