So I finally decided to get around to fanficcing again. This is a six-book fic series called The Dimensional Slash, and this book - the first book - is called Temporal Flight. I lieks writing it. :P

If you want to access this but don't want to go looking or are having trouble finding it for whatever reason, instead of node 7717 you can type "community/TemporalFlight" to access it.

Also, don't ask about the bird at the beginning. It gets explained much later.

~Prologue~

A red sunset glowed beyond the horizon. Mountains dominated the distant horizon, their sides decorated with bands of rich brown and creamy white and dark orange-red, and all of the mountains were picked out in bright bursts of flame as the sunset hit them, giving a brilliant red color to the peaks and a dark orange color to the crevasses below.The shadows reached right to the base of the highest cliff, on which sat two creatures - a dark tortoiseshell she-cat and a light green bird with white wings. The bird was several tail-lengths taller than the cat, and though the bird might have made good prey if it could have been killed neither creature made a single violent move toward the other. In fact, the only movement either of them made was the twitching of the cat's tail and ears.

As the last sunlight died below the cliff, darkening the distant hills slowly until each one was indistinguishable from the others, the bird suddenly spread its wings wide and let out a loud kawww. The she-cat jumped slightly at the loud noise, but she recovered quickly, for she rose to her paws and turned to the bird.

Then she spoke to it.

"What do you see?"

The bird did not say a word - who would expect it to? - as it continued to stare into the pale streaks that were all that remained of the blazing sunset. Finally, without turning its head, it replied to the cat in the cat's own tongue.

"I see their destiny."

The she-cat bit back a retort. Of course that's what the bird would see in the sunset. That was the point of looking in the sunset anyway. She wished for something - anything - more specific.

Choosing her words carefully, she finally asked, "What... what have you seen regarding them?"

This time the bird turned to look at her and answered her question in a whisper.

"They will come here."

The she-cat blinked in surprise. "Here? But-"

"From the mountain of snow, they will come here and they will be set... on a path no living creature has ever walked before."

The she-cat's ears twitched. She knew this already. That was why she had come to ask the bird's help in the first place. She bit back a sigh. Nothing the bird was saying was helping her understand any better the destiny the two she watched would follow. This had been a waste of her time. She cast a frustrated glance back at the bird, before turning and padding away, tail drooping, across the cliff to the canyon that yawned at its edge.

A single word called her back. "Wait."

"Is there something you can tell me that I haven't already guessed?" she asked, a hint of bitterness in her voice. The bird had summoned her all the way here; surely it could tell her something actually useful?

The bird took no notice of the harsh statement. "You need to watch those two. You need to follow them. Their destiny may be theirs alone, but that does not mean you can do nothing to set them on the right path."

The tortoiseshell's whiskers twitched and her dark amber eyes narrowed. This was not new, either. Every destiny of every animal she had ever watched needed guidance. The bird clearly knew nothing about her, nothing about what she had seen and done. She turned her back on the bird and walked away, her tail brushing the tip of the rock as she left.

The bird let out another loud kawww. The she-cat visibly jumped this time.

"Why are you being scornful about the signs I reveal to you?" asked the bird. Its voice had not changed, even though she thought the bird must be bitter with her for refusing to listen. She suppressed a sigh, and then turned back to the bird.

"They don't help," she replied. "Everything you tell me - I already know all of it. I've wasted my time in coming here. I should be getting back."

"There is one sign you have yet to see," protested the bird, though its voice was still unchanging. "One sign that may help you guide them."

The she-cat ignored the bird. The sign would probably tell her that she needed to watch them more carefully. She did not stop, and continued heading for the canyon.

"You have not yet seen this sign, I promise you," the bird spoke quietly. The she-cat sighed audibly this time. She probably had, but she was not going to tell the bird this. She stopped and turned around, placing her paws in the prints she had just made in the dust.

"Is it something I haven't heard before?" There was no trace of bitterness in her voice this time; only curiosity.

The bird did not reply.

The she-cat stood there for a moment before following the bird back to the edge of the cliff.

"Look there," the bird instructed, pointing with one white wing towards a cluster of stars in the still-darkening sky. "You can read star-signs, correct?"

The she-cat's ears twitched. "Yes," she replied softly, her gaze fixed on the silvery-white swathe of stars that glowed above their heads. Images flashed through her mind. She had little time to make sense of each one before it was swept on and the next appeared.

Was this the sign she was supposed to see? Her initial confusion at the images was replaced by a thorough understanding of what they meant as they settled in her mind. She blinked. Maybe the bird could tell her something after all.

"You saw the sign," the bird cooed, affirming her original thoughts. "Do you understand what needs to be done now?"

The she-cat, after a brief hesitation, dipped her head.

"I do," she meowed, before turning and continued into the the tunnel. Her dark tail glistened briefly in the brilliant starshine, and then she melted into the shadows darkening the tunnel's depths.

A/N: The reason there's a talking bird is going to be revealed in the second book. Kudos if you guess what the bird is, though.

~Chapter 1~

"Eaglekit? Eaglekit, wake up."

A brown tabby tom kit stretched his paws out and rolled over. "Don't wanna get up," he mumbled, still half-asleep.

"Eaglekit..."

This time the voice was accompanied by a paw shaking his flank. He groaned in his sleep, but the paw continued shaking, until two bright amber eyes snapped open. Eaglekit pulled himself to a sitting position.

Eaglekit blinked the early-morning light, trying to clear his eyes. He looked around the nursery. The cat who had been waking him was his mother, Skyflight. She was sitting up, her thick gray tail curled around two gray paws, looking at him quite seriously. As his eyes began to adjust, he saw that there was a second cat in the nursery. Her tortoiseshell fur had blended in well with the dappled shadow in the corner of the nursery, and before now Eaglekit had not recognized that Rainbowpaw was there. What was she doing here, anyway? The medicine cat apprentice had not been here since Flowkit had caught greencough and they had come to treat her. Eaglekit's ears twitched. Nettleslash and Rainbowpaw had done all they could, but Flowkit had still died. Why was Rainbowpaw back here now? Eaglekit and Skyflight were the only cats in the nursery, although Frostsong was pregnant with Cedarfur's kits. Neither of them were sick, so why was Rainbowpaw there?

His thoughts were interrupted as Skyflight spoke. "Eaglekit, we... ah... we have something to tell you," she began awkwardly. "Nightstar's... Nightstar's disappeared."

Eaglekit's ears pricked. Nightstar was leader of ShadowClan. She rarely went off without notifying Marshfoot, her deputy. "Is she on a patrol?" he asked, wanting to come up with a logical explanation.

It was Rainbowpaw who spoke this time. "No," she replied. "I was going to give her some treatment for the wounds she got at the RiverClan battle, but when I went to her den she wasn't there, and she wasn't in the camp, either." Rainbowpaw sighed. "I tried to track her scent, but there... wasn't actually any scent."

An awkward silence hung over Eaglekit before Skyflight spoke again. "We're going out to look for her."

Eaglekit blinked in surprise. "Wouldn't a patrol be better?" he asked. Skyflight shook her head, but Rainbowpaw was the one that spoke.

"If we let the Clan know, they might panic. This is why I came to Skyflight and you first."

Both of the older cats rose to their paws. "Eaglekit, you have to come with us," Skyflight meowed.

"What?!" Eaglekit jumped to his paws. "I'm supposed to help you find the leader of ShadowClan when neither of you can? I'm just a kit!"

"Well, yes," Skyflight agreed, "but there is a reason we expect you to be able to help us."

"And what's that?" Eaglekit muttered. "The fact that I get under every cat's paws?"

"No," Skyflight meowed. "There's a real reason we want you to look."

Eaglekit got to his paws. "Skyflight," he began, "I'm a kit. I'm not even six moons old. And yet you expect me to be able to find Nightstar - me, of all cats?"

Skyflight and Rainbowpaw exchanged an awkward glance. Skyflight turned away and began padding out of the nursery. Rainbowpaw cast a glance after her, and then mewed, "Come on, Eaglekit. I think you'll see what's going on as soon as we get out there."

Eaglekit stared at Rainbowpaw incredulously, but when the tortoiseshell did not change her expression, he sighed and followed the apprentice out of the nursery.

---------------

"I told you there wasn't any scent," Rainbowpaw muttered frustratedly. "Either the scent somehow got washed away - impossible, it hasn't rained at all - or - well - it washed away. That's pretty much the only explanation, and it didn't happen."

Do you expect me to be able to pick up the scent? Eaglekit thought bitterly. He didn't say anything, though; he just continued padding along toward Skyflight through an empty leaf-bare forest. Frost coated the leaves; they crunched under Eaglekit's paws with every step he took. A cold wind swept through the forest, and Eaglekit fluffed up his fur, shivering. What cat in their right mind would wander off in such freezing weather without a purpose?

His thoughts were interrupted when Skyflight looked up from where she was sniffing the roots of a tree and growled in annoyance. "Then where could she be? She's not in her den either, right?"

Rainbowpaw bristled with indignation. "What do you take me for? Do you think I wouldn't have checked her den?"

"I'm just making sure," muttered Skyflight.

Eaglekit walked away as the two she-cats argued. Nightstar wasn't here, and she wasn't in her den either. That much was clear. But if there wasn't any scent, then where could she be?

He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that he didn't notice when he stepped into a rabbit hole. "What -" The word changed into a wail as Eaglekit fell, his paw twisting and pain shooting up his leg. He took a deep breath, his heart pounding, and slowly managed to pull his paw from the hole.

"Eaglekit, what..." The voice was Skyflight's. Eaglekit spun around to see both Skyflight and Rainbowpaw staring at him in shock.

"I'm fine!" he called back, his voice high-pitched and squeaky. He fell into a rabbit hole. What was so weird about that? Other cats did it all the time!

Then he noticed that a light silvery mist was beginning to cover the forest. As he watched, Skyflight and Rainbowpaw's pelts faded through the mist, which slowly grew thicker and thicker.

There was a sharp yowl, and a faint cry of "Eaglekit!" Skyflight's pale outline showed slightly through the mist as she bounded toward him, but Rainbowpaw bowled her over and held her writhing on the forest floor.

"Leave him," muttered Rainbowpaw. "There's nothing you can do."

Does she know what's going on? I certainly don't! Eaglekit opened his mouth to call out to Skyflight and Rainbowpaw, but before a sound could escape his mouth the thick mist, which was now more like a fog, pressed in on him. Eaglekit blinked. The world was spinning around him, and he collapsed onto the ground. He looked up, and he thought he caught a glimpse of a rainy sky as the mist vanished before a wave of blackness crashed into him.

