Re: Cattail Pond
 

Antpaw glances behind himself to see if Sunflowerswirl was even paying attention to him. She hadn't said a word coming to Cattail Pond. Not that he didn't understand. Things were awkward between them, after all. But there was an unreasonable part of him that felt annoyed that she was just ignoring him.

[Antpaw rolls a 5]

No prey in sight. Antpaw grumbles and crawls deeper within the leaves and rocks, eyes sharp and alert for anything moving. He sniffs the air.

[Antpaw rolls a 13]

A faint, delicious smell. Antpaw isn't quite sure where it's coming from, but he crouches anyway. His eyes wobble desperately as he tries to find where the smell is coming from. The left? Right? On that pile of rocks?

Should he even try? No, there was nobody around right now. This wasn't time to be embarrassed and hold himself back. It would be more embarrassing if he brought back nothing. Antpaw steps forward, tensing, ready to pounce.

[Antpaw rolls a 13]

A failure. Antpaw jumps, causing a fluff of cattails to fly all over his body. His paws vaguely swish by some sort of prey, but he doesn't know what it is- he can't see. The entire rock is just a hill of fluff now. Antpaw desperately tries to get a hold on his prey, but there's a scrabbling noise, and nothing hits his paws. In the end he stops and coughs all the cattail out of his lungs.

"This place is horrible." Antpaw grouches to himself, spitting out the fluff. "So..." he coughs again, "Itchy. Why are we hunting here, of all places?"

Antpaw pads over to the edge of the water to attempt to wash some of the fluff off himself, rubbing his tail over the grass while he's at it. He makes sure to stand by a decent distance from the cattails and from Riverclan territory. He was not coughing again, no. Even while he's doing maintenance on himself, he's still looking around for signs of prey.

[Antpaw rolls a 11]

No sign of prey. Or at least, he thinks so. Antpaw's ears twitch. His eyes still felt a little itchy, so he blinks and focuses on his hearing instead of his sight. He can hear something. It sounds like... something hard and soft gliding through the rocks, through the grass. Something big, scaley, and... Antpaw's eyes widen.

[Antpaw rolls a 9]

"Snake!" He screeches, jumping away towards his clanmates, abandoning all pretense, "There's a snake!"

If Antpaw had any proper experience he would know the snake wasn't poisonous, and thus not actually all that harmful. And though it was decently sized, it wasn't enough to kill a cat. But Antpaw had heard stories about giant venomous behemoths swallowing a cat in one bite, and combined with all he heard about predators prowling about Thunderclan recently, he wasn't about to take any chances. No siree, he was going to leave this to the warriors.


Tags:
@TanghuluCat /Willowfrost
@Oliver /Sunflowerswirl

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Antpaw takes a few moments to answer. He had just been preoccupied with getting away from the snake, and he used all the energy in his body to run to Willowfrost, so he didn't have the any spare thought to respond. Right now, the only emotion he feels is relief that Willowfrost was able to handle it, along with regret that he isn't able to chase the snake off by himself. In the future, maybe. Though Antpaw regrets not being stronger and capable, he doesn't regret running away- he isn't stupid enough to play hero with venomous snakes. Yes, Antpaw still firmly believes the snake must be venomous.

Speaking of which, Willowfrost was right. Where was his mentor? As the snake backs off noticeably and Willowfrost sighs, Antpaw shrugs. "She went... somewhere." He meows briefly, still eyeing the snake, hoping it won't come closer, "I don't know, I didn't see her. Maybe she's still out doing something?"

Like lazing around on a tree stump and taking a nap, he thinks sourly, though he doesn't say it out loud. Did they have to look for her? He hoped they didn't have to look for her. She was a warrior, she was probably fine. And he would feel much more comfortable padding back separately to camp. Antpaw sniffs the air, but Sunflowerswirl's scent is nearly gone, too. Must be the wind. It really was as if she had just... disappeared.

Tags: @TanghuluCat

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Antpaw agrees with Willowfrost, though he doesn't show it. He's already starting to like the older cat and her no-nonsense way of doing things, and she seemed pretty cool. Willowfrost was right- it wasn't his fault if he couldn't catch anything. It was because Sunflowerswirl had disappeared, and they needed to report it, and so they were rushing back to camp. And because she wasn't a good mentor. It wasn't because he was a bad apprentice. The thought makes Antpaw feel a lot better.

"Thank you." He meows at the offer of training. Antpaw follows Willowfrost and trots after her back to camp.

@TanghuluCat /Willowfrost

Re: Cattail Pond
 

Shadeclaw doesn't respond. Peachpaw's words were fine with him. He continues into the rocks, searching for any patches of red within the territory.

[Shadeclaw rolls an 18]

Right next to the rocks by the water's edge, Shadeclaw sees the scattered stalks of plants with pods filled with seeds. Any red flowers have wilted and faded away in the intense heat, and because of the season, the plants are normally hard to find amongst the dense overgrowth. Only their strong, tall, green leaves stand out against the flat rocks, the petals smushed into the dirt.

Shadeclaw feels he is lucky- he's barely able to spot some fallen red petals on the ground to guess the nature of the plants they're under. He paws one of the poppy seed pods. It's nearly fully dried, ready to pop and burst.

Shadeclaw points to the pods with his tail and meows clearly to the Peachpaw, "We found the poppies. Let's bring them back."

He leans down and nips the pods off. Ignoring the ones that had already fully dried and popped, Shadeclaw takes only the pods that haven't popped yet. Two are a tad unripe, but Shadeclaw can't tell the difference, and so he carries them anyway, doing his best not to accidentally swallow any seeds. He waits for Peachpaw to do the same, mouth full with 2 unusable, unripe poppy heads and 3 useable poppy heads filled with seeds.

(He doesn't have herbal knowledge, so he failed to get a perfect harvest, lol.)

Tags:
@vellichor /Violetfreckle
@nyme /Peachpaw

Re: Cattail Pond
 

"Great, then what I want to do is give you a more real taste of implementing some of these in a fight. We're going to spar; I'll attack first, and I want you to ward me off with the techniques we've gone over." He could do a reminder to keep things clean, but decided against it.

Wolfhive dropped to a crouch and used his backlegs to kick himself forward, lunging toward her.

Re: Cattail Pond
 

[ continuing the patrol so it's done in a timely manner! @TanghuluCat @Spider. ]

It didn't take long to reach Cattail Pond, and with ideally two cats in tow Wolfhive was comfortable with fanning out. "Risingstorm, Willowfrost, stick together and look around for any disturbances. Scuffed ground, fur, blood... her scent. She left with the patrol, so she has to have go e somewhere between camp n here." They hadn't seen anything on the way here, which to Wolfhive implied she'd gone off track a little. Perhaps she started to hunt... who knew.

"I'm gonna find the snake 'n get rid of it so it doesn't try to hurt anyone else. I'll catch up with you two to look for clues." Then he was off, tracking the fading scent of Antpaw to determine the snake's last location - cat scent was a bit overpowering against the scent of the reptile.

[ For Sunflower, they can find the scent of an outsider (nonspecific) and it'll eventually lead to signs of a struggle. The trail leads toward the Twolegplace. ]