He stalked stealthily through the forest, the large trees towering over his head, the layers of leaves with unknown torture below them that he stuck his paws into. His great blue eyes shining, but wide, watching for any and all things that he'd never seen before. His short fur shuffled, brittle tips that fell and then raised as he kept his head low to the ground, sniffing scents- warmth to his nose, his eyes turned up as he watched Wrenstar glare out at the island.

'WATER!' he exclaimed in his mind. He was no land mammal and all this wooded area was doing was tiring him out, he was a fishing cat, loving the open waters, riding boats. He saw some abandoned port docks by a half bridge, way out behind the island on the river. 'What a shame for port docks to go wasted over here,' he mused grinning. He looked at the sandy shore beneath the half bridge and turned to Wrenstar.

'Water Water Water!' how he wanted to live on the edge of that sandy shore, but she seemed to have other ideas. As he ran beside her quickly to get a better view he noticed that it was not just a river, it was an ocean, a very small ocean. He blinked and his paws gripped at the earth. He took a large breath in to smell the water, but no salty sea air caught his drift, instead cool condensed air wafted by him. 'That's no sea that I know,' he thought silently. 'This must be that lake.'

The island was where she had been headed, it was practical, safe, and it was a great place for them to create this stupid little "clan" but it was not the life he truly wanted, then it occurred to him that all this territory came with the package, he wanted to swim, and this would have been easier done by the side of the island then by a rocky shore. He wondered how on earth they were to get to the island, swim back and forth the whole time and then climb the banks?

That's when he noticed the tree. A great fallen tree, Wrenstar walked across it with no fear, and Fish-Sootstar was close behind her. He put his paw up and felt it jostle. 'Or maybe I'll just swim.' Sootstar had no idea that trees were sturdy, he'd never even seen a tree until now. His life had been aboard ships, and while he'd seen trees from afar, they looked like tiny little green and brown specks in the distance. Unknown to him, that tree would never budge, but he'd preferred to swim.

He splashed into the water and swam his way across, things littered the bottom of the lake, things that only Twolegs would know about. He looked up to see Wrenstar eyeing a mouse and he dove under. When he returned he pulled up a bottle of some sort between his teeth. It's sharp jagged edges had cut his paw, but they could not cut through his teeth. He swam up to the surface again and climbed up on the bank, soeing his catch in an area at the base of the lake.

He then climbed up the bank to meet his mate. As she landed on the mouse squarely he shook his fur and ran over to her. Licking her cheek he purred "that's how it's done?" he gave a slight grin and shrugged. "it's a mouse, sure, what I was told to catch, but that isn't my forte." He wandered over to the edge of the island, through thick bushes his short fur easily squirmed right through. His tail raised in the air, he could only sit and wait.

She was a beauty, the land they'd claimed. She was filled with an enormous body of water, Sootstar liked that. He pulled his shadow away from the water as the sun slowly began to set. He looked back through the thicket where Wrenstar had been standing, unsure of where she was now. This was his turn to taste the fish in a freshwater bed. He'd tasted Salthingyer fish, but never Freshwater. Maybe they were like Brackish water? He rolled his toes letting one fish pass. Then he let two more big fish pass. He paused and waited. Then two good sized fish swam by and he pounced.

Plunged into the water, he fumbled with them biting one and instantly killing it and slamming the other against the floor of the lake. He let his buoyant body float him up, and he took a breath before swimming back to the island, he climbed up the bank and back to his mate. "And THAT’S how it's done."

---

[By: Cookie]
[Muse: Pile of poop]
[For: Creek]
[Puppet: Fisher]
[Words: 792 D:]
[Key: Brown-Thought, Blue-Speach]