~Chapter 2~

The world spun around Eaglekit when he opened his eyes. The forest was unfocused and blurry before his eyes, and it took him a moment to realize that he was still in the forest and not in the nursery.

Wh... what happened...? He rose to his paws, and was instantly dizzy. He blinked a few times before the nausea subsided, and looked around in confusion. Did... did I faint? In that case... wouldn't Skyflight or Rainbowpaw have brought me back?

The thought made him go rigid. Skyflight. Where is she? He opened his jaws to scent the air, but he could only catch a faint trace of his mother's scent, and there was no scent of Rainbowpaw.

Did they abandon me? Oh, StarClan, why would they do that? He spun around, searching for any sign of his mother or the medicine cat apprentice, but there was nothing. He simply stood there, trying to work out what had happened, when he suddenly realized that a cold sensation was creeping into his fur. A loud booming noise echoed around the forest, and he flinched. It was storming. Why was it storming? It had been perfectly clear - cold, yes, but clear - when he had last seen Skyflight and Rainbowpaw. And what was with the plants? They were growing. It was the middle of leaf-bare.

How long was I knocked out for?! Eaglekit darted off into the forest, unable to hold in his fear any longer. Skyflight and Rainbowpaw must have left him and gone back to camp. They'd let him stay there! He drew in a sharp breath as he ran, unable to believe that his mother would deliberately leave him to die in the forest. He was only five moons old; he was not an apprentice and there was no way he could catch prey or fight off intruders. What was wrong with Skyflight?!

He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that he didn't smell an approaching cat, or see the bushes rustle as a black shape emerged from a bramble bush. He cannoned right into the cat's side and fell backwards with an "Oof!"

"Who are you and what are you doing in ShadowClan territory?" growled the other cat, seemingly unfazed by Eaglekit's sudden appearance.

Eaglekit scrambled to his paws. This was a ShadowClan cat, right? Then how come it didn't recognize him? "It's m-me," he stammered, flinching under the cat's fierce gaze. "Eaglekit!"

"I've never seen you before," meowed the cat, still hostile. "What are you doing in ShadowClan territory? Are you a spy?"

"No," murmured Eaglekit helplessly, "just a kit. A ShadowClan kit! What -"

The other cat's fur began to bristle, and it cut him off with a hiss. "You are not a ShadowClan kit. There are five kits in the Clan right now. You are not one of them. Wherever you're from, go back there."

Eaglekit took a step back. He wasn't going to run away anytime soon, but he saw no way of standing up to the cat. As he wondered what to do, two other cats squeezed their way from under the bush. Eaglekit blinked. One of them was Stormclaw, Nightstar's mate and Grasspaw's mentor, and the other was... who was the other one? He didn't recognize the third cat - a pale she-cat, most likely an apprentice - but her scent was awfully familiar.

"What's wrong, Nightstar?" meowed the she-cat. "Is there an intruder?" Her gray fur began to fluff up, and she glared at Eaglekit with hostile amber eyes. Suddenly Eaglekit recognized the black cat he'd crashed into; it was Nightstar.

"He claims he's a ShadowClan cat," Nightstar answered, "but do any of you recognize him?"

"No," meowed Stormclaw. "What Clan is he from?"

"Maybe he's a ThunderClan spy!" the apprentice hissed. "We should drive him out!"

"I'm a ShadowClan kit. I'm Eaglekit!" Eaglekit protested. "Why don't any of you recognize me?"

"You're not a ShadowClan cat," meowed Stormclaw. "Why, exactly, are you in our territory?"

"I am a ShadowClan cat!" yowled Eaglekit indignantly. "Why don't you believe me?"

"We're clearly not going to get you out of our territory through words alone," hissed Nightstar menacingly, ignoring Eaglekit's words, "so we'll have to chase you off, no matter what you say."

"Wh-what?!" Eaglekit gasped, taking another step backwards.

"Get out of ShadowClan territory!" growled the apprentice, running toward him with her claws unsheathed. Eaglekit let out a terrified yowl, turned, and ran. The apprentice chased after him.

Despite being only an apprentice, she was clearly very familiar with the territory; while Eaglekit floundered around trees and bushes, the apprentice swerved neatly around them, as if guided by StarClan themselves. He opened his mouth to sniff the air and caught a strong whiff of ThunderClan scent. He must be nearing the border. He didn't want to cross it, but he had no choice - the apprentice was still pursuing him and would probably continue to chase him well past the border, when he'd be caught by a ThunderClan patrol instead. He uttered an involuntary wail, and ducked through an approaching gorse bush to tumble into the apprentice as she ran at him from the other side, clearly having overtaken him from the side. She bowled him over and leaned down, her whiskers brushing Eaglekit's face as she growled deep in her throat. He writhed as hard as he could, but even against an apprentice he was no match. He looked up, quivering, wondering if the apprentice was going to kill him or not. He looked right into her big amber eyes, pleading with looks rather than words for her to let him live. There was something familiar in the depths of her gaze, although he couldn't make out what it was. He didn't recognize her.

Then he smelled her scent again, and with a gasp he shouted, "Skyflight!"

~Chapter 3~

Skyflight stared down at Eaglekit with confused amber eyes. "What did you say?" she asked, her voice so quiet that Eaglekit wondered whether he'd actually heard it.

"Skyflight," Eaglekit repeated, struggling for breath. "I said Skyflight. That's your name!" The brown tabby blinked, unsure why Skyflight was acting the way she was or why she didn't respond the way he thought she would to his realization.

"Listen," Skyflight growled, "there isn't a cat in any of these four Clans that goes by the name Skyflight. I don't know who you think I am, but I am most certainly not Skyflight." She bared her teeth at Eaglekit, and leaned down until her face was a whisker away from Eaglekit's own. Eaglekit tried not to shrink back from her as her smoldering amber eyes glared into his. "The name's Skypaw. Sky-paw. You got that?"

"Y-yeah," grumbled Eaglekit, too shocked to fight against Skyflight's - no, Skypaw's - words. "Yeah, I got that."

"Good." Skypaw didn't let Eaglekit up, however; she continued to talk to him. "You going to get out of our territory when I let you go?"

"Yeah, I will," muttered Eaglekit. He would have to come back to camp sometime, or he would starve to death. However, he didn't feel like going to ThunderClan territory, and he wanted to know what was up with Skypaw and Nightstar. He wasn't in a position to fight Skypaw's hidden warning, so he figured he'd leave and then circle back into the camp once the patrol had left. "I'll leave the territory."

Skypaw looked down into Eaglekit's eyes, and he could tell that she was trying to judge whether or not she could trust his word. After a few moments of close scrutiny, she stepped back, away from Eaglekit. Eaglekit scrambled to his paws, shaking his fur to get the dampness of the ground from his pelt, and turned away. He didn't look back as he padded across the ThunderClan scentline, his paws becoming muddled with the smell of countless ThunderClan cats. Despite being safe from Skypaw in the territory of another Clan, he did not turn around and instead crawled his way through a large gorse bush a few foxlengths away. After seeing him disappear into the bush, Skypaw would probably leave to rejoin the patrol, and he could make his way back into ShadowClan territory.

There was a rustling of fur behind him, and wriggling around Eaglekit could see Skypaw's gray fur flash as she turned and made her way across the soaked ground to where Nightstar and Stormclaw would undoubtedly be waiting. Eaglekit breathed a soft sigh of relief, and then scrambled through the gorsebush. A protruding branch caught his fur and snagged it, but Eaglekit forced his way through the bush regardless and emerged standing on a fairly open plot of ground.

Realizing that he was within view of any ThunderClan patrol that happened to be patrolling the border, Eaglekit cast a hasty glance over his shoulder. Seeing no ThunderClan cats anywhere behind him, he quickly crossed the ShadowClan border and breathed a sigh of relief. He still had the scent of ShadowClan on him; if he stayed along the border it would be nearly impossible to detect his scent among those of the many ShadowClan cats that came and went around the border. He turned away from where he knew the lake would be and padded along the length of the border, keeping his ears and tail low so to avoid being spotted.

As he reached the northern end of the territory, for the first time he wondered what he would do when he reached the camp. Nightstar and Skypaw were hostile toward him, so there was no way he could ask to join this ShadowClan. There wasn't any way that he could see to get into camp and stay hidden - but he had to talk to Skypaw.

The rain eased off as he approached the ShadowClan camp from the northern end of the territory. The clouds blocked off the sun from Eaglekit's view, but just by looking at the sky, it must have been nearly sunset. His pawsteps faltered as the familiar area around the camp began to come into view, and he wondered again what he would do. He stopped walking completely and sat on a pile of damp leaves, thinking. There wasn't any way he could just walk into the ShadowClan camp and not be spotted. What am I supposed to do? he wondered.

He was so intent on his thoughts that he didn't notice as a ShadowClan scent flooded over him, or hear the nearby rustle of newleaf growth against the noises of the forest. He jumped to his paws, eyes wide with shock, when a dark gray tabby cat padded from behind a pine tree, his jaws filled with medicinal herbs. He stopped short when he saw Eaglekit, and dropped the herbs onto the ground.

"Who are you?" he asked, his green eyes searching Eaglekit.

"M-my name's Eaglekit," Eaglekit stammered, shaking. "I, uh... I'm a Sh-ShadowClan kit."

"I don't recognize you," meowed the other cat, his head tipped to one side. "You smell of ShadowClan, but I don't recognize you. Why are you here?"

Eaglekit's heart sank. It looked like another cat was unbelieving of his story and willing to drive him from the territory. "I don't know why I'm here," he muttered. "I just woke up earlier today and I was... here. Don't drive me out, please...." He looked up at the older cat, hoping to StarClan that the cat would take pity on him.

The tom was silent for a moment. "I'll listen to your story," he decided, "but not here. Follow me back to the medicine cat's den." He picked up the herbs he had dropped in his jaws and gestured to Eaglekit with his tail. Eaglekit blinked, and then padded after the other cat - Nettleslash, the medicine cat, Eaglekit realized - through the soaked forest.

---------------

"So, what's your story?"

Nettleslash and Eaglekit were sitting in Nettleslash's den, away from the other cats of the Clan and all suspicion of Eaglekit's presence in the Clan.

