I WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED [skyy]

To her, her own unsteady pawsteps sounded like thunder in her ears. She was crossing over the river using the Twoleg Bridge—something she might be more inclined to avoid given the warmer weather. Now that she had an apprentice, however, she wanted to scope out the local twolegs and their kits for herself. So she limped with purpose across the unnatural wood, ignoring the way her uneven steps seemed to thud. The issue with training an apprentice in Newleaf was that twolegs would soon begin their swarm of RiverClan territory like it was half theirs. Other Clans could relax when the warmth started to come, but RiverClan had to deal with pests large enough to destroy what they had worked so hard on if they weren’t cautious.

Duckstep wanted to make sure they weren’t near any decent training spots before she took Larkpaw out of camp. Halfway across the bridge she stopped—the stench of twolegs was heavy in the air, and she could hear their shouts from where she was. Carefully, the she-cat pulled herself from her half crouch—ignoring sharp protest from her twisted leg—and peered over one of the boards that ran on either side of the bridge like a barrier. Twolegs were so clumsy she could figure why they’d need it, and she certainly didn’t like the idea of them splashing around in the river.

Some older twolegs—not quite kits nor warrior age by the look of them—were standing on the bank and hurling large rocks into the water. Duckstep curled her lip despite herself. They had enough trouble lately, what with SkyClan breathing down their necks. At least the hunting would still be decent upstream, but it was frustrating to think that all these young twolegs were doing was scaring fish.

A sudden shout drew her attention, and a hiss of alarm leaked out of the she-cat’s throat. One of the tall twolegs had started toward the bridge and spotted her. Pelt bristling, Duckstep began to step backwards only to hear a shout behind her—she whirled around, startled to see another at the other end of the bridge.

“Woops!” Duckstep cried, she ducked down and dove into the water. It swallowed her—she was aware of muffled cries of alarm above her. The chill of the water drove her breath way, there was still snowmelt filling the rivers and it shot a burst of pain straight to her bad leg. Ignoring it, she struck out for the bank, only allowing her pink nose to appear above the water before she slipped out and crouched in some reeds under the bridge.

The twolegs were yowling up a storm for her—the two that had been on the bridge stomped up and down it noisily. The ones on the bank were pointing to the water and waving their arms, Duckstep couldn’t tell if they were mad that they lost the chance to heckle her or if they were concerned. It was almost amusing, except that it meant that they were actively searching for her.

“We’ll just hope that nobody else decided to come this way today,” Duckstep murmured with a wince. She could hunker down and hide as long as she needed to, but she couldn’t expect that of any cat that might be spotted by her pursuers.