Posts by Falconpaw apprentice

Suddenly, an orange apprentice pounced from the branches of a neighboring tree in pursuit of the possum. The small cat landed stifflegged on the dirt and then tumbled into a somersault and landed on her back. "Mouse dung!" she cursed. "I almost got that possum, Echoheart. That would have filled a lot of bellies." Then, she noticed the small kit for the first time. She rolled over, stood up, shook the dirt off her pelt, and tried to look dignified. Then, she leaned down to look at the kit."Oh hi, I didn't see you there. Who are you?" she asked politely, completely focused on the kit and ignoring the possum still stumbling around the tree.

"Storm. That's a cool name," the cat said, sliding her eyes sideways, mildly interested in the now-moving possum. "My name is Brushpaw. I'm an apprentice in ThunderClan." She leaned down to sniff the kit. "Where are you from? You don't smell like you're from any of the Clans. Are you a kittypet?""

"Of course you did. How could any cat stand to be a kittypet with their soft, comfortable life and eating pellets that look like rabbit droppings," Brushpaw said with distaste. "Yuck! It's so much more free out here in the forest eating mouse and hunting for your own food. This is how to live." She looked at Storm with a confused expression. "So what are you going to do now? You can't just live as a rogue; you're just a kit!"

"You might be able to join our Clan," Brushpaw said slowly. Then she added hastily, "But don't get your hopes up! The Clans don't like kittypets all that much. I don't know how they will react to one coming into the Clan," she said worriedly. Then, she put on a determined expression. "Well, no matter what you do, you need to get that collar off. You won't be able to live out here with that thing on. It will make a lot of noise and chase off prey or alert other animals to where you are."

"A moon? How old are you?"

"Well, if you are six moons, then you are old enough to become an apprentice like me if the Clan would accept you. I'm kind of a recent addition to the apprentice's den. I'm eight moons old," Brushpaw said proudly. "Anyway, back to your collar problem. If you have gotten close to getting it off before, and then the Twolegs just came along and gave you a new one, then just use those same methods. The Twolegs aren't around anymore to give you a new collar." Brushpaw flicked her ears, slightly irked by the noise of the snoring possum. It was as if the possum was taunting her to come up and try to get it, but Brushpaw was occupied with helping this kit.

"Well...," Brushpaw said, wondering what furniture was but deciding to just skip over it, "to answer your second question, a Clan is a group of cats that live together. We share responsibilities, like hunting for fresh-kill and caring for kits and elders, and we care for one another. There are warriors to defend the Clan if there is an attack and to patrol our territory's borders. Apprentices train to become warriors. There is a leader and a deputy who is like the assistant and usually the successor of the Clan leader. Then, there is the medicine cat who heals the injured and sick with herbs, and they interpret signs from StarClan. In this forest, there are four Clans: ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, And ShadowClan. StarClan is the Clan of all the spirits of the dead cats, no matter what Clan they're from."

"Well, I guess I could bring you back to my Clan and see what the leader has to say about it. Would you like that?" Brushpaw said slowly.

"Rabbitleap!" Brushpaw said respectfully and nodded her head and crouched down. "Um...This kit's name is Storm," She started slowly, looking at the kit. Then she rushed on breathlessly, looking at her paws and not meeting the warrior's gaze. "He was a kittypet, but he ran away, and now he needs a place to stay, and he can't go as a rogue; he wouldn't be able to care for himself because he's just a kit...," Brushpaw took a deep breath and slowed down. "And so I wondered if maybe the Clan could take him in," She concluded meekly.

Meanwhile, back in the forest near Twolegplace, Brushpaw was still crouching in front of Rabbitleap. Her expression was a mixture of worry and confusion. She hoped she wasn't in any serious trouble. She didn't know why she would be, and she tried to reassure herself that she had handled this kit problem well, but it wasn't much use. The fact that a warrior wanted to talk to her alone was always unnerving. Brushpaw looked up from her paws and at the older warrior's face. Tentatively, she asked, "W-What do you want to talk to me for?" stammering a little in her nervousness.

