pioneers~ (tag: breezepaw)

[LEAFY]

If Spottedthorn was new to the world of apprentices and mentoring, she would have told Breezepaw to meet her at Outlook Rock in the morning. It made the most sense. They could each get up, eat at their own pace, and meet at the most visible landmark in WindClan. A younger, more naive Spottedthorn would have done just that. And a younger, more naive Spottedthorn would have waited half the day for her young apprentice to arrive. But she had raised too many kits to think that new apprentices were responsible enough to not be late to a training session. Mousedapple had slept through her entire first day as an apprentice, if Spottedthorn's memory served her. ...Although, it might have been Cloverstorm... And Spiderheart, little thing that he was, had shown up for training at the Abandoned Badger Set, when his mentor was actually waiting for him at the Briar Patch.

Spottedthorn wasn't going to let that happen to her apprentice. At dawn, she awoke almost instantly, stretching her muscles and gazing up at the sky, which was pink and still starry. She loved Newleaf and Greenleaf, when she and Mothstar could sleep under the stars together and enjoy the soft breeze and warm weather. Her dreams were always more pleasant when she slept outside, she noted as she padded over to the fresh-kill piled and picked up a rabbit. It wasn't a smaller size piece of prey, compared to the usual rabbits that ran the moors, but it would be enough to feed her and Breezepaw and to keep them full, or at least not hungry, until they returned to camp.

With the prey's pelt between her teeth, she walked softly over to the apprentice den. Unsure if Breezepaw preferred to sleep under the stars, like many of the WindClanners, or within the shelter of the den, she looked around, searching for her apprentice. When she finally spotted her, she whispered, "Breezepaw! Breezepaw, wake up!"

She prodded the sleepy she-cat gently with her nose, and nudged the prey toward her. "I've brought breakfast. Eat quickly. We should leave for training before the sun's fully up." Spottedthorn dug into the rabbit herself, leaving room for Breezepaw to join her. She ate until she had had her full, and then backed off, cleaning her whiskers of all the particles that had gotten on her face. After a pause, she glanced at the sky and realized how far the sun had risen in the short time she had been awake. If they didn't leave now, the whole day might as well be thrown to the crows.

"Ready or not, it's time to go," Spottedthorn said in her mom voice, her tail twitching in some emotion that was not quite impatience and not quite anticipation. She wasn't the kind of cat who sat quietly around for a six moon old apprentice to get her bearings, so she didn't bother to check and see if Breezepaw was awake enough or finished eating. She could wake up and let her food settle on the walk to Outlook Rock, Spottedthorn decided as she padded toward the entrance of camp, assuming Breezepaw would follow her. She slipped agilely through the entrance of camp and breathed a sigh of relief as her paws found the open ground. Here they were, on their way to Outlook Rock, on their way to their first training session.

OOC: Sorry. My posts won't usually be this long and I won't usually just roll through Breezepaw's actions like this. /// I just didn't feel like dawdling around camp, so I wanted to get her up and on her way to the rock.

[Moli]

Breezepaw could see the rabbit in front of her. She was mere fox lengths away, standing in a casual crouch, ready to sprint. Her long legs could send her flying across the distance in less time than it would take for the rabbit to start hopping. She fixed her yellow eyes onto the brown pelt of her prey, and suddenly --

The young she-cat felt a nose prodding her side, and the yellow eyes blinked open. Her senses, now awake in the real world, caught the scent of rabbit, and her mentor, Spottedthorn. She heard her telling her to wake up and eat quickly, and then they would go out and train. It took a few seconds for this sentence to process, and then Breezepaw was up, scrambling eagerly to her paws from her resting place in the open. She loved sleeping outside and feeling the wind ruffle her fur, but the time for sleep was over. She was on her way to being a warrior! The thought drove all of her drowsiness away, the energy of excitement coursing through her pelt. She took a few bites of rabbit, not wanting to miss breakfast. She had a lot she wanted to say, but she wanted to make sure she got to eat before they left. Her first training session! She couldn't possibly be more excited. Her tail and whiskers twiched excitedly, and she could hardly keep her paws still long enough to eat.

She didn't need much to eat - and was too excited to fill herself entirely - and was soon ready to go. She sat up, washing away the last bits of food along her face with her tongue and swiping a paw across her face. She saw Spottedthorn rise and start to walk toward the exit.

Ready or not? Breezepaw thought as she bounded after Spottedthorn, considering her words. She had never been more ready in her whole life!

"Where are we going, Spottedthorn? Are we going to learn how to hunt? Or maybe how to fight? Are we going to see the territory? I've seen some of it, but I want to see everything now! Can we see everything?" The black and white she-cat rattled off her questions, bounding alongside her mentor as the reached the open moors outside of camp. Her eyes glowed and her mew was filled with barely contained excitment. She had to listen to her mentor and be a good apprentice, she knew that, but the moment she had been looking forward to for her whole life was finally here!



