Sleepwalker [Finished]

Cool blue eyes followed the grey and black tom closely. Her memory told her his name was Shadowfrost. He had helped Swanstrike once upon a time. The large shecat eyed the vole he had caught, replaying the movements in her mind. Crescent had a memory like a clap-trap and keen eyes to go with it. She followed quietly behind the tom as he hunted, a pale ghost amidst the shadows of the darkened trees. Watching. Learning.

Shadowfrost.

The tom had an able lope and deadly air to him that Crescent could appreciate in a cat. He was not a difficult tom to look at either with gleaming black fur that swept and spiraled through his short grey pelt like tendrils of smoke given a solid form. He was small enough to be unnoticed in a crowd, but muscled enough to take out a cat twice his size in an battle of strength. It was an interesting complexity that the shecat toyed with as she trailed along behind him, her pawsteps quiet and her eyes watchful.

She did not doubt for one second this tom knew she was near. Even down wind and stalking as quietly as she could, this was not her native element. She might be a terror in the mountains, but this cat owned the forest, not her. The predator in her recognized one of its own -and recognized the threat Shadowfrost posed to her if she should do something he did not like. It is the nature of predators to guard their land and avoid those who are stronger, but Crescent found herself drawn to the tom even still.

His movements were similar, but strange. His stalking almost the same, but still different from what she had known in the high snow covered peaks. She tried to adjust, to mimic the differences and move as he did. Her muscles twanged uncomfortably after a few meters of the new position but she ignored them. Swanstrike would deal with that later. 

The tom stopped and Crescent froze, her body tense, her eyes wary. She opened her mouth to scent the air. Had he stopped for prey -or for her?

The large shecat remained where she was at. There was no reason to step closer and every reason to keep her distance. The tom knew where she was, she knew where he was, and that was sufficient. She had no intention to go cozy up to a cat that screamed lethal with every pawstep.

"I need to hunt. You know how," she mewed simply.

She had not meant to say more, but her mouth kept going. She was not sure what it was about the tom that riled her fur, but she wanted to rile him right back. He acted just a tad too entitled for her liking. A little too arrogant under that quiet facade which made her fur itch. Crescent hated liars and he was lying right now, pretending not to be angered by her presence.

"And what do you know of where I should be? Did someone assign you as my keeper and forget to tell me? How shameful. I thought the clans were better than slavers."

Ah. This was better. The anger was crackling in the air now. So much for that 'quiet and distant' routine. Crescent wondered if Swanstrike had ever seen this side of Shadowfrost, the side that was more fire than ice. Knowing her feeble and delicate nature, Crescent doubted it. The tom had a sharp tongue, but Crescent had thick skin and his words slid off as easily as claws on stone. A thought niggled around in the back of her mind. Swanstrike stirring as Crescent's blood rose. The shecat had better things to do than banter with this tom at the moment. The moon was up and her time was short. Even so, how could she resist snipping kinks in his fur when he offered himself up so freely? 

She cast the tom a pitying look as she spoke. "What is this? Putting more work off on your leader already? You are hardly a very good Warrior then. Tell me, what is it you do for the clan exactly? I already forgot," she mewed sweetly with mock innocence, cocking her head to the side and... was she smiling? Crescent did not smile. She worked. She survived. That was her sole purpose. The only reason she existed in the first place.

She flicked her tail in the direction the tom had been heading. "And you are keeping me here, sugarplum," Funny how the endearment, normally so sweet from Swanstrike's lips, sounded almost exactly like 'idiot' when she spoke it now. "In case you forgot. Are you going to stand here all night or actually provide for your clan and start hunting again? On the scale of Warrior attributes, you really seem to be lacking."

The shecat flinched as the name sent a jolt through her subconscious. Swanstrike rolled over in her mind, ears twitching. Crescent shook her head, fighting the darkness that wanted to drag her back under. Swanstrike would be upset if she woke up outside her den, and she was still hungry. Submissive by nature, the queen settled back down with hardly a murmur of confused thought whispering through her mind. Crescent rounded on the tom, icy blue eyes narrowed. That had been too close. The safest route was to leave the tom here. She should continue on her hunt alone. She would find food somehow and she hardly needed this cat's example to do it. She had been in worse positions many times over in the past moons. One night of hunting was hardly a trial. It was the safe route. The easiest way to survive tonight. It was exactly what Crescent existed for. She could just let the tom leave. Now.

