In the dark of the night, a slender, stealthy figure, crept into a dark, dank cave. Her paws slipped silent as cotton over ice. The only sound was the drip, drip, drip of dirty water falling from an unknown place on the cave ceiling....
....And the soft snoring from a larger cave to the small cave’s right, unknown to the weary she-cat.
*****
Clementine and Spark, a pair of demon cat twins, yawned and stretched, waking up with the sun.
Spark was a male demon cat with a mellow, tender personality. He was a gray long hair peppered with white-rimed, orange explosions with a white belly. His paws were white, and his tail was ringed with colors of flame; white on the very tip, then yellow, then orange, and lastly red. He had bright yellow, laughing eyes. A lightning insignia looked alive on his left hind leg.
All demon cats have an insignia on their left hind leg. This symbol tells them what their names--and powers--will be. Some demon cats have powers that are in some relevant relation to their name. Spark’s power was to conjure a lightning storm.
Clementine was female demon cat. She was a orange tabby short hair with white paws. She had dark brown eyes. Her insignia was of an orange with a single green leaf. Her power was to grow plants at will.
They lived in a small forest. In the clearing--or as much of a clearing as there was in that forest--that they lived in was a large cave, where they slept. Next to that cave was a smaller one, which Spark and Clementine didn’t bother with. Although, unbeknownst to the twin demon cats, it was presently inhabited by uninvited--and unwanted--company.
Spark jumped playfully onto a large tree stump only a yard away from the small cave. The other demon cat in the cave was awakening. She blinked open her eyes, two dazzling blue lights shining in Spark’s direction.
Spark was quickly joined by his twin sister, Clementine. The two wrestled on the tree stump for a while. Just then, Spark saw something. The two eyes of another demon cat.
“Who’s there?” Spark asked with friendly curiosity.
The demon cat felt threatened. Her growl emanated from the cave in reply to Spark’s question.
Clementine snarled, which probably wasn’t the best idea. The other demon cat sprang from the cave, hissing in a terrifying, feral way.
Clementine and Spark jumped back, but Clementine was a bit to slow and became ensnared in the other demon cat’s claws.
“That,” Clementine hissed, arching her back and silting her eyes, “was a bad idea. On your part, of course.”
Spark shifted nervously as the other demon cat mirrored Clementine and they began to make the terrible sounds that demon cats make, circling each other. “Stop,” he pleaded uselessly.
The two ignored him.
Now, Clementine and spark finally had a good look at the opposing demon cat. She was a female. She had long hair that was silver. Tabby stripes along with leopard-like spots were peppered along her flanks. She had white paws, and a white muzzle, chest, and belly. An infinity insignia bordered each paw where silver met white. On her forehead was a sign like a figure eight made with two diamonds. The sign was black and was flanked by two dark dots.
And then there was the sign on her hind leg. It was made up of beautifully chipped gemstones that caught the light as if they were real. They came in four colors; red, blue, yellow, and pink. They came in all shapes and sizes; some diamond-shaped, others hearts, several triangles, and many more.
But now was no time to admire each other’s designs. The two she-cats were snarling at the other, unsheathing their claws and raking the ground.
“Hey!” Spark shouted above the clamor of the snarling she-cats, deciding to take matters into his own paws. “Stop it! There is no need for fighting.”
Clementine glared at her brother. “Fine,” she sighed. She jumped down from the stump, a sign of surrender.
Seeing Clementine retreat, the opposing demon cat sheathed her claws. She, too, leapt down to the ground. She sat and washed her pads, showing that she was no threat. She then paused and watched the other two demon cats intently.
“Hello,” she greeted in a steely tone.
“Hi!” Spark smiled warmly. “I’m Spark--”
“And I’m Clementine,” Clementine added coldly.
“What’s your name?” Spark inquired, tilting his head slightly to one side. He still smiled, and the expression was obviously genuine.
The demon cat decided that she might as well return Spark’s friendly antics. “Thank you, for being so welcoming,” the cat smiled. “And, well, I really don’t know what my name is yet.”
