The wildcat didn't look like she wanted to kill me as we stood, facing each other with wide eyes in the midst of the trees. Her eyes were rather fascinating—one was blue, but the other was blue with a little splotch of green in the center. Her pelt was well-groomed, not like the mangy wildcats I had always imagined. But her claws were unsheathed and sunk into the forest floor, posture stiff and teeth slightly bared.

And in a heartbeat, she realized that I definitely couldn't harm her. A smile twinkled in her eyes as she meowed, "Hello there. Why is a kittypet like you out here in the forest?"

"A k—kittypet?" I stammered, heat flushing my cheeks. 

"A cat who lives with the Twolegs," she explained, ears twitching. The ginger tabby crouched lower to the ground so that her eyes met with mine. "I can smell it on you, though it's not too strong... you also smell strongly of plants and flowers. Did you travel through a garden on the way here? I don't think it rained, so the scents weren't washed off you... how long has it been since you were with your Twolegs?"

"I'm not a kittypet," I meowed, trying to pick which questions to answer. If she knows I live in the garden, she'll take me back there! "B—but my parents died and I have nowhere to go." 

The she-cat gave a slow nod, eyes flashing with pity. "I'm very sorry about your parents. I'm Burnetflash. What's your name?"

Burnetflash is a weird name. "I'm Fleeter." I sniffed slightly, hoping that I appeared sad enough about my parents "death". "Are you a Clancat?"

"Yes, I'm the medicine cat of RuneClan," she explained, her whiskers twitching. "That means I use herbs and plants to make cats better when they're sick, or just heal their wounds. I also talk to StarClan as a part of my job. StarClan is where Clan cats go when they die."

Father told me about StarClan! Doing my best to keep up my grief, I met her odds eyes, curiosity sparkling. But before I could think of something to say, Burnetflash had gotten up and picked me up by my scruff. The world disappeared from beneath my paws.

"I'm going to take you back to camp. We can't have young kits running around, can we?" A mrrow was evident in her tone, though it was muffled through his scruff. "Now, you seem very cold, and that scratch on your paw could use a bit of marigold." She started through the trees, padding through a small clearing. A fern brushed against my nose, and I giggled.

Burnetflash crouched, then leaped up over a small pile of rocks. Her paws almost stumbled at the top, but the she-cat quickly regained her balance. I could barely feel it, anyways. I was used to being carried around.

"We're almost there." Her words were quiet, almost as if they were only meant for her own ears. She sped up a bit, and my vision began to dance with black spots. I'm dizzy! But I didn't dare to say anything to the she-cat. The Clan cat might take me back to the garden if I didn't listen. 

The garden.

My family, where Bonny and Mother and Father were. I was leaving them behind.

I shut my eyes tight as the meows of other cats became audible. Dizziness was swelling up in my stomach, pressing up on my throat and choking away any hopes of meowing for Burnetflash to slow down. I could hear her saying my name, and I could hear the faint meows of other cats, but as my paws touched the floor, my body slumping after them. 

I realized, after my head had started to throb, that I had been holding my breath. So I sucked in a lungful of air, and my symptoms instantly began to fade away. Strange, I thought to myself, still breathing slowly and catching back to speed. It's like the... stress of realizing I'm going to be away from my family made me forget how to breathe! 

I opened my eyes and shakily stood up. Burnetflash was standing next to me, and a small crowd of cats had gathered around them. I realized with a shocking blow that they were all wildcats. What if they're all here to kill me! What if this is a trap! My heart started thumping against my chest, but I tried to fight my instincts. Surely they wouldn't hurt me. 

"Are you alright?" asked Burnetflash. "You look a little... woozy." She brushed her tail over my shoulders, as if that would brush away my hurting.

"I'm fine," I meowed quietly, though it was evident I wasn't. My ears laid flat against my skull. My fur was ruffled, raised along my spine. My eyes were bigger than the widest moons, and my heart was still threatening to beat out of my chest.

RuneClan was big. They weren't just one family like I had imagined—there were white cats and brown cats, like me, and black cats and ginger cats, like Burnetflash. And they didn't seem mean, the more I stared at them. They looked... curious.

So I was going to answer their questions.

"My name is Fleeter," I meowed, and that was the truth. "My parents are dead." 

And the lies began."

I could see their faces fold with pity as I continued. "My parents are dead, and I ran away. I had no where to go. So I just kind of wandered. The Twol—" I could see their faces change, flashing with surprise and slight disgust. I could see it—they didn't like Twolegs. "The Twolegs tried to catch me," I corrected myself, and the disgust melted away. "But I got away before they could take me. And I came here. I miss my parents, I guess, but they weren't the nicest to me..."

