Strange Stone and Unnatural Cats

[Fireflake]

Buckleap the Loner

---

The sun watched Halcyon Gardens from a high perch in the clear blue sky, offering warmth to the most resilient of plants and to one such cat. This cat, a slender yet solidly-built tom, perched slightly lower on a raised part of what he'd only ever referred to as strange Twoleg stone.
His narrowed green eyes skimmed the Twolegplace surrounding him, while long pricked ears swiveled in search of nearby sounds.  Shade coated his mostly-tabby pelt as he slowly turned his head. The atmosphere wasn't completely foreign to the tom, but the place itself was.
He sought to escape it now in the comfort of moss and patchy tufts of grass. He'd been spoiled by the familiar open fields of his former clan for too long, and now found himself dissatisfied with harsh smells and unnatural shapes. 
It wasn't only the shapes that were unnatural, he reminded himself, but the cats themselves. Marked with collars and often the inability to bear kits, they belonged to the Twolegs. A shiver ran through the loner at the thought, and he continued to look around. If he let his guard down, their grabby furless paws could close in on him.

---

mewmehh

[mewmehh]

The sweet aroma of flora wafted through the air, strengthened by the warmth brought upon by the midday sun's light. Bright green and deeply saturated hues of pinks and blues did well to light up a particular twoleg garden and mask the obnoxiously bright ginger form of a cat snoozing within the flowerbed. A wild pelt full of wayward curls and tight ringlets laid in a lump amongst the dark soil as a pair of bluish green eyes bore holes into her fence with a lazy light. The kittypet had been laying there since early that morning and already the sun had reached its peak height in the sky, and her attention was drawing to a close.

Tallulah had been expecting to see her forest friend today, the Ivyclan warrior having told her he would visit a few days after the full moon. It was a tricky way to gauge time- using moons- she'd thought, but didn't worry about it too much. All she knew was that she was bored and wanted her friend to hurry. But clearly that opportunity had passed for the day. It was too late in the day for the warrior to get much time to play with the kittypet, and her disappointment was evident in the huffy groan she made as she rose from her spot in the dirt.

With her pretty coat matted and dirty, she trotted slowly over to the edge of her yard and climbed up to the top of the fence with relative ease. Having hoisted herself up, she settled into a seated position and gazed out wistfully to the thin band of trees that marked the start of the forest. So lost in her daydreaming of the woods, she failed to notice the unfamiliar, wild-ish cat scent that floated nearby.

[Fireflake]

Buckleap the Loner

---

The loner's attention sprinted from building to building, at first passing over the kittypet. It was only when his eyes trailed to the ground and noticed the cat's shadow that he looked up and saw her sitting there on the fence. The tom's hind leg was under him in a heartbeat, ready to push him up and propel him forward if needed. One of his ears flattened. He narrowed his eyes further.

All of this struck him at once, and it only took a few moments for it to all reverse. Sitting there on the fence, possibly not aware of his existence and much less of his presence, she couldn't seem further from a threat. The clan cat's internal monologue teased him for jumping at the sight of a kittypet she-cat. He ignored the thoughts and let them fade.

How she could sit so casually on a fence was beyond his comprehension. Aside from having to balance on something, she stood on what looked to him like giant claws protruding from the ground. When he noticed the state of her pelt and the way she gazed out into the woods, he wondered if she might not be a kittypet after all.

"Hey!" he called. Some part of him hoped that she still hadn't noticed him and would jump just as he had at hearing his voice.

---

mewmehh

[mewmehh]

Tallulah had been blinking slowly at the distance when the tom's voice sounded and about spooked the kittypet out of her fur. She flinched and nearly fell backwards off the fence, but her claws managed to keep her rooted to her perch as they claw deeply into the wood. Her turquoise eyes flashed as she looked down, the unfamiliar scent of the cat flooding over her sense as his yellowy green eyes peered up at her. How long had he been there?

