"Listen, what you did was wrong. There's no denying that. I just want you to know we're not gonna let that fly." Moonstar said to Phoenixpaw, who twitched nervously in the great leader's den. "So I have to punish you."

"Are you-you-you gonna EXILE me?" Phoenixpaw exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"No, you're going to be confined to camp for a month like a kit, because that's clearly how mature you are. On top of that, you will be handling all bedding duties for the entire moon. You will gather leaves in and around camp under a warrior's supervision and deck the edges of beds with feathers."

"B-b-but?"

Moonstar's piercing blue gaze fell on her, and Phoenixpaw murmured, "Yes, Moonstar."

"You can start now."

Nightsky, who was one of the younger warriors, only older than Silentpelt and Longclaw, watched as Phoenixpaw gathered leaves drearily. "Nice feather you got there. Where'd ya find it?"

"It was given to me by a cat when I was little."

"Oooh, mysterious. Weird coloring, weirder size. The only bird I know of that has that kind of feathers is the legendary phoenix, the one you were named for."

"What's that?" asked Phoenixpaw, half-listening while she whisked the leaves into camp with her tail.

"It's a bird twice the size of a cat. It lives for one thousand mooncycles and after that, it bursts into flame and is reborn as a new phoenix." mewed Nightsky, making exaggerated motions as she said it.

Phoenixpaw snorted. "That's even sillier than the black fox."

"You haven't even heard about dragons."

Phoenixpaw looked up. "Dragon? Like DRAGON-Clan?"

"Yes. It's like a lizard, but with wings. Tall as a tree and wide as two trees fallen on their sides."

"Who thought of all this mouse dung? It's hysterical." Phoenixpaw meowed sarcastically.

"When the first leader of DragonClan was just a kit, long before the clan existed, her mother, a medicine cat, dropped her in the forest, over the mountains far beyond the ShadowClan territory. She claimed StarClan was calling her, but really she just wanted her kit gone.

The little kit, only a week old, with no name and no mother's milk, wandered the forest. She was a precocious kit who's eyes were already open, but she was still weak. She was about to die when she saw two great animals fighting. One was a dragon and one was a phoenix. The kit, not wanting to see such great creatures suffer, ran between them. They stopped, and amazed by the kit's compassion, they raised her as their own. They taught her the skills they would need to lead a new clan, and when she was old enough, they took her to the MoonStone and she received the nine lives of a leader. Then, she headed off to make her clan upon the earth."

Nightsky looked around, but Phoenixpaw was gone. The insufferable little kit! Nightsky thought.

Silentpelt strode past her, cooing, "I'll watch the little sweetheart for ya."

Nightsky's fur spiked at the sight of him. The young, hardheaded tom had always shown Nightsky up when they trained as apprentices. "We share a lot in common," he would always say. Of course they did. But DragonClan... noone in DragonClan would ever know exactly what they shared in common. Ever.

Phoenixpaw, oblivious to everything, continued gathering her leaves.