Duckpaw seemed intent upon her task at least, inhaling great gusts of air which tempted Deadmoon towards giggles, though she resisted. Character growth! She wasn´t laughing at her apprentices ALL the time, just SOME of the time. This was probably the part where she thought someone would be proud of her, and she considered it for a moment. Who´s name would take that spot though? Rookscreech? No, Rookie would giggle alongside her. Snowybreeze? He had been fine with her idiocy, for some reason. Stars, she really needed to talk to him. She was a mess, that was for sure. Wolffang? Not a chance. He NEVER would have laughed, made a joke of, an apprentice. A model warrior, her brother. Of course he was. Breezefeather, too, was a good warrior. A good adult. He was dead, it didn´t really matter if he was proud of her anyway. It shouldn't, anyway. Starclan had never done anything for her.
In the midst of her interminably wandering thoughts, Duckpaw had actually managed to locate a rabbit, or the general direction of one anyway, and so Deadmoon was forced to refocus. Tragic.
There is, indeed, a rabbit to our right. she mewed, nodding with a hint of pride slipping into her voice. For all her occasional buffoonery, Duckpaw could, apparently, be more competent than Deadmoon herself had been as an apprentice.
Before we go after it, I want you to practice your stalking a bit. Stalking isn´t the most important part of hunting a rabbit, if it were she´d actually be able to catch the stupid things
but you need to be stealthy enough, and get close enough, that you can run the rabbit down before it reaches its burrow.
Some cats (Crowtooth) were brave, and knowledgeable, enough to enter the tunnels in pursuit, and Deadmoon had received a lesson in their navigation once or twice as an apprentice, but they weren´t for new apprentices at all. Best to keep Duckpaw in open air for now.
What I want you to do is copy me as best as possible, creep around here. If you think you´ve got the hang of it at some point, try lunging on me. Pounce, whatever you want to call it. Pretend I am a rabbit and ´catch´ me, without actually biting my throat. She would like to survive this lesson, ideally. With instructions, perhaps overly complicated, given, she dropped into her own crouch, padding about with her tail low and paws quiet. @
Marycat006