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| - "This is not good." The brown tabby tom stood staring down at the landscape below, the gathering perils reflected in his eyes. A sleek ginger she-cat padded up to him and stood beside him; both of them had that comfortable air of knowing each other well. "Will they be strong enough? Will she be strong enough?" she asked. "Well, you taught her. That's the greatest gift any cat could be given," the tom mewed. "Pinestar," Fireflower sighed. "She'll need more than the few tips I could give her to face down this threat. She doesn't even understand the threat, and she has other things to worry about..." "Did you know?" Pinestar asked. His former deputy hung her head. "I suspected," she admitted. "Which is why I encouraged her subtly to choose Troutstream. But she made the decision all by herself." He sniffed. "It almost destroyed her children. It still might." Her dark yellow eyes flared. "For your information, they chose-" "Guys! Don't fight!" Both cats turned, and froze. Two kits came scampering towards them, followed by a half-grown slender black she-cat. Emeraldpaw, her younger sister Flowerkit(an honorary member of StarClan, though she had died before Shadowpelt joined WaterClan), and Hawthornkit, Bushtail's little sister who had died all those moons ago. "We have better things to be arguing about," Hawthornkit said, her round gold eyes solemn and serious. Fireflower felt a pang of regret, looking at the little kit. She had been killed by the very threat her brother and Clanmates were facing now, yet here she was, unafraid, trying to think of ways to stop them. "She's right," Emeraldpaw sighed. "Songflight, Patchbird, and Hawkswoop will need a lot of our help to get through this." Pinestar gazed back down at the scene of his beloved Clan. "Dark times are coming for the Clans. They are just on the horizon. All we can do is trust in the light, and wait. It's all up to them now."
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