When Fleck awoke early the next morning. She yawned and stretched lazily. With a start, she remembered the events of yesterday, and rushed out of the den. Once she reached the flowering bramble bush, she skidded to a halt and ducked beneath the cover of the thorny branches. With a sharp gasp, she saw that her earpiece was dripping wet. Luckily, the bramble’s wide-spreading branches had provided overall shelter for the delicate mechanism, but where she had last placed it had been, as there will, several large gaps in the cover. Desperately, she clipped it on and attempted to contact Ember.
“Ember! Ember come in,” Fleck said into the earpiece.
There was an immediate answer, but Fleck could barely hear it through the static. Ember’s voice was broken and faded by the water-clogged and poor connection. “I-that y-Fle-?
“What?” Fleck inquired, a little comically.
“Wha-did -say, Fle-?” Ember seemed to be having just as big a problem of hearing her as she was with him. Nevertheless, she had to at least try telling him about the upcoming battle.
“Ember! Listen, there’s going to be a battle in just under three weeks! Ember, can you here me?” Fleck felt stress and desperation pressing on her chest.
“Fle-ck, I ca-he-you!” Ember was shouting, trying to get her to respond as he wanted her too. “-what a-you tr-ing to s-?”
“Never mind!” Fleck yelled into the piece, flattening her ears in annoyance. “I’ll meet you at your empire as soon as I can!”
Fleck unclipped her earpiece, unwilling to struggle deciphering more of Ember’s garbled words. Feeling sudden exhaustion, Fleck shock her head. Life during a war was, as was expected, extremely stressful. She had to go over to Ember’s kingdom from now on, all because her stupid earpiece was wet.
Sighing heavily, she set off in the direction of her king’s empire. Fleck walked at a brisk pace, as to travel quickly and still conserve energy for the long walk back. She watched as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky and quickened her pace a little more. She had to move fast, or she’d be missed.
“Hey, Fleck,” a dry but slightly friendly voice sounded behind her. “What’s the rush?”
With a sharp gasp, Fleck spun around. She was greeted by Jade’s half-smile. Her friend was now directly in front of her, and was luckily alone. Fleck felt her heart beating a little faster as she tried to come up with something as quickly as possible.
“What--? Oh, I was just--walking! Yes, that’s what I was doing... Taking a brisk morning stroll, you know? We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” The strain was evident in Fleck’s voice.
Jade looked a little suspicious and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “A very brisk morning stroll, huh?”
“Uh... Yes! Very brisk!” Fleck sounded extremely anxious. Normally, she would have covered up quite smoothly, but she was feeling out-of-sorts today.
“Are you sure that everything’s okay? You seem, y’know, a bit stressed out.” Jade’s voice was filled with genuine concern.
Fleck was now recovering from her previous shock. With a sigh, she said longingly, “Yeah. It’s just a bit hard with all of this responsibility. We’ve got the war, the apprentices, the upcoming battle...” Not to mention the fact that I’m a spy with divided loyalties, Fleck added inwardly.
Jade nodded sympathetically. “Speaking of the little worms, I was actually looking for you because of training. Most of us woke up about a half hour ago, and were starting to worry about where you’d gone. So a couple of us went out to look. Ha! Look at what your morning stroll’s done to us!” Jade gave a dry--but good-humored--laugh and a realized smile. “I’m just glad that Ember and his team of boogies didn’t get to you before I did!”
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“So, today, you are going to show me what you know,” Fleck instructed in a flat and pointed manner, ears slightly pressed back. She was glaring at her slightly frightened-looking student, who was sitting only two yards away from her.
“What I... Know?” Sparrow asked anxiously. He seemed quite eager to prove himself to his mentor.
Fleck’s ears flatted further and her brow creased with impatience. “I have no time for your needless inquiries. Now, shut up and listen. All you have to do is show me whatever battle skills you have learned on your own. You have to have learned something in your entire life, right?” At this question, she raised one of her eyebrows in a bored and slightly mocking way.
“Uh... Okay! I will show you.” He paused, standing motionlessly. “What I know, I mean,” he addled hurriedly.
Sparrow sprung to his paws with a purposeful and energetic demeanor. He stood there, hesitating, excitement slowly fading from his eyes and energetic grin gradually drooping as the seconds ticked by. Then Sparrow’s crazed smile picked back up and his eyes lit up once more. Fleck’s eyebrow climbed a little higher, as if she was mildly amused by her apprentice’s odd behavior.
