Ashes

Chapter Five

Ashley groaned. Her head was throbbing and there was something warm and wet trickling from her ear down onto the ground. She blinked her eyes open and squinted at the far end of the alley she was in.

She appeared to be in some sort of box, laying on a pile of old newspapers and Housefolk bed stuffing. It was discovered that the liquid trickling from her ear was blood, when the shecat looked down at the ground beside her. Ashley had also suffered a nasty gash on her side where the rats had attacked her, and she had a twisted paw from falling.

'How did I get here?' Ashley wondered, sitting up stiffly, wincing in pain as her twisted  paw flared in sudden pain. She clenched her jaw tightly shut and breathed out heavily while she waited for the pain to subside.
A little while later, Ashley stood up and limped out of the box to look at the ends of the alley. This was a fairly clean one, so she could assume it didn't belong to the BloodClan savages. Before she could take one step further, a cat yowled loudly.

Ashley whipped her head to the direction of the noise to see a pale cream and ginger shecat racing towards her, with an expression of distress.
"You! You!" She meowed pitifully. Ashley just backed up a little, shocked.
"Me?" She asked.
The cat nodded vigorously, obviously upset.

"Yes! You! If Fox sees you up, he'll throw a fit. He says you're not healed yet."

"Wait... F-Fox?" Ashley mewed, confusion and shock painting her delicate features.
Before the other shecat could reply, quick pawsteps could be heard and the orange shecat shoved Ashley into the box.
The former kitttypet snarled from inside the box and opened her mouth to complain, hut stopped when she heard an annoyingly familiar voice; Fox.

"Is she awake?"
"Yes. She just woke up, and doesn't seem to be in too much pain." That was the new cat.
"Alright, good. I'll go talk to her."

Fox squeezed his way into the box and looked to the corner, where Ashley was huddled up. She unsheathed her claws and hissed at him.

"What are you going to do to me?!" She exclaimed, trembling with fear and confusion.

Fox sighed, "I'm not going to hurt you." He meowed complacently as he stepped forward, his now unsheathes claws scraping against the cement, leaving small gouges.

Ashley's eyes widened in fear as he stopped right in front of her and held his paw up.