#mintcloud

“This was a mistake!” Nightpaw cries out from where he stands, stiffly holding his body rigid as he glances back to the shore he once was safely planted on. The ice beneath him groans again and another crack splinters out across the sheet, and Nightpaw’s round, frightened eyes frantically lock with Vervainpaw’s pale green ones.

“I think that’s pretty obvious!” Vervainpaw calls back, and Mintpaw shoves against her brother’s side, her eyes narrowed as she scolds, “Shush! You’re not helping the situation!” 

She turns back to Nightpaw, desperately trying to calm the definitely stressed tom out, “Don’t worry! Goldenpaw should be coming back any moment now with our mentors - they’ll know what to do! Just hold out a little longer!”

“Okay,” Nightpaw’s definitely trying not to shake, echoing Mintpaw’s words as as if trying to reassure himself, “Okay, I’ll hold out a little longer!”

“I don’t know if the ice will,” Vervainpaw murmurs under his breath, eyeing the ice skeptically, and as if on cue, there’s one last shattering crack from the ice before it caves in beneath Nightpaw’s weight. Nightpaw can only get out one frantic yowl before it’s cut off as he’s submerged beneath the water’s depths, and Mintpaw only hears the words “screw it” come from her brother’s mouth before he, too, is plunging head first into the murky depths. 

“What the fuck are you doing!?” Shrieks Mintpaw, but there’s no response from the hole in the ice; the molly frantically bolts back and forth along the frost covered bank. 

It feels like ages pass by before Vervainpaw’s head breaks the surface of the dark water, with Nightpaw’s thick white scruff clamped firmly between his jaws; the gray tabby tom paws at the ice, testing it, before ungracefully hauling himself and Nightpaw out of the water and onto their bellies. He shimmies across the ice, nearly sprawled out flat, with his teeth still buried in Nightpaw’s fur - he hopes he isn’t drawing any blood with how tightly he’s holding onto the other apprentice. 

And before he knows it, he’s made it, crawling onto the safety of solid shore with Nightpaw finally squirming to life once he knows he’s not on frail ice anymore. Mintpaw frantically circles the two toms, bouncing between smothering the two of them in urgent, rasping licks, hoping that she can keep the two of them from freezing to death; Vervainpaw simply laughs and shoots that doofy, giddy grin of his at Nightpaw, “All of that for a stupid vole that got away.”

Nightpaw stares at Vervainpaw, wide-eyed and almost mystified, before rasping out dumbly, “Yeah?”