Notes: No problem! Works for me. :3

[LEAFY]

"Watch out for rabbit holes!" she warned as they stepped onto the open moors. It was no use telling an apprentice to ask one question at a time, Spottedthorn thought, shaking her head in an amused way. Everything was too new and too exciting. It had been so long since she had been Spottedpaw, but she remembered it vividly. The first moons of training were filled with more pride than pain and more wonder than worry. The scents were new, the sights were new, the freedom was new. It warmed her heart to see Breezepaw's enthusiasm. She just hoped she could channel it into something productive. This was wartime, and training an apprentice these days was no casual task. Breezepaw could be on the front lines in a moment's notice.

She turned the apprentice's questions over in her head as she jogged along and answered them one by one. "I'm taking you to Outlook Rock. You can see it there on the horizon." She pointed with her skinny tail. The large boulder was hard not to see against the flatlands around it. "When you climb to the top, you can see all of WindClan. You'll see everything up close eventually, but this way, you'll have some perspective." Her legs kept churning, but she kept her strides short so Breezepaw's little legs could keep up. THe youngster might have bounds more energy than Spottedthorn, but Spottedthorn's lean legs had years of WindClan running behind them.

"Then I'll teach you some fighting basics. These are dangerous times. RiverClan and ShadowClan could attack at any minute." Not to mention ThunderClan who's supposed to be our allies, and those nasty rogues. Yes, it would be best for Breezepaw to learn self-defence on her first day out. The warriors and the older apprentices could worry about hunting for now. "If you still have energy after fighting," which Spottedthorn didn't anticipate, "then maybe we can try to catch a rabbit on our way back to camp." A little bit of everything to please the apprentice, Spottedthorn thought happily. And not focusing on any one thing for too long of a time. It was a good strategy for the first day, in her opinion. It balanced Breezepaw's fleeting attention span and exuberant enthusiasm. Once she had settled down into the groove of being an apprentice, Spottedthorn would increase the length and intensity of the training sessions. But the time for focus was later. Now was the time for discovery.

She slowed as they reached the base of the huge boulder. It was several times larger and higher than Tall Rock back at camp. It towered over all of the moors, the only real significant landmark. She turned back to look at Breezepaw with a daring glint in her eyes. "Are you ready to climb?"

[Moli]

Breezepaw glanced down once at her warning, then looked back up, orange eyes taking in everything with delight. Normally, she would have been annoyed at the warning - she was an apprentice now, not a kit! - but she was too excited to really care. She felt like she was floating across the moor, though this was the fastest she had gone before. (Most of the warriors in camp liked to tell her to slow down when she had tried to have races with her siblings. It wasn't her fault her legs were long and she was faster than her littermates!)

Outlook Rock! That sounded good. She could see everything from there, even ShadowClan invaders! At least, that was what she had thought about it. She could see it ahead, the only landmark on the otherwise featureless moor. It looked so big. She wondered if she could climb it. She decided that she was going to climb it, and try to beat Spottedthorn, too. Wouldn't her mentor be impressed!

She was excited by the rest of her mentor's plans for the day. Battle training and hunting! She couldn't imagine being tired at the end of the day, not when there was so much to look forward to! She bounced once before dashing forward again, eagerly skidding to a halt in front of the rock. She looked up at the hulking mass in the midst of the moorland. It was much bigger up close than it was from a distance. She could hardly see the top. All the more reason to climb!

"Yep! Race you!" Breezepaw jumped up, catching herself on the nearest ledge and looked around for her next opening. She was a little winded, but she wanted to put forth her best effort. She wanted her mentor to be impressed, and she was going to beat that challenge!

[LEAFY]

Spottedthorn's eyes danced in amusement as Breezepaw took off, making the climb a race. She was amazed at the boundless energy of apprentices and slightly chagrined that her own age showed in the slower start she got as she scrambled after little Breezepaw. She was in great shape, well-fed and muscled, but she was also a senior warrior. She didn't like to think that this time next Newleaf, she might be thinking about retiring to the elder's den.

The disturbing thought prompted her to move more quickly up the rock, although she wasn't thoughtless enough to forget to warn Breezepaw. "Careful. Lose your pawhold here, and it's a tough slide to the bottom." WindClan cats had to be sure footed. Rabbit holes and pesky rocks were only a few of the problems they faced just by moving around their territory. She let Breezepaw beat her to the top, or at least she told herself so. She wanted to stay behind the apprentice in case she should accidentally lose her balance.

When she reached the top of the rock, she noted in dismay that a few small pebbles cascaded down steep slope. Her muscles were warm from the run and the climb, and she thought it was a pity that they couldn't practice fighting moves up here right now, since they were already ready to go. But that kind of practice at the top of the rock could easily kill a cat. Like the Gorge at the RiverClan border, everyone needed to be careful at the top of Outlook Rock. It was wide enough for several cats, but straying too close to the edge could be deadly.

