Duskelle waited impatiently just in front of the entrance to the dirtplace, watching the wavering shadows cast by the wind-rustled leaves of the trees behind her. To tell the truth, it wasn't much of an entrance. The dirtplace was nothing more than an area of land that stuck out from the main camp clearing into the forest. The 'entrance' was the just the neck of land that was between the main clearing and the dirtplace.

Duskelle had come to the dirtplace thinking that she could slip away immediately without any cat noticing or troubling her in any way, but she had forgot about other cats using the dirtplace. Four cats gone in now, each taking a very long, or at least it seemed that way to Duskelle, to finish up and come out, only to be replaced by another cat.

The last cat to go in had been a young tom with a rippling gray and white pelt with an abundance of shaggy light gray fur around his throat that looked almost like a mane. He had cast her a curious look with his darkish gray eyes and that had been it. Duskelle had been surprised by his lack of a more significant reaction. Since the moment that she had first encountered these forest cats, every new cat she met had a reaction towards her, and every reaction had been either definitely positive, or definitely negative. No cat been quite as...neutral and...unconcerned as this tom.

Nevertheless, it was still to her benefit, as his almost non-existant interest meant that he wouldn't stop to think why the talking Twoleg was stationed outside of the dirtplace like a guard.

She fidgeted as she waited, twitching her paws and staring off into the distance. When would this cat come out? Just as she thought the question, the tom came out, trotting along like he didn't have a care in the world. This time, he didn't even spare Duskelle a glance as he padded off.

Duskelle fought the rise of irritancy in her. Sure, she didn't want cats giving her suspicious or wary looks all the time, but that didn't mean she wanted them to ignore her completely.

She shook her head, trying to clear it of thoughts. Now was certainly not the time for them. She waited a moment more to make sure that no other cats were coming, then slipped inside.

As soon as Duskelle set foot in the dirtplace, a disgusting, repulsive odor struck her, overriding her senses and making her wrinkle her face in disgust. She stopped, almost unable to breath. At that moment, all she wanted to do was to bound outside and take in deep, jagged breaths that filled her lungs completely and washed the horrible, horrible scent out of her nostrils.

But she didn't have to, as after a short while, the odor lessened in strength, though it did not fade away completely. As she began to move again, heading towards the forest, Duskelle wondered how it was that the forest cats could tolerate the detestable smell. She supposed their immunity to it must've come from being of a different kind of creature than Duskelle. It appeared that the noses of the twoleg creatures were much more sensitive to such scents than cats. The female creature certainly hadn't liked it when River had come in one day with blood leaked from the horrible growling things that the creatures rode around in smeared all over her. She had said that a pool of it had gathered in the place where the thing usually slept. She had noticed it when the thing was out carrying its masters, and, well, she had been curious. That had certainly not ended well, Duskelle thought with a small smile.

And then she realized what the object of her thoughts was, and the sorrow at losing the only and true, or at least she had thought, friend in her entire world fell upon her once more, suffocating her, and she had to stop again to push it back to wherever it had been lurking for the past few days.

River.

Oh, River.

Duskelle managed to reel herself back before she was lost once more in the abyss that consisted of her thoughts about River. But before she did, one struck her. She still hadn't found a way to mourn her loss. She needed to think about that, find a fitting way to let go.

But now was not the time for that.

Duskelle pushed herself to her paws again, and continued her walk towards the trees that were barely three cat-lengths away from her.

Or at least, she would've.

If a voice from behind hadn't stopped her.

"Where are you going?" It was male, and deep, but still with a youthful touch to it.

But his age was not what concerned Duskelle at that moment. It was the fact that he knew that she was going somewhere. The fact that she had been found out. The fact that her plan had been ruined.

Duskelle sighed before turning around to face the destroyer of her hope. Of course something would happen. Of course what she wanted would be swept away when it was in her glimpses, but still too far too reach, just like everything else. Of course she would fail.

