#feather dustlight

The cat nodded absently, mulling over her offer, but ultimately agreeing. "Okay. Around our sanctuary, we had humans dressed in white carrying boards with other sleeping humans on them. They brought them to large square, noisy cars and drove away. I don't think this is linked to the plague that infected most animals, but we should still stay vigilant."

Plague? Why is he talking about a plague? Frankie had to stop herself from baring her teeth. Was it like the weird cat she and Oddie saw in the tunnels? It's just an ailment, not a widespread plague, is it? That cat didn't even tell her where he's from!

"The Coven has also left their last hideout and the Bone Society seems less present than it was before."

No information on the Blinding?

Frankie wanted to turn back and walk away. The one thing she was interested in was not a priority for this cat, so her information would not be shared. But the voice of one sandy-colored apprentice rang behind her.

"We haven't seen much, but we can tell you that there's a wild mutt roaming the streets, here. I think it doesn't belong to some twolegs. Aside from that, nothing out of the ordinary."

"Twolegs you say… You're a Nomad?"

"I was a former Clan kit, yes. My name is Featherpaw."

The cat stared at the sky, as if asking for guidance by some celestial power, or just thinking over the information given. With a blink, they turned away. Their last words were a simple "thank you, see you soon".

That's it? No discussion? No fight? Frankie shivered in frustration, turning away from the cat's location and leading the apprentices away. She does have information to bring back, but if she doesn't find something more tangible than words on her scouting patrol, this outing would have been a waste of time.

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"What if someone sees us? The rule has no loophole. We're not allowed out without Oddie or Minha or Frankie or the Bartender saying it's okay."

"We'll be fiiine," her sandy brother chirped. "We'll go find food and they will all be impressed when we bring back a mountain of rats."

"Can you even catch a rat?"

"Watch me."

"Can you even find a rat?"

"That's the hard part," his shoulders slumped. There were a lot of animals in the streets, especially in this part of the twoleg camp. He's good enough when he needs to catch something, but finding food? No matter why the adults bring home shiny boxes instead of fresh meat. "We should also stay close. I know Oddie talked about other groups of cats around. I don't want 'the Bone Group' or whatever their name is to annoy us."

"They can try!" Mangopaw unsheathed her claws. "I'll show them who's the boss!"

"Perfect. You show outsiders who's the boss and I'll show the cats here who's…"

"Shut up!" Mangopaw hissed, blocking Featherpaw's snout with her paws. She forced him to crouch down, looking at the entrance. Her eyes were fixated on a white and silver cat exiting the Bar.

Minha. The new healer.

The siblings exchanged a look. What was he doing outside so late? Frankie was the one who usually went hunting at night.

"Should we follow him?" Featherpaw whispered, and Mangopaw agreed.

Minha is a quick cat. Very agile when it comes to jumping and climbing. He's a cat that is used to this terrain. He's a cat that knows every nook and cranny of the twoleg camp. But that means nothing to Featherpaw and his sister. He's determined to follow the new healer. His paws silently tapped on tin roofs, eyes on their campmate. He won't let him get away. He won't let him slip away like Frankie does. He won't—

CRASH!

Featherpaw hissed as he missed his step, tumbling over metallic bins twolegs use to drop their waste in. The noise it made was deafening, his shoulder hurt, but not as much as his pride.

Minha jumped and turned around, fur puffed up like a white and silver boulder. He relaxed when he saw one apprentice on the roof, and another apprentice clambering out of the trash pile like a raccoon.

"What are you two doing here?" He asked, his voice low and stern as if he was lecturing his kits. "You should be sleeping at home."

"What are you doing here?" Featherpaw protested. "You should also be sleeping at home! Frankie already left on patrol."

"Go back home. Where I'm going is dangerous."

"And tell Oddie that you were outside?" Mangopaw's ear twitched. "They won't be happy to hear that we were out, but they won't be happy to hear that you were too."

All six eyes stared at each other, Minha's dark blue against stormy gray or bright gold. He cleared his throat. "What are you doing outside? Just following me?"

"At first we wanted to practice hunting, but then we saw you sneak out and we wondered where you were going." Featherpaw confirmed.

Mangopaw looked at her brother with a stare that would plant the fear of StarClan into some poor cat's soul, but she couldn't deny that he was saying the truth.

"And you?" She meowed.

"I thought it was weird that Frankie was sneaking out every night. I wanted to follow her and see where she was going." Minha confessed.

"So you mean that adults don't know where she's going!?" Featherpaw protested.

"No, we don't. But sometimes she comes back with food so Oddie lets her do as she pleases. We all have our secrets, of course, but…" He left his sentence unfinished. "Listen, we can either both tell Oddie what we were doing outside, or we swear to not say a word. I never saw you outside, you never saw me outside."

Mangopaw faced her brother once again. "What do you think?"

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"Bluebells," he said with a smile. "Mistpaw found them yesterday when he was gathering medicine. He said it would look nice. I think he's right."

