Fleck awoke to warm golden sunlight and cheery, distant birdsong. She yawned broadly, laying out her very full day before her. She would have to train Sparrow for most of the day and with any free time personally report to Ember as to give him the small bagful of supplies and to tell him of the results of her mission last night. Fleck stood and stretched, head aching with tiredness. Had she slept at all?
Fleck exited the guards’ den to find that everyone else was sitting around the training grounds, save Ob, who was still sleeping.
“Hi, there, Fleck,” Ginger said with a welcoming flick of a tattered ginger ear. “What took you so long, sleepyhead?”
“I dunno,” Fleck fibbed with a weary shrug. “Just tired.”
“I sure hope that you’re awake enough for today’s training, cause these little rascals certainly are. And I’m sure that your Sparrow or whatever he’s called is just as ready for training as these two little duffers,” Jade said in an amused tone, ruffling the fur on the twins’ heads.
“Heh. Yeah, my name’s Sparrow. And I am anticipating starting training!” Sparrow said excitedly. “So what have we got for today?”
Fleck mutely led Sparrow to the side, as did the other guards. “Okay, then. Now that we’re all set, I’d like to teach you something that has helped me win quite a few battles. And it helped me to pick out you, Ash, Cinder, and Tigger from all of the other Commoners.”
“What is it?” Sparrow asked eagerly, eyes bright with excitement.
“This skill is to analyze your opponent. You look the cat in the eyes and read the facial expression to tell how confident, scared, angry, etc. the cat is. You look the cat up and down to figure out it’s build, which is easy enough, and to see how it holds itself. This also shows its personality.
“Like, for you, I’d say that you’re disadvantages are that you have a slight under-confidence in yourself and that you have a scrawny build. But this is also your advantage, for it means that you are faster then one bulky with muscle. You are also a fast thinker, I can tell by that certain bright look in your eyes and by the was you hold yourself. You are also quite eager to learn, although it doesn’t take an expert to figure that out. So basically, you underestimate yourself a bit, are scrawny but fast, have mild strength, and are clever and full of a sort of youthful eagerness.”
“You can tell all of that just by looking at me?” Sparrow gasped, obviously amazed.
“And more,” Fleck said with a humble smile, attempting to sound modest (and not succeeding) but truly brimming with pride.
“How do you do it?” the awe-inspired Sparrow questioned, edging foreword eagerly.
Fleck cleared her throat. “Well, if the attacking cat has a sneer and a set, relaxed expression, carrying itself with pride and ease and perhaps making snide remarks, it is confident in itself, probably overconfident. If the cat is tense, with terrified eyes darting this way and that and chewing its lip, it is underestimating itself and is scared. If a cat’s eyes are dull, bored, and gazing in a random spot, maybe drooling and mouth almost defiantly slightly agape, it means that he or she is unfocused and probably a bit dim, at that. If a cat has bright perky eyes and is perhaps smiling, this means that the cat is eager to lear and therefore bright. There are others, but let’s just try to have you guess them. For real-life practice, you’re going to look at a bunch of different Commoners and tell me what you think that their personalities are.”
“Okay!” Sparrow said excitedly, grinning from ear to ear and fidgeting a bit with anticipation.
“Then let’s go,” Fleck smiled with a shrug.
It the corner of her eye, she saw Mudsplash doing a fair job with Tigger, but not getting much through to him. Jade was pouncing playfully upon her apprentices, who were laughing gleefully as they trained. Poor Ginger (or rather poor GoldenSunn) looked on the verge of frustrated tears and was close to killing GoldenSunn. Fleck smiled and gave a little laugh as her friend was speaking quite colorfully.
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Once Fleck and Sparrow were at the commons, she kept on dragging him to completely random Commoners and having him tell her what their personalities were. He took quite a while to finish examining them, but was good seeing that he was new to all of this.
“Arrogant, right? Or do I say overconfident? Or is it either? Or is--” Sparrow started nervously as he looked at a ‘swagger’ Commoner.
“Either is fine,” Fleck said.
Sparrow was steadily getting less and less afraid to speak what he though was their personalities, which enhanced her performance.
“Scared.”
“Untrustworthy and sly.”
“Righteously confident in himself.”
“Disloyal to the guards, yet afraid to act out.”
“Timid and kind.”
“Unfocused and dim.”
“...um...Flaky.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Fleck assured him with an approving nod. “Now, I think that you’ve done enough training for now. Why don’t you have a rest? We’ll train some more afterwards, okay?”
“Okay,” Sparrow agreed with a sort of sad smile.
He then dashed off in the direction of the guards’ den, ready for a well-earned rest. Once he had left, Fleck, too, departed, but in the opposite direction. She had something to do.
Once she was beneath the bramble bush, Fleck turned on her earpiece and said, “Ember, do you read me?
There was no reply from the other line, just still silence.
“Ember!” she called, a little desperately. “Ember, please pick up!”
Still, nothing but silence. Since Fleck had to go personally, anyway, she took her leave in a weary manner. She yearned for a nice long sleep. Abut, she had a mission to complete. A sort of small, petty mission, but a mission all the same.
