THE TENNIS COURT — private

Cobiapaw woke in his den lazily. He streched out with a lucid yawn. Ah. Nice, peaceful, quiet. He seemed to be the only one in the camp woken up, as a streak of sunlight had broken through and shined into his deep set coppery brown eyes. Suddently, something came back to his mind. He had training! Quietly but quickly, he slipped out of the den, bounding towards the exit with breath pooling at his mouth in spouts of smoke-like air. Through the short strech of territory he went, until approaching the bank of Sunningrock's river. Something was off as he rounded a fallen trunk of a old tree. There was an odd trickling rush of a sound coming from the other side. with wiggling haunches he leaped to the top, digging his claws into the molded surface. The ice was broken, and Palemoon was on the other side! Cobiapaw gasped slightly as he fell to the ground in a controlled roll. He padded slowly up to the bitterly cold bank, staring puzzled at his mentor. Did he miss part of the lesson? No. He was the first here, a presumption which definitely seemed true.

(Nvm, second. we posted at the same time. LOL_)

He glanced with a smile and a nod at Pansypaw. "Hey. Ready for training?" He inquired, before turning his head back to admire his older mentor across the bustling river. At her windswept and diluted words, he shrugged. "Sort of! I've done it before but I was not very good!" He called in a half yell across, laughing whole-heartedly at his scratchy attempt. "Have you?" He twisted his head around before plopping onto his haunches in a tense and ready-to-go yet lazy sit.

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Dawnpaw arrived hurriedly, panting as she slowed to a stop. "Sorry!" she apologized breathlessly, her heaving flanks slowing to a regular breathing pattern. "I slept in." Warm with embarrassment, she looked at the swirling dark river. She'd just caught Palemoon's question. "I kind of know how to swim."
[hr]

"Oh. You guys h've swam before? I mean, I think I know how but..yep, I have no idea." He shrugged at the fellow apprentices, ears twitching in slight emberrasment. "I just know how to do stuff. Logically. I'm not a skill guy." He threw back his head in an exagerated laugh, before slowly bringing it back down quietly as he noticed nobody was laughing as hard as he was. "whatever. I bet she'll make us like, swim across or something. why else would she clearly have split the river? You can tell. I think." He shrugged.

Cobiapaw watched as Pansypaw was the first to leap into the fridgid waters. She was still close to shore, and it seemed she was fine. For a cat about his size, it was important to study their movements. He could tell that once she got off of the sandy bottomed part of the river and to the more gritty and gravely part the current would increase.
He squinted at the water before breathing in deeply. Quickly, he lowered himself to the ground and tightened his core muscles. He bit the edge of his lip in anticipation as he sprung forwards. The large breath he took mid-air was battered out of him as he hit the water.
Shaking his head in determination, he found himself farther out into the water than Pansypaw was as she entered. It was a bit of a con, though, as his strength was alot lower than if he had just jumped into the current. Hmph. Funny.
As he padded out farther, he realized he was slowly being dragged sideways and towards the unbroken sheets of ice. But, there was one large chunk sticking out of the water still, pressed against the side of the still formed ice. How could that be?
A sand bank. It had to be. Or, just some random underwater hill or raise in the ground. He backpedaled his feet, whipping his tail around to push himself towards there. As he did, he could feel the ever present lull of the ice bending his strength and direction. It was a gamble.
with one last burst of strength he propelled himself towards the ice. Bad idea. His head fell sideways, clonking gently but still connecting with the frozen surface. His eyes blurred out in pain for a moment and he blinked hard. How had he not floated away? Me. No, how am I still here?
His feet brushed the grimy bottom, and he smiled to himself. Paddeling forwards with his back legs drifting off of the ground, he got to a slightly higher spot, and pushed off hard. He was 3/4 of the way to shore. He was disorientated and in pain but still stared strait ahead, eyes doefully blinking as his paws stroked hard against the waters pulling him towards the frozen edge.
Finally. His back legs fell from the water and onto the firm shoreline. He gasped a rattling breath into his lungs in slight exhaustion. But, the task was not over yet. He looked to his right and saw Palemoon at sunningrocks. He had blown himself off course by a few fox-lengths. As quick as possible, he bounded over to the rocks and pulled himself to her before flopping down in exxagerated tiredness.
(He was most likely second from his fiasco of going sideways to the sandbar. The sandbar, though, might have been on all sides of the water and he had simply just noticed it from the ice. Sorry for the late post, we are trying to find the origin of a pipe leak in my home)

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Dawnpaw nodded at Palemoon's instructions and approached the shore, tentatively dipping a small ginger paw into the icy liquid and feeling it lap gently at her leg. She entered the water, blue eyes wide as her long fur was soaked and slightly weighed her down. Finally, the small she-cat adjusted to the feeling, and she began to swim, pulling the water with steady strokes, holding her head high above the swirling black water.
A small chunk of ice suddenly blocked her path, and she bumped into it unexpectedly, flailing her paws as she desperately tried to regain her balance. She went under for a many heartbeats, unable to come up as the ice chunk was above her head. She managed to knock it away with her paw, and her head broke the surface, gasping for air and coughing up icy water. Even though her heart pounded in her chest, she was alive. She continued to swim, her blue gaze fixed on the shore of Sunningrocks.
[hr]