Eaglekit blinked. "I... I woke up this morning because Skyflight and Rainbowpaw wanted me to go look for Nightstar."

"Wait a moment," Nettleslash interrupted. "Skyflight? Rainbowpaw? Are those Clan cats?"

Eaglekit nodded. "Skyflight is Skypaw," he replied, "and Rainbowpaw... is Rainbowkit."

"Why did you call them Skyflight and Rainbowpaw?"

Eaglekit twitched his ears. "I'm not done with the story yet," he muttered indignantly. "Skyflight woke me up and told me that she wanted me to help her look for Nightstar, who had somehow gone missing."

"Kits aren't allowed to leave camp," Nettleslash commented.

"That's what I said," murmured Eaglekit. "They insisted on taking me out anyway. I was out there, and then there was a silver mist that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and I - I guess I was knocked out or something..."

"Do you know why?"

"No," replied Eaglekit. "I don't know. Anyway, when I woke up Skyflight and Rainbowpaw weren't there, so I went back to camp, and Nightstar, Stormclaw and Skyflight - no, wait, Skypaw - were there on patrol, and none of them recognized me."

"I can see why," remarked Nettleslash. "I don't recognize you."

Eaglekit bit back a retort. If he got mad at Nettleslash, the medicine cat would probably drive him off. "Skyflight's my mother," he continued, "and yet she tried to drive me out of the territory - Nettleslash, I don't have any clue what's going on, do you know?"

Nettleslash rose to his paws. "I can't say that I do," he replied, studying Eaglekit with bright green eyes. "I don't have an explanation for why you know ShadowClan differently. The only thing I can think of to do is to talk to Skypaw."

Eaglekit gaped. Talk to Skypaw? She'd try to kill him! "I - I-" He broke off as Nettleslash waved his tail for silence.

"Let me bring her here. She'll listen to me, and she won't try to drive you out if I tell her not to. Just don't leave this den. Whatever's going on with you, no other cat can know that you're here."

"Understood," meowed Eaglekit, nodding. He stood and padded to the shadows at the back of the den, keeping himself hidden from view while he awaited Nettleslash to return with Skypaw.

~Chapter 4~

"So what is it that you want?"

Skypaw was sitting before Eaglekit, her thick gray pelt fluffed up with undisguised hostility. Her amber eyes burned into Eaglekit's, and for a few moments he was unable to speak under the harshness of her stare. What am I even supposed to say? he wondered. She has no reason to believe me when I say I'm from a different time. I can't even prove that I'm really not from this time!

"Are you going to talk or not?" Skypaw interrupted his thoughts. Eaglekit blinked, and then stared back at the older cat boldly. "My name is Eaglekit," he began, trying to say something in the hopes that he would come up with something else while talking. "I'm, well... not from your time, I don't think."

Skypaw rolled her eyes disbelievingly. "And hedgehogs fly, I suppose," she growled. "That's impossible. I don't know what kind of hallucinations you've been having, but they're clearly not real."

Yeah, thanks, that really helps my confidence! "What else am I supposed to tell you?" Eaglekit growled. "I can't prove what happened what happened to me. I don't even know what happened to me! All I know is that you are supposed to be Skyflight, and you are supposed to be my mother."

Skypaw didn't reply. She just blinked, a confused look coming over her as she tried to figure out what Eaglekit had just said. "Your... wait, no, that's impossible."

"Then how come my mother shares the Sky- part of your name and is a pale gray she-cat with amber eyes?" Eaglekit hissed, his fur bristling. "Do you know of any other cats in the Clan like that?"

"You're hallucinating," Skypaw spat. "If you're telling the truth, then what cat is the father, hmm? I'm not in love with any cat in the Clan presently - or outside it!"

"Pineclaw," Eaglekit muttered. "My father is Pineclaw." Skypaw's eyes widened as he spoke, and Eaglekit was not surprised at what she said next.

"Pineclaw's a warrior. He was a warrior when I was a kit!"

"Yes, and? What about Frostsong and Cedarfur? Cedarfur was a warrior when Frostsong was a kit, wasn't he?" Eaglekit pointed out. "It's not that strange, and whatever you say, it's true!" Skypaw opened her mouth, but she didn't reply. "What can I do to prove to you that you're my mother? Tell you that your warrior name is going to be Skyflight? I don't even know how far you are into apprenticeship!"

"I'm not going to believe you whatever happens," Skypaw snarled. "What you've been saying is impossible. Physically impossible."

"What can I do to make you believe me?" Eaglekit shot back.

Skypaw smirked. "You could always take me through time with you," she meowed. "Then I'll know you couldn't have been lying."

Eaglekit's eyes widened. "I can't do that!" he protested. "I don't even know when I'm going to be going anywhere else!"

"Fine, then," Skypaw growled. "If you can't prove to me that what you say is true, then why should I be listening to you? She rose to her paws and padded out of the den.

"Wait!" Eaglekit jumped up and ran around her to face her, his tabby fur bristling. "How about this. If your warrior name is Skyflight, then you'll believe me. And no, you cannot ask Nightstar for your name to be Skyflight or not Skyflight."

"How would that prove to me that you did this? It might just prove that you have good prediction skills."

"Either way, when I'm born, you'll definitely realize that that brown tabby kit that Pineclaw wants to name Eaglekit must be me, right? Right?"

Skypaw didn't respond. "I suppose," she conceded. "I wouldn't be able to deny that, now would I?"

Eaglekit went weak with relief. "Thank you, Skypaw. I - well - thank you."

Skypaw turned away. "Whatever," she muttered. "Are you going to let me through now?"

"Wait," Eaglekit mewed, "there's one more thing. What happened that led to me coming here was Rainbowpaw - Rainbowkit - saying that Nightstar went missing and coming to you about it."

"Nightstar went missing?" Skypaw's ears pricked. "Are you sure she just wasn't out on an early patrol?"

Eaglekit shook his head. "There wasn't any scent," he explained. "Besides, you and Rainbowpaw seemed to know what was going on."

"We did?" Skypaw looked confused. "If Nightstar disappeared, then how would I know how it happened?"

"Don't ask me!" Eaglekit shot back. "I didn't know what was going on either! Anyway, you and Rainbowpaw decided to take me out into the forest, even though it's against the warrior code. You thought that maybe I would help find Nightstar. And it was when we were out there that I was knocked out... and ended up here! When that happens - when Nightstar disappears - you're going to have to take me out of camp!"

Skypaw blinked, her amber eyes clouded with confusion. "O... okay," she meowed; Eaglekit could tell that she still didn't really understand what was going on. "If that's the case, shouldn't you talk to Rainbowkit too?" she pointed out. Eaglekit's eyes widened, and he realized that that would be the logical thing to do. After all, Rainbowpaw had seemed to know just as much about what was going on as Skyflight. Rainbowpaw had been the one to stop Skyflight from trying to reach him when the silver mist was beginning to surround him. It was clear that she knew more about Eaglekit's predicament than Eaglekit himself would have guessed.

"Then I guess I have to talk to her, right?" Eaglekit pointed out. "I have to talk to -" He was cut off by a sharp yowl from the clearing behind him. He spun around, and what he saw made him freeze in terror. Nightstar, Marshfoot and Stormclaw were standing around him, their fur bristling and their eyes hostile.

They must have seen me talking to Skypaw! Eaglekit realized, his heart thumping painfully. Marshfoot's yowl cut into his thoughts.

"Who are you and what are you doing in the ShadowClan camp?"

~Chapter 5~

Eaglekit's fur bristled, and his amber eyes were wide with terror. "I-"

"You're that kit we saw near the ThunderClan border, aren't you?" Nightstar interrupted. "What are you doing in our camp? Who let you come in here?"

Eaglekit's eyes narrowed. There wasn't any way he was going to get out of this and still be able to talk to Rainbowkit. Skypaw probably wouldn't agree to help him talk to Rainbowkit, either. There wasn't anybody else he could ask, not even Nettleslash. How was Rainbowkit going to find out about what happened back in Eaglekit's time?

Then something clicked in his mind: Even if Rainbowkit were nearing her sixth moon, neither Nettleslash nor Skypaw could seriously talk to her about Eaglekit's problem and expect her to believe them or pay serious attention. What if somebody had come to him and told him that a cat he didn't even know was going to be going through time in eight moons, back to this moment exactly? He would have thought they had had too much a dose of poppy seeds. Skypaw and Nettleslash would have to wait until she was an apprentice at least. But how could he tell either of them to tell her what was going on? The three ShadowClan cats currently surrounding him would probably kill him if he argued to talk to Nettleslash or Skypaw first.

His thoughts were interrupted by a low growl behind him. He spun around, his fur on end, to see Skypaw crouched down, amber eyes narrowed, claws unsheathed. "I'll chase this intruder out," she hissed, and slowly crept toward Eaglekit. Even though he knew she wasn't going to hurt him, he couldn't deny how dangerous she looked, and backed away from her. The cats surrounding him parted to leave a direct path toward the entrance to the camp. Never going to get any help from the rest of them, Eaglekit thought bitterly. They're not going to help a kit that, for all they know, could be starving to death. Skypaw let out a throaty growl and began to run toward him. Eaglekit let out a terrified yowl and fled, forgetting that Skypaw wouldn't kill him, no matter what she said or did. He crashed through the bramble-covered entrance to the camp, his bristling fur getting snagged on the protruding thorns. Skypaw ran after him, keeping her body low enough that the brambles did not touch her and she could slide through the entrance with ease.

"Chase him to the border. And give him a warning to leave with!" Marshfoot yowled after them.

Still terrified that Skypaw would actually attack him, Eaglekit ran with all the strength he could. He was only a kit, though; Skypaw was much faster and knew the territory better. He dodged around a particularly large pine tree and had to scrabble to a halt to avoid crashing straight into a bramble bush. But the stop slowed him down, and almost instantly he was knocked to the ground by a flying rush of gray fur.

"Listen," Skypaw hissed in his ear, "I'm not going to hurt you. I just need you to tell me what to do after I go back to camp." When Eaglekit didn't reply, she continued, "You can't stay in ShadowClan, and I can't go back without getting you out of the picture. If they smell your scent, they're going to question me. You're going to have to cross the border and stay there. Hurry, just tell me what you want me to do."

Eaglekit took a deep breath. He couldn't focus on his own situation now; he had to speak to Skypaw quickly. "When Rainbowkit becomes an apprentice," he mewed breathlessly, "or when she's old enough to understand, tell her what happened with me. She's going to have to know. Tell her that the day Nightstar goes missing is the day I come here."