With a raised brow, Tal swished her tail around to drape itself over the edge of the fence as she leaned forward to focus on the tom. If would have appeared a rather stupid pose to any other the other kittypets that fancied sitting on their fences as she hung dangerously over the edge. As she did so, a little gold bell tinkled softly and a bit of bright blue could barely be seen beneath her curly mess of a pelt.

Curiosity glittering in her wide gaze, she meowed with a hearty, rumbling purr to her tone, "Heyo! Who are you?"

[Fireflake]

Buckleap the Loner

---

Startling the kittypet wasn't quite as satisfying as the tom had hoped, but it still made his whiskers twitch with amusement. His expression had returned to its default emotionless look by the time her eyes reached him. The tom stared with this same expression as she somehow managed not to fall off the fence. His eyes flicked quickly to her small bell when it sounded, and he only returned his attention to her face when she spoke.

"I'm Buckleap," he answered after a moment. "Or Buck, I suppose. Or Leap..."
He tilted his head as if musing over it, but his completely uninterested expression refuted that idea. "Or 'get off my territory', apparently. You could probably call me Bunny at this point and it wouldn't matter much."

As his long ears caught the sound of his own rambling, they pricked slightly in surprise. A simple answer of 'Buckleap' would have worked just as well. He didn't know why his words seemed so desperate to dig themselves out of his mouth. He hardly had a reason to even want to talk to this stranger, let alone go on until moonhigh arrived. Besides, he'd had lots of practice not talking to any cat for the past moon. It didn't make sense for him to talk even more than before. But there he was, rambling even inside of his own thoughts.

"So who are you?" he returned. He decided not to comment on the fact that the she-cat looked like she'd been dragged against her will through a tunnel. Of course, he thought sarcastically, kittypets were always far too busy to stop and groom. Maybe this one just didn't know how.

---

mewmehh

[mewmehh]

"Heehee!" A small, pleasant giggle came from the kittypet as she listened on to Buckleap's rambling, fully engrossed in his introduction with a curious gleam in her eyes. She swayed leisurely from her leaning perch as she listened, only to freeze with her eyes wide after a second. Bluish emerald orbs roved the tabby's form with almost a hungry light about them and her mouth dropped open widely.

"Your name!! You're a clan cat, right? Right?!" The matted kitty seemed to buzz with enough excitement to give a hive of bees a run for their honey as she wiggled her haunches uncontrollably. "Are you from Ivyclan? Do you know Longwing?! I was expecting him today, but holy smokes! I've gone and met another clan cat! You're a warrior, right?!" Her eyes, wide as saucers, glittered like a kitten's.

[Fireflake]

Buckleap the Loner

---

Buckleap leaned backwards as if bracing for the impact of the kittypet's explosion. He glanced left and right, and wondered for a heartbeat if he should just stop talking to her and bolt. He was certainly fast enough. Maybe not through a twolegplace, though. Besides, there was no way he was running from a kittypet.

Still, an escape route might not be the worst idea. Not from the enthusiastic she-cat, but from the creatures she lived with. He'd heard rumors that twolegs in the area liked to snatch up clan cats. While he wasn't exactly a clan cat, he figured he was close enough to them. Which led back to the kittypet's question.

"I used to be," he stated bluntly. "Until about a moon ago. My clan disbanded, and now I'm not one."
Buckleap shrugged as if it didn't bother him, but he felt the sting like claws raking along inside of him. There was no warning. No proper goodbye. He didn't even know his own name anymore.

"I haven't heard of this Longwing, or IvyClan for that matter."
Buckleap had come to the area in the first place because he heard there were clans, but he didn't know anything about them. "Why don't you enlighten me?"
'Yes, kittypet, why don't you tell me about the clans?' he thought. It seemed so backward to the former warrior. He couldn't decide whether it was humorous or annoying, but he eventually settled on both. "Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you tell me your name?"

---

mewmehh

[mewmehh]

The gingery she-cat's grin faltered for a moment, a small twinkle of sympathy in her blue-green eyes. "Name's Tallulah Rose. I'm sorry to hear about your clan," she offered in a soft voice before perking up a bit. The tom didn't seem too torn up about it, so the kittypet figured there was no point dwelling on being somber. Instead she brightened up at the prospect of getting to inform him about the local clans dwelling just past her fence that she so wished to visit.

