The Welcome Committee (short story)
Bloomwhisker flinched back, blocking his throat. But it quickly dawned on him that the scenery had changed. No longer did he have Fringesong lunging at him, he was alone in a forest rank with the scent of blood. The trees were massive, littered with countless claw marks with roots the size of Bloomwhiskerās head twisting out of the ground like gnarled fangs.
He was surrounded by a cluster of sharp-edged boulders. He could feel them beneath his paws, rough and scraping even though he barely moved. Puddles of crimson-red mudāor what he hoped was mudāfilled the hollow gaps in the stone.
As everything set in, sights, and sounds, and feeling, Bloomwhisker realized where he was. It wasnāt long after that that a tune reached his ears, a sing-song whistle like birdsong, only with a strange slowness, and as if the tongue was snagging in all the wrong places. It made Bloomwhiskerās hair stand rigid along his suddenly very icy spine.
He whipped around in time to see two surprisingly small warriorsāapprentices?--leap onto one of the boulders. They stood in such a way that Bloomwhisker wasnāt entirely sure that one wasnāt the shadow of the other, movements so synchronized it made him dizzy. But one was spotted brown and black with yellow eyes, and the other was dark with a darker back and some spots, with blue eyes surrounding slitted pupils so intense that they had Bloomwhisker backing up until his back hit the wall of another large rock.
He jumped away when laughter sounded above him. He whipped around and saw a she-cat, definitely older than the two, but very similar in appearance to the black-and-white cat. Her eyes were multicoloured, one of them icy like the dark cat.
She raised her chin into the air and sniffed, shaking her head while smiling. āItās been too long since Iāve smelled such terror, and weāve only just started talking. Take it in, girls, youāll miss it when itās gone.ā
That only served to make Bloomwhiskerās heart thump harder. He turned again, to the side this time, and slipped on one of the puddles.Ā
āGraceful,ā a new voice chimed in. Bloomwhisker looked up, eyes bulging out of his thrumming skull. A brown tom with lighter forelegs stood on the highest rock, standing with his pads on the pointed stone as if it didnāt bother him at all.
āIāuhm, uhā¦ā This was a trick, a joke. Bloomwhisker knew what to expect, Nettlefrog had warned him. āWhereās Ferndoe?ā The kind she-cat. She was supposed to meet him, she meets everyone.
āSorry, spotty,ā the tom grinned. āWeāre the welcome committee today.ā
--Thereās no way Myrtle will just stop killing. But killing cats in Starclan, though heās done before, is way too complicated, and he canāt do it often. If he kills soemone in the Dark Forest, cats throw a fit.
But if he kills someone new, too new for anyone to really be bothered by it beyond disgruntled annoyance? Most cats here are murderers, after all--theyāre not going to be shocked by more murder.
--Aw, and look! He decided to bring his daughter and grandkits! He does kill with others, it was just their time today. Scab and Blight are young apprentices at this time.
--Yes, Fallen questions why sheās so evil, but she still does evil things.
--Bloomwhiskerās story is very vague, all I know is that they and another friend, Nettlefrog, were doing evil stuff at the same time. Nettlefrog died first and was visited by Ferndoe before going into Bloomwhiskerās dreams and telling him about it.Ā
Thatās why Bloomwhisker expecting Ferndoe to greet him.
--Bloom is spotted, which is why heās calledĀ āspotty.ā
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