Skypaw's amber eyes bored into Eaglekit's. "I will. Now go cross the border! I'm not giving you any special favors because I'm not attacking you like I would any other intruder."

"I understand," Eaglekit meowed. "There isn't anything left for me to say anyway."

"Then this is goodbye." Skypaw released her grip on Eaglekit. He rose to his paws unsteadily, and then turned and padded quickly through the undergrowth to the ThunderClan border. He turned around to see Skypaw padding back to the ShadowClan camp. She didn't turn around, and it wasn't long before she vanished behind a thorn bush. Eaglekit sat down underneath a spreading bramble bush and began to think.

He couldn't stay in any Clan territory. That much was clear. The Clans were as hostile toward outsiders as they were toward each other, and he doubted any Clan would be willing to take in a lost kit. The only thing he could do was leave the territories. But how was he going to survive, when he couldn't fight and didn't even know how to hunt for himself?

StarClan help me, he thought silently, gazing at the sky, which was reddening with the approaching sunset. Show me what I'm supposed to do.

He gave a deep sigh, and rose to his paws. Padding along the length of the ShadowClan border, he headed away from where he knew the lake was, up to the top of the territory. The Clans didn't ever stray past their borders, and he might be able to convince ThunderClan or ShadowClan to take him in from there.

Suddenly the sound of pawsteps rang through the forest and ThunderClan scent drifted over him. It was a ThunderClan patrol, off to patrol their borders. What would they do when they found Eaglekit in their territory? He didn't want to find out.

He spun around, searching for a safe place to hide. A large, straggly bramble bush with low-growing branches looked like the closest refuge, so Eaglekit dove into it just as the patrol, made up of five cats, came into earshot.

"What was that?" he heard the first, a she-cat, meow.

"What was what?" answered another cat, an impatient-sounding older tom.

"I saw the bush rustle," the she-cat meowed. "It wasn't by the wind. What was it?"

"Probably just a mouse or something, Stormpaw," another she-cat answered. "We don't have time to hunt now. We have to report back to Larchstar before sundown."

"There's no problems on the border," another tom meowed. "So we can..." He trailed off, and Eaglekit could tell he was scenting the air.

"What is it, Amberpaw?" the older she-cat asked.

"I can smell ShadowClan," the tom - Amberpaw - answered. "Past the border. I can smell fresh ShadowClan scent."

Eaglekit's heart almost stopped. They're going to find me! I have to get out of here!

The bush didn't move as Eaglekit turned his head wildly to look for any escape route. There - a hole in the ground, large enough for a cat to slip through. He crouched down and, taking care not to make any movements that would set the bush rustling, crawled into the hole.

Once inside, he looked back at the bush. None of the ThunderClan cats seemed to have notice anything. He sat down and breathed a sigh of relief when voices drifted into the hole.

"The scent's still there," Amberpaw was meowing. "If there's a ShadowClan cat in there, we need to find out."

They're going to notice I'm here! Eaglekit inhaled sharply, and then scrambled to his paws and ran blindly through the hole.

The sunlight from outside gradually faded, and soon Eaglekit was running through pitch darkness. The hole, it seemed, was not crafted by cats; there were times when Eaglekit had to squeeze his way through openings in the sides of the hole, which were becoming less like soil and more like... rock? Was he running through some sort of rocky tunnel? He couldn't stop to think about it now; the ThunderClan patrol might be chasing him right now. He couldn't stop to see if they were or were not. He just had to keep running until something - anything - forced him to stop.

Light began to glow from up ahead, and Eaglekit pushed on harder than ever, determined now to find where this hole led. He shot out of another hole - but he didn't land on soft forest ground.

Rock walls stretched on all sides of him, with many tunnels curving away into them, so dark that he couldn't see more than a few tail-lengths. A sparkling river cut through the rocky floor, its churning surface adorned with various shades of blue and gray. Where's the light coming from? Eaglekit wondered, bewildered. He looked up. Golden sunlight slanted into the tunnel through a hole in the roof; he could see the reddened sky through it. The sunlight glittered on the surface of the river.

But where am I? Eaglekit wondered. There wasn't any scent of cat here; he suspected the Clans didn't know it existed. The only thing that he could tell by the scents wafting in through the hole in the roof was that he was somewhere near WindClan territory; he could smell a cat scent that did not smell like the RiverClan or ThunderClan scents his Clanmates had on them when they returned from patrols. WindClan territory? Eaglekit wondered to himself. That hole led all the way to WindClan territory? H-how do I get out of the territories?

He doubted that these tunnels led all the way out of the territories. He sniffed at each tunnel's entrance, but there was always the cat scent of ThunderClan or WindClan drifting in from the land above. Some tunnels didn't even have any scent; he guessed they were blocked off somehow. Do I have to go back the way I came? he thought to himself. He padded back to the middle of the tunnel and looked around again, but none of the tunnels looked promising. I guess I do. He turned away from the river and followed his own scent trail back to the tunnel he had entered from. He padded along in the darkness, hoping there would be no ThunderClan patrol there to catch him.

When he reached the end of the tunnel, he crawled stealthily into the bramble bush and sniffed the air. He relaxed; the ThunderClan patrol wasn't anywhere nearby. He sniffed the air again and froze.

There wasn't any cat scent in the air at all.

~Chapter 6~

Eaglekit's eyes widened, and he spun around in shock. He couldn't smell any cat scent. The scent of the ThunderClan cats he had nearly run into earlier should still be in the air, albeit fainter, but no - no matter how hard he scented the ground he could not smell a thing. He was very close to the border, too; the scents of ThunderClan and ShadowClan at their strongest should be hanging in the air, but they simply weren't there. His own scent from earlier, save the trail he left upon exiting the tunnel, was gone, too.

"A-anybody? Is anybody there?" he called nervously. "Skypaw? Nettleslash? Is there any cat around here?"

No reply. The forest was completely silent, and his own mew echoed eerily through it. There wasn't any reason Eaglekit could think of for the forest to have suddenly lost all Clan scent. Panicking, he turned back around. He would need to find somebody to ask.

Dusk was falling, but that didn't stop Eaglekit as he ran through the quiet forest, moving as fast as his paws would carry him. The Clans have to be here! They can't just have disappeared. They can't! Where did...? He trailed off in his thoughts as the thick undergrowth where ShadowClan had the camp came into view.

No scent surrounded it; it could have been another part of the forest if Eaglekit hadn't known instinctively that there was supposed to be cat scent around it. He ducked in through the bramble bush that marked the entrance; the brambles snagged his fur and he had trouble squirming through it. Once he did manage to pull himself into the clearing, his fur torn from the protruding branches, the sight he saw devastated him.

The dens didn't exist at all. The bushes that he recognized were overgrown, and even the smallest cat couldn't get through the branches. The rocks in which Nettleslash held his den were surrounded by gorse; a cat living behind there would have a lot of trouble getting out. The roots of the tree in which Nightstar slept were not wide enough for any cat. No cats could have lived in this camp; it was simply unsuitable for life.

"Who are you?"

The voice shocked Eaglekit into jumping into the air, his fur standing on end. He turned around, shaking, to face the cat talking to him.

It was a tortoiseshell-and-white she-cat with glowing green eyes. Her fur was matted and her paws were caked with mud. She looked thin and starving, as if she hadn't eaten in a while. It is the middle of leaf-bare, thought Eaglekit, but leaf-bare alone doesn't do that much damage to a cat! I never starved, not even when Flowkit was alive and we had to share food.

There was a rustle in the bramble bush behind the tortoiseshell, and a huge white cat emerged into the clearing. He was in even worse shape than the tortoiseshell; his pelt stretched sharply over his ribs and his eyes were dull with hunger.

"I thought you said there weren't any other cats here?" he growled, glaring at the tortoiseshell.

"I don't recognize him," replied the tortoiseshell. "I've certainly never seen him. Who are you? What are you doing in our camp?" Her fur began to bristle slightly, and her green eyes were hostile.

More cats were piling in behind the white cat and the tortoiseshell, staring uneasily at Eaglekit. The white cat turned around and took one glance at the cats behind him before nodding to the tortoiseshell. "You can begin setting things up," he ordered the grouped cats. "There isn't much that we can do for you right now. We will come back in a moment to help. Come here, you." He jerked his tail at Eaglekit and nodded. "We'll talk about this in the forest." He walked back through the entrance tunnel, motioning to the tortoiseshell and Eaglekit to follow him. The tortoiseshell exchanged a glance with a dark ginger cat standing in the grouped cats before padding back through the tunnel. Eaglekit followed her out, noticing with a jolt that the other cats were hissing at him as he passed.

"Who are you?" asked the tortoiseshell again once all three cats were just outside the camp. "Where are you from?"

Eaglekit's tail twitched nervously. Whoever these cats are, he thought, even if they're not the Clan I know, they might be willing to help me. But what do I say?

"What are you doing in our territory?" inquired the white cat, his dark amber gaze hardly veiling his hostility. "We can't have any other cats living in our territory."

I have to make something up, Eaglekit realized. Even if it means lying to these cats. "My name is Eaglek-" Eaglekit stopped. That was a Clan name. What if these cats knew the Clan cats? They might try to send him back to ShadowClan, which he didn't smell at all in the forest. Even if he found them, they would just drive him out again. ShadowClan, he knew, wasn't too friendly toward intruders. "Eagle," Eaglekit stammered. "Just Eagle."

The tortoiseshell narrowed her green eyes. "Where's your mother? Surely you can't be living here by yourself? You'd be as soft as a kittypet." Her nose wrinkled with disgust as she said the word kittypet.

"I-I'm not here by myself," Eaglekit stammered. What did he say? He had to get these cats to accept him. But how? "M-my mother... she..." Think of something! Anything!

"She... she was killed by a fox."

"A fox?" the white cat echoed, a hint of nervousness in his voice. "You didn't report any foxes," he meowed to the tortoiseshell. She simply rolled her eyes.

"There are foxes everywhere. This place is no exception. You can't expect it to be perfect."

"Th-the fox wasn't here anyway," Eaglekit interrupted quickly. "We were... uh... somewhere over there. A long way over there. I don't know how far we were..." He gestured with his tail toward the area away from the lake, hoping he was vague enough not to raise suspicion. "M-my mother told me that if anything ever happened, I should come here..."

