WARRIOR (Dryclan)
The Dryclan group has reached a section of the desert in which you have a perfect view of your old home. The canyon in which you once lived is now a raging river. After minutes of mourning silence, a very familiar voice fills your ear, speaking your name. Your heart leaping into your throat, you turn quickly to see Treepelt, your long-time best friend. Excitement fills you for a moment, as you thought him dead, but your face falls as you notice his enraged expression. He leaps toward you, claws outstretched. "You abandoned me!," he yowls, attacking you fiercely. What is your response?

She felt nothing.

They pushed forward until her lithe blue body shook with the strain of it, until wounds old and new began to clamor for attention, until she fought to breathe through the fierce ache of her throat and lungs -- and still she felt nothing. The collection of shallow scrapes that decorated her plush sterling hide were pink and raw, untreated; the nasty slash across her face still wept blood, slow and steady, staining her cheeks and muzzle crimson. Somewhere beneath the grief, beneath the sightless eyes and the unsmiling mouth, beneath the mind-numbing heartache that had rendered her vacant, she recognized the waves of pain that shivered through her bruising flesh and battered bones. Each step was a battle fought and won.

Part of her had died far below, she knew, swept away by the floodwaters along with everything else. Gone, her mind whispered again and again, until it was all that she could hear. Gone, gone, gone. It's gone. They're gone. She shut her eyes tight against a wash of grief, and their terrified faces flashed in the darkness behind her eyelids. All of the breath left her body in a rush. She stumbled, muddy legs giving way; the tom to her left - Cactusfang, with his haphazard spray of cactus-spike whiskers - steadied her. "I'm so sorry, Blue," he murmured gently. His words fell on deaf ears. Bluecloud could hear the screams of the cats who had been caught up by water; she could hear the cries of her children, mewling as they were torn from her grasp; she could hear the thunderous roar of the river that had overtaken their home. She could not hear him.

Another violent tremor wracked her slender frame. For one terrible moment she thought that she was going to shake apart, scatter to the wind like dust -- and then the tremor had passed through and she was moving again, worse for the wear but entirely whole. "How..." Her voice was rough. Broken. She swallowed once, twice, three times to clear the grit, but her tongue was cotton in her mouth and her throat was drier than the rock-studded sand underpaw. "How much further?"

"Not far," Cactusfang rumbled. The press of his sleek beige body to hers was oddly reassuring, though it did little to erase the anguish from her heart. "We've nearly reached the top of the canyon."

The top? Bluecloud struggled to bring her surroundings into focus, pale eyes dull with sorrow. She - and what remained of her clanmates - had filed onto on a narrow, crumbling, sandy ledge, where the earth fell away from their paws at a sheer ninety-degree angle, offering an unobscured view of the several-hundred-foot drop below. She stopped short. Cactusfang nudged her forward with his head, but the fear remained until they had all reached the flat stretch of desert at the top of the canyon. From here, Bluecloud thought sluggishly, staring down at what had become of her home, the whole thing looks like a snake. She said as much. Cactusfang gave a solemn nod, and they both watched the floodwaters swirl. Every frothing wave was a blue-white scale, the sunlight glinting and gleaming along the ripples of its spine; its powerful, sinuous body followed the smooth curves of the canyon, and Bluecloud imagined the flash of teeth as it devoured all that stood in its way.

"They could be alive," Cactusfang began, soft and quiet. Bluecloud shuddered violently, the tears in her eyes finally spilling over. "No," she rasped, "No." The sympathy on his face cut sharper than any claw or tooth would have; fury edged her sadness. "Don't you dare look at me like that. I'm -- " her chest heaved. I'm fine. The words never left her mouth, however; the gentle cadence of her name drifted to her on the cusp of a single wondrous breath, and she turned with a thrill of wild desperation. Treepelt. Treepelt. There he stood, his mottled fur - all shades of brown and black - clumped with sand. His eyes burned like emerald fire. "Tree -- "

"You abandoned me!" The fury in his voice stunned her, his accusatory snarl shearing through the melancholy silence of their fractured clan like talons through the flesh of a rabbit. The blood froze in her veins. "No, I -- "

He leapt before she had even finished the sentence, and she dropped to the ground on impulse, rolling deftly aside. "Listen -- "

"I searched for you! I searched for you, and you left me to die!"

She found her footing, stood her ground. His claws scored her face. A spray of fresh blood spilled into her eyes, obscuring her vision; she did not move. "Please, Twigs -- "

"Shut up!" Treepelt spat viciously. He advanced on her, the threat of violence clear in his face. "You don't get to call me that anymore." But a sliver of the heat had left him, just a sliver, and that was enough. Bluecloud braced herself. Treepelt had been temperamental since kithood; he let his emotions get the better of him, always, and this wasn't the first spat that they'd had, though it was certainly the bloodiest. "My kits -- " Her voice fell to pieces, and she tried again. "Treepelt, my kits."