In a hazardous mountain range, near the edge of a precarious, knifelike, rocky overhang overlooking a steep, vertical drop down to a deep valley floor lay a figure watching, but not being seen. He made sure he stayed very still in the shadow of the cliff behind him so that his perfectly camoflauged gray scales, each one carefully lined on the bottom edge with a light brown, would not betray his position by reflecting one of the sun's bright rays. He was crouched down with his white claws and his long, serpentine neck stretched over the edge of the overhang so that his head could rest on a ledge lower down the cliff.
The valley below him was his territory. It was midday, and the sun was high up in the sky, lighting up everything in the valley. His perch was on the southern side of the valley, and to his right and left, the valley curved away around the mountain range. He could not see the ends, but he could see the cliff face directly across. It was just a small purple silhouette far in the distance, perched on the edge of the world, and was sometimes blocked from view by fog or clouds, but it was clearly visible today. Down in the valley, an evergreen forest normally covered most of the ground, but it had burned away in the recent fire leaving the charred remains of skeletal, unstable trunks that looked thin as strands of hair from this height. At the foot of his cliff, there was a large clearing where no trees grew. It covered a fourth of the width of the valley, and stretched almost as long as the visible length of the valley. Usually, it was covered with lush grass and boulders proudly displaying their blankets of soft, green moss, but now, it was littered with scorched, rocky boulders, soil, and ash. To his left, a calm river flowed northernly, winding through the trees before joining another river heading east, right down the middle of the valley. This river was four times wider and more turbulent since it traveled more steeply, gradually cutting a crevasse into the rock. Mist was always being thrown up from the surging white waters. This river and canyon had prevented the fire from traveling to the other side, and plenty of moss still habited the wet rocks. Some caves were carved out of the inside walls of the canyon, he knew. He explored them and memorized their passages because he had to know his territory well.
This was his favorite spot to survey the deep valley below him. His amber eyes missed nothing from his elevated perch. And he didn't have to worry about any sort of ambush from above or behind. His ledge was only accessible in two ways; gliding in from straight on or from the sides which his large, batlike wings could easily manage. The cliff behind him was angled in such a way that the bottom was directly behind his slender tail but the top was way above and in front of his nose. It was a very smooth cliff, too, with hardly a single crack or ledge to use as a foothold so nothing could climb down from above. He knew; he had tried to do so himself, and he was an expert climber, but he could not get anywhere on the smooth cliff face. He could see all the land in the distance from his vantage point and anything approaching the front would be seen miles before they were even close to the valley below him.
And for the last little while, this unseen dragon had been watching a strange phenomenon folding out before him.

When you create a new thread, what does the options "private" and "hidden" mean at the top? And once you set it to private, how do you change it?

I scrolled down to the Quick Reply and I checkmarked the "Invite-only access" box and I tried to invite one of my friends to join the thread but when I typed in their username, it said there was an error and it couldn't find that member. Is there something I missed?

The dragon, Vincent, kept watching to see if this mysterious ripple in the air would move again. It seemed very energetic, always flitting from one place to another. Vincent was curious to see what strange creature was on his territory. However, he knew he couldn't approach it because it could be dangerous. He did not know what powers it could posess.
Instead, he decided to try to attract it's attention to something. His eyes flicked to a pebble near his nose on the right. Then, he carefully watched where the ripple had last been for any movement as he moved his head very slowly over to where the pebble was. It was an agonizingly slow process to move the short distance because he couldn't let himself be noticed, but he had to do this before the ripple moved again. When the pebble was finally in front of his nose, he slowly moved forward until he could push the pebble down the cliff wall.

As Vincent noticed that the eyes' line of vision was slowly moving up the cliff wall, he quickly closed his own eyes so that the mysterious ripple wouldn't notice the glint of light on his pupils that was surely going to be there. He hoped he hadn't closed them too late and that the ripple hadn't noticed the fleeting movement of his eyelids.

It works now. Thanks for the help.

While all this had been going on, Vincent had risked cracking one of his eyelids the tiniest fraction just in time to see the ripple change into a white dragon. It was about 2/3 his own size. He kept watching and had unconsciously and slowly opened both his eyes wide to see the dragon better, but when the dragon's orange eyes widened, he realized his own were open and quickly closed them to just a fraction again. He saw the accusatory glare directed in his direction and, too late, realized he should have closed his eyes all the way, but he didn't dare move now. Even though this dragon looked directly at him, he wasn't sure if it knew he was there, so he stayed still and hoped his scales camoflauged him.

Peeking through his half open eyes, Vincent was gripped with fear as he watched the white dragon fly towards him. It's hard eyes had a mysterious glint in them that scared Vincent, and they were locked onto his own as it flew directly toward his head.
He always tried to avoid a fight with other dragons if possible but was never afraid to reveal himself if it came down to it. This dragon, however, was still strange to him, so he was afraid to be discovered. He could see there was no alternative, though. Even if he trusted his scales to hide him and assumed he hadn't been spotted, this dragon would probably hit him on the way past.
Finally, he decided on a course of action: to try to intimidate the dragon. Quick as lightning, he reared up on his hind legs, spread his wings to their full length, and puffed out his chest in an attempt to appear bigger. He arched his neck down and hissed at the small dragon.

Vincent was relieved when he saw that the white dragon was afraid of him, but he tried not to let it show. Instead, he dropped back onto all four feet, and, with his back arched, and his wings still opened wide to look bigger, he took a step forward and roared a challenge as loudly as he could in the white dragon's direction.

Vincent felt a change in the air and his skin tingled just a split second before the cliff behind him made a sharp crack that echoed across the valley. There was a burnt smell to the air, and he crouched low to the ground and tucked in his wings, trying to make himself as small a target as possible as he whipped his head around and looked up. Vincent noticed for the first time that there were storm clouds and immediately concluded that lightning had struck.
For a moment, nothing happened, but then, a large slab of stone, about half Vincent's size, broke off the cliff. The rock seemed to move in slow motion as it pivoted at the bottom so that the slab now fell horizontally. Then, time restored itself as the rock crumbled into chunks, and Vincent realized he needed to move or else the heavy rocks would land squarely on his neck.
All this happened in the span of a few seconds.