"Why would she do that?" the tortoiseshell interrupted. "The forest is crawling with foxes and badgers. It's not safe for a kit if you don't have anywhere to go, especially if you're a kittypet."

"I-I'm not a kittypet!" Eaglekit spat indignantly. "I've been living in the forest since I was born! My mother told me that I needed to find the cats living here if anything ever happened to her..."

The white cat blinked, and the hostility in his eyes mingled with suspicion, clouding his gaze. "There weren't any other cats living here until recently. She can't have known we were here." Fox dung! Eaglekit thought. Where did all these cats come from, then?

"She... she thought there might be cats here. Aren't there cats in a lot of forests?"

"There are," the tortoiseshell meowed. "Usually." She exchanged a sharp glance with the white cat, but began speaking again before Eaglekit could ask about it. "You may be a kit, but we don't really have room for an extra mouth right now, especially if you can't even hunt for yourself."

"I need somewhere to go!" Eaglekit wailed. "I'm all alone now and I can't survive on my own in the forest. What else am I supposed to do?"

"I'll think about it." The white cat's deep voice startled Eaglekit, and he froze for a second before turning to the white cat.

"Really?" he gasped in surprise. "You'd consider taking me in?" He wasn't the only one to act surprised; the tortoiseshell was gaping at him in shock too.

"You're going to consider taking this outsider in?"

"We need all the cats we can get. We've lost many cats these past moons, and even if it means feeding another mouth-" He broke off and turned to Eaglekit. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Five moons," Eaglekit replied, less shaky now that he knew he might have a future with these cats.

"So we only need to feed him for one moon."

The tortoiseshell didn't look convinced, but she wasn't as surprised anymore. "Are you going to take him in now?" she asked. "We haven't even settled in yet. He probably wouldn't make our settling any easier!"

"No," the white cat answered. "I'll think about it for a day or two. Now I must get back... Eagle, do you have a den?"

"No," Eagle replied. "I don't. I just came into the forest today."

The white cat nodded and rose to his paws. "Okay, then," he meowed, twitching his whiskers. "Are you strong enough to go any further with him?" he inquired of the tortoiseshell.

"I'll find him somewhere," the tortoiseshell muttered mutinously. The white cat nodded again. He turned and padded away from both cats, back through the bramble bush that was the entrance to the ShadowClan camp - no, what Eaglekit knew as the ShadowClan camp; now he didn't know what kind of cats were using it.

"Follow me," the tortoiseshell meowed, breaking into his thoughts. Eaglekit padded after the tortoiseshell, still not able to take in the fact that he might be getting back into a group of cats, albeit an unfamiliar one. He was hardly thinking about anything except this realization when he reached the bush where the tortoiseshell had stopped and crawled under it.

"I must be getting back."

The tortoiseshell turned and left for the bushes. She was almost out of earshot by the time Eaglekit remembered to call out to her "Wait - what's your name?"

"My name," the tortoiseshell called back, "is Tawnypelt."

~Chapter 7~

"Eagle, we've made our decision."

Eaglekit opened two foggy eyes to see the two cats he had met with the day before, as well as a dark ginger she-cat, crouched before him. Their pelts were barely outlined with light, and Eaglekit could see that dawn was still a while off through the branches of the bush he was curled under. He sat up, wrapping his striped tail around his paws, trying to look his best for the cats he was appealing to.

"We've decided," the white cat meowed, "to take you into our Clan."

Eaglekit blinked. Even though he had appealed to them to let him in the day before, somehow he hadn't expected them to accept him.

Wait a moment, our Clan? Eaglekit wondered. Is this one of the four Clans? D-did I end up... in the time of the Clans? "You said you live in a Clan...?" he asked warily.

"There are four warrior Clans in this forest," the ginger she-cat explained. "We are cats of ShadowClan."

ShadowClan! Eaglekit could hardly stop himself from blurting out the word. These are ShadowClan cats, and they're letting me into the Clan. I'm going back to my birth Clan!

"Is there something wrong with that?" The white cat's amber eyes were narrowed with suspicion as he spoke.

"N-no," Eaglekit stammered hastily. "It's fine." The white cat and the ginger cat exchanged a wary glance before the white cat turned away, flicking with his tail for the other three to follow him.

"Come on, then," he meowed gruffly, padding under the branches of the bush and back towards the place where Eaglekit had seen them the day before. The ShadowClan camp, he realized with a jolt. It wouldn't be the exact same Clan that he had grown up in, but he was heading back to his home, back with cats who shared the same rules and customs as the ones he had lived with, with cats that may well be his own ancestors. Eaglekit was awed by the prospect, but he rose to his paws and forced himself to follow the three older cats out of the bush. The tortoiseshell - Tawnypelt - dropped back to join him.

"Blackstar thinks I'd better tell you about the way the Clan works. You'd probably be able to pick it up fast enough, and it'll be a moon before you become an apprentice, so I'm not sure why he felt it was necessary," she meowed dryly; Eaglekit could tell she didn't want to spend her time explaining things that he would find out for himself through experience. But nobody disobeys the Clan leader, he reminded himself. It's in the warrior code. And it's not necessary to tell me this anyway, Eaglekit thought as he scrambled over a fallen tree that Tawnypelt leaped over with ease. Trust me, Tawnypelt, it's not.

If Tawnypelt had noticed his silence, she hadn't said anything; instead, she kept on talking. "Like Russetfur told you, there are four Clans in this forest," she began. "ShadowClan, ThunderClan, RiverClan and WindClan. As Russetfur said, we are cats of ShadowClan. Blackstar is our leader, and Russetfur is deputy. I'm a warrior," she explained. "In each Clan you have a leader, who runs the affairs of that Clan and speaks at Gatherings, which are a period of peace held under the full moon." Yeah, and they're held on the island, Eaglekit thought to himself. You have to cross RiverClan territory to get there. He couldn't say anything, though, for Tawnypelt was speaking again. "The leader's given nine lives by StarClan." She stopped expectantly, as though she were waiting for Eaglekit to say something.

What do I say? thought Eaglekit. What did she - oh, right, StarClan. "I thought you said there were only four Clans?" he asked hastily, trying not to make himself appear suspicious. "You didn't mention StarClan; what are they?"

"The spirits of our warrior ancestors," Tawnypelt answered immediately. "They send prophecies and omens to the medicine cats, and give leaders their nine lives and name. Sometimes," she added, "they even come to the warriors." There was a glint in her green eyes that suggested there was some meaning behind this, but Eaglekit didn't have any time to think about this, for Tawnypelt had gone on to the next point. "Deputies, like Russetfur, are the second in command. They assign patrols and oversee the training of apprentices. They confer with the leaders to make decisions for the Clan."

"Apprentices?" Eaglekit asked, trying purposefully to sound as if he had no idea what Tawnypelt was talking about. "What do they do?"

"They're cats in training," Tawnypelt answered shortly. "Their names always end in -paw."

"Who trains these cats?" meowed Eaglekit, ducking through a gorse bush which Tawnypelt swerved to avoid.

"The warriors, deputy, leader or medicine cat can all train an apprentice," Tawnypelt answered. "After a few moons of training, the apprentices will become warriors and sometimes medicine cats."

"Medicine cats?" Eaglekit couldn't act as if he already knew who the cats in the Clan were. "What do they do?"

"They heal," Tawnypelt meowed simply. "They heal the cats with herbs. They also speak with StarClan and help the leaders decide on a course of action for their Clan. Our medicine cat is Littlecloud." Eaglekit could tell that Tawnypelt was getting bored of telling him the lifestyle of the Clan, so he asked one last question.

"Anything else I need to know?"

Tawnypelt sighed; it was clear to Eaglekit that she was getting annoyed and impatient. "Queens and elders," she answered regardless. "The queens are warrior she-cats that are nursing or expecting kits. We have two queens, Tallpoppy and Cherryfur, but I'm not sure you'd want to be cared for by Cherryfur," she told him dryly. "Her kits haven't even been weaned yet. I expect that you'll be cared for by Tallpoppy until you get your apprentice name; her kits are about your age. There are also the elders, the retired cats. It's the apprentices' job to care for them." Tawnypelt wrinkled her nose. "They treat the elders with mouse bile. The stuff stinks and it gets in your fur, too. There's also the warrior code, but you'll learn about that when you're an apprentice." She broke off, staring at something ahead of the cats; Eaglekit also guessed she didn't want to explain to him the warrior code, so she was trying to find an excuse to stop talking. Eaglekit looked up to see the ShadowClan camp - or what would become it; right now it was being swarmed over by dusty, exhausted-looking cats. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the cats were already up and working on the bushes, clearing out space out for would become the dens and the barrier surrounding the camp. The cats looked up when a gust of wind tugged at Eaglekit's fur and sent his scent into the bushes.

"Who is this?" snarled a dark gray tom working on the entrance tunnel.

"What is he doing in our camp?" muttered a spiky-furred she-cat, her eyes gleaming with undisguised hostility from where she was dragging brambles from a den.

"How could Blackstar allow such an intruder in, and right after we've just moved in, too?" The speaker, a dark brown tom, glared at Russetfur coldly. "Russetfur, did you know anything about this?"

The ginger she-cat narrowed her eyes at the brown tom. "This kit is coming to join our Clan," she growled.

Shocked yowls rose up from around the clearing, and more than a few cats bounded out of the bushes to confront the three older cats.

"How could you do this?" an ginger tom hissed at Blackstar. "Have you forgotten who we are? Let ThunderClan take in a poor lost kittypet. It's thanks to that wretched Firestar that we're here at all." He spat the words out, contempt making his pelt bristle. "He forced us to come with him, rather than allowing us to follow Boulder to BloodClan's home. We could have lived there just fine."

"Be quiet, Rowanclaw," Blackstar snapped. "I don't like Firestar any more than you do, but that doesn't change the fact that we're here now, and there's nothing we can do about it." His fierce stare raked over the cats standing before them, and he did not stop Tawnypelt as she stepped up and began talking.

"StarClan always decreed for there to be four Clans," she spoke, her green eyes narrowed with anger. "If they didn't, they wouldn't have sent a cat from each Clan to hear Midnight's message."

"Look who's talking!" growled the dark gray cat that had spoken up first. "It's the ThunderClan warrior. Is it any surprise that you want to remain with your brother?"

"I'm more loyal to my Clan than my kin!" Tawnypelt yowled indignantly, her tortoiseshell fur bristling with rage. "I wouldn't have joined ShadowClan if I wanted to stay with my brother. Not when Tigerstar was ruling!"

