Dark River

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The indigo sky stretched over the moorland, holding in the night’s chill.

Wind stirred the heather and set the hillside rippling.

Between the low bushes, feline shapes, their fur slicked flat by the breeze, streamed down the slope.

Among them, a tabby queen kept pace with a young tom.

“Are you sure you are ready for this?”

“I’m ready,” the tom answered, his green eyes flashing in the moonlight.

“You’re my eldest, Fallen Leaves,” the queen whispered.

“The first of mine to face the ordeal.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“He was trained well!” a low voice called from behind.

“Even trainin’ can’t prepare a softpaw for rain!” growled another.

Fallen Leaves glanced up. “But the sky’s clear.”

“I smell rain on the wind, I tell you.”

Murmurs of alarm spread among the other cats.

“The sky’s clear!” Fallen Leaves insisted as he stepped out from the swath of heather and halted. The moon lit his ginger-and-white pelt. His Clanmates crowded at his heels, their tails flicking. Beneath his forepaws, the slope fell away steeply. Here, moons of wind and rain had flayed the moorland, peeling away the earth until the stone beneath lay bare, a wall of jagged rock amid the rolling heather.

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