The first thing she noticed about him was his fur color. The pelt of the tom that stood before her was colored in an interesting manner. It was gray. Some may have said dark gray. But it wasn't exactly dark gray either. Then again, it wasn't light gray. It wasn't even plain gray, not dark nor light. It leaned towards the dark side, yes, it definitely did, but not enough to be classified under it. It was stuck at the point between normal gray and dark gray. It was confusing. In fact, it was so confusing that as Duskelle surveyed the tom, a small part of her brain debated about the color of his pelt.

The second thing she noticed was his tail. It was long. Very long, in fact. Probably long enough to wrap around the neck of another cat and touch the tip of it to the cat's right ear.

The third thing, or rather things, and what she deemed the most important, were his eyes. They were green. Not a pale green like Seapaw's, nor a yellow-green like Brookpaw's. They were a darker variety of green, dark and deep.

Duskelle was distracted from her observation of the cat when he spoke again.

"I said, where are you going?" he asked, a note of irritancy creeping into his voice as he shook his gray head. "Twolegs. The one time that one of them is smart enough to figure out how to speak with us, it's too much of a mousebrain to function properly."

Duskelle's silence was cut by that comment. "Excuse me? I am more than capable of speaking for myself. It just so happens that I have the forethought to spare a moment to think about what I'm going to say who I am speaking to instead of blurting out whatever comes to my mind like the imbecile you seem to be."

Duskelle was satisfied to see the tom's eyes darken in anger, though she thought it unlikely that he had understood much of what she had said. To tell the truth, she herself wasn't sure what some of the words she had used meant. They had come from River, River and her extended vocabulary that stemmed from her past before she had met Duskelle and settled down at the creatures' place.

"Don't insult me using your fancy Twoleg words. Just answer the question I asked, and keep your flat mouth shut about anything else."

At that, Duskelle couldn't help but try to stare down her nose at her mouth to see if it was flat, though she failed and quit after only a glance. She got rid of the stupid query in her mind and looked back up at the tom, her blue eyes blazing. "I don't need to answer your question, but for the record, I wasn't going anywhere except for the place that I'm already in."

"Oh really?" he replied, voice thickly laced with sarcasm. "Then why were you clearly walking towards the edge of the forest and facing the forest and looking at the forest as if it were the way to StarClan?"

Duskelle was really starting to hate this tom and his perceptiveness.

"Well, that was because...uh...well...because-"

The tom shook his head, cutting her off. "I don't need to know. I don't care about you and your Twoleg business." He padded forward, passing by her, heading in the direction that she had been only a little while ago.

"Hey! Where are you going?"

He stopped, but didn't bother to turn around. "Can't you see? The forest."

"But...you're not allowed to!"

This time, he did look at her, though it was nothing more than the turn of his head to glance back. "Who says? I'm allowed to leave whenever I want to."

Duskelle smirked. "Oh, no, that's not going to work. Just because I'm new to you and your ways doesn't mean that I don't know the few basic things about you. Seapaw's already told me about your rules. I am going to be staying here, after all." For the time being, at least.

When she said that she was there to stay, the tom turned all the way around, glaring at her. "Great. Now I have a Twoleg ready to report me to Minnowstar. Isn't that going to help me a great deal." The sarcasm made the last sentence sound more like a statement than a question.

"Alright, you know what?" he asked, and before Duskelle could open her mouth to answer, continued. "Let's make a deal. I go out of camp. You go out of camp. We both forget about the other. How's that?"

Duskelle thought about the offer, scrutinizing the face of the tom in front of her as she did so, though it was a useless attempt. His expression was void of any emotion as he waited for her to answer.

To tell the truth, it wasn't hard for her to make a decision. She didn't care about ratting out the tom, and she wouldn't have done it even if he had gone ahead without this 'deal', so having his word that he wouldn't tell of her sneaking out of camp to Minnowstar and thereby soil her trust, was very beneficial to her.

"I'm fine with it as long as you keep your word," she finally said.

"As am I," he replied coolly. "Then it's settled. I'm leaving." He turned around and once more began to pad towards the edge of the forest.

"Wait!" Duskelle called, and he looked back over his shoulder, an annoyed expression covering his face. "What's your name?"

He laughed. "That's not something that I need to tell you." He resumed what he was doing before, but then paused. "But if you must know," he called, "it's Stormpaw."