Welcome to Gaia! ::

Username: Geyser Eelborn
Partner's username: No, but if I win, I’d like the silver cat to go to elfstar89
Cat names: The brown tabby is Amberbright, the silver is Leopardsheen
Cat genders: Female; male

Prompt response: Night had swept in like a ravenous pack of dogs, and Silverpelt was blocked by the darkness belched out by Twolegplace. Two ThunderClan warriors were hideously lost in the maze of streets, and in the gloom far away from their forest, they were running out of hope. Dirty, ragged, smelling of trash and half-starved, they were on the run first from Twolegs, then dogs, and even the vicious alley cats who wore dogs’ teeth on their collars. Amberbright sighed and leaned against her friend. She was exhausted and her paws ached, longing for the feel of a yarrow poultice. “Leopardsheen, we’ve got to stop!” she meowed. “Please, we’ve got to stop. I can’t go on any longer!”

“Nonsense, I’m sure we’ve seen this post before!” The silver tom flicked his tail towards the grimy Twoleg sun up above them, perched on a post like a vulture on a dead tree above the Thunderpath. “That means we’re retracing our path, and that means we’re going home!” Leopardsheen meowed.

Amberbright rolled her golden eyes. “Or it means we were going back, and now we’re going back into Twolegplace. Let’s face it, Leopardsheen, we’ll never make it home!”

“You are such a pessimist,” the tom replied, flicking her lightly with his tail. His eyes still held a flame of hope. And what a flame of hope…

With a sigh, the she-cat sat down on the pavement unhappily, her tail curled around herself. “Look, we’ve been travelling for one straight moon. In that time, we’ve missed Gatherings, friends, hunts, why, what if Sunstar or—”

Leopardsheen swiftly put his tail against Amberbright’s mouth. “Did you hear that?” he murmured softly. He looked around, nose twitching.

Amberbright lifted her head and scented the air. Her heart sank into her toes even as her blood boiled up her legs. “Dogs,” she whispered, and that lone syllable was not enough even to relay the horror and disgust in every cat’s heart at the dreaded foe.

“I know,” Leopardsheen murmured. His voice was sharp, business like. That’s what happened when anything started happening. His cheerfulness melted into readiness for whatever might come. He turned his head towards an alley where the baying of the dogs was growing louder and louder by the instant. They were close…too close… “Run. Before they see us properly, Amberbright, run!” Leopardsheen hissed.

She hesitated, then turned and ran as fast as she could, her paws racing over the rough ground as if it were the softest grass. Straight towards another alley, then curving along it. The dogs with their longer legs covered the ground of the thunderpath behind them like lightning in a storm. Behind her, Amberbright could hear Leopardsheen catching up with her, panting hard. “Can’t…keep this up…” Amberbright gasped. “Leopardsheen…can’t do this…”

“We have to…have to run…can’t hide…nowhere to hide…all we can do—” Whatever the tom was about to say was lost as the warriors ran into something hard. There was barely any light here, all of it filtering down the alley that was now blocked by five huge dogs, their growls rough and low. They had run into a wall of that reddish stone that the alley cats called “brick.” Unforgiving, unmovable…and unpassable.

Still dazed from the blow, Amberbright looked around desperately. The dogs were coming closer, claws making tiny sounds as they clicked against the filthy ground. Despite her fiercely aching head, she could hear them. This is it. This is how it ends.

Leopardsheen shoved her roughly out of the way. “I’ll handle this,” he hissed. His fur fluffed up, its silver light lost in the darkness. All she could see of him was the faint glow of light in his eyes.

StarClan, help us! Amberbright thought desperately. She turned her head upwards towards the masked SilverPelt. Her eyes widened; something thin and white floated in the air above them! It looked like string, or a ribbon, and, as she stared at it, she realized it was barely moving. It was tied to something. “Leopardsheen,” she hissed. “There’s a branch above our heads a couple fox lengths. If we jump high enough, we might just be able to catch it!”

“After you!” There was no arguing with his tone. She crouched low until her belly brushed the ground, then she leaped higher than she ever had in her life, just barely snagging her claw on the branch. A dog barked and jumped after her. She was just barely able to move her tail tip in time, or it would have dragged her down.