He launched himself at her in a sightly clumsy fashion but not to such extent that it could be considered badly executed. Fleck swiftly dodged the attack with a speedy jerk to the side. Sparrow landed on the pounded-dirt ground with a clumsy roll. Fleck couldn’t help but wince a little in quiet empathy for her unfortunate apprentice. But she straightened her expression and arranged her features so that she appeared bored and uninterested. Sparrow looked so embarrassed and disappointed in himself, that she felt compelled to say some words of encouragement.
“Listen, I wasn’t to bad,” Fleck explained gently. “I’m actually pretty impressed. Most wouldn’t be able to do half as good as you.” She waved a paw disinterestedly in the direction of the other guards with a slight smile. Ginger was snarling orders to GoldenSunn, who was cross-eyed and drooling; Jade was attempting to detach herself from the claws of Cinder and Ash (who were actually doing really good); and Mudsplash was trying and failing to explain to Tigger the art of modesty.
“Oh!” Sparrow chirped brightly, perking up quite a bit and smiling from ear to ear.
“Yep.” Fleck was grinning now. “And that’s why I picked you out of all of those Commoners to become a guard. Anyway, I’m hear to teach you. I didn’t expect you to know very much about battle tactics. Now, let’s really start training.”
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By the time training was over, Ginger had managed to make a GoldenSunn-sized whole in the group; Jade had received over thirty scratches; Mudsplash hadn’t achieved a thing; Ob had eaten almost sixty flowers (and had thrown up twice); and Fleck had taught Sparrow countless battle moves. But there was far more work to be done. While the other guards were heading to their den for a well-earned rest, Fleck began to creep away, hoping to deliver Ember the news of coming battle, catch a few mice or birds and return claiming to have been hunting the whole time.
“Where are you sneaking off to?” Ginger called playfully as Fleck neared the edge of the forest.
Fleck bit her lip and screwed up her face in rage. Why hadn’t she moved faster? Then she wouldn’t have been caught. There was still hope of giving Ember the news by the end of today, though. “Oh, I was just about to take a quick drink in the river.” She said this as casually as she could, not wanting to raise suspicion.
“Oh.” Ginger shrugged and nodded, not indicating any sign of incredulousness. “Okay, then, I’ll come, too.” It didn’t seem like a very imposing offer, just a harmless suggestion. At least in Ginger’s opinion.
Fleck felt like a deer in headlights: trapped. She struggled to figure some way out of this, but then decided that there was none. “Okay, then,” she said with a forced but still falsely warm smile.
They walked side-by-side in a chummy fashion, but Fleck provided an air of tension that seemed to kill her friend’s wonderful mood. Awkwardly, Ginger tried to brake the ice with some friendly conversation.
“So-o, what did you teach Sparrow today?” Ginger inquired in a way that would be appropriate for one trying to engage in a conversation with a particularly angry rattlesnake.
“What did you teach GoldenSunn?” Fleck asked tensely.
“Nothing,” Ginger moaned angrily. “All her does is sit there, drooling, while I’m trying to beat some sense into him.”
“Or are you trying to beat him senseless?” Fleck cut in, losing some of her previous tension. “Anyway, I see that you are listening to my advise.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Ginger sounded sincere. “but he just doesn’t listen. And it’s really annoying. I wonder if there’s something wrong with his ears. Or maybe some sort of mental deficiency. Anyway, I can’t help it but unleash my seething hatred for him physically. Honestly if he wants the drooling freak to live, Slate should have paired him up with someone else.”
“Not me,” Fleck backed away a little, grinning.
“You’d abandon a friend in need like that?” Ginger gasped, pretending to be appalled. “Shame on you, Fleck, shame on you.”
Ginger gave her friend a playful shove, which sent Fleck skidding a couple of feet before stopping. Fleck rose to her paws, only to fall over, laughing. They had a good time together the way there and back.
But by the time the two of them had both settled into their beds for the night, Fleck felt a sense of nausea in her stomach. She had to give Ember her message soon. I’ll have to tell him tomorrow, she thought to herself. But something told her that tomorrow would be just as useless as today.
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-KittyLover8
© 2013
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