“Oh,” Clementine meowed understandingly. “I see....”
“We could help you find out!” Spark volunteered, always extremely friendly. “We’d love to help, right Clementine?”
“Well,” Clementine grumbled into her brother’s ear, sure not to let the other demon cat hear her, shifting her paws nervously. “we hardly know this demon cat. How are we supposed to go on a whole mission with her?”
“Come on!” Spark retorted in a whisper, disappointed that his sister didn’t agree. “This’ll be easy! It’ll probably be something like ‘Gem’ of ‘Jewel’. Besides, we got help to figure out what our names were.”
“Fine,” Clementine meowed grudgingly, this time raising her voice slightly to a normal tone. “We will help her.”
“You--you will?” the demon cat squeaked gleefully, aghast and awe-struck. “You really and truly will?”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” Spark cried eagerly, always being a very kind spirit.
The other demon cat’s joy vanished to leave concern. “You don’t have to,” she protested. “I mean, it will, you know, be really dangerous. I don’t want you to put yourselves at risk just to help me....”
“Of course we’ll help you!” Spark said, nodding. “Why not? We needed each other's help to find out what our names and powers were. It’s important to find that information out.”
Clementine’s resentment to the strange cat left a sudden as it had come. “Please let us help you,” she said in sugar-coated tone.
The stranger smiled and her eyes sparkled like stars. “Well, if you really want too....”
“Yes!” the siblings agreed simultaneously with enthusiasm.
“....then let’s start guessing!” the strange cat exclaimed joyously.
Immediately Spark chided, “Gem! Or maybe Jewel!”
“Or Gemstone!” Clementine suggested.
The demon cat sighed in a forlorn way. “Thank you, but I have tried all of those. I’m guessing that it must be--”
But the fire of a merciless rifle, maned by a heartless hunter, sounded, interrupting the demon cats’ conversation.
“What was that?” the atypical demon cat inquired in a fearful tone, ears back and eyes wide disks of apprehension and anxiety.
“That,” Spark panted as he ran for cover, “is the signal to run!”
The three demon cats shoved themselves in different hiding places; Clementine jammed herself into a tree hollow, Spark compressed himself in between two rocks (although he could hardly breathe in this makeshift refuge), and the stranger stuffed herself into the small cave of which she had met her unlikely comrades.
Another shot sounded.
The demon cats huddled further into their refuges, trembling with terror, as yet again the earsplitting blasts of gunfire rang out into the forest.
And that was just the beginning of it.
A green camouflage jeep containing two men, a driver and a shooter, thundered out of the undergrowth, crushing the homes of countless animals and destroying vegetation that many creatures depended on for food in the blink of an eye. The men were vehemently talking to each other in loud, boisterous tones. They had malevolent smirks on their faces and an arrogant, bragging glow in their cruel eyes.
The jeep lurched past the cowering demon cats’ hideouts, the rifleman releasing a volley of pricing iron bullets without a moment’s hesitation. With that, as sudden and traitorously as they had come, they drove past. Although, their shouts and gunfire could still be heard as they unleashed havoc into the forest.
The demon cats didn’t creep out of their hiding places until these sounds, too, faded away. When they did, what greeted them brought shivers crawling up their spines like a hundred black beetles.
The peace and rapture of the forest had been broken by the cruelty of the terrible musket and riflemen and the havoc they wreaked upon the forest and its inhabitants.
“What,” said the demon cat, aghast with horror, “was that?”
“That was a jeep with a pair of hunters,” Clementine growled in reply.
“I hate them!” Spark cried, and his eyes ignited with rage and abhorrence. “They’ll regret this!”
Poor Spark broke down in tears, the fire that he had harbored in his eyes extinguished, and his sister and his new friend curled around him in attempt to comfort him and stem his tears.
“It’s okay, Spark,” the strange demon cat murmured in a comforting tone.
Clementine rubbed against her brother’s cheek with an unbreakable affection. And for the next hour or so, the demon cats were silent, mourning for those who had suffered for the hunters’ fun.
______________________________________________________________________
-KittyLover8
© 2012
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