Here's the second chapter!

SakuraFlutist: Yes, it is! Until things get out of hand... ;)

Ranger of the Forest: Yep! It's the first time I've written anything besides Romance/Adventure, as you can see from my other stories.

Smurflover: I will, thanks. :)

Jayfeather: Thank you. :D

Mochikins: Yeah. XD I'm going to change it to The Cold, though.

Honeyshade: Thanks for reviewing! :) And I guess it was a bit rushed, because I tried to make it seem like they were only two young warriors, out on a harmless adventure. But as this chapter shows, it turns out to be something darker.

Disclaimer: I do not own Warriors.

It was the middle of leafbare, and the cats of LightningClan were taking it hard. Scrawny kits huddled at their mothers' sides, mewling pitifully for milk, while the queens stroked the kits' thin flanks gently but with shaking tails, brokenly repeating over and over again to the hungry scraps of fur at their paws that they had no milk. The elders stared unseeing out of their nests, too tired to move, quietly murmuring to each other of how in the old days, the prey was so plentiful that it practically jumped into your mouth. The warriors dragged themselves out of their nests each day to return with only a few skimpy pieces of prey, the only things they could find. The leader presided over a broken Clan, heart heavy with despair.

And yet, two warriors seemed to return home every day with full bellies and light dispositions, curling up contentedly in their nests at night and dashing out of the camp at dawn the next day. The other cats whispered confusedly, wondering if they were taking food from Twolegs. They had to be, either that or they were expecting kits.

The medicine cat cornered one of the warriors one day. "Duskfire," she asked haggardly, in a voice that held a tinge of tiredness in it, "are you expecting kits?"

The mottled gray-and-brown she-cat stopped, surprise flickering in her face. "Uh, no. Why do you ask?"

Poppybloom sighed and sat down to organize the few dried herbs she had left, what with all the cats sick with greencough now. "Nothing. Just wondering."

Duskfire paused, then said, "Well, nice talking to you," and left the medicine cat den.

Outside, she met up with Honeyfur. "Honeyfur," she whispered urgently, "Poppybloom just asked me if I was expecting kits! Kits, can you believe it? And haven't you heard the whispers? They think we've been eating out of Twoleg paws!"

The golden-brown she-cat snorted derisively. "Shows how much they know," she scoffed.

"Honeyfur, look at me!" Duskfire shouted, making the she-cat start with surprise. "Cats are dying. Our Clanmates are starving around us. Let's go tell Hawkstar about our food storage now." Please, Honeyfur. Duskfire couldn't bear it anymore; it simply wasn't right. But Honeyfur shook her head. "No one's died yet." She swept her tail from side to side. "They're still all fine. How about to cheer you up, we each take two pieces of prey from the cave today?"

Duskfire felt like yowling at the top of her lungs; Honeyfur was completely missing the point. "But you said that if our Clanmates seemed to be starving, we would let them have the fresh-kill too!" She pointed with one paw at Blacktail staggering through the camp. He was now a warrior, as he'd waited his entire life for, but instead of the bright-eyed apprentice he had been before, he was now a hunched tom with his head down, with no sign of the cat he'd been in leaf-fall. "Look at him! His ribs are poking out."

Honeyfur sighed. "Look, it's not their problem they didn't find enough food. Sure, we need to be good Clanmates, but we don't have to bring food to them."

"We took all the food!" Duskfire whisper-shouted. "Almost all of it. We stored it away like squirrels and now they have to work as hard as they can just to find one measly mouse."

The golden-brown warrior's eyes blazed, and she clapped a paw over Duskfire's mouth. "Be quiet!" she hissed. "Do you want someone to overhear us and report about this to Hawkstar?"

Duskfire backed away, shaking her head in disbelief. "I can't believe you. I can't believe you're doing this."

"I can't believe you're saying this," Honeyfur spat, fur rising in a wave of anger. "Do you remember what you promised? You said that you would keep the secret. You said that it would stay between the two of us."

"But…but can't we at least bring a few pieces of prey from the cave to the fresh-kill pile?"

"No. Like I said, not our problem if they can't catch anything."

