Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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Comfort was a confusing state, Nectarinepaw found when he attempted to settle into Summerclan. He supposed it had something to do with their intense group mindset and the fact that they each had a role laid out for them — but he was used to that. Perhaps it was the friendliness, or maybe they just wanted to make him and Clementinepaw feel welcomed. He wasn't quite sure, but it still put him on edge. Despite having to survive in the depths of the wild, not much different then the strays on the street, Nectarine hardly had to do much at all. That gave him time to observe. He found himself watching from afar, not engaging — not yet, not unless he had too — but studying.
That didn't leave him with nothing to do, of course — he was an 'apprentice' (surely he was more than capable than half the adults they had around, surely he wasn't just a student), and that was supposedly the prime time for learning. Or for being assigned random chores with the excuse of 'learning' tacked on. He'd seen more than enough apprentices bustling around to change bedding (couldn't they do it themselves?) or gathering whatever it was that needed gathering. Nectarinepaw hardly offered to help.
It was a few days in when one of their healers, the small grey one — Cypresspaw — requested a brief audience with him, alone. Something about a check-up to ensure he was healthy or something, considering he was new, and after a few minutes of health and wellness questions (he noticed Cypresspaw fumbled with his words throughout the whole thing, like he'd rehearsed them but half-forgot), Nectarinepaw was good to pad out of the medicine-cat's den and be on his way, until — 'oh, I'm a little busy right now, and if I wasn't I would do it myself, but can you please find some tansy? It looks like this and you can find it pretty much everywhere.' Audibly, Nectarinepaw gave a quiet groan and shot a nod over his shoulder, stalking away with a slight glowering look, as if the burden of the world was just placed on his shoulders. He could almost feel Cypresspaw cringe behind him. Of course he was overreacting — he knew what tansy was, he knew where to find it, and he always prided himself on his excellent memory, so the task wouldn't be difficult at all, but it was the simple fact that somebody had asked him to do it that he found offensive.
"Let's get this over with, then." He breathed to himself upon stepping away from the den.
Clementinepaw was always watching; it was the reputation she’d earned for herself mere hours after slinking into SummerClan’s camp behind her brother, looking around in silence with eyes that looked unsettlingly amused enough to send chills down people’s spines — and not amused in a funny away; amused in the humourless away aliens coming to Earth for the first time would look around at perfectly ordinary things. Nests, flowers, insects, kittens in the nursery — it was like she’d never seen a thing in her life, and it wasn’t long before the queens bundled their kits into the nursery whenever Clementinepaw came past; because she stared, and she tilted her head at the little furballs with eyes stretched wide and unblinking, and she approached so slowly, like a predator would, and it looked very much like she’d gobble them up. Now, she had been crouched down in the shadows beside the entrance to the medicine den, waiting with her usual unsettling patience for her brother to come back out. She’d been across camp, crouched in another patch of shadows; and then she’d seen Cypresspaw call Nectarinepaw in, and she’d slunk across at a trot to duck down and wait there instead.
As soon as he emerged, she stood and fell in beside him. “What did the little dumpling boy ask you to do?” she asked, in that voice that sounded like she’d only used it nine or ten times before; it was so quiet, so husky, like the words scratched at it for lack of practice. “Strange, strange, strange,” she went on in a hoarse whisper, turning her head to scrape her eyes around the camp. She saw a kitten rolling over herself by the nursery and smiled to herself, letting out a high sort of giggle. It wasn’t the smile any mother would want to see. Yesterday, her mentor had tried to get her to practice swiping; she’d just sat there on the earth, head tilted, her face blank and faintly ominous, like she didn’t understand what was being asked of her and it wouldn’t end well if they kept insisting. That had been strange, too.
At Clementinepaw's appearance, he immediately brightened, giving a small, near-silent noise of relief as she took pace beside him, "oh, thank God, I'd rather you than literally anyone here." He laughed at her words. "Little dumpling boy? Yes, I guess he is kind of — round, and soft, like a dumpling." Ushering her towards the camp exit, tail flicking and eyes wandering to the same kit she had fixated on, but instead of feeling the amusement she did, he simply rolled his eyes.
"But, anyway, he wanted me to get some little dumb plant for his stores. Or whatever." He spoke as if he was unsure on the whole task, like he was a little dense, in some attempt to make himself seem more relaxed and uncaring, but he knew exactly what he was doing — he even had an idea of where to look.
Pushing through the tunnel and out the other side, turning in the direction of the nearest meadow. "It's all strange here. Like, how did all these cats get here? Why are there so many just in the woods? It's quite confusing. And they're weird, with weird names. But it's kind of interesting, you know? And, also, they let us in on basically a whim, I suppose they can't be that bad. Strange," he hummed, "but interesting."
Nectarinepaw walked close enough that his thin pelt brushed hers, like she would disappear if he moved away. "Oh, and the plant has little yellow circles for flowers, by the way. Tansy, it's called. They're smaller than dandelions and not as petal-y."