Still, you couldn't beat the view.

From the top of the rock, Spottedthorn could see everything. The grassy plains that made up the moors, the thicket walls that marked WindClan's camp, the mountains in the distance were easy to spot and, if she looked carefully, she could see the place where the ground opened up in front of them which was where the Moonstone was found.

"This is WindClan, Breezepaw," Spottedthorn said proudly. She'd let the little she-cat take it all in at once before attempting to break it down and point out all the important places and showing her exactly what was WindClan and what was beyond WindClan's borders. But for now all Spottedthorn could do was stare, sweeping here eyes across the plains. She had seen the view more times than she could remember, but it was always stunning. She sighed. "Isn't it breathtaking?"

OOC: It must be said...

"Look, Breezepaw. Everything the light touches. That is our territory."
"Everything the light touches... But what about that dark place over there?"
"That's ShadowClan, Breezepaw. You must never go there."

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[Moli]

Made it!

Breezepaw's triumphant thought was all she could manage as she finally found her footing at the top of Outlook Rock. She was breathing more heavily now, but her eyes still glowed with energy and enthusiasm. She had beaten her mentor! No doubt Spottedthorn would be impressed with that. At least, Breezepaw hoped so.

As she found her place at the top of the rock, she started looking around. She knew WindClan had a lot of territory, but she never realized just how big it all was! It seemed like it never ended, depending on which way you looked. She could see dark forests lining the open moors, and notches in the earth that showed bends and dips in the moorland; a huge, dark rock stood in the distance behind them. Mothermouth? She wondered. She had heard kit tales about the Mothermouth and the Moonstone within, and how the medicine cats journeyed to talk to StarClan. I'll go there sometime, for my training. She remembered. The thought pleased her greatly.

Finding that she had her breath back, she nodded happily. "It's amazing." She said, in a voice as calm as she ever was. She was serious. WindClan was the best. This view proved that, in her mind. She was proud to be an apprentice in this Clan.

[LEAFY]

Where to begin? There was so much of WindClan that it was hard to know where exactly to start. She didn't want to overwhelm Breezepaw. Although, Spottedthorn seriously doubted that her plucky little apprentice could ever be overwhelmed. But maybe it would be less disorienting to start off with the one place all WindClan cats, even kits, knew: camp.

"See those briar walls over there?" She nodded in the proper direction. They weren't easy to spot, even from up here, because the moors had so many patches of briar and the walls of the camp weren't high enough to be seen from afar. Still, the neat walls of briar, made by WindClan's own paws, looked strikingly different from the natural thickets. "That's our camp," Spottedthorn explained. "I think you already know it well enough, so I won't spend time telling you about it. But when you leave camp... That's when things get interesting. There's so many different places you can go."

"If you leave the entrance of camp and head to the right..." She traced the path with her eyes. "You'll run into the abandoned badger sett. I can't see the actually opening from here, but you'll notice where all the dirt is kicked up over there..." Thousands of curious apprentices and wary warriors had trodden a dirt path around the badger's nest. It could be a dangerous place, but it was often necessary for the WindClanners to check on it. "It reeks of stale badger scent, so it's the easiest place to go to learn the scent of a badger." She hesitated and gave her apprentice a knowing look. "Of course, most cats don't take it upon themselves to learn what a badger smells like the up-close and personal way, like you did." The story could be amusing, now that it was over, but Spottedthorn remembered the day vividly. The entire clan had been terrified when they discovered the kits had gone missing, and when Mousefoot had come running back with poor Mintkit's bloody body, she had thought the worst. As a mother, she could understand what intense fear their poor mother had felt that day. She would rather die than see one of her own kits bleeding like that.

"From time to time, warriors go out there and check that the set's still abandoned, but you never know." She eyed Breezepaw. "So don't do anything stupid, okay?"

[Moli]

Breezepaw was still admiring the view when Spottedthorn started. It took some effort, but she wrenched her attention back to her mentor, keeping a close eye on where she pointed. She nodded when she pointed out the camp - it looked so far away now! - and followed her gaze as she talked about the badger set. She flicked her tail with some embarrassment at the memory of her adventure outside of camp. They hadn't meant to go there, it had just kind of happened. Really, Breezepaw remembered wanting to go and catch her own rabbit, but they had stumbled upon the badger set first, and then...

"I won't." She promised her mentor. No more stupid excursions. Unless there was something fun out there! But now that she was an apprentice, she could go with them, so she didn't have to go out on her own. The warriors would take her along with her now. She hated being left behind, so she hoped that wouldn't happen when she became an apprentice. "I get to go with the warriors now, right? So nothing stupid from me!" She mewed excitedly.