[open] Cat! I'm a kitty cat! And I hunt hunt hunt-

[taxusbacatta]

Who: Yellowfang + taxusbacatta and YOU!
What: Yellowfang gets used to island life.
When: Throughout the June event, multiple prompts
Where: Enso
Warnings: A cat doing cat things to small reptiles.


EARLY JUNE

What a week Yellowfang'd had. The fire, the sea, talking Twolegs and an entire island of new sounds and smells. She had made it on the jungle's edges well enough, stamping down a nest for herself under an uprooted tree and hiding when Twoleg activity grew too near. A small grey cat was easy to miss in the shadows. Her birth Clan was named well. She made meals of the wildlife that scurried through the underbrush. Save for the horrifying lack of cat scent, living on Enso was not terribly unlike her life between her exile from ShadowClan and ThunderClan taking her in.

It was also just as lonely--perhaps more so. StarClan had been completely silent since she arrived on Enso's shores. The warriors of Silverpelt looked down on her every night without a word. Punishment? Banishment? Was she truly so far away that they could no longer reach her?

It hurt to think about. And so she didn't. She forged ahead, learning what she could of this strange place. She sniffed and tentatively tasted plants. She climbed low twisted trees and inspected the well-guarded nests cradled there. She even peeked out from the fronds on occasion to watch the Twolegs milling about their homes.

This eventually brought her to the ruins of the temple. It was unlike any Twoleg nest she'd ever seen--great stone walls swallowed up by moss and vines. As she slunk between the fallen slabs and chased tasteless but filling bugs that made their homes in the cracks, the trickle of water drew her attention.

Yellowfang abandoned her hunt and rushed toward the sound. She had scarcely found water that wasn't foul like the sea since she arrived--mostly lapping from puddles and plants in the morning. Another discovery--a puddle that moved. Yellowfang pushed her whiskers forward, twitching as tiny droplets that broke the surface of the bubbling sprig sprayed her.

Hmm.

Gotta slap that.

The medicine cat deftly swiped at the bumpy surface of the spring with a paw and instantly drew it back, shaking away droplets and then greedily licking them off her pads. Oh, it was wonderful. Cool and clean. The surface wasn't still enough for her to lap from it so she opted to dunk and lick for the time being.


JUNE 16 ONWARD

It was another hot day on the island. Yellowfang had spent enough time alone that she had started naming things in her head, just to keep herself oriented. Perhaps other cats would wash up here. Then she could tell them. Things were less scary when they had names.

The island itself was The Silent Forest. No stars spoke here. She had mentally named a few of the Twolegs that she could spot at a distance. Beetlepelt. Cowperch. Thornkit. Sprayfetch. Among others. Though she was one cat, she supposed that if she met others there would need to be a Clan to welcome them and that clan would be ShoreClan. Population: 1. She didn't see herself as the leader, after all she was a medicine cat, but she wasn't about to start letting Twolegs join the clan.

Yet.

Yellowfang was mulling all this over while stretched in a sunbeam whens he spotted movement on the beach. Strange dots were appearing out of the sand and shuffling clumsily toward the waves. Naturally she had to check this out. She padded through the sand, thankfully used to the bogs of ShadowClan enough not to lose her footing and stopped when she came to one of the shining turtle nests. Like little fleas one by one they emerged and for a moment Yellowfang was endeared. As distant and alien as The Silent Forest was, new life still sprang from it.

And then she was hungry.

Unlike the turtles that Yellowfang had come to know, these ones couldn't draw their legs (and most importantly, their heads) into their shells so dispatching them was simple work. However, Yellowfang wasn't the only predator on the beache. Great screaming sea birds swooped down over the sand as she hunched over her fresh-kill. They nipped at her ears and tugged tufs off her tail even though there were more than enough turtles for every creature. Yellowfang hissed and grabbed a hatchling up by the leg and dashed away into the shade of the treeline. She quickly buried it and returned for another. Back and forth she made her store, all the while dodging the surf and tearing beaks of the white screamers.

Comments

[prettypurpleparlor]

Ah, I don't believe we've met before. Are you a new arrival here?

[Muffet maintains a polite distance, not wanting to unnerve Yellowfang by coming any closer.]

[taxusbacatta]

Both are true...