He froze. She watched the realization hit him, watched it crawl across his face and seize his heart. "Your -- " His eyes widened, filled, overflowed. She had not been a mother when he saw her last. "I didn't know." The heartbreak in his voice was palpable. "I didn't know." Bluecloud crumpled as though he had landed a killing blow. "Two," she began, and then she was sobbing uncontrollably. Three of her babies had been stillborn, but two had lived, a girl with fur like moonlight and a boy with his father's lovely stripes. She had given birth just hours before the water hit; Treepelt never seen her children, had never gotten to know them, to lay with them, to breathe their scent and taste the musk of their newborn bodies. Their father hadn't, either. He had been on patrol when the world fell to chaos, his body forever lost to the waters below.

She didn't blame Treepelt for his anger. She didn't blame him for not knowing.

When he lay beside her in the sand, breathless apologies spilling from his mouth in a rush, she thrust her head under his chin and he fell abruptly silent. The sudden rasp of his tongue on her ear lulled her, though the tears didn't stop flowing. She had lost so much. They had lost so much -- all of them, from Warrior to Apprentice, from Medicine cat to Deputy. Several clanmates curled around she and Treepelt, offering their condolences; the warmth of their bodies helped to thaw the chill of Bluecloud's heartbreak.

They stayed together like that, wrapped around one-another in a show of quiet solidarity, while Redfern spoke of their distant neighbors to the North. Then they stood, all of them, and prepared for the journey ahead. Anything was better than here, where the ghosts of the fallen hung heavy in the air. Besides, they had each other, and for now...

For now, that was enough.

(I'm sorry if this isn't great. I haven't written in months, so I'm rusty -- but I hope it wasn't too much of a struggle to read. ;-;)

oof i started typing this up like 2 hours ago but rick and morty ended up distracting me oops

Warrior (DryClan)

The deep rumble of running water filled the otherwise silent air, heat rippling over dunes of golden sand. Along the cliff that overlooked what used to be DryClan camp stood what was left of the fallen Clan, an assortment of misplaced, mourning toms and she-cats unsure of what they would do now that their home was gone. Among the broken cats was Willowwhisper, a newly-appointed warrior, gazing down at the ravaging waters with glassy green eyes. His head was lowered, ears folded down as he remembered his home, what it once was before nature had taken it from him, and he didn't seem keen on moving from his vigil any time soon.

As if on cue, a familiar voice called the long-haired tom's name, rousing him from his thoughts with a start. Willowwhisper turned quickly, eyes wide, ears perked, expression betraying his excitement as he searched frantically for the owner of his caller. There, standing a few foxlengths away, was a cat he had never thought he would see again.

"Treepelt!" Willowwhisper cried, pacing toward his friend, blinded by happiness. It was only when the other tom hissed that he was pulled back to reality. Skidding to a stop just a ways away from his old friend, Willowwhisper watched Treepelt with worried eyes. This was not the cat he knew, always so excitable and friendly. This was a face of betrayal, of abandonment. And it was all directed at him.

Taking an instinctive step back, Willowwhisper lowered his ears, tail curling at his side in submission. He wanted to make it clear that he had no intention of fighting—now was neither the time nor place—but Treepelt was having none of it. The tom, with his speckled brown pelt reminiscent of light shining through a forest canopy, growled, lips pulling back to reveal a jagged set of fangs. It was clear to Willowwhisper then that he would not be able to get out of this peacefully.

"You..." murmured Treepelt, stalking slowly forward, causing the other surrounding cats to back away. "You left me in that canyon. Left me to die! I saw you look back at me! You knew I was there! And you did nothing."

Willowwhisper could feel his heart pounding in his chest, eyes wide and breath short. "I, I thought you were dead," he managed, the words choked with emotion. "I thought there was no saving you, so I went to help those I could. If I'd known you were alive, if you'd maybe called out to me—"

"Called out to you?" Treepelt scoffed, "So it's my fault for drowning, for being too hurt to speak up. Do you hear this fox-hearted furball?" He turned, addressing the rest of the DryClan cats now. "Can't you see what's happening here? Willowwhisper was too scared to risk his own pelt, so he just left me to die."

All the while, Willowwhisper was silent. He had stopped listening to Treepelt's ramblings, lost in his own thoughts to pay the tom any mind. Had he truly done all he could to save his friend? Had he really been too selfish to risk his life for someone he held dear? And as these thoughts plagued his mind, the warrior began to grow angry. Yes, he had done everything within his power to save Treepelt. He had been convinced the tom was a lost cause when he finally pulled himself away from him. Why else, he thought, would I be so happy to see him return?

It was then, when Willowwhisper decided this, that Treepelt launched himself forward on to the tom. The two tumbled dangerously close to the cliff, a mess of bloodied fur and unsheathed claws and anguished yowls of betrayal. Treepelt kicked at Willowwhisper's stomach, tearing at the soft skin. But at the same time he loosened his grip, and Willowwhisper managed to wriggle out from under the larger tom, cornering him against the steep drop and the frothing river below. He was breathing hard, tail lashing back and forth as blood stained his underbelly. But his wounds did not seem to bother him. Instead, as he moved forward, closing the distance between Treepelt and himself, Willowwhisper only wore an expression of guilt, and sadness.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. Willowwhisper leapt forward, sending Treepelt a staggering step over the edge of the cliff. And as the body of his friend tumbled down into the river below, Willowwhisper sat at the steep drop, lowering his head, mourning not only the loss of his home, but the second and final loss of his best friend.