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(tl; dr, read the last paragraph)
stumpy was the kind of apprentice you'd always find outside when he wasn't supposed to be. he was naturally defiant, eager to explore the world presented to him, to nose at every rough bark-faced tree, to lick at every stream and water. well, that was how he liked to put it. he didn't think that other apprentice wanted to, uh, try to lick some sap up and spit it out a few seconds later because it was too sweet. yes, he attempted that. he could inform the other cats not to do such things, but some alter part of him turned him the other cheek and basically wait for others to make his mistakes. hey, history repeats itself, no?
the tom was only seven moons and yet he felt as if he had already explored all of skyclan's expansive territory. well, everything on the ground, anyways, since he couldn't climb trees. his stunted legs disallowed him to do so, and when he tried, he looked like an upturned, frantic turtle. ugh. he wanted to be a regular apprentice, not some half-pint pipsqueak that could easily be mistaken for a kit. he wasn't a kit! although, his voice was quite high-pitched. and that his ideology was a bit childish at times.
one particular night, he had wandered out, as usual. by now he was pretty sure that the apprentices sharing his den knew that he often was plagued by a gripping, nagging feeling of wanderlust and that his feet ached to move and his eyes yearned to see, so they had kept aside the entrance so he'd have a more accessible exit. as usual, under the moonlit forest, he wandered carelessly through the shrubbery. nevermind the prey, it was night and they needed breaks too. he didn't fear foxes or badgers, mostly because he had actually never seen one in his entire life and believed that the warriors were exaggerating when they told mystical stories of giant predators with gleaming teeth and bloodied maw. whatever, he thought.
he had been too close to the twolegplace, but he, again, paid no heed. his head was held high, nose acutely sniffing around for...he didn't know. his green eyes blinked through the darkness, ears pinned back as his face embraced the cold breeze of leafbare. it hadn't been snowing for the past few days, only the foreboding chills of winter were present. he exhaled slowly, seeing nothing but the square twoleg nests. how did they live in those again? he was quite curious.
so he set out to the twolegplace, exhaling in sharp new scents. his tail swished eagerly as he ventured onto the territory, feeling as if he were a kit doing something that their mother scolded them harshly yet to do. he felt rebellious. stepping out of charted territory. yet he believed he had self-control. this little apprentice, barely a moon into apprenticeship, thought he knew what self-control was? most adults would find that childish. childishly amusing. seeing the munchkin sized apprentice padding through the darkness of the kittypet's territory was a sight to see.
and before he knew it, he felt he was being watched. a prickle at the back of his neck had started to ail him as he glanced around the night for someone to scapegoat for the sudden unease that hit him like a wave of nausea in his stomach. stopping abruptly, the tom hunched over and looked quite small. like the immature cat he was. his green eyes flitted around, darting from shadow to shadow, each too ebony and indescribable to see clearly. his claws dug into the ground slowly, feeling as if someone was going to attack. he was surrounded by darkness, and the forest was more clustered than this empty alleyway, why did he feel so unnerved?
he didn't have time to answer that question in his mind before something picked him up. his eyes widened as he started to flail wildly, fighting against whatever was pulling him away from the ground. an eagle? no, those did not feel like talons. they felt like elongated skinny branches probing into his short fur. screeching, the tom's claws quickly unsheathed and clawed at the air in mad despair, but to no avail. he was facing the other way from his assailant, and even his legs were not long enough to kick at the unknown threat.
the tom felt a sharp needle go into his left leg, and panic started to rise in his throat, bile threatening to erupt from his throat. was he going to die? was this it? his movements started to get more sluggish, his mind was starting to numb. why? what happened to him? what did he do to deserve it? soon, the last of the blurry darkness became nil as the tom closed his eyes and was as peaceful as a newborn kit.
he awoke the next morning to filtered light, refracted onto his pelt. huh, wait? he didn't scent the comforting pelts of his fellow apprentices that he took for granted, he realized. he couldn't scent the fallow-tinged aspen trees that marked skyclan as their unique trademark. as he woke up, his green eyes slowly opened, emerald irises slowly emerging from the lid. he was...sleeping? was he in starclan? those were his first thoughts, his heart beating as quickly as a hummingbird's wingbeat. this place was so foreign. he hated it. he wanted to go back home. he knew he didn't die, deducing that from the fact that there were no stars in his paws and his ancestors were not there to greet him happily and for him to reunite with him. maybe he could even see snowbloom there, if he did die.
as he started to live there for the few days he was present there, he learned that he was in a twolegplace. the tom knew he should be disgusted that he had even come in contact with a smelly twoleg nest, but he was so intrigued by it. there were so many intricate corners and things to do and play with! he knew he shouldn't have even thought that if he wanted to keep his honor untainted, but he liked it here. the twolegs were very nice - which, by the way, he deduced it was one of the twolegs who escorted him into the house, observing their spindly, thin paws. twolegs were weird. he wondered how they hunted, how they interacted with clanmates - did they even have a clan? he assumed that the systematical positioning of the nests had something to do with being grouped together.
around a week or two had passed since he had seen his clanmates. one day, he woke up near where a clear film of some sort of material was preventing him from accessing the outdoors, also blocking out any scents or sounds, so only the clear image of the taunting outdoors was visible in plain sight. blinking, he lifted his groggy head to find that the twoleg was sliding the transparent material away to reveal the real world. the scents were almost otherworldly, heavenly. the scent of the forest, of aspen, almost made him want to burst out and roll around in naturality. standing up, stumpy glanced at the twoleg with big emerald eyes, not knowing what he was trying to convey. it looked as if the twoleg was ushering him outside. well, at least it knew that he was aching and homesick in the stuffy den. with a confidence that seemed to flow naturally within his blood, the tom strutted outside with his head held high and with a dorky smile on his face. he was going home.
the purchase in which his escape would be finalized was quite obvious in the garden. under a few upturned magnolias, lie a hole in the wooden fence, as if another cat had dug through recently. huh, weird, he thought as he glanced at the twoleg to see if he would notice. he needed to be stealthy. the twoleg had captured him into the nest that he had to share with him, yet he wasn't...angry with him. merely curious as to why he would do that/ was it fun for twolegs to chase cats and capture them? was he trying to save him from a predator? he would never know. but stumpy cast a emerald-eyed gaze at the twoleg, distracted by something, before slipping out. the hole was designed for cats much slimmer than he was, and it took heaving and pulling to get him across. he sighed, and trotted towards skyclan. his home.
his heart flooded with the utmost joy as he approached the border. he could scent the fallow-tinged aspens. they had marked the border recently. the apprentice smeleld of filthy kittypets, but he didn't care. he was home. he was home. they'd recognize him, right? the brown tom smiled in exasperation as he sat down quietly, ready to utter the words that he wanted to most. like he was planning for it, just to say it now.
"skyclan, i'm home."