Hmm. He was first by only a tiny, tiny bit. He watched with panted breaths the other cats coming. His throat was dry and felt as if it was splitting open with every breath, and he felt the throb at the top of his head slowly subsiding. Dawnpaw seemed to be doing amazingly. She kept a strong pace as she was nearly ontop of the shore. His gaze switched to Pansypaw. Pansypaw?
His gaze searched the chopped frozen waters for her, heart sinking with dread. A wet feeling plopped into the bottom of his stomach where he could see the faint outline of a cat. He flickered his head backwards and up to his mentor. Screw that. Dawnpaw was safer on shore, anyway.
Cobiapaw was a wimp. A young, stupid, slightly stuck-up wimp that seemingly was suicidal. He shook his head. No, No. I don't want to die. He thought, sitting back down onto his haunches with a thud. Seriously, Cobia? Move it.
A metaphorical tear welled at the edge of his eye in terror as he sprinted in a suspended race towards the sandy shore. He plodded in circles for a couple heartbeats before plunging back into the water. His breath was sucked like a vortex out of his throat as his chest met the icy tendrils of the river's fingers. They wrapped around him and forced his lower body down. The apprentice thrashed his paws and swiveled his legs even harder.
As he neared the barrier between air and death, his bravery shriveled. He bit into his lip until the metallic yet sweet taste of blood rolled in droplets over his tongue. A final large gulp of breath sent him under and towards the limp figure pressed against the sheet of freeze.
It was peaceful down there. Droving from the current gently yet physically pulling you away just felt calming. He squeezed open his eyes to widen them extremely, searching hard yet again for Pansypaw. There. Just off to his left. Her body was slowly yet certainly getting scraped across the bottom of the ice kittenstep by kittenstep.
He gripped the ice with his foot as he kicked off, and heard the surface moan in a saturated yowl. He scrabbled his way over to her soaked body, grabbing the she-cat by the scruff of the neck. Now what? His lungs burned as he ran out of air. The bank. where was the bank?
He dragged her body sideways. Sideways? The direction that felt like sideways, anyway. He could see faint light shimmering through more that way. As he approached that spot, he nearly let go of his grippe in shock. It wasn't open. It was still ice.
Fury overwhelmed him for a moment, and then he thought. How was light coming through? Thin ice. The idea clicked in his head, and with his tiny amount of last strength he hit in slow movements the spot with one paw while the other gripped helplessly onto the slick ice, back legs moving like motors to stay upright.
His vision started to blur as he pummeled the ice. Please. Please. Please. Each hit had a repeated word as he could hear the slightest splintering sound.
what felt like 10 minutes later, he felt a chunk fall onto his head and his paw shot through. It slopped onto the surface with clicking claws. Yes! His eyes were starting to close and his grip on the she-cat was loosening. Cobiapaw through one leg out and arched his neck to chuck the appie in his hold up and out. She barely made it out of the small hole, side getting caught and (possibly if u want) cut from the jagged nature of the incision.
He stuck his nose out, breathing in a fresh whiff of air as underwater coughing and spluttering drove it all out. The soaked fawn and brown cat slammed the sides of his hole with his limbs until the hole was large enough for him to slip and slide out.
He fell onto the ice with a moan, bubbles of water sapping out of his nostrils and bleary wet coughs sounding from his lungs. His head throbbed and it felt as if all of his claws were slowly slipping out of their sheaths and onto the ice. The coldness of the outside air was a relif from the murkiness below. "H-h-hohw?" He gasped, shudders rippling his small body.

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And with a last stroke filled with all of her effort, she reached the shore, hauling herself up with heaving flanks, sodden with icy water. She coughed out a small amount of water and then glanced up at Palemoon, hoping her mentor was proud of her. Glancing around, she realized she had come first. Wow. She'd actually achieved something. It was a surprise to the small flame-point. It seemed that Pansypaw and Cobiapaw had both got themselves into trouble, as both looked rather panicked and fatigued.
[hr]

His chest felt like a small fox had kitted inside of it. A wet, dull feeling was swimming through his soaked body and he could feel his rasps of breath cause a ringlet of pain to shoot through his nerves. His body trembled, yet, the young apprentice forced his optics open to scan around the ice.

Cobiapaw decided to stay still. Many would logically think that he had pulled himself up onto thin ice and it would splinter if he moved, while Pansypaw had slid to thicker ice so she was free to go. No, that was not it. He attempted to move but his paw moved in the opposite direction he wanted it to, for a far, far longer stride than he had expected.

His hocks felt as if they had crumpled under the pressure of his sodden bark-brown appendages. His legs had grasped at the slippery reflective surface, but nothing had came from it. Instead, he realized his only chance of not going back in while his head is still in post-shock mode was to speak.

"H-hey." He croacked, throat burning as fresh oxygen flooded in, chasing out the cold burn from the ice fringed water. "Are y-you, are y- are you okay, Pansy?" He weakly called, lifting his droning head up from the damp surface and attempted to squint into the morning sun.

Streaks of red and pink flooded into his gaze, sending the mental thought of the dying night into his eyes. For that one, blissful, out-of-body moment, he felt peaceful. Painless. Hopeful. That all went away when he heard a cackled groan from underneath his splayed underbelly fur below.

No. He slowly dug his battered claws into the ice, pulling himself forwards in sheer panic. He let his back legs carry alot of the weight, making sure the slight punctures he made in the deadly surface did not crack the weak patch of ice he was on. Fortunetly, it seemed to be working. He scraped his leg along the side, tail whipping furiously like an aggrivated snake, until he rolled onto the thicker layer of ice that atleast supported his laid out body weight.

"P-Pansypaw?" He m'rrowed, eyes squeezed tightly shut as a wave of shivers rippled his wide-fronted body. The darkened hair along his features was parched and out in a wide radius of his skin. His smooth; shined thin coat that most Riverclanners had did not last well against freezing water for a long amount of time.