"Mist was," Oddie confirmed. "Speaking of, I'm very happy about yesterday's excursion. We maybe didn't find a lot of medicine, but we found a lot of food. With two new kittens, we need to plan accordingly."

Feathergale looked down. Pondkit and Firekit. Of course they need to be sheltered and protected. That's the Code of the Dustlight, the Code he helped write down and one he agreed to follow with all his heart. But he can't stop being wary about them, especially Firekit, who, despite his boundless energy, seems to be sick. Nobody except Minha saw their mother. She could come from anywhere, from any of the other "Clans" around the twoleg camp, from any of the Nomad Clans in the desert.

He thinks their scent is familiar, but he can't trace it back to anything. A locked away memory he can't define, nor can Mangospeckle.

He looked in the back. Mistpaw was sleeping with the newcommers, close enough to bring some comfort but not close enough for body heat. This greenleaf has been too hot, and no contact was desirable during the day.

"I thank the Bartender that Minha found them." Oddie added. "Who knows what would have happened to them if he didn't?"

Feathergale didn't want to imagine the worst.

"Why not thank StarClan?"

"StarClan is silent. They don't speak to us, and I don't think they ever spoke to our Healers either. I use the Bartender as she's the closest being to our little group, but I don't know if Minha seeked them out, found them, was guided to them… There are so many possibilities as to how he could have found the kits and their mother, as to how she died…"

"He could know how she died. Did he even mention it?" Feathergale asked. He knows that the white and silver Healer is the least squirmish out of every cat here. He was the one manipulating dead and questionable things, and he was the one taking care of most "gross" medical practices that needed to be done. Plus, he knows about twoleg medicine.

"No… He didn't."

"Do we know if he at least performed an 'autopsy'? That would give us more information." He urged. "I trust him, you, and the kits, but…"

Oddie stopped him, understanding his point.

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Where sand started to sweep over dark pavement. Where stretches of golden dust faded away in the horizon and the red sunset. Twoleg monsters roared as they ran by, but the alien chatter of their conversations quieted down as they walked.

They haven't seen this stretch of land in a while. They haven't taken the time to appreciate its beauty. It's dry, hot beauty.

Something caught their attention.

A tiny, tiny meow.

They try to follow it, discover where it came from. It lead them to a twoleg monster, abandoned by its twoleg, where two kits cried out in confusion, nested in a box.

"Hey, hey, shhh…" Oddie tried to quiet them down. "Are you hurt? What are you doing in here?"

"I don't know!" A dark tortoiseshell hissed. "A twoleg picked us up and put us in this monster and now I don't know where home is and I want to go home and if you hurt my brother or me I'll hurt you I swear to StarClan!"

StarClan.

That is something they haven't heard in a long time. Their parent, their leader, their healer, the cats from their former family would often mention StarClan and their ancestors watching from the sky.

"What are your names?" They asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," the sandy tabby tom replied. "I'm Featherkit. She's Mangokit."

Kit.

Oddie used to be a "kit" once. An odd kit. Oddkit. They did have odd patches of white on their fur. Must be why the Bartender supposes that their full name would have been Oddspots. Maybe Oddtail? Oddpelt? Maybe Oddleaf or Oddspirit?

Them and these kittens are kits. They had a Clan. They were nomads of the wastelands.

And Oddie saw themself in these kits. A scared little cat who lost their family and found themselves in this hostile place. A cat who had nowhere to go, no home, no food, no shelter, no safety, who saw their entire world fight to the death and tear each-other's throats out.

"My name is Oddspots," they said. "You can't stay here. It's not safe. I don't know when the twoleg is coming back—"

"I don't want to be with twolegs I want to be with cats…" The tom whined.

Oddie looked around and picked the two kittens up by the scruff, running back to the Bar. Their paws lifted sand and dust as they darted through the border and into the twoleg camp, into the Bar.

Frankie watched them fly in with two kits, out of breath, fur fluffed up and tangled. Her pelt puffed up in revulsion.

"Oddie, please, don't tell me that you've stolen two kittens…"

"No." Their answer was firm. They put them down. The two tiny bundles of fur curled up against Oddie's tail. "They're Clan cats, just like I was. They were in a twoleg monster…"

"And you just took them out?"

"It was open!" They protested. "They're Clan cats. They're Mangokit and Featherkit. They don't belong with twolegs and who knows how far away they are from home. These monsters can travel distances in a day that a cat would cross in a quarter-moon. They need proper care."

Frankie narrowed her eyes.

They looked down at the two kittens by their side. "I'll be a good guardian. And if they decide they want to leave and find their Clan, that's for them to decide when they're older. But right now, they need to be taken care of."

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"I do," Oddie assured her. "Now, I need to introduce them to the rest of the cats, here."

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Another day where she won't be able to hang out with Ash and where she will be able to rest, or fight, or do whatever she wants.

Another day where a can of fish won't be enough and she has to teach them to hunt and look for things that could be useful to the bar. Not that she dislikes them. She doesn't know Mangopaw well, and she enjoys Featherpaw's company, but she would rather be free to act as she pleases.

