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Tatteredpaw opened his golden orbed eyes, as though he had not been sleeping at all, his pupils slitting from the wideness that was when they were in the dark of the closed eyelids to the diamonds of shutting out the excess of the new light. His small, scraggly looking body stretched- stringy, looking almost like he was harshly underfed- and headed outside to sit down, and try to lick his fur into submission, which she never could, but it kept him busy.

Tatteredpaw's claws shot out when he was suddenly shouted at along with the rest of the clan, and they made no attempt to receede, though the rest of his body continued along it's given task, trying to smoothe the wirey seeming fur. His eyes cut over immediately when his mentor adressed him, and he watched her moving nothing but his slit pupils after her until she had dissapeared. He stood then, head low, eyes looking up over his brow, without amusement, and trailing after the scent.

Tatteredpaw, the master sneak he was, had veered off, after he realised where it was Ferncaress was planning to lead him. He made sure to keep to the general direction, but otherwise went off to be on his own. Just following her trail made him feel crowded, and he really did not like crowds. Soon enough though, as he padded on, he realised she stopped at the icy marshlands and now she was on about yelling at him as well. He grumbled very near silently as he stepped out of the frostbitten brush to her side, blending well with the ice tipped shadows of the dark dead branches and whatever was left of their folliage,

"To what point and purpose?" He sighed, his small, but never without irksomeness voice asked while he departed his wonderful solitude, "Will the frost be gone if I move faster? Will the prey be more plentiful? This place is a wasteland of emptiness and misted nothing. Why run for it as though it were new-leaf in Thunderclan?" and he sat himself down near her, his shoulders hunched like a condor or a vulture up above his head while he near hissed his words, ears back, looking out into the pale, sickly scab that was his clans lands.

Tatteredpaw made a face, like a bit of mild disgust, before quieting his mouth. He didn't enjoy being in trouble, so for the most part, he did as he was instructed. Still though, looking about, he heard the soft sounds of near nothing, and smelt the cold wet marsh stinging his nose with its temperature and sighed once more turning to her, his normal, brooding tone,

"I'd rather not play any games. We don't have time, nor do we have the food to provide or replace the energy. If we are going to expend ourselves, we might as well have something to show for it. I say we hunt, and if you feel so desperate to put a restriction on it so as to call it 'training' then set a time limit or a quota." he answered, his contenance yet to change, and his claws having never sheathed themselves after earlier that morning.

"Yes, of course," Tatteredpaw began slinking off in a rather sickly smooth jaunty manner that was all his own in his small body, turning as he headed toward the bushes and grumbling under his breath, "If you nonessetial greeting hasn't given them all the proper warning I'm sure I can turn up a weeks worth of food in a measly hour. I mean have you seen me? I'm a regular hunting beast." He spat as he spoke of himself. It wasn't so much a self-hatred or a self-loathing as it was a rather consistant state of lukewarm self-aggrivation and unnappreciatioin.

He didn't see much in himself, small, weak of body and possibly of mind, born to probably the most scroungy of clans; this was not the comings of someone great. It was just a recipe, a penny-recipe for a tattered kit with tattered paws who would one day grow up to be a tattered something else until he died his raggedy death after his scraggly life, what with so little meat on the bones of the years, and became a tattered corpse. He didn't feel at all that this was pity- he spat- couldn't stand pity, it just seemed to make sense. He was little more than some ragged old fur stretched on some tiny weak bones. It would be downright presumptuous of him to expect his life to amount to anything more than time served. Why even his name kept him in place.

Oh? a smell. Well, well well, it seemed some pour little bird, what with an injured wing and all, was going to be his prize today. Fitting that he should only come against the weak and injured. He knew his place. He would fill it well. A pounce on the grounded avain, and a cruel rent of the neck and it was his to claim.

Tatteredpaw, for all his thought, and follow-through, was cautious, suspicious, and protective. He never ever buried his things- everything and everyone in the whole of this land was hungry and angry, and would do whatever they could for a bite. Digging up something freshly dead for a chance to put something in their weak, shrinking, self-eating bellies to give energy to their limbs enough to carry on another day, was nothing at all, in fact it was a gift. He wondered how much longer Ferncaress and her ever so vocal stomach could continue to hold out. He himself had taken to eating snow whenever he could, and sometimes mud, which he felt would provide him with minerals, though he never made a habit of trying to eat that. The solid water, sometimes enough to chew, sort of sated his hunger. For a time.