With that, Honeyfur spun around and began to stalk out of camp. Just before she disappeared through the vine-covered entrance, she turned around to shoot a question at Duskfire. "Are you coming or not?"

Duskfire lifted her head and stared Honeyfur full in the face. "No."

Honeyfur shrugged. "Fine by me." And she disappeared through the vines, no doubt to the cave where she would fill her belly with prey.

Duskfire glared at the spot where the golden brown she-cat had been. Then she padded through the vine-covered entrance, too. Today, she decided, she'd try to actually catch her food.

But after hours of fruitless hunting, she returned home, heart heavy. She hadn't been able to catch anything. As much as she hated to admit it, she had been right. Honeyfur and she had taken the most of the prey before they escaped into their hollows to wait out leafbare, and now there was almost nothing left.

When she brushed through the vine entrance, she stopped, wondering what all the commotion was about. A group of cats clustered around the center of the camp clearing, shoulders hunched and tails drooping with sadness. "What's wrong?" Duskfire asked, stepping closer to the huddle.

Her friend Whitefrost lifted her head for a brief second to stare at Duskfire, her eyes dark with sorrow. "Maplewing…she died!" she wailed, burying her face into her dead mother's fur.

So that's what this is all about, Duskfire thought with a heavy heart. She padded closer to pay her respects to the much-respected elder.

Maplewing's body lay stretched out in silent death on the ground, her flanks still. The starved elder's eyes were closed forever, her spirit now in StarClan because of Honeyfur's selfishness and Duskfire's indecisiveness to take a stand. I'm sorry, Maplewing, thought Duskfire sadly as she sat next to the shuddering Whitefrost. I'm sorry that you won't die peacefully with a full heart, instead of starving to death. I'm sorry that it had to come to this to make me realize I have to stand up to Honeyfur. But this will end now. I will make sure of it.

She got up and padded silently out of camp, the grieving cats taking no notice of her leaving. She had to find Honeyfur.

Duskfire found Honeyfur lounging outside the hollow in the cliff. The golden-brown she-cat was savoring a bird, chewing slowly and seeming indifferent to the layer of snow and frost that crunched beneath her paws. But she leapt to her feet at once when she saw Duskfire and the glare on her face. "What? What is it?"

"Maplewing died."

Honeyfur's face went slack with shock. "I…I…"

Duskfire took a step closer. "You said that no cat was hurt yet. Well, now there is. If we don't give the fresh-kill to our Clanmates, many more will die. Come on, help me take this all back to camp." She made a move to dart inside the cave, but Honeyfur blocked her way.

"I don't think so," the she-cat said, eyes narrowing. "I always knew you would back out, Duskfire. I should have never included you in this. I should have let you starve with the rest of those fools."

Duskfire's mouth dropped open. Her friend—the cat she'd known since they were kits—was saying these things? What sort of cat had Honeyfur transformed into? And how had Duskfire never noticed this until this moment? "Honeyfur, come on." She tried to dash past Honeyfur, but the LightningClan warrior blocked her. "Our Clanmates have nothing to eat. They're wasting away. We need to help them."

Honeyfur slashed Duskfire's shoulder, and droplets of blood splattered to the soft white snow below. "There is no 'we' now. Just me, and you. And soon there will be no you."

Duskfire backed away, her eyes widening when she grasped the sinister meaning of Honeyfur's words. "But…we're friends!" she cried. "We're Clanmates! You can't kill your Clanmate." Her voice grew quieter. "You…you can't kill a friend."

A twisted, dark version of a smirk appeared on Honeyfur's face. "Too bad then, that we're not friends." And she sprang.

She managed to bowl Duskfire over, mostly by surprise, but the gray-and-brown she-cat was up on her feet in less than a second. She shoved Honeyfur to the side, not trying to harm her, but trying to get her away from the cave. But Honeyfur fought viciously, digging red lines through Duskfire's pelt and snapping at Duskfire's paws. Eventually, Duskfire was forced to fight back purely from the need to save her own life, and the two she-cats rolled around on the snowy forest floor, clawing and hissing loud enough to wake the dead.