There were sympathetic glances, but the curiosity still lingered.

They wanted to know what I was going to do. Would I stay? I wanted to. The lures of the wild outweighed the safety of my family by far, if I had to admit it. 

"Well," Burnetflash meowed before another cat could get a word in. Her eye with the blue splotch closed, then opened. She did the same in her normal green eye. "I'm going to take him into the medicine cat den and fix up his scrapes while... while you warriors can make a decision."

Warriors.

The word was already enthralling to me.

-

Burnetflash stuck the end of a flower in her mouth, chewing on the stem. "This is marigold," she explained, "It'll stop any infection from forming, and slow down the bleeding too. I'd give you some dock if we weren't already low on it." The medicine cat picked up a leaf that I recognized as from an oak. "This'll prevent any infection too," she mewed, also chewing up this one. 

With a shrug, she leaned down and spat a bit of the yellow stuff on her paw. I watched, eyes wide, as she spread some of it onto my flank, where a few thorns had cut into my side. It stung a bit, but I held my tongue. "Thank you," I meowed quietly.

"No problem. Healing is my job, even if it's not just for RuneClan," Burnetflash responded. "If you aren't allowed to stay..." She seemed to forget to finish her sentence, busying off into the back of the den. She emerged carrying a few more plants. "Ragweed, and a touch of honey—to keep your energy levels up." She started creating another concoction, and I watched with wide eyes as she spat some of the chewed plant onto a leaf, mixing it with a thick golden liquid. 

"You have so many plants back there!" I exclaimed, craning my head to glimpse all the herbs. How can she even remember them all? 

Burnetflash laughed, pushing the leaf toward me. "Eat this." I obeyed. "I guess I do, though I don't really think about it. I spend most of my time collecting herbs, hunting with the warriors sometimes, or just organizing in here." She shrugged. "Or healing. It's not an enthralling life, but it's enough for me."

"Sounds hard." The ragweed was really bitter, but the sweetness of the honey balanced it all out.

The medicine cat sighed slightly, her whiskers twitching as she stood. "I suppose we should get going out into the camp," she mewed. "Well, you can wait here... I'll see if the warriors have made a choice."

Warriors.

There was that word again. My ears twitched, and my tailtip straightened behind me. I shouldn't follow her, I told myself, but I couldn't help as I padded out into the clearing. I stayed shrouded in the ferns, though, watching. Some cat might notice me, but I hoped they wouldn't care. She hadn't exactly told me to stay there, right?

Burnetflash was speaking. "There's no harm in letting him stay. He has an interest in herbs, and I do need an apprentic—"

A large golden tabby interrupted her, "We don't need any rogue kits joining our Clan," he spat. "Wrenthroat's expecting kits—the nursery'll be full already." He gestured toward a small black she-cat, whose belly was swollen. Rogue? I'm not a rogue!

"He's old enough to start off as an apprentice," commented a brown tabby, tail twitching. "I think we should let him stay. Doesn't hurt to add a little bit of new blood in the Clan, does it?" 

Wrenthroat, the queen, nodded in agreement. "Swallownose is right. It surely can't be bad to have just one more apprentice here in RuneClan."

The golden tabby sniffed, but the rest of the cats had seemed to have reached an agreement. My heart leaped into my throat as Burnetflash stood up. Is she going to go get me now? Oh no! Before she could even take a few steps toward the medicine cat den, I closed my eyes for a few heartbeats, then burst out of the ferns as if I had just come out of the den. 

"Hi! I'm sorry for not staying, but I really wanted to know. Do—do I get to stay?" I meowed, adding a bit of shakiness to my tone. Even the golden tabby looked a bit doubtful. Wrenthroat looked like she wanted to snuggle me into her nest, and Swallownose, the brown tom, seemed satisfied. He leaned back. 

All the cats turn to one—a brown tabby who looked a bit like Swallownose, but with broader shoulders and hazel eyes.

"I guess we have a new RuneClan apprentice," the tom meowed, padding toward me. "I'm Rookstar, leader of RuneClan, by the way. Do.. I swear that I recognize you. I saw a loner—rogue, whatever you call it—just like you, Fleeter."

Father. My tongue was dry as I tried to speak. "I... I wonder if you knew my parents," I managed to squeak out.

By Rio. ⛈