Fleck winced as a sharp thorn pierced the tender skin on her pad. She stopped momentarily to pull it out, causing another sharp burst of pain. She ignored it and continued forewords, headed back towards Slate’s kingdom. As she went, she thought of plans to cleverly tell King Slate about the ‘new location of Ember’s kingdom’ without him finding out that she was a spy or knowing that it was her who had started the rumor. But she couldn’t come up with a thing.
Fleck caught a couple of mice, but her hunt was less successful then usual, as her heart just wasn’t in it. She soon entered Slate’s kingdom, where she was greeted back by Cinder.
“Hey, there!” Cinder said cheerfully as she slashed at imaginary enemies with her short amethyst dagger.
“Hi, Cinder,” Fleck murmured with a degree less enthusiasm. She was always happy to see the playful little kitten and her brother, but right now she had a lot on her mind. “What are you doing up so early? It’s really early for anyone but me to be up. A lot of you guys sleep in until midmorning.”
Cinder stretched her tiny misty-gray hind legs and yawned with her eyes tightly shut at the mention of sleep. Then her eyes snapped open and she looked awake as ever. “Well, I woke up and felt like practicing a tad, if you know what I mean. What were you doing at this hour?”
“Just doing a little hunting,” Fleck replied, holding up the two measly mice. It wasn’t the whole truth, but she knew that she couldn’t tell Cinder everything that had happened this morning even though she hated lying. “I didn’t get as much as I usually do. There was scarcely any prey out.”
“Huh,” Cinder grunted skeptically. “Maybe it was Sparrow’s great hunt yesterday. Ha! You should have seen that mountain of stuff! I bet you that there was enough food in that pile to feed all of the Commoners for a whole year!”
“Wow,” Fleck said without much enthusiasm. She nodded, even though she knew that the little apprentice was exaggerating. Then a thought cam to her mind. “Hey, where’s Ash? I rarely ever see you two apart.”
“Oh, he’s just sleeping,” Cinder scoffed with a hypocritical laugh. “He’s always been really lazy and I should know. As you said, we’re almost always together and I have to deal with a lot of his laziness.”
“Ha!” Fleck couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re one to talk. You are almost never awake before him.”
“Whatever,” Cinder snorted dismissively. “Anyway, why were you limping?”
“I stepped on a thorn while I was hunting in the forest,” Fleck replied carelessly, waving away the matter. Se didn’t want Cinder to say something typical like -you should have the Commoners patch that up’ or ‘be sure not to walk on that or you’ll get an infection’ or something of the sort.
“Cool,” Cinder breathed. “Can I look at it? Does it have puss?”
Well, that’s original, Fleck told herself, mildly amused. “Yah, I guess that you can see it. And no, I don’t think that it has puss. At least it didn’t when I last looked at it.”
Fleck showed Cinder her pad, which was now smeared with blood. It was covered with dirt from the forest floor. Cinder craned her neck foreword to get a better view, her tiny gray nose almost touching Fleck’s pad. She seemed entranced, and Fleck felt quite awkward as she waited for the tiny she-cat to get her fill of the sight. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to any time soon, Fleck placed the paw back on the ground with a sigh of both amusement and exasperation.
“That’s enough, Cinder,” Fleck said with a little laugh. “Honestly, you’re going to end up like Jade.”
“And just what makes you think that I don’t want to be like her?” Cinder sniffed indignantly.
“Yeah,” murmured a dry and bored voice that came from the shadows nearby, “why wouldn’t she want to be like Jade?” Jade then stepped out of the shadows, a large, sly grin on her face.
Fleck remanned apparently unfazed. She crouched down in a playful position with a teasing smile and her hazel eyes alight and laughed, “Because then she’d be a violent snob that none of the other guards liked, that’s why.”
“Hey!” Jade snarled with feigned indigence. She gave Fleck a playful cuff on the shoulder and added hotly, “What she really needs to watch out for is ending up like you!”
Fleck stuck out her tongue; a juvenile gesture of indifferent indigence.
“Hi!” Sparrow happily purred in his squeaky way, greeting Fleck. “What are you three doing?”
“Nothing,” Jade replied, giving him a crocodile grin.
