Cattail Pond

[Badwolf]

[Antpaw]
Apprentice|6 moons|Thunderclan

· · ─────── ·· ─────── · ·

Antpaw glances behind himself to see if Sunflowerswirl was even paying attention to him. She hadn't said a word coming to Cattail Pond. Not that he didn't understand. Things were awkward between them, after all. But there was an unreasonable part of him that felt annoyed that she was just ignoring him.

[Antpaw rolls a 5]

No prey in sight. Antpaw grumbles and crawls deeper within the leaves and rocks, eyes sharp and alert for anything moving. He sniffs the air.

[Antpaw rolls a 13]

A faint, delicious smell. Antpaw isn't quite sure where it's coming from, but he crouches anyway. His eyes wobble desperately as he tries to find where the smell is coming from. The left? Right? On that pile of rocks?

Should he even try? No, there was nobody around right now. This wasn't time to be embarrassed and hold himself back. It would be more embarrassing if he brought back nothing. Antpaw steps forward, tensing, ready to pounce.

[Antpaw rolls a 13]

A failure. Antpaw jumps, causing a fluff of cattails to fly all over his body. His paws vaguely swish by some sort of prey, but he doesn't know what it is- he can't see. The entire rock is just a hill of fluff now. Antpaw desperately tries to get a hold on his prey, but there's a scrabbling noise, and nothing hits his paws. In the end he stops and coughs all the cattail out of his lungs.

"This place is horrible." Antpaw grouches to himself, spitting out the fluff. "So..." he coughs again, "Itchy. Why are we hunting here, of all places?"

Antpaw pads over to the edge of the water to attempt to wash some of the fluff off himself, rubbing his tail over the grass while he's at it. He makes sure to stand by a decent distance from the cattails and from Riverclan territory. He was not coughing again, no. Even while he's doing maintenance on himself, he's still looking around for signs of prey.

[Antpaw rolls a 11]

No sign of prey. Or at least, he thinks so. Antpaw's ears twitch. His eyes still felt a little itchy, so he blinks and focuses on his hearing instead of his sight. He can hear something. It sounds like... something hard and soft gliding through the rocks, through the grass. Something big, scaley, and... Antpaw's eyes widen.

[Antpaw rolls a 9]

"Snake!" He screeches, jumping away towards his clanmates, abandoning all pretense, "There's a snake!"

If Antpaw had any proper experience he would know the snake wasn't poisonous, and thus not actually all that harmful. And though it was decently sized, it wasn't enough to kill a cat. But Antpaw had heard stories about giant venomous behemoths swallowing a cat in one bite, and combined with all he heard about predators prowling about Thunderclan recently, he wasn't about to take any chances. No siree, he was going to leave this to the warriors.


Tags:
@TanghuluCat /Willowfrost
@Oliver /Sunflowerswirl