"Then why'd you join at all?" Rowanclaw mocked, his narrowed eyes goading Tawnypelt on.

Blackstar silenced all the cats with a ferocious caterwaul. "Enough!" he spat. "This cat is going to join the Clan, whether you like it or not. The Clan needs warriors. We're all tired and hungry from that trip, and Smokepaw, who would have been a warrior by now, is dead." As he spoke, Eaglekit caught a glimpse of a black she-cat hanging her head sadly. "We aren't soft-hearted cats. Not like Firestar and his band of kittypets. If this cat were a kittypet, we'd tell him to seek out ThunderClan. He's a rogue." Blackstar swept a furious gaze across the cats, and Eaglekit could see their expressions change as what Blackstar had just said sunk in. "If any of you have a problem with that, take it up with me personally!" The cats retreated, muttering with discontent. Eaglekit twitched his ears. It was going to be hard to settle in properly, living in a Clan that didn't trust outsiders. I'm not an outsider, Eaglekit reminded himself. I have a right to be here. They just don't know that.

"This kit," Blackstar continued, "will be raised with Tallpoppy's kits. They may be a little younger than him, but unless Cherryfur wants him to be with Snakekit and Dirtkit, he's staying with Tallpoppy. He is five moons old, and from this point until he becomes an apprentice, will be known as Eaglekit."

~Chapter 8~

"Tallpoppy, he's so boring. Why won't he play with us?"

"Maybe it's because you're just sitting there staring at him?"

Eaglekit looked uncomfortably around. Tallpoppy's three kits had instantly swarmed around him the moment he set foot in the nursery, and now they wouldn't leave him alone. In front of him was a small brown she-cat, who had her head tilted to one side and was studying him carefully. The two other kits, a dark brown tom and a small light gray tom, were on either side of him, doing the exact same thing as Applekit was doing.

"Do you want to play a game?" asked the light gray tom. Without waiting for an answer, he crouched down to leap on him, as did the other two kits. What? thought Eaglekit dimly before the three cats had ambushed him. He flailed wildly under the three kits' paws, not accustomed to actually playing with other cats. Cloudpaw, Darkpaw and Woodpaw, Rootclaw's kits, had moved to the apprentices' den just after Flowkit's death - he hadn't had another cat to play with since he was three moons old. Fortunately from him, he was saved from having to try and engage in a mock battle by a quiet meow behind him. The gray kit - Marshkit - jumped off him and stood up to face the cat; after the three other kits had gotten off him he flipped over and stood up to face two kits much younger and smaller than himself; they couldn't have been older than two moons. One was a dark brown tom and the other was a very light brown tabby she-cat, and behind both kits there was a tortoiseshell queen, watching her kits closely as if she were afraid Eaglekit would attack them.

"Who are you?" asked the tabby, gazing directly at Eaglekit. "Where do you come from?"

"This is Eaglekit," explained Applekit. "He comes from a long way away, away from the lake."

"You mean like us?" prompted the tom. "We come from a long way away. Are you one of those other cats that came with us?"

"No," The speaker was Tallpoppy. "He's from somewhere else."

"Then why are you here?" asked the she-cat, not hostilely, but with more of a curious intent. "I thought only ShadowClan cats were allowed here."

"Blackstar decided to take him in anyway." This time it was the other two kits' mother, the tortoiseshell queen, that was speaking.

"Why couldn't he have taken in Birchkit too?" Marshkit complained, turning back to Tallpoppy. "Birchkit was so much fun!" His whiskers twitched, and his eyes shone with sadness. Tallpoppy's eyes were shadowed as she gazed at her kit.

"Birchkit's in another Clan," she explained quietly. "Eaglekit isn't from another Clan, or else Blackstar never would have taken him in."

"But why does it matter if Birchkit's in another Clan?" Applekit protested pitifully. "Why couldn't Blackstar have taken him anyway?" The three kits all gathered around Tallpoppy, their large eyes pleading for an answer.

Tallpoppy flinched slightly before answering. "We don't have Birchkit. We have Eaglekit," she meowed evasively; Eaglekit wondered what it was that she didn't want to tell her kits. "Why don't you play with him?" All three kits turned around at this point; it was almost as if they had forgotten that he existed.

"He looks kind of like Birchkit," Toadkit mused. "Are you anything like him?" The three cats padded away from their mother to sit down around him.

"Who's Birchkit?" Eaglekit asked, thoroughly confused.

"Never mind," Applekit muttered, annoyed now. "Do you know any good games?" Eaglekit hesitated before responding, racking his brains to try and think of a game that he and Flowkit had played before her death. Unfortunately, the games he could think of were basic ones that he didn't think these kits would like.

"I... I didn't have any littermates where I lived," he stammered. This wasn't exactly a lie; he hadn't told Tawnypelt or Blackstar anything more than that his mother was killed by a fox. Applekit just gaped at him.

"No littermates?" Marshkit echoed, amazed. "I couldn't imagine being without Applekit and Toadkit! How did you stand it?" Before allowing Eaglekit to answer the question, he turned around and jumped onto Applekit, who fell under his weight. She flipped over, bringing the gray tom down with him. Before long, both kits were rolling over the nursery floor, locked in a fierce tussle, and as Eaglekit watched, Toadkit joined them. Well, I might as well get used to playing with them, Eaglekit thought, and leaped into the fray. He landed on top of Toadkit, who let out a shocked yowl and twisted around, trying to throw Eaglekit off, but the brown tabby held on tightly, refusing to let this younger cat get the better of him. Applekit, freed from Toadkit's grasp, reared up on her hind paws and batted at Eaglekit, trying to shake him off. The combined force of both cats attacking him was enough to push him off of Toadkit and squarely onto Marshkit.

"Oof!" the gray kit huffed, not expecting Eaglekit to land on him. "Hey!" The gray kit scrambled out from beneath Eaglekit and turned to face him. His fur started to bristle, but there was a good-natured gleam in his eyes. "For that, ThunderClan warrior, you're going to pay!" He launched himself at Eaglekit, his paws outstretched but his claws sheathed. Eaglekit didn't have time to dodge, and Marshkit pushed him right into Applekit and Toadkit. Applekit toppled over into Tallpoppy, whose amber eyes snapped open.

"If you're going to play," she growled, "do it outside!" She rose to her paws and sent all four kits scurrying out of the nursery.

The weak sun shone through the branches of the pine trees that surrounded the camp. Eaglekit blinked, not used to the light. There was supposed to be something blocking the light. That's how it was in the ShadowClan camp he knew, anyway. A cold wind swept through the branches, chilling him to the bone. Eaglekit realized that whatever blocked the light was supposed to block the wind, too. He guessed that it was the bramble bushes he could see around the slope, but in the camp he had lived in they were larger and fuller. Here they seemed puny, their gaps stuffed with fern and gorse to close the camp from the world outside. Eaglekit felt a pang of homesickness. He wanted the camp he knew back, and he wanted Skyflight and Nightstar and all the other cats he had grown up around. Nobody knew him here, let alone trusted him. As he watched cats weave back and forth between the dens strewn about camp, he could see a few cats glance darkly at him over their shoulders. He didn't know how long it would be before they trusted him. To them he was an outsider, not a ShadowClan cat, even though he had lived in ShadowClan of the future. How would he ever cope, living among cats who didn't even trust him?

"Eaglekit." Eaglekit jumped in surprise as he heard a voice behind him; he spun around to see Tallpoppy standing quietly on the ground behind him. "I know you're worried that the Clan won't trust you." How could you tell? "Don't let it bother you. They'll come to accept you over time."

"But... these cats don't like outsiders, do they? Why should they...?" He was silenced as Tallpoppy swept her tail across his mouth. She looked down at him with warm amber eyes, and Eaglekit could see in their depths the love that Skyflight had always shown. She doesn't treat me like an outsider. I might as well be one of her kits, Eaglekit realized. He twitched his whiskers in understanding.

"They'll come to see you for who you are, if only because some of them can sympathize. Boulder, for instance, was a rogue before he came to the Clan. ShadowClan accepted him because of it, but when ThunderClan invited a kittypet to join the Clan, they became very self-conscious about their roles as Clanborn warriors." Eaglekit blinked. Boulder had been a rogue? The Clan's reaction to his arrival had made him positive that none of them were outsiders. And yet... they trusted Boulder fully. Why don't they trust me like that? "It didn't help that shortly after Firestar's arrival, he drove out our leader and a few other cats, who become rogues. And after that, Tigerstar, who had been a rogue, took over leadership of the Clan and, in the end, nearly destroyed it. The Clan started to hate outsiders for destroying their beloved Clan... even though Blackstar and Russetfur were two rogues that left with Brokenstar." Blackstar was a rogue? These cats' leader and deputy had been rogues, and yet they still didn't trust him? "Their feelings about you will change, though," Tallpoppy continued. "Whatever Blackstar says, the reason he took you in is probably because you had been a rogue - and he would have been a hypocrite if he hadn't taken you in, then."

"But... what about Tawnypelt?" Eaglekit murmured. "These cats don't trust her like they do Blackstar. Rowanclaw called her a ThunderClan warrior." His ears twitched. This wasn't the Clan he knew. They still didn't like outsiders... but they didn't have any, either. It was contradictory.

"She was a ThunderClan warrior," Tallpoppy told him. "In fact, she was Tigerstar's son. ShadowClan was more willing to trust the former ThunderClan deputy, who had left ThunderClan for some reason that Bluestar wouldn't reveal, than they were to trust his daughter, who came to join ShadowClan of her own free will." There was a hint of sourness in her voice; did Tallpoppy disagree with the Clan's policy? "Remember that StarClan had no objection to taking you in, though," she reminded him. "The Clan will soon come to see that, I promise." She bent her head and began to gently lick Eaglekit's pelt. He was silent, looking around the clearing at all the unfamiliar cats, knowing that one day he'd be among them, hunting and fighting for his Clanmates, as loyally as he would for Nightstar and Skyflight and all the cats he knew.

I'm not any less loyal because I'm not from here, Eaglekit thought to himself, narrowing his eyes. I'm going to prove myself to this Clan.

~Chapter 9~

"Rowanclaw, Talonpaw, Cedarheart, Oakfur and Tawnypelt," Russetfur meowed, "you'll take the dawn patrol. Start setting scent marks along the ThunderClan boundary. We agreed to the stream, but take a few more fox-lengths if you think you can get away with it." The ginger she-cat's eyes gleamed in the pale dawn light.