Noting that this was a sign to go no further on the subject, Sparrow timidly obliged and sidestepped Jade. Ash had come out with Sparrow and the two siblings were already having a playful little tiff. Jade looked at the two of them with affectionate amusement. Fleck observed that the twins were extremely good fighters, even when they were only playing.They darted away from the other before they could land a single blow, their instincts were lightning-fast and the two were just a little more then a gray blur.
“You’re apprentices have really progressed,” Fleck murmured to her friend, obviously impressed.
“You’re apprentice isn’t to shabby, either, you know,” Jade said with a grin, nodding her thanks to Fleck.
“Yeah,” Fleck agreed, eyes shining with pride. After a long pause she added, “Where’s Ginger and GoldenSunn? I thought that they would be out by now.”
“Hey, me too,” Jade replied with a small nod. “When I left, I think that Ginger was trying to murder him. Or wake him up. The way she does it, there really isn’t any difference between the two.”
“Yeah,” Fleck agreed with a laugh. “Either way, he’ll end up dead. But I suppose that we should cut her some slack. We’ve got really good apprentices that are far easier to train. She, meanwhile, has to deal with that lazy cat every single day.”
“Huh,” Jade grunted. “I think that Cinder and Ash know pretty much all that they need to. Every time we train these days, I struggle to think of anything new that I could teach them. Usually, it’s just review.”
“You, too?” Fleck asked, surprised. The twins were far younger then Sparrow and had less previous experience. “I think that Sparrow’s got nothing else to learn.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a while. We trained them everyday for the longest time, didn’t we?” Jade said with a small smile. “Anyway, I’d better go help Ginger wake up GoldenSunn, which is, believe me, one of the harder things I’ve ever done. When he’s asleep, he’s just a lump.”
“When he’s awake, too,” Fleck commented sarcastically. “Anyway, good luck.”
“I’ll need it,” Jade snorted as she disappeared into the hollow ash tree that served as the guards’ den.
Fleck sat there, deep in thought. She was trying desperately to think up of a plan that she could ensure that no one knew that it was her feeding Slate the false information. But how could she do that? After a couple dozen minutes, Ginger and Jade emerged from the entrance of the hollow tree, looking exhausted and dragging GoldenSunn not far behind them.
“How was it?” Fleck asked with exaggerated concern.
“A nightmare,” Ginger growled through gritted teeth, glaring at her drooling apprentice. “I mean, seriously, what is wrong with him? You’d think that he was hibernating, the way he sleeps.”
“What have we got to do today?” Sparrow asked brightly. He had been play-fighting with Cinder and Ash and was currently attempting to disentangle himself from the twins.
“You’re fighting a losing battle there,” Jade laughed as she watched the three.
Ginger answered Sparrow’s question, ignoring her sarcastic friend. “Pompous King Slate told me last night that he wants us to guard him. He said that he can’t take any chances and that, hopefully, if anyone tries to poison him, one of us will take it instead like Tiger. Can you believe him?”
“No, I can’t,” Fleck murmured in a kind of trance. An idea had just popped into her head and she had to suppress a sly smile from creeping across her face. “Did he say whose going to guard him at breakfast?”
“No, he--” Ginger began to explain.
“Then I volunteer,” Fleck interrupted. “I might as well. We’ll probably alternate and it’s better to jut get it over with, you know?”
“Yeah,” Jade said with a nod. “I think that I’ll do lunch.”
“Okay, then,” Fleck said with a smile. “What time does Slate usually have his breakfast, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m not really sure,” Ginger answered, examining the sun’s position in the sky. “Although, I think that it might be around now. If you want to be the first to guard him, I’d advise you to go now.”
“All right,” Fleck said decisively. I’ll see you guys in what, half an hour?”
“That sounds about right,” Ginger nodded. “See you then. And good luck. I hope for your sake that Slate’s in a good mood this morning. I know for a fact that he was sour last night when I was talking to him.”
As Fleck headed away, Jade shouted after her, “Use the back door! The other one leads straight to his living room!”
“Okay!” Fleck called back over her shoulder, although she wasn’t really listening and this information wasn’t exactly new to her. She now had a plan that would work all because of her new guard shift. It wasn’t one of the best of her plans, but it would work and that was all that she needed.
The door was right in front of her now. She grinned a cunning smile and murmured slyly underneath her breath, “Slate, I’m gonna end the war, one way or another, and I’ll owe it all to you.”
______________________________________________________________________
-KittyLover8
© 2013
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