"Well, I don't know a whole lot about them since they're pretty secretive around outsiders- I'm sure you know that, being a clan cat yourself- but I'm pretty sure there are three now. One sprouted up a few moons ago from members of the older two clans. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what Longwing said. He's a warrior of Ivyclan in the forest behind this fence and apparently it's the best one. They're the closest-knit clan out of the three; Mistclan is stoic and steely and Mossclan...or was it Mothclan? Well, they're supposed to be a bunch of brutes. But they're the most likely to accept outsiders according to Wing since their numbers are still small." The she-cat brightened further in excitement. "Are you planning to join one of them?!"

[Fireflake]

Buckleap the Loner

---

Buckleap shrugged and answered flatly, "I suppose so."
His own uncertainty forced him to pause for a moment and consider the question. After this moment, the tom's natural attitude kicked in and he added, "It's not just a habit of mine to spend a moon looking for clans and then leave, if that's what you're asking."
It wasn't that bouncing from place to place had never been normal life for him, just that he wasn't too thrilled for it to be again.

His long ears pricked at some faraway sound that threatened to run away with his attention. Buckleap quickly flicked them back down and shut out the strange world to picture one that might be more familiar. Typical, he thought, that the one clan he wouldn't fit in was the one the she-cat's friend was in. He guessed wasn't all that interested in a kittypet's retelling of a warrior's tales.

"Do you know anything about what the territories are like, or is your garden quite big enough for your adventures?" he asked. He assumed the kittypet knew nothing at all about what it was like out there, but it was worth asking if it could help him figure out which clan to pursue.
Stoic and steely sounded like his sort of cats, but not his sort of home if they were suffocated by bushes or trees or rocks. Accepting of outsiders certainly sounded like a good trait for him. New and brutish didn't. He figured that it didn't matter either way, as the information had been distorted by the minds of both this friend and the kittypet, and now his own. Still, any information was good information to have at this point.

Or was it? The wind always seemed to tug him back towards his last clan. His inner critic had started to yowl that he was being disloyal. Clumps of grass had started to catch his eye. He ignored it all, of course, but they were stronger feelings than he'd had in the past.

Ignoring it now, he decided to impart some of his won wisdom upon the kittypet. It wasn't a distraction. Buckleap didn't need a distraction from his own thoughts. It was just an exchange of information.
"And by the way, ever cat thinks his own clan is the best. Every kittypet probably thinks her own Twolegs are the best, right?"

---

mewmehh , sorry about the absence. It does not usually take me two weeks to reply to posts. :S

[mewmehh]

At the tinge of attitude that laced Buckleap's words as if to insinuate something, Tallulah's face frowned a bit. She shifted her position on the fence, allowing herself to be draped length-wise along it as her bluish green eyes narrowed at the cat standing below her. "It's not that I don't want to venture out there and explore- I would in a heart beat! But Longwing advised I stay put. I don't want to upset my only friend on the outside." There was a certain bitterness and hurt that could be felt in the way she spoke, and her drooped posture did well to reinforce her feelings. "So no, and no. My garden in fine, but will never be enough. And I don't know of the clans' territories besides Ivyclan. They live in the forest just past here. But that's it. Longwing is my friend, but I get that his clan's safety comes first, so there is plenty he hasn't told me."

Her expression softened and her chin found itself slumped against one of her forepaws. "I suppose. Mine is the best of the housefolk in the area. Always sweet and lets me outside whenever I want. But Longwing's different from other clan cats- err....so I assume. I've heard from other strays and neighborhood cats that clans are supposed to be brutal and bloody savages, but not once has Longwing ever told me a tale of battle or hurt. He always has nice things to say, even about the other clans. He doesn't want to see others hurt and only wants the best for all the cats in the clans, I think." If Tallulah had known of medicine cats as a position, she likely would have figured the Ivyclan tom to be more like them rather a warrior.

|| No worries ^^ I'd been without internet last week, so don't sweat it ||