And that was how LightningClan found them, engaged in a battle to the death in a dark, icy-cold cave with the scattered bodies of prey surrounding them.

Duskfire sat by the entrance of the warrior den, tail curled around her forepaws. The late greenleaf wind ruffled her fur, revealing scars running up and down her sides. She was deep in thought, her eyes scanning the sky without seeing. After a while of sitting there, she felt hungry. She got up and padded to the fresh-kill pile, but the new warriors had just been there and had raided it, leaving only a bird. When Duskfire saw its sightless eyes staring up at her, she suddenly didn't feel hungry anymore. She turned around and walked back to her position, wrapping her tail around her paws once more.

She sighed quietly, drifting back to the memory of that fateful day. Once Honeyfur had noticed the shocked LightningClanners standing around her, she had hissed, "You'll never find me," and dove into the cave. But what Honeyfur nor Duskfire or the rest of their Clanmates had expected to happen was that once Honeyfur was inside, there was an avalanche of rocks, blocking the entrance with a barricade so thick that no cat could make their way inside, and sealing off the cave forever. Honeyfur was gone.

But sometimes, Duskfire would forget and turn to a cat that wasn't there, wanting to share a laugh over what had just happened with Honeyfur, only to find empty air. She wasn't deaf to the whispers hissed urgently in quiet voices when she walked by, and she wasn't blind either to the pointed stares that Mudeye, the only surviving elder from that time, gave her when she would occasionally bring him pieces of prey. She knew it would take a while for the Clan to recover from what had happened in leafbare, and she knew that it would be some time before she would fully remember that Honeyfur simply wasn't there anymore. How could it not? Honeyfur had been her best friend; the two were together whenever they could be, from the time when they were kits. And yet she had been blind to Honeyfur's slow transformation into darkness, until the moment when the golden-brown she-cat had tried to kill her.

What happened, Honeyfur? she thought sadly. And how did I not see it? She noticed Whitefrost pad by with Blacktail, the two cats twining tails and murmuring to each other in low contented tones. Blacktail had helped Whitefrost get over her mother's death, and there were rumors that Whitefrost was going to move to the nursery soon. Duskfire was happy for them. And if there were going to be kits, she was glad that they would have plenty to eat, unlike the poor kits who had to survive the leafbare. She watched one of them, Sleetpaw, now an apprentice, bound past and snatch the last bird off the pile.

Time to restock. Duskfire clambered to her paws again, brushing through the vine entrance to the warm scenery outside. Birds trilled high on their perches in their trees, the last serenade of the day before the sun set. Before barely any time had passed at all, she caught a squirrel and a vole, depositing the vole on the fresh-kill pile and sitting back to enjoy the squirrel. She bit into the fresh meat, savoring the proud feeling in her chest that she had caught the prey herself, instead of sneaking away to collect it from the cave.

She finished it quickly, and after cleaning her whiskers, she went and settled into her nest. She closed her eyes, resting. After a while, she felt her niece Sleetpaw nudge her in the stomach, seeking attention. It had been too late to save her mother, Duskfire's sister, and Duskfire took care of the apprentice now. When Duskfire didn't respond, the sneaky gray apprentice climbed on top of the gray-and-brown mottled she-cat's back, curling up with a loud mrrow of pleasure. Duskfire purred, shaking her off, and Sleetpaw tumbled to the ground, only to snuggle herself into Duskfire's side.

The two cats rested together, bellies full and hearts happy. And why wouldn't they be? The harsh, bleak leafbare was behind them, and they had their life ahead of them. Duskfire briefly opened her eyes to watch the sun set, the bright warm rays sinking into the horizon. The birds hushed to watch the night come, and soon the moon appeared in all its silver glory, casting light into the inky darkness of the sky. Duskfire smiled and closed her eyes once more. Night had fallen, but there would be another sunrise to watch, another day to live.

Can you hear me, Honeyfur? she thought. You were right. We do need to live. But so does everybody else. And she drifted off to sleep, finally at peace.

So how did you like it? Review, please!

~Ponyiowa