His white fur was never too messy in the mornings, but it sure looked odd to see lone blades of fur randomly ruffled up. Frostpaw began grooming himself, seeing that Doepaw was doing the same. The white apprentice preferred doing it himself rather than sharing tongues near the fresh-kill pile. While he was loyal to the clan of shadows and would no doubt give his life for it should there be no other choice, he didn't actually trust his clanmates, didn't want them touching him, not even in such a trivial manner. It wasn't their fault. He supposed that if he hated physical contact, then it was all Stormgorse's fault. And he said 'if' because he didn't dislike contact, really. It just made him slightly tense and wary.
The tom didn't notice a grey-brown paw sliding across the floor of the apprentices' den until it struck his forelegs. In a sudden movement, one of his paws were knocked to the side and the other tensed before following suit. Frostpaw shifted his weight to his back legs in a desperate attempt to retain his balance and his forelegs pawed at the air. For a second, he resembled a horse rearing up, although he wouldn't have known that. Setting all four paws back onto the floor, the apprentice turned to Doepaw in bemusement. The molly had a soft smile on her maw and she was... laughing.
Against his will, a smirk slithered onto Frostpaw's maw, which was more or less the closest he ever got to a true smile. He supposed that this was amusing. It had been... fun.
"Should I be prepared to avoid being attacked in my own nest every day from now on?" the apprentice asked wryly. He had to admit, he wouldn't mind if the answer turned out to be 'yes'. It was frowned upon to randomly attack a clanmate, and no cat dared to attack the thunderborn apprentice, anyway. All his battle experience from ShadowClan onwards came from participating in raids, which seemed to happen surprisingly often. This was different. A reminder to stay alert at all times, maybe.
Had it been any other cat to swipe at him, they likely would've received a glare, perhaps a cuff back for their insolence. It wasn't unlikely; Frostpaw could think of a certain kit who deserved such punishment. Trying to teach the thing about respect was going fairly well. Slowly and he very much wanted to knock some sense into the kit and get over it, but otherwise well. Anyhow, Frostpaw's reaction to Doepaw was different and even for the stars, he couldn't figure out why. Doepaw was his friend. He had met the molly just a day ago, but was already closer to her than he was to more than four-fifths of his clanmates. He enjoyed spending time with her, or he believed so. And... what? The trail ended there; he still didn't understand the she-cat.
Dismissing those thoughts, Frostpaw noticed something else. When he had woken earlier, he hadn't been facing at the dark corner of the apprentices' den like usual. Somehow, he had turned in his sleep, waking with his nose pointing in the direction of the den entrance. That had never happened before, not in all his time of living with the clan of shadows. It probably didn't mean anything, but it might. And odd things had happened yesterday night. No, he shouldn't be wondering about things like that. If it happened today, too, though... then perhaps it was a sign. Mentally, Frostpaw scoffed. He sounded like a medicine cat trying to decipher an omen of some sort.
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Arie