_{[Her eyes...Yellowfang can't figure out which pair of eyes to focus on! Oh, she does not like that.]}

What is it you want, Twolegs? I'm...busy.

[prettypurpleparlor]

[Her legs usually aren't the set of limbs that people comment on, but she's not going to judge.]

Simply to greet a newcomer. My name is Muffet, may I ask yours?

[taxusbacatta]

_{[A greeting. Not a threat? No competition for turtles? This island was making her head spin. She hasn't considered befriending anyone here who isn't a cat yet, but she supposes she can call them allies. They were all brought here by that blasted hare after all. Nobody had thrown anything at her yet.]}

I am called Yellowfang. Where has the hare taken you from? I haven't seen anyone like you.

[prettypurpleparlor]

[She nods politely, acknowledging the answer.]

I was born in a place called the Underground, far beneath a mountain, but my people have recently come to the Surface and begun living there once more. We would call ourselves 'monsters', but the term seems to have a less pleasant meaning elsewhere...

[taxusbacatta]

I would not call you a monster...you don't look like any monster I've seen.

_{[Now if the spider lady had her a set of wheels...]}

[prettypurpleparlor]

Oh? What do monsters usually look like, where you're from? My people tend to come in many different forms.

[Some might look quite a bit more like what Yellowfang would expect.]

[taxusbacatta]

_{[She draws herself up as though to imitate the hulking form of the Monsters that raced the thunderpath.]}

Great stinking hulking beasts with hard hides and the Twolegs travel within them. Unnatural.

[prettypurpleparlor]

[She pauses a moment, trying to puzzle that out. So, if twolegs would be... humans, probably, then what they travel in...]

Do they make a sort of loud noise, and move around on round wheels? With clear panels in the front and sides, so you can see into them?

[taxusbacatta]

Yes! They foul the air and crush cats beneath them!

_{[Riled up, Yellowfang stamps her little paws.]}

[prettypurpleparlor]

[She nods solemnly, showing the proper respect to those Yellowfang's people have lost on the roads.]

These, I know of- they're called cars, by those that make them. They aren't living creatures, truly, but a kind of device built to carry people great distances very quickly.

[taxusbacatta]

_{[Though it doesn't look like it, Yellowfang is tucking away this information.]}

They're evil is what they are. Lazy Twolegs!

[prettypurpleparlor]

[Muffet doesn't dispute the point- she doesn't necessarily agree, but there's no need to argue over something that's clearly caused this cat a fair amount of grief.]

I'm not as familiar with them as a human might be- until recently, all my people lived in one comparatively small area, so we didn't really need things like cars to travel. But I do know that people using them need to be careful not to crash into each other, so they have specific rules about when and how cars are supposed to be used.

[Today, a spider lady tells a doctor cat about traffic safety.]

The paths that the cars travel on, do you ever see long black strings with things dangling off them when you look upward, hanging across the path?

[If Yellowfang can talk, she can... probably understand traffic lights, right?]

[taxusbacatta]

_{[Sadly, there are no traffic lights in rurral Clan Land.]}

I've never seen anything like that across the Thunderpath. There is a tunnel that runs beneath it which leads to WindClan territory...

_{[Until washing up here, Yellowfang really had no scope of just HOW BIG the world was. No real vantage point to see from either. While climbing trees was fun for kits, it wasn't something Clan cats who weren't warriors regularly did.]}

[prettypurpleparlor]

Hmm, that's more difficult, then... The things that hang from the strings are supposed to be signals to warn people when the cars are going to start coming through, and from what direction- they light up in different colors.

[The mention of a territory has her curious.]

'WindClan', is that another group of your people?

[taxusbacatta]

_{[Yellowfang dips her head in a nod.]}

There are four Clans where I am from...

_{[She hesitates, thinking of sharing her little imaginary idea of ShoreClan with Muffet but they've only just met. There is no one here, cat or Twolegs, that she would call a friend. Instead, she opts to change the subject.]}

How is it you keep track of so many paws?

[prettypurpleparlor]

[Muffet blinks, then realizes Yellowfang means her hands, and answers:]

I suspect the same way anyone else understands how to use their body- I was born like this, after all, so I've never known anything else. To me, it would be strange to have any fewer.