At his happiness to see her, she just cast him a thin, tiny little smile; it would have looked shy on anyone else, but on her it just looked like a childhood on the streets. Only he would have seen the love in it. “‘Some dumb little plant,’” she echoed in a husky titter, letting him brush his side against hers as he told her about the tansy, the un-dandelion. “You sure seem to know all about something you know nothing about.” She liked the whimsy of that; her brother always knew more than he said. As he ranted, she just listened in a silence so vague it was like she wasn’t listening at all. But she was; she always was. “Mmm,” she hummed at last, still looking around as they padded towards the camp entrance. “We have strange names too now,” she pointed out in that husky, too-quiet voice, barely more than a hoarse whisper. She took what she liked from the conversation and left the rest. Clementinepaw stopped and stared at the little mandarin tree growing beside the leader’s den, up so close that any other cat would imagine she couldn’t see a thing but vague orange. “Look. They must like fruit a lot. I don’t really know what a nectarine is at all, but it’s a pretty enough name.”
Of all the Wraith cats, she imagined that it had been easiest for her to give up her old name; she was very used to giving things up. She never really owned them in the first place. Her name had been Carolyn; now it was Clementinepaw, and she never thought of Carolyn anymore. She didn’t miss it because it was just gone. Over. It was done. And she was someone new, until she wasn’t. She’d already stuck her nose into every inch of the camp; there were warriors who’d spent their whole lives here who knew less than she did now. It had always paid in the Wraith — know your environment; know the exits; know where someone might try to kill you from. That never went away.
Her nest in the apprentice den was changeable and fluid, just like everything else about her: sometimes she had her own, next to her brother’s; sometimes she shared his; sometimes she had wild, unpredictable bursts of feeling stifled and petty and irritated and moved her nest far away to the opposite end of the den, like she was mad at him but she wouldn’t say why. Sometimes she was something like a baby cared for by her brother, infantilised and worried over so much that once a cat they barely knew had said he was the sort to make her sick on purpose, just so she’d need him; sometimes she was an equal sibling, making up schemes in back alleys. Most often, though, she was just happy as air. She loved her brother; he loved her; what on earth else was there in this world. It was just them.
“Where’s the other medicine cat?” she asked as they brushed out of the camp entrance, heads ducked like they weren’t yet used to the inconvenience of the tickling, scraping leaves, and headed for the meadow; she was always the troublemaker, always the one who’d seize on the one discrepancy, the one thing someone else didn’t want noticed, the one thing that didn’t make sense or that was just plain mean to pull at — and pull at it. It had made her useful in the Wraith: they’d be close to making a deal, the symbolic papers were being signed — and then Clementinepaw would speak up for the very first time in that grating whisper, like her voice box had been half torn out when she was a kit, and say something so airily pointed. And all the heads would turn away from her, towards the one signing the papers, and pelts would begin to bristle at the realisation, and she’d fade back into the shadows she’d been forgotten in the entire time. “Why are you the one doing their bidding around the territory?” If Nectarinepaw babied her, Clementinepaw stoked his temper; she liked it when her brother lashed out at others, especially when it was because of something she’d said. “It isn’t right. You have things to do.”
You sure seem to know all about something you know nothing about. He huffed, half indignation, half humour, because she was right — of course she was — he always seemed to know a little too much about anything, useful or mundane. It was something he prided himself on, on being the know-it-all, the knowledge holder between the two (though that was partially his own bias, his need to think of himself as above, and certainly Celementinepaw was just as intelligent, just as observant, he simply hadn't realized it yet), the one who knew everything that was going on, the one that figured things out. It was a burden he had chosen to carry on his own, it was a burden he, inexplicably, fought to keep to himself, even when it was clear in the brief moments he saw her less as a ward and more as an equal that she was capable.
"A nectarine? They're the — the little things that are like peaches but worse. Lighter and not as soft. Have I taken you behind the stores? You could find a few in the garbage, but," he shrugged, "they aren't that good." Everything seemed to not be something — not like peaches but not, like dandelions but not, everything was simply just not, simply new in a familiar way.
The forest thickened around them — one way led to the Deep Lands, as he'd heard them be called, and the other towards a meadow, though not the one they needed. That one was more for prey. Ahead was a river, and while the concept of crossing it had made him nervous at first, he soon realized that it wasn't much danger unless the tides were rough and high, and with the intensity of the summer (it was Summerclan, after all, he'd expect it to be quite summer-y) that didn't seem like too big of a problem.
Where’s the other medicine cat? "Oh, he —" he cut himself off sharply. "Heck," he corrected, because he despised any sort of cursing in front of Clementinepaw, no matter how soft — which was especially ironic because he seemed to have had no problems bringing her along to fighting rings and Wraith contracts, "if I know. I find it hard to believe they're both that busy. Maybe it's like a test, or maybe they think we owe them much." He mulled that over in his mind, contemplating if they actually did or not. Summerclan had let them stay, offered them a life and a bed and food to eat, and all they had to do was carry their weight — really, it wasn't that bad at all. "Things to do?" He snorted, "yes, I am just so busy all the time. Watching you, of course, and doing menial tasks like this." Watching her, that was partially a lie. They had spent less time together since they joined, assigned mentors and duties and training (for what, he might ask if he cared enough), and, truthfully, he didn'tneed to 'watch her' at all. But if he wasn't caring about her, if he wasn't doting on her, what else was he supposed to be good for? It would mean his entire life, everything he'd ever thought and done because of her, would be meaningless. So, he would pretend, continue pretending.
