Erin Hunter - Starlight

“You don’t like it here, do you?”

“It’s not that.” Brambleclaw paused in rasping his tongue over his injured pad. “It’s just… well, I suppose I wanted to find a camp exactly like the one we left behind, in a ravine with gorse to keep out invaders…”

He trailed off, afraid Squirrelflight would think he was being ridiculous; instead she pressed her muzzle affectionately against his. “There isn’t a cat among ThunderClan who doesn’t want our old home back. But it’s gone now. StarClan has brought us to a new place, and we’ve got to find out how to live here. Don’t you think this hollow would make a good camp? Twolegs don’t come here, and there’s no sign of Thunderpaths.”

Gazing into her shining eyes, Brambleclaw knew that he had brought with him from the forest everything that was truly important. “You’re right,” he murmured, leaning into the warmth of her fur. “I couldn’t do this without you. You know that, don’t you?”

Squirrelflight’s tongue rasped gently over his ear. “Stupid furball.”

Brambleclaw returned the affectionate lick, then froze as he heard the sound of something approaching through the gap.

“Hi, there.” It was Crowfeather’s voice, muffled by a mouthful of vole. He shouldered the long grass aside as he came up to them and dropped the fresh-kill at their paws.

“You’ve been so long, we started to think a fox might have gotten you.”

“No, we’re fine,” replied Brambleclaw.

“If a fox had gotten me ,” Squirrelflight added, “you would have heard about it, don’t worry.”

“I daresay we would,” Crowfeather meowed, pushing the vole toward them. “This is for you,” he went on. “We’ve all had ours. We hunted while we were waiting for you to come back.”

“Thanks, Crowfeather,” mewed Brambleclaw.

The WindClan warrior acknowledged his thanks with a wave of his tail.

“Well, what do you think of the new ThunderClan camp?”

Squirrelflight demanded.

“Here?” Crowfeather blinked, and turned slowly around while the ThunderClan warriors shared the vole in swift, hungry bites. “I suppose it’s okay,” he meowed at last, “if you want to be closed in like this. It would be easy to defend, but it wouldn’t do for WindClan.”

“We’re not offering it to WindClan,” Squirrelflight pointed out.

Crowfeather flicked his ears, and Brambleclaw wondered if he was worried about finding somewhere suitable for his Clan. Surely he’d wait until they explored the ridge of hills before seriously looking for a camp? Now that they’d found this hollow, amid the right sort of woods for voles and squirrels and birds, Brambleclaw was starting to believe there might actually be territories for every Clan around the lake.

Tawnypelt and Mistyfoot padded into the hollow, tasting the air as they gazed around at the sheer walls of rock.

“No foxes or badgers,” Mistyfoot remarked. “Pretty sheltered, too.”

“All the same, you’ll need to be careful,” Tawnypelt urged Brambleclaw. “If Twolegs made this place, how do you know they won’t come back?”

“Twolegs haven’t been here for seasons,” Squirrelflight replied calmly. “There’s no scent of them, and there wouldn’t be so much undergrowth if they were still cutting out the rock.”

But Tawnypelt’s words made Brambleclaw unsheathe his claws and sink them into the rain-damp ground. The memory of Twoleg monsters ripping through their old home was too recent; it was all too easy for him to imagine them coming here to cut more stone out of the hollow. And yet ThunderClan would be mousebrained not to use a place that seemed to have nearly everything they would need for a safe and sheltered camp. In the end it was Firestar who would have to make the decision.

“Are you ready?” Mistyfoot interrupted his thoughts. “It’s way past sunhigh.”

Brambleclaw nodded. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. He wasn’t sure what direction they should take to return to the lake, when his nose was filled with unfamiliar smells. Not far away from the entrance to the hollow, he noticed that the ground sloped upward.

“Let’s go that way,” he suggested. If they gained some height, they might be able to see the lake.

The rest of the patrol murmured agreement, and the cats padded side by side out of the hollow. As they pushed through the undergrowth, leaving the sheltering stone walls behind them, Squirrelflight paused and looked over her shoulder. “We’ll come back, won’t we?”

She spoke so quietly that Brambleclaw wasn’t sure if she was talking to him, but he replied anyway. “Yes,” he said, stretching forward to touch his muzzle to the tip of her ear.

“I think we will.”

“Come on,” called Crowfeather. “We want to be back before it gets dark.” He didn’t add that they still had to find somewhere for WindClan to live, but Brambleclaw knew that must be in his thoughts.

He trotted up the slope with Squirrelflight beside him, leaving the hollow to be swallowed up once more among the close-growing trees. Wet grass brushed at his fur, chilling him through, but above his head the clouds had cleared away to reveal the pale blue sky of leaf-bare. The sun shone, though there was little warmth in it.

Brambleclaw stopped and looked down at the sweep of leafless branches below. The stone hollow was totally hidden, safe and secret in the surrounding forest. Could it really become ThunderClan’s new camp? He had expected to feel more certain when he discovered somewhere his Clanmates might be able to live; he had thought it would feel like home .

Instead there was something oppressive about this place, as if the rocks themselves did not want to welcome the newcomers.

As they climbed, the trees began to thin out, and the dense undergrowth gave way to stretches of crisp fallen leaves.

After a while Brambleclaw saw glimpses of open moorland between the trunks, and soon they reached the edge of the forest, with the ridge of hills rolling away in front of them.

The lake was a gleam of silver in the valley below. Straight ahead lay a gray-green swell of moorland grass, rippled by the wind. Gorse thickets were dotted over it, and Brambleclaw could hear the sound of running water. There could be no doubt that they had found a home for WindClan.

“Hey, Crowfeather!” he called. “What do you think?”

The WindClan warrior’s eyes gleamed, but he did not reply until he had opened his jaws and carefully tasted the air.

“Rabbits!”

“Right, that’s WindClan sorted out,” Squirrelflight meowed. “Let’s get back to the others.”

Crowfeather shot her a look from narrowed eyes.

“Only joking,” Squirrelflight mewed quickly. “Come on; let’s find somewhere for your camp.”

Brambleclaw knew they needed to look for a camping place for WindClan, but already the sun was slipping down the sky, casting long shadows over the grass.

“Actually, we should get back to the others,” he began awkwardly. “I’m sorry, Crowfeather. I don’t think we’ve time to explore these hills properly. Tallstar can send another patrol tomorrow to check out a site for your camp. I think we should head straight across the ridge to the end of the lake now.”

Crowfeather’s tail-tip twitched. For a few heartbeats he stood motionless, studying the sweep of hillside before lowering his head to sniff the grass. Brambleclaw was worried that he was about to insist they explored further, but in the end he just meowed, “It’s okay. You’re right; we should be heading back.”

There was a guarded look in his eyes as he spoke, and Brambleclaw guessed he wasn’t sorry that cats from other Clans weren’t getting a chance to explore WindClan’s new territory. Pain stabbed at the young tabby’s heart.