After a fitful night of sleep, Slatepaw woke up and was assigned to a morning hunting patrol. Luckily, his best friend Finchpaw was also assigned to the same patrol.

Finchpaw was a shy and quiet she-cat who went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the Clan, and she seemed to be perfectly fine with it. Whenever he would speak to her, he'd get strange looks from the other members of NettleClan, as if they couldn't see the she-cat he was talking to. She never talked to anyone else, and no one tried to initiate a conversation with her.

The patrol set out, and Slatepaw jogged to the side of his friend. He slowed down once he caught up to her. "Hey," he meowed with a quick glance at her.

"Hey," she replied without much emotion, still looking in front of her. The others walked around Slatepaw and Finchpaw, occasionally pushing between them as if they weren't even there. No one else wanted to talk to her, and would sometimes interrupt them by attempting to talk to Slatepaw.

Slatepaw took a look around at the forest, ears pricked for any sounds of prey. The forest looked beautiful, with sunlight streaming through thousands and thousands of multicolored leaves, creating a kaleidoscope of colors on the ground. He heard some noises of potential prey to his left and made a mental note of the location.

The group suddenly split when all the cats leaped into different directions, all chasing prey of their own. Finchpaw didn't go anywhere though, she simply stood in the spot where everyone split. Slatepaw didn't think anything about it; instead, he followed a scent trail of what he had narrowed down to either a squirrel or a vole.

He pushed through a bush and dropped into a hunting crouch. There, just in front of him, about four tail lengths away was a squirrel washing its tail. Slatepaw slowly pulled himself forward, his pawsteps light and slow to ensure that the small animal didn't see or hear him.

Once close enough, he leaped and landed square on the squirrel, pressing his front paws into its spine to paralyze it. With a quick bit to the neck, he killed it, then buried the squirrel to find dig up later.

***

Sometime afterwards, the patrol regrouped with their freshly caught prey. Slatepaw had caught a squirrel and a crow that seemed to have a broken wing, and Finchpaw caught... nothing. The small she-cat was still sitting in the same spot she had been, and there was no prey around her. Slatepaw frowned but ultimately ignored it.

The patrol began walking back to camp, and Slatepaw suddenly remembered: the trees! The trees he had marked the day before! In the patrol, two rebellion members walked beside him; Sunbelly and Firejaw. The trip into the forest they didn't seem to notice the marks, but Slatepaw was still hopeful that on the way back they'd maybe notice.

Passing the first marked tree, Slatepaw held his breath.

No one noticed.

Tree after marked tree, neither Sunbelly or Firejaw noticed anything out of the ordinary. Slatepaw tried to stay hopeful that maybe they just weren't saying anything about it, but something in the back of his mind wanted to give up.

The patrol finally made it back to camp, and Slatepaw dropped his fresh-kill in the pile before grabbing some prey for his own. He picked out a mouse and then found a place to sit. He heard other groups of cats idly talking about things like Ashbranch cheating and whether the rumor was true or not, or worrying that they'd have enough prey to make it through the coming leaf-bare.

His attention was suddenly drawn back to the stack of fresh kill. Slatepaw quietly watched as Finchpaw approached the pile, her usual shy mannerisms showing through. Just as she went to pick up a fat brown vole, a gray cat pushed her out of the way and picked it up. Finchpaw frowned. "Excuse me," she meowed quietly. "I-I was going to get that,"

The gray cat looked down at her with sharp green eyes, and it looked like the gray tom was looking through her... like he didn't really see her. He stared around and at her with a blank expression before turning a walking away with Finchpaw's vole.

Finchpaw slumped slightly and looked visibly and understandably upset, and stalked over to Slatepaw with her tail dragging on the ground behind her. She sat next to him with a sigh, laying her head across her paws. "It's like I don't even exist," she muttered quietly in a sad tone. Slatepaw's heart sank at her words, and he pushed his mouse over to her. She gave him a weak smile before taking a bite.

Slatepaw stared at the ground before suddenly standing, intending to speak to the gray tom who had taken Finchpaw's vole. He usually wasn't very bold, but he wanted to know what was going on. He stepped around the kill pile and crossed camp to where the tom had laid with another cat, the vole laying in front of him.

Slatepaw stopped in front of the tom, who he recognized as Embershade. Embershade stopped talking to the cat next to him and looked up at Slatepaw with a slight tilt of the head. Slatepaw looked down at the gray cat in front of him and meowed, "You took her vole."

Embershade frowned and shook his head in slightly annoyed confusion. "Whose vole?"

"Finchpaw's. She was about to grab it and you pushed her out of the way."

Now Embershade looked even more confused. "Finchpaw? I don't know a- oh. Oh, yeah, Finchpaw..." he meowed in a dreamy voice, as if he recognized Finchpaw's name, but didn't actually know her. Slatepaw frowned and left Embershade to his stolen vole, and looked across camp to where his friend was still sitting, her tail wrapped tightly around her.

It is like she doesn't exist.

~Remlin
~edited by churro