But she has made up her mind. If the Bartender isn't coming back, she's leaving.

To add to today's disappointment, the three of them also saw another mangy beast. A small, slobbering boulder of a dog, useless and disgusting and dangerous. How could any creature feel any type of affection for those things? She was very adamant to fight it. She wanted to attack. Just seeing it made her blood boil and her tail twitch.

But she didn't.

Frankie is confident in her abilities, but the Bar cats wouldn't like it, if she was the reason why apprentices were in danger. And she wouldn't either. She craves violence, but couldn't lift a paw on a kid.

"Excuse me?"

A voice rang from above. The three cats raised their eyes to face a brownish cat with a shiny, short, well-groomed pelt. Too well-manicured to be a rogue, not prissy enough to be a housecat. Frankie did not speak, waiting for the other person to explain themselves.

"I am a researcher of the Open Eye. One of my colleagues has spoken about a weird cat that was frozen and aggressive in this district of the city. Do you have any information about this? And while I'm at it, have you seen a dog around?"

"You're the only weird cat here," Frankie replied. "We don't owe you anything much less details of our life and territory."

How dare they take care of their territory, as if they cared that they saw a dog, or that Oddie had a weird seizure, or that the Bartender is gone?

She stared at them as if they committed a crime. The cat narrowed their eyes.

"I never said that you owed me anything. I am just curious to know more about what my colleague has told me. If you do not wish to speak about it, I will be on my merry way."

Frankie looked back at Featherpaw, who shrugged, before facing the outsider once more.

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Former reference:

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Minha was having none of it. His tail swished, eyes narrowing to coal-black slits.

"If you do tell Oddie everything, I will also tell him that you two were sneaking out of the Bar and I don't know if this is the first time you've been out at night or not."

That wiped the smile off of Featherpaw's snout.

"Alright. I won't tell Oddie if you won't."

"Me neither." Mangopaw was quick to reply, but she was tense, as if keeping an eye on the healer.

Minha nodded, looking towards the street he wanted to walk along, then back to where he came from, back to the bar.

"If you two can't sleep, do you want a late-night lesson?" He offered. "I can show you how to get cat medicine from humans. Oddie uses the same technique. You just have to make sure that you don't get caught."

"Yes!" Featherpaw bounced up, ready to sneak into some twoleg den.

"Why not," Mangopaw stood up, a little less enthusiastically than her brother. "Where are we going?"

"The human medicine provider is over here." Minha turned around. "We just have to be back home before sunlight."

The two younger cats agreed and followed, and all three of them disappeared in the shadows of a dead end for monsters and twolegs.

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Said Bartender has been absent for a while, too, and they hoped that she was fine.

The kits have grown so much. They were so small when oddie found them in the twoleg monster. They're not quite adults, but they have been growing into their personalities, becoming fine members of this little cat haven. It is now time for them to start learning practical skills.

Oddie hoped that the Stars wouldn't curse them if they held an apprentice ceremony, as they are no leader and had no mentor, but the stars have been silent since he came into the city. Any spiritual force he once knew left them to their own demise, and they can only hope that the Bartender comes back.

"Mangokit, Featherkit, please step forward." They spoke with fake confidence. Their spiritual crisis should not impact the kits' special day.

Mangokit was in a power stance, Featherkit was impatient and fidgeting, both too young to be able to jump up and join Oddie.

"You two are six moons old, now. We are no Clan, but you and I were once part of nomad Clans. Please allow me to follow the naming tradition we once knew, if you will allow me."

"Okay," Mangokit solemnly replied.

"I agree too, but why don't you have a Clan name, then?" Featherkit asked.

"I do not want to name myself. The only person who may is the Bartender, but I am happy as Oddie."

He thanked oddie for their answer and sat up straight, puffing up his chest.

"As the most senior former Clan member here, allow me to gift you your apprentice names.

Featherkit, you will now be known as Featherpaw. Your eagerness and curiosity are a strength for our group, and I look forward to seeing how you grow and learn.

Mangokit, you will now be known as Mangopaw. Your determination and bravery are your greatest strengths, and I look forward to seeing you hone those skills.

I welcome both of you as apprentices of our group."

These words weren't the exact spiel of ceremonies, but they aren't exactly a Clan either. This is how things will work, now. Oddie hopes that it will be okay, but the others seemed to enjoy his speech. Minha was looking proud, Frankie had an unreadable expression with a pleasant smile, and Minha's three kittens were peeking up from their nests to see what was going on.

"Won't we have a mentor?" Mangokit asked.

"Everyone here will be your mentor," Oddie explained. "I wish for everyone to learn how to fight, heal, mediate, scavenge, and scout before you decide if you would rather be a Warrior or a Healer, or maybe something else entirely."

They jumped down from the Bar and faced their protégés. "Perhaps you will also naturally pick a mentor."

Oddie pressed their nose on Mangopaw and Featherpaw's foreheads, softly adding. "Congratulations. I'm so, so proud of you two."

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