His bird, weak from the cold, and broken unable to hunt, and so mostly bone and feather, swung from his clenched jaws, tensed and corded on his small skull as though he thought someone might rip it away. Stepping swiftly and with no trace through the brush, he sniffed around for more prey, not even a pull at the bushes he was moving through- he was so small, he could find places to pass without touching and made sure his bird did the same. He found exactly what he expected: nothing. He smelled the wet land, the bark of sopped trees, the cold wind, and all the innanimate that came with it. He wondered how much longer this would be.

While he had varily lost track of time, Tatteredpaw decided that he must've wasted nearly half an hour with his thinking before the bird, so about a quarter of an hour after the prey was caught, he decided to look for his mentor so they could meet up and go home. He headed back the way he'd come and found nothing so he continued on, trying to see if she had gone somewhere normal. As he wandered though, he caught her scent after a while and that of a dead water creature of some sort, so he turned and followed that trail, though it was leading him into the wooded area. He wasn't fond of the area and so he sat for a bit, waiting to see if she'd come out. A while longer passed, and when she did not, he growled thought his feathers and went in. In the wooded area, smells weren't so well masked by the stech of stagnit water, and brush didn't grow as well with the shade from the trees eating up all the sun. Moving toward fresher and fresher scent, the apprentice tensed all the more. To be out in the open was to be exposed and vulnerable to others.

Finally, while his eyes raked the landscape like angry claws, he spotted her pelt on the ground. Continuing on toward her it seemed as though she had fallen, and by the amount of snow caked up on her pelt, it had been some time ago. His eyes, half glowered and half stared with unwavering and unnerving pennetration at the feline laid out before him. He noticed her shoulder seemed off- looks like it had poped out of it's socket. Well, he wondered how that would have happened, her landing so wrong. What had it looked like? What had it sounded like this pop of her bone and the sudden collapse of her body like a drape over a fallen show? He had circled her, while he thought, like the vulture his posture so easily and mindlessly mimicked, until he stopped, staring down at her as though his eyes were glued there with wonder, and he raised up on his hind legs, forepaws raised, and with no snarl from his voice, but one clear on his face, he slammed down onto her and heard the crack of the ball sliding back into its socket. Not a bad sound at all- he would have to remember it. He stood back then and sat, waiting for her to rise.

OOC: And so it stahts- lol, sorry about the novella^^;

With bird still in jaws, Tatteredpaw looked over at her as she got up, moving only his eyes, as he was so privvy to doing. He watched her stand, and gingerly avoid her injured limb, only to have his attention then directed to the tree in which she must have come out of. Once given a setting for which to search, he saw where the thing was and assumed that was from where she had come tumbling down. He slowly cut his eyes back to her with a blink, but turned and stalked toward the tree. He had to go around the other side- some of the snow having blown onto his side of the trunk making it covered in ice and thus no good for grip. Scaling the wooden thing, he clawed his way up, slipping a couple of times, but managing, as he did so cautiously, not to fall himself. Eventually he made it up and around the tree then out on the branch to an ugly toad. This is what she had harmed herself for? She shouldn't have gone through such the trouble for soemthing like this. He growled and swatted it to the ground. You'd think something like that would bounce a bit, but no, it just plopped on the ground like a sack.

He then descended the tree and swatted it over to her,

"It would be at a point like this," He said, walking toward camp, same way he had exited it, head low, ears back, eyes looking up over brow, "that I beleive you have come to owe me one."

"Seeing as our clan lacks the energy needed to strike out 'benevolently' against the others, wouldn't learning to be a hunter be more benificial?" Tatteredpaw asked from up ahead, "If the only reason we're putting so much emphasis on fighting is so we can take land needed for hunting, it only makes sense that hunting should be the foremost priority doesn't it? If we can't hunt, no matter how many techniques we learn, we won't be able to put up much fight with the large, well fed, and muscled cats, and we will then be injured, perhaps dead, and even more in need of food that we will have less of. Vicious cycle, isn't it?" he asked, then paused looking to both sides, as though he expected something to come flying across his path, "Besides, you're supposed to teach me that regardless. No, it will be something else. Something else altogether." and he leapt into the bushes, allowing the ones he entered to shake for a moment before he was gone and headed to camp on his own.