"And hunt on your way back, too." The voice was Blackstar's; the white tom had padded over from where he was helping clear space for the warriors' den. "StarClan knows we need fresh-kill." Eaglekit's stomach rumbled at the mention of fresh-kill. The space in the center of camp where the pile usually was was empty. Well, at least the kits and elders get to eat first, he thought to himself. When they have prey we'll be some of the first to eat.

"I'll lead another patrol to set the border with RiverClan. Nightwing, Branchtail and Kinkfur, you can come with me." Three she-cats trotted over from their places around camp to join the deputy. "And finally, Smokefoot, Snowbird, take your apprentices and hunt. Stay close to the camp and don't stay out too long. We've traveled long enough, and now we need to have a decent meal." The cats around her let out loud yowls of agreement. "Go to your duties." Three separate patrols of cats filed out of the camp; the remaining cats, including Blackstar, went back to preparing the dens. Tallpoppy rose to her paws from behind Eaglekit and went to help a black-and-white she-cat as she worked on reinforcing the outside of the nursery. Cherryfur and a gray tabby tom whom Eaglekit did not know the name of were dragging branches from inside the nursery already. Fur brushed his side; he turned to see one of Cherryfur's kits - the dark brown tom - pounce on the back of a branch his mother was hauling away. The tortoiseshell she-cat stumbled, the branch caught under her kit's paws. She good-naturedly tugged the branch away, sending the kit tumbling onto the ground. Eaglekit had to suppress a bout of laughter. This kit was acting exactly the way he had when he was younger, when Flowkit had still been alive. He tipped his head to one side. Would this adventure have been different if he had had Flowkit to share it with? What if she hadn't died those two moons ago? Would she have come to the past with him or would she have stayed in his own time?

"You can't catch me!"

He was jolted out of his thoughts as, ahead of him, Cherryfur's kits chased each other around the camp, the branch their mother had been dragging abandoned. He had to quickly spring back to avoid them running straight into him, and neither kit seemed to even notice he was there as they continued chasing each other around the clearing.

Why can't I be that carefree?

"Hey, Eaglekit!" Eaglekit jumped as a voice sounded behind him. He turned around to face Tallpoppy's three kits. "Do you want to play a game?"

Eaglekit purred. Here was his chance to have fun for once, with Tallpoppy's kits. He trotted over to stand in front of the kits.

"What game?" he asked, tilting his head to one side. Applekit narrowed her eyes, thinking. Marshkit leaned over and whispered something in her ear, and she looked up.

"How about you and me will be ShadowClan warriors? And Toadkit and Marshkit are invading and we have to fight them off?" she suggested.

Eaglekit blinked. "Okay," he meowed, shrugging. He crouched down, preparing to spring onto Toadkit. Fur brushed his side and out of the corner of his eye he could see Applekit's brown fur. Toadkit let out a yowl and sprang into the air, his outstretched paws aiming right for Eaglekit. Thinking quickly, he rolled to one side; Toadkit crashed into the ground where he had been only a heartbeat earlier. Eaglekit sprang to his paws and, without hesitating, leaped onto the brown kit. He held him down with his front paws, leaned over and hissed, "Get out of our territory, ThunderClan intruder!"

Toadkit writhed from side to side. "Never!" he shot back. He gave a massive lunge forward and sent Eaglekit right into the bramble bushes at the edge of the clearing. Eaglekit got to his paws, brambles pricking his pelt, but before he had time to make a move Toadkit crashed into him again. Suddenly Toadkit was the one holding him down, and he couldn't break free. He flipped over onto his back, crushing Toadkit beneath him. "Get off!" he heard the tom hiss. He stood up, his pelt dusty and pricked with brambles. As soon as he let Toadkit up the kit went rushing right back at him, but Eaglekit jumped, and Toadkit skidded beneath him. Eaglekit fell onto him, and he held him down with all the strength he could muster. He looked up to meet Applekit's gaze; the brown she-cat had pinned Marshkit down as well.

"We've won the battle," Eaglekit hissed, his whiskers twitching with amusement. "Now get out of our territory!" He let Toadkit up, and both cats padded over to join the other two kits.

"We won!" Applekit mewed happily, her eyes glowing. "We beat those ThunderClan invaders."

"But we'll get you next time," Marshkit growled playfully, his bright eyes narrowed. "ThunderClan will never be beaten!"

"By ShadowClan, you will!" Eaglekit meowed teasingly. He crouched down and began to draw himself forward, looking up at Marshkit as he went. The gray kit remained still, aside from a twitch of his whiskers, as Eaglekit approached. "Are you too scared to fight?" he mocked him. Marshkit's tail lashed.

"ThunderClan are not scared! We're brave!" Marshkit suddenly leaped over Eaglekit's head, and he didn't even have time to look up before the smaller kit's weight crashed down on him and the breath was knocked out of him. He surged upwards, bringing Marshkit with him, and threw him off.

"You may be brave, but you're no match for a ShadowClan warrior!" Applekit yowled, rushing forward until she could pin down Marshkit. Eaglekit turned around, looking for Toadkit. He spotted the brown kit creeping up on him; he let out a hiss of frustration as Eaglekit rammed into him, carrying him off his paws.

"Leave, ThunderClan warrior!" Eaglekit meowed sharply; Toadkit simply writhed beneath his paws. He glared at Eaglekit with narrowed amber eyes, and then Eaglekit felt his hind paws push into his stomach; he was thrown right into Applekit and Marshkit, who toppled over. Marshkit jumped on him; he writhed for a little bit before a sharp yowl made him freeze. Marshkit stepped off him; he scrambled to his paws to see four cats push their way through the still-straggly bushes of the entrance and into the camp. All four of them were carrying prey; they dropped their catches in the center of the camp. Eaglekit's ears twitched. He still didn't know why there hadn't been any fresh-kill before - nobody had bothered to tell him why there wasn't any prey, nor why all the cats had come into camp for the first time, apparently, the night before. His stomach rumbled and he looked around guiltily; Applekit and Marshkit were looking at him with apologetic looks.

"We're hungry too," Applekit meowed. For the first time Eaglekit noticed how thin they looked; he hadn't eaten in a day or two and he was still better-fed than the kits. What's the matter? Didn't they eat, wherever they came from?

"Here." The voice was Tallpoppy's; the tabby queen had picked up four small mice from the fresh-kill pile and dropped them in front of the kits. Eaglekit looked at the prey in awe. It was the middle of leaf-bare, and yet these mice didn't look quite as scrawny as the ones he was used to seeing on the fresh-kill pile back home. He looked at the fresh-kill pile; there was more prey on it already than there had been in the one leaf-bare he had been through, and only one patrol had been sent out. Why was the prey more plentiful here than it was back home? And if it was so plentiful, why were the cats still starving?

He didn't have an answer to the question. Instead, he bent down and ate the mouse, his hunger causing him to quickly devour it. He looked up when he was finished, his stomach full. Around the camp the starving cats were eating the prey hungrily and swiftly, as if they hadn't had anything to eat in a moon.

Whatever happened to these cats? he thought to himself. Why are they starving so badly?

~Chapter 10~

"At one point, many, many moons ago, we lived in a forest, a long, long way away from here," Tallpoppy meowed, her tail curled around her paws as she spoke to Eaglekit. Her three kits, as well as Cherryfur's, were listening a short distance away.

Eaglekit's ears twitched as she spoke. This was news to him. No cat in ShadowClan had ever spoken of the old territory - indeed, he wasn't sure if they even knew there had been an old territory in the first place. How far back is this? he wondered.

"The old forest was a place were all four Clans lived in harmony, where prey was plentiful and where StarClan watched over us all, even in the toughest times."

Eaglekit nodded. This was familiar - how often had he heard the cats of his Clan talking about the harmony of the Clans beside the lake and StarClan's presence? - but hearing that it was ever once different was a new thing to him. He couldn't picture that there had ever been anywhere for Clan cats to live outside the lake, where StarClan watched them as much as they did now. It was a weird concept.

"In the southeast were the ThunderClan cats; they lived in forest much like they do now, and they bordered the Twolegplace." Eaglekit noticed that Tallpoppy's kits - and even Tallpoppy herself - flinched as she said the word Twolegplace; he couldn't help wondering what was so bad about that. Twolegs came to RiverClan and ShadowClan territory every greenleaf, didn't they? The cats dealt with them just fine. He didn't press the point - he didn't have time to, for Tallpoppy was continuing. "In the southwest were the RiverClan cats; their territory was cut off from the forest by the great river that ran through it, and they often quarreled with ThunderClan over the Sunningrocks that lay just on the ThunderClan side of the river. In the northwest there was WindClan: they lived on the great open moors past the trees, in the direction of the Thunderpaths that crossed the territory beyond Highstones and the Twoleg farms."

"Highstones?" Eaglekit asked, genuinely curious. He hadn't ever heard of Highstones before. "Where - no, what was that?"

"Of course, you don't know, do you?" Tallpoppy meowed, shaking her head. "It was the place where the Clan cats shared with their warrior ancestors, in the cavern of the Moonstone."

Oh, you mean like the Moonpool, Eaglekit thought. He remembered overhearing Rainbowpaw talking to her brother Grasspaw about the things she had seen during the half-moon trips to the Moonpool. He didn't say anything, though - nobody had mentioned the Moonpool yet; they wouldn't have expected him to know what it was.

Tallpoppy took his silence as an invitation to go on. "And finally in the northeast was the ShadowClan territory. It was actually quite unlike our territory now; there weren't many trees back there and it was more marsh than anything else. But in the center of all four territories there was Fourtrees, were the Clans met every moon in a truce under the full moon to share news. The times of peace were known as Gatherings."

Like on the island? "Have you found the - the Gathering place here yet?" Eaglekit meowed. He had only just barely stopped himself from saying the island.

Tallpoppy sighed. "No, we haven't, and we wouldn't need to if the Twolegs hadn't destroyed our forest."

Eaglekit's ears pricked. That would explain the kits' flinching at the word Twolegplace earlier. "What... what happened?" he asked quietly.

"StarClan sent one cat from each Clan to the sun-drown-place - a massive body of water where the sun sinks every night," Tallpoppy added, seeing Eaglekit's confused look. "Of our Clan, they sent Tawnypelt."

That would explain why she was getting a voice in decisions with Blackstar and Russetfur. "Rowanclaw said something earlier about Tawnypelt being a ThunderClan warrior, though... so why would...?"

