Two Lovely Shadows in The Night

[Yoko]

How peacefully their journey had begun. Of course Snaketail simply could not leave without giving his brothers any warning. It was so rare that he was not invited to go to Gatherings (for let's be honest, who gains more inside information from the event than Snaketail) that his not attending in and of itself might be suspicious. He told them nothing vital at all, but rather warned he might be out all night and hinted that he would detail the reason why later.

Shortly after the Gathering Patrol set out, so did he and his lovely companion. They had been rather stealthy in their going, but he still retained the slight hope that their all-night outing would be the start of a scandalous rumor about them. Gathering rumors and gossip was a talent, being the center of rumors and gossip was a flattery.

The sun was not quite gone when they set out but it was certainly straddling the horizon, its auburn hairs sprawling across the darkening sky. Snaketail, in spite of his height and long fluffy hairs, managed stealth quite well. His dark tabby pelt blended nicely in the shadow and gloom of the swamp and fit even better in the striped shadows of ThunderClan territory as they edged around it to enter two-leg place.

The two-leg place was incredibly bright with its small suns on sticks along their pathways and the yellow glow of light inside their nests. It was far from quiet here. The sounds of dogs barking and rats crawling along the dark streets. The scent of strange meat wafting through the air. The odd voices of two-legs were floating out of open windows.

Snaketail, who had been stunningly quiet the entire trip, padded down one of the paths with so casual and familiar an attitude that one might think he was a street cat.

[Ki]

Nala was laying out in her garden. Faith, one of her Twoleg kits, had a group of little friends over. They were in her room, mewling and giggling to each other. Henry, the oldest, was reading on his bed. Little Sandy was already in bed. So far the day had gone well. The kits' parents hadn't fought that day. But Nala had gotten put out of the house for the day. She tipped over a bottle of the father's foul-smelling water that made him act so angry. So he tossed her outside. Not that Nala minded. She enjoyed being outside. That was...as long as her kits weren't being yowled at or swatted. But nothing had happened. Nala had spent the day stalking birds and squirrels through the gardens of her friends. When the sun had begun to lower in the sky, she'd taken a nap and used the last of the daylight to warm her fur.

Her eyes opened as she smelled something...different. Other than the usual scents anyway. She rose to her paws and stretched out each of her long, slender legs one by one. Night had fallen. The scent of flowers and familiar cats wafted through the air. Dogs barked, Twolegs chattered. But there was an underlying...sort of sour smell. One that Nala recognized but didn't at the same time. She clambered up the tree in her garden and walked across one of the branches that stretched over the fence and out above the sidewalk. Two cats she didn't know were sauntering up the way. They had no collars, and she glared down at the bell on her collar. It probably had just alerted the cats to her presence. These cats were strangers to her, and they looked like they could hold their own in a fight. Hm...were they safe?

Nala didn't know. She sat on the branch and called down in a friendly manner, "Hello there! I've never seen YOU two around before...why do you smell so weird?"

[Yoko]

Snaketail paused in his casual strut at a strange ringing sound. Probably some two-leg thing that made pointless noise. All the same, he looked around in case it was something threatening. He wouldn't want Lightningclaw getting injured due to carelessness.

He didn't have to look long because pretty soon a voice came from the sky in catspeak. He looked up and his amber eyes nearly fell out of his head.

"Specklestar?!" he whispered, awestruck.

Then, realizing what a mouse-brained thing he had said, backtracked. This cat was obviously a lot bigger than Specklestar and she was a kittypet.

"Good evening to you up there," Snaketail mewed with a smooth and sweet voice. "Well, its not much of a surprise you don't recognize us. We're not exactly from around here."

He paused a little on her smell comment. He chuckled in amusement. A little blunt there wasn't she?

"It's probably just the forest scents," he called up the tree. "Why don't you come down so we can talk? It hurts a little, looking up like this."

[. s p o r e l e t t ♪]

Lightningclaw had never been to Twolegplace before. She had no idea what to expect of it, having never seen anything like it before. As the collection of Twoleg nests was on the other side of ThunderClan territory, the two ShadowClan warriors had needed to take a rather roundabout route to reach it without trampling through Ashstar's lands, but they had gotten there eventually. And now that they were there, Lightningclaw was taking everything in with a mixture of wariness and extreme interest. She couldn't imagine how Twolegs lived here, amongst the noise and the smell. Perhaps they had very poor senses, and so it didn't bother them as much.

But what she found even more amazing was the fact that there were cats who lived with the Twolegs in this dump. Granted they weren't shining examples of the feline population, being kittypets and loners all of them, but they were still cats, and she couldn't understand how any self-loving feline could abide such a place. Well, she and Snaketail were required to gain the trust, or at least service, of at least one of these cats, so she supposed that she had better start trying to understand them.

The night was young yet, but the dark didn't bother her in any case. She was ShadowClan; darkness suited them best. Beside her, Snaketail's long-furred pelt blended into the evening shadows, hiding him from sight as they moved through the foul-smelling town. They would be looking for some cat old enough to be capable of carrying out the task without becoming distracted, but young enough for the softhearted ThunderClanners to take pity on them should they encounter them in their territory. Though she did not know where exactly to look for such a cat, Lightningclaw kept her senses open for signs of other cats as they padded through the dark.

It was the scent she noticed first, the smell of a cat who had never caught its own prey, who subsisted on soft slop and pellets and slept with Twolegs. She saw the cat shortly after, and finally heard it when the spotted she-cat spoke. But Lightningclaw was paying only half a mind to what this kittypet was saying, because she was busy noticing something else about her. Although it was obviously a different cat, she couldn't help but notice that this housepet looked strangely like Specklestar, the cat who she had never known another to resemble. It was very strange... but she put it out of her mind for now. Subtly bumping into Snaketail for his mousebrained question, she say down, a picture of ease, and stared upward with vivid green eyes.

"We won't bite," she added casually to the end of Snaketail's invitation. "We're just looking to talk. We're looking for some cat, but since we're not from around here, we'd appreciate it if you could tell us a little about the area, and the cats who live here."

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