Below her, her friend yowled. “LEOPARDSHEEN!!!” Amberbright screamed desperately. Then she felt the branch dip and the silver tom hauled himself beside her. The dogs snapped at them from below, their teeth nearly meeting the cats’.

“Let’s go!” Leopardsheen meowed. He turned and ran down the branch to the tree.

“No, wait!” Amberbright swiftly snapped off the end of the branch where the strings were tied, then followed Leopardsheen, the sign from StarClan gripped tight in her mouth.

They rested that night in the bushes of a Twoleg den without dogs or other cats. The dogs that had chased them left after a while, frustrated at the escaped prey. Meanwhile, the ThunderClan warriors examined their find. A long, flat piece of string, smooth and soft. It was frayed in the middle and, after they discussed it, they decided to bite it in half. It was Leopardsheen’s idea to tie the pieces to themselves. “It was a sign. A sign of hope. We’ll find our way out of this place just like we found a way out of that alley.” He murmured it as he tied the ribbon around his best friend’s leg. He tied it much, much neater than she had tied the ribbon around his tail.

“Maybe you’re right…” Amberbright murmured. “Maybe this is the turning point…”

~~~
“See? What did I tell you?” Leopardsheen grinned the next morning, flicking his tail over the lines of fences to the dark smudge of green beyond.

“ThunderClan territory in sight!” Amberbright breathed. She leaned against him. “Thank you, StarClan! Thank you for the sign and for home!”

Username: ChibiPoet
Partner's username: None, I'll contact people for the second if I win
Cat names: Tabby - Spiderclaw, Spotted - Stonedream
Cat genders: Tabby - female, Spotted - male

Prompt response:"Keep up, keep up, keep up!" The she-cat Spiderclaw called back to her mousebrained companion. If Spiderclaw had it her way, she'd be making this trek alone. But there was the promise to be considered... "Spiderkit, always look after your brother. Stonekit's not as strong as you and he'll need some help as he grows up." She never knew she'd come to hate her mother for that promise.

A quick turn and Spiderclaw found where the thunderpath became smaller. She knew it would be safer here at sunrise, fewer of the strange twoleg things - cars, the pampered kitty pet had called them - would be on the thin thunderpath. While she waited for her brother, Spiderclaw continued to work at the various ribbons the twoleg kit had tied to her. She'd been unable to stop her, the older twoleg had given her something she couldn't quite explain. She'd felt tired and a bit numb. She continued chewing off ribbons even when she heard Stonedream's labored breathing beside her. From one eye she looked with disgust at the trappings tied to her littermate.

"Couldn't get yours off," she taunted. "I'll do it." She pounced on top of him and began chewing ribbons off. Stonedream tried to wriggle away, but couldn't do anything to stop his sister. It wasn't until she tried to chew one on his tail that he cried out and redoubled his efforts to get away.

"Spider, no! Spiderclaw!" He was crying now, "I want it! It's a white stripe... like mama." Spiderclaw stopped, one end of the ribbon held in her mouth, and sighed. Where their mother, Dewsong, had Stonedream's colors, she'd been striped like Spiderclaw. "Y-you have one too..." Spiderclaw go off her brother and walked to one of the long trees. A wall, she reminded herself.

Stonedream spoke true. She'd managed to get most of the infernal things off, but there were still a few on one leg. Among them, a thin white one very much like the one Stonedream had. "Why would you want to keep anything given to you by a twoleg?" she asked bitterly.

"It doesn't matter where it came from... I still want it..." Despite how angry she got at times having to watch over her brother, Spiderclaw's sentiments ran deep. She would later never admit it, saying that last ribbon was just caught in her fur and too much trouble to remove, but she kept her twoleg gift because it made Stonedream happy. It was still many days after teir escape before they finally found the safety of the trees. Spiderclaw's explination to others was just that the ribbons reminded them to be more careful, and was representative of their sibling bond. Stonedream was happy enough that they wore them and didn't mind if his sister lied about it.