"Her brother's a ThunderClan cat," Tallpoppy put in. "Brambleclaw was the ThunderClan cat StarClan chose for the journey." Eaglekit nodded in understanding.

"So what did they find when they got to the... the sun-drown-place?"

"Midnight," Applekit put in, speaking for the first time since Tallpoppy had started explaining. "They found Midnight."

"Midnight?" Eaglekit asked, confused. "What was that?"

"A badger," Tallpoppy replied simply. "She told them that Twolegs were coming to destroy the forest and that the Clans needed to leave."

"A... a badger?" echoed Eaglekit in disbelief. "They believed in the words of a badger?"

"Blackstar was reluctant to believe it too," Tallpoppy pointed out. "But then the Twolegs came, and we realized that she had been right after all. Originally, Blackstar was going to take the Clan to the Twolegplace nearby."

Eaglekit's ear twitched. "Why would he do that? The Twolegs were the ones destroying the forest, weren't they?"

"Yes," Tallpoppy agreed. "Blackstar believed we'd be better off in the home of cats who once tried to destroy us than with the other three Clans." Eaglekit was about to ask what cats had ever tried to destroy the Clans when Tallpoppy continued, without even giving him a chance to ask; he guessed she didn't want to talk about it. "But in the end, Firestar of ThunderClan managed to convince him to travel with his own Clan and the other two. That's how we ended up here."

A question that had been nagging at Eaglekit ever since the tabby she-cat began speaking finally slipped out. "Is that why you're all so hungry? Did the Twolegs destroy all of your food?"

"If they hadn't destroyed the food, we could have lived in the forest still!" The voice was Toadkit's; the brown tom's fur was bristling with anger. "Those stinking Twolegs - they think they can just move in and steal our territory -"

"Hush, Toadkit," Tallpoppy commanded fiercely, sweeping her tail around him to muffle his voice. "We're here now, and that's all that matters."

Eaglekit smiled. Tallpoppy was right. He might be in a different time, an outsider in his own Clan, but he couldn't reverse the situation; he might as well try to make something good about it.

"Those fox-hearted ThunderClan cats!"

The cry erupted from outside the nursery; Tallpoppy hurried outside to see what was going on, leaving her kits and Eaglekit in the nursery. Eaglekit exchanged a glance with Applekit and then followed her out.

Rowanclaw was standing in the center of camp, his ginger fur brushed up with fury. As Eaglekit emerged from the nursery, a smaller dark ginger tom and a gray tom exploded from the branches forming the entrance to camp. Blackstar padded over from where he was fixing up the warriors' den to face the tom.

"What happened, Rowanclaw?" he growled.

"We went to mark the border with ThunderClan," he explained, "and when we got there we found that some ThunderClan cats had crossed the border and were trying to claim part of our territory!"

Yowls of outrage burst from all the assembled cats; Eaglekit looked around wildly and found that to his relief neither Tallpoppy nor her kits were joining in with the screeching.

"They wouldn't leave, even though we told them that we decided to mark our border in a straight line from where the stream curved into our territory. In the end we had to wait for Firestar to show up before they left."

"Did he let you keep the territory?" asked a light gray tom.

The dark gray tom that had come back with Rowanclaw snorted. "Yes," he meowed, "but only because he's too much of a coward to fight for it."

Tallpoppy snorted and went back into the nursery. Eaglekit, with one last glance at the furious patrol, followed her in, unsure of what was going on but not willing to get involved.

~Chapter 11~

"They're back from the Gathering!"

Eaglekit snapped open his eyes at the sound of Marshkit's excited mew and sat up. Tallpoppy's kits were fidgeting with excitement. "It's the first Gathering we've had here," Applekit explained to him. "They were supposed to decide on the territories tonight." Without waiting for a response - even if Eaglekit had been able to give one - all three of Tallpoppy's kits hared away into the clearing, tails bristling with excitement.

It had been only a few days since Eaglekit had come to live with ShadowClan, yet he was already adapting to the drastically different environment and the different cats well - or so he thought. He still didn't feel quite at home here, but he was sure that he would, eventually, given enough time. He shook his head. I shouldn't be thinking about that right now, he thought, and followed Tallpoppy's kits into the clearing.

The cats were already heading to their dens without bothering to say anything about the Gathering. Eaglekit remembered that most of the cats who hadn't gone were sleeping; he guessed that Blackstar wanted to wait until morning to explain what happened. But Tallpoppy's kits were awake and too impatient to wait for the morning. They ran over to the apprentices' den, where Crowpaw and Ratpaw were settling down for the night, tired after the late Gathering.

"Crowpaw! Ratpaw! What happened at the Gathering?" Applekit called, barging through the entrance to the apprentices' den. Crowpaw and Ratpaw looked up, their exhaustion visible in their eyes. Near the back of the den, Talonpaw's head snapped up, his ginger fur bristling, but he turned away with a flick of his tail and began to groom his ruffled pelt when he saw that it was only the kits.

"Well," Crowpaw began, licking a paw and drawing it over his ear, "the borders got marked."

"Wow! They did?" Marshkit gasped in amazement.

"Did ThunderClan try to steal any of our territory?" asked Toadkit, crouching down and baring his teeth, as though facing the warriors of ThunderClan in battle.

"No," Ratpaw replied. "They agreed to the borders set when Tawnypelt's patrol went around the lake the first time: our border with RiverClan is the Thunderpath down by the lake, with ThunderClan is the stream and then the markers that Rowanclaw's patrol set a few days ago, ThunderClan and WindClan share the stream and then WindClan and RiverClan's border is somewhere near the Horseplace."

"What about Gatherings?" asked Applekit. "No cat ever went through another Clan's territory to get to Fourtrees!"

"No," Crowpaw agreed, "but there's nowhere around here that we can meet without having to cross RiverClan's territory, unless we all decided to swim out into the middle of the lake and meet there."

"Are you still meeting at the marshy place in RiverClan territory?" asked Eaglekit. "Or did you find somewhere better?" He hadn't actually been to the marshes where all four Clans sheltered when they first arrived at the lake, but he'd heard about it enough from Tallpoppy and the other ShadowClan cats. He flicked his ears self-consciously as Ratpaw turned his amber gaze on the tabby kit.

"What do you know about the marshes?" he hissed. "You're not even a true ShadowClan cat! You never visited the marshes."

Eaglekit didn't say anything in response; he was too stunned. Tallpoppy and her kits accepted him; why couldn't the rest of ShadowClan?

"Hey!" Applekit hissed, leaping to her paws. "It's not his fault he wasn't born into ShadowClan!"

But I was, Eaglekit thought to himself; he only barely stopped himself from saying the words aloud. I am a ShadowClan cat!

"But it's his fault he couldn't keep his filthy kittypet paws out of ShadowClan!" The speaker this time was not Ratpaw, but Talonpaw; the ginger apprentice had sat up and was glaring at Eaglekit.

"I'm not a kittypet!" Eaglekit spat. "I'm a - I was a rogue, if that's what you want to call them. How in the name of StarClan was I supposed to survive when my mother had died?"

"Hunt for yourself!" Talonpaw spat back. "I'm sure any Clanborn kit would be able to hunt for themselves if they had to."

I am Clanborn! Eaglekit wanted to wail. But he knew he must not tell ShadowClan that; it would lead to questions that he couldn't answer as easily as he had with Skyflight when she had discovered him outside the ShadowClan camp. Thinking about it now, he doubted that she would keep her promise to him about telling Rainbowpaw not to let her rescue him. He thought now that maybe she had just done that to get him to leave ShadowClan territory. My own mother didn't even believe me. His heart felt hollow with the knowledge. The sense in him tried to tell him that it was nothing personal, and she wasn't his mother at the time, but he still felt betrayed.

"If Clanborn kits can hunt, why couldn't a whole Clan of Clanborn cats find enough food for the Clan?" Toadkit snarled, taking a pace forward. His angry mew snapped Eaglekit out of his thoughts. "If Clanborn kits can hunt, we never would have needed to move!"

"And rogues can hunt as well as Clanborn cats!" Applekit added. "Or else they would have gone off and become kittypets by now."

Crowpaw twitched his whiskers in amusement. He didn't seem to be taking this as seriously as his brothers. "Fine, then," he purred. "Let's see how you would stalk a mouse."

Ratpaw turned to his brother. "Do you want him to do the hunter's crouch?" he asked.

Marshkit hissed in indignation. "But that's a ThunderClan move! Even I don't know the hunter's crouch."

"And he's the best hunter out of all of us!" Applekit put in.

Crowpaw ignored the kits. "No, no, let's just see if he has any hunting moves at all with him. Go on, crouch down." He flicked his black-and-white tail over Eaglekit's back. Eaglekit felt a pang of resentment. He didn't want to let these apprentices show him up. He crouched down and slowly pulled himself forward. There wasn't as much of a trick to the ShadowClan hunting style as there was to the ThunderClan hunter's crouch. Grasspaw had once showed him and Flowkit the way ShadowClan cats stalked their prey, and he explained that it wasn't so much about keeping quiet as it was not being seen. ShadowClan cats jumped out from the cover of shadow to attack their prey; they did not walk right up to it like ThunderClan cats did. Wouldn't the prey run off if you hunted like that, anyway?

"What kind of crouch is that?" Talonpaw called from the back of the den. "It's all wrong!"

Eaglekit's anger exploded. "Then let's see your crouch," he snapped impatiently.

"Let's not." The voice was Tallpoppy's. Eaglekit turned around guiltily; Tallpoppy's head was poking into the apprentices' den, her eyes glowing in the darkness. "Come on, let's get you to bed." She withdrew from the den and the other three kits followed her out. Eaglekit did as well, his pelt burning with shame. He didn't need to be fetched like a naughty kit! But he couldn't argue with Tallpoppy; besides, he was grateful to have an excuse to stop arguing with the apprentices.

Tallpoppy led the way into the nursery. Snakekit and Dirtkit were curled up next to Cherryfur, sleeping soundly and unaffected by the loud shouts of the kits. Tallpoppy lay down on the far side of the den; the four kits followed her over and huddled down next to each other, their pelts fluffed up to keep out the leaf-bare chill.

"Sleep well, my kits," was the last thing Eaglekit heard before he drifted off into sleep.

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A/N: Ugh, I'm really worried that I didn't do too well with their personalities. What do you think? (This holds for everything from chapter six forward.)