But did he have to act so damn superior about it? He was the one that was giving up so why did she feel so cheated? And that cursed mask of ice was back in place. It made her want to bite his tail just to spite him, but she wasn't that childish.... probably.

"You are just going to walk all the way back to camp and not even bother to hunt?" she demanded, following him. She tried to think of a reason to justify the action. When she couldn't, she decided a reason was not important. Worrying was Swanstrike's job. Crescent, on the other paw, took care of business, and right now she definitely had business with this tom.

His response was hardly satisfying.

The shecat growled, her large feathered tail lashing. "Look," she snapped, "I'm your clanmate. Your my clanmate. I promise to stop insulting your status and mentally insulting your lineage if you just go back to hunting. It's not like I was scaring off any prey in the first place. What is the deal? You got stage fright or something? I know some toms have trouble performing, but I always assumed that was in other aspects." -Was that insulting? Oops. Whatever. They were a long ways from camp and the tom could hardly out run her. Not if he wanted to pretend to keep his cool and not when every one of her steps was big enough to account for three of his.

"Kiss ass," the shecat grumbled under her breath. She eyed the tom quietly for a time as they walked. 

Silence.

Silence.

Silence. Crescent hated silence. It made her ears burn.

Sile- The shecat swooped in, attempting to knock the tom down and take his vole. A little like a kit bullying for lunch? Maybe, but Crescent had never claimed to be a cat that played fair. Shadowfrost was quick -quicker than her she was certain- but he was disgruntled and the large shecat figured she could catching him offguard by now. Besides, she was essentially a giant battering ram. Pretty hard to dodge, especially when it was walking right next to you and had the element of almost-surprise.

If she got the vole, she would pull back, her tail lashing and her front legs crouched down like a kit playing a game of keep away, her crystal blue eyes a playful dare. Only instead of toddlers, these cats were big, fierce, and both had the potentially to get very, very mean when provoked. Crescent hoped Shadowfrost wouldn't draw blood. That would be a nasty thing for Swanstrike to wake up to. She'd probably faint and wake Crescent up all over again.

If she didn't get the vole, well that hardly meant she would stop trying. She just had to cut off his retreat back to camp. There was more than one side to keep away, after all, and Crescent had no intention of losing.

The shecat raised herself from her crouch and glared at the tom who seemed as confused by her as she was by him. Honestly, she had thought there was more to him than this. She would never have bothered to chase him if she had known he really was a total wuss. Begrudgingly, she supposed that if a cat like Swanstrike could actually appear threatening to someone, then a boring cat could appear interesting at first too.

As the tom started to turn to walk off again she spat out the vole in disgust. "I really am just wasting my time, aren't I?" she mewed sharply. "I don't want your vole." -Actually she kind of did. She had been out hunting for food after all. She could just take it and her problems were solved. But his wimpy acceptance had soured her stomach. - She tossed the prey at his feet.

"I just wanted-" What? What had she wanted? To learn to hunt, sure, but there was no way she would admit to this dull cat she did not know how to do something. Maybe... surely she had not been lonely. No. There was no way. Crescent was made for when Swanstrike was lonely. When Swanstrike was overwhelmed by the world and could no longer cope, like tonight when she had been awoken by a fierce nightmare. 

At the end of the day, Crescent was only a shadow. A phantom. A ghost of what Swanstrike could have been in another life. She was not even a real cat and her time was extremely limited. A phantom did not need companionship. Especially not one that only existed in nightmares.

Icy blue eyes searched Shadowfrost's. She was not sure what she was looking for. Something. Anything. Anything that was something more than the emptiness of the forests and the trees and the night and the nightmares where she roamed. She had thought this cat had something interesting about him, a fire that she had wanted to see.

Maybe he really was just made of ice. How boring.

"You seemed like a cat I would want to know," she finally mewed. "I don't spend much time with cats so I'm not a very good judge. I guess I was wrong. Take your vole then. I'll figure out a way to get my own." On my own.

The words were silent, but hung over the shecat as surely as if she had given them form in the air. She did everything on her own. Always. She was the strong one. She was the one that had gotten Swanstrike through the beatings and the mountain journey. She had been the one to endure the savage hunger and terrifying wild beasts when Swanstrike retreated away into the deepest corners of her mind in terror.

Swanstrike had been able to survive because she was never alone.

Because Crescent had always survived on her own.