Briskly dashing in the direction of Ember’s empire, Fleck stopped briefly to readjust her belt, which held her dagger and the bag of bolts. As Fleck dashed towards the other kingdom, she knit her brow in frustration. Did Ember even known how much she was risking? Nothing less then her life was at stake. Oh, he knew. It was merely that he didn’t care. Once again, she was risking her life for the sake of a handful of old bolts. What use would they be to the sappy king, anyway? He didn’t have any forges to melt them down with, not that Fleck knew of. And he also had no mechanics to make the otherwise useless bolts into an efficient weapon.
Why was she doing this, anyway? She really felt no connection to Ember’s empire, nor to those within it. When she was very young, with bright kitten eyes newly opened, her mother had died. Fleck couldn’t remember how, exactly, but she had a vague, hazy memory that mentioned a lose dog or something of the sort. She had been the only kitten of the litter, and she had never known her father. A cat named Smokeflower took Fleck under her wing. She was a mother of four kittens and said that she could handle just one more. But as Fleck grew older, one by one they passed away. The last was Fleck’s dear foster mother, Smokeflower, who was stricken with a violent illness.
Afterwards, Fleck devoted her life to training. She had already been inspiring to become a spy, and now she was finally taking action. Her trainer was a lethe black cat named Sooty. He was a wonderful ninja and spy, and taught her all he knew. Fleck was very young at the time, not even half a year old. But she learned fast, and was a master in no time. About a year after she had begun her training, her beloved mentor died. He was yet another to fall to illness.
Fleck felt a boiling sensation of anger and pain. It seemed as though everyone that she loved died when she could do nothing about it. Helplessness was something that she felt when each of her loved ones died. She could not stop sickness, and she wasn’t even old enough to walk when her mother died. Yes, the world was a cruel place.
Fleck had made a few distant friends in Ember’s kingdom. But she had always been more of a loner, ever since her last true friend there, Sooty, died. The few friends she had made there were more like friendly acquaintances. She usually talked to them only once or twice, and it was always a short and awkward chat. But somehow, she didn’t feel that way with Ginger and Jade and all of the other guards, including Stinger. Maybe it was because they had the same king of spunky flare that she possessed, but they had always been much more easy to talk to. Even though she was supposed to be spying on them, they all felt more like friends the Ember’s cats did.
But what could she do? If she told the guards, they were sure to, in the least, shun her. Most likely, they would kill her. If she told Ember that she was unsure of where her loyalties truly lay, then he would kill her, just as he killed Stinger. Yes, she was traped as a bird in a cage. There was no way out for her.
“There you are, Fleck.” Ember’s voice jolted Fleck out of her thoughts. It was hard with no hints of warmth, but laden with immense relief. “I’ve been waiting for you to come. So, have you completed your mission and collected you dagger and belt? You did, didn’t you? Because otherwise you wouldn’t have the nerve to show your face here, yes?” It sounded more like a threat ten a question, and Fleck was sure that that’s exactly what it was.
“Yes, I completed my mission, flathead.” Fleck didn’t bother hiding her distain.
“Yes!” Ember squealed with delight, obviously oblivious to the insult. “So you’ve killed King Slate, then?” The king’s eyes were lit with joy and expectation.
“Er, no, I did--” Fleck began awkwardly, shifting her weight from paw to paw.
“You did! You did you did you did you did!” Ember interrupted, skipping about delightedly and whooping with cheer as he did.
“No, not exactly,” Fleck said.
Ember wilted. “Say what?”
“Well, I kind of...” What was she supposed to say? That she hadn’t mustered the guts to kill Slate? “...I kind of forgot.” Yes, that was much easier. Fleck winced and cringed, as she was a brilliant actress.
“What?” Ember snarled. “Forgot? You’re an elite ninja spy, trained by Master Ninja Sooty, only child of Lavender and my only hope to win this war and you forgot?”
“W-well, there’s no need to g-get w-w-worked up over it,” Fleck stuttered, feigning fright. “I-it was just a s-small mistake, t-that’s all...”
“‘A small mistake!’” Ember fumed, violently lashing his ginger tail in frustration. “We could have won the war--just like that!--and yet you forgot. It was right there in front of you, and yet you didn’t do it. You had you dagger right there! You had the power to end it all! It was all right there!”
Fleck didn’t pay much attention to the rest of her king’s lengthy rant. Instead, she gazed at a small black beetle that was trying to climb up the side of a large pebble. Yes, that was much more interesting.
After what seemed like forever, Ember dismissed her and stormed off. Christmas might as well have come early, the way Fleck inwardly celebrated.
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On her way back to Slate’s empire, Fleck determinedly decided that she would tell her friends about what she was really doing here. She couldn’t keep this up any longer. These were here friends, and she couldn’t bare keeping secretes from them.
“Yo, what’s up?” Ginger said to Fleck with a raise of her brows. “You look like you’ve run a mile.”
Fleck ignored Ginger’s comment and panted anxiously, “Guys, I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?” Jade inquired, emerging from the shadow of the guard’s den. She had obviously detected the urgentness in her friend’s tone.
Fleck swallowed hard. She felt her insides twist as she tried to form the words. “I wanted to say that I’m... That I have been...”
“Come on, spit it up,” Ginger said, eyes brimming with a spunky playfulness. “We haven’t got all day, you know.”
“It’s just that I’m... Never mind.” Fleck shook her head. Why did she ever think that she would be able to do this? It had been so much easier in her head... But she just couldn’t tell them the truth, no matter how much she wanted to. Her life was a lie, and was meant to be left that way.
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-KittyLover8
© 2013
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