CLOSED Cold Case

[Longstorm]

He was unrecognizable and they wouldn't have known him if not for the unnatural bends in his tail that came from having it broken as a young cat.
Mustardstorm's yellow fur was mottled black and reddish-brown from the mud, and clay that had pooled in the previous few day's rain. His body was twisted, limbs splayed out in all the wrong directions - and he looked peculiarly flat. It was a horrific sight, but less horrific for the fact that he didn't look like himself. Even so, the apprentices were left behind at the camp.
Redstar looked down at Mustardstorm's body from the ledge. It had been quite a fall. If that hadn't killed him first, then the falling stone fall was what probably did it.
Redstar grimaced. Mustardstorm should have known that the outer reaches of the territory, down the slopes, was where they had built all of their traps. Many had already been sprung, whether it was by the weather wearing them down or foolish larger animals stumbling across them. Which, by the way, wasn't a bad thing. DarkClan suddenly found themselves with enough food to go without hunting for days, all because they had left their traps up. Even now they were discussing if they should use traps in their everyday hunting. It was a tricky debate.

Mustardstorm dying didn't help matters.

There wasn't more to be done than take him back home. Gorseclaw slung the dead warrior across his broad shoulders and lead the group back towards home.
Redstar kept finding himself staring at the dead warrior's limp tail.

"This shouldn't have happened," meowed Jaycall. "Mustardstorm shouldn't have come out this far. What was he doing alone?"
"He wasn't alone. Flowerfoot was supposed to be out with him. And where was she?" Jaycall looked over at his mother, who was sharing a look with Redstar.
He was glad that she was back with the rest of the Clan. Her very presence had been uplifting to everyone else, what with her careful thoughts and ready-to-go attitude. And she brought up a good point.
"I didn't know that," he admitted. Flowerfoot had been in the camp all the days Mustardstorm had been missing. What was the story there?
"How do you know, Blueblossom," asked Redstar. He hadn't known either.
"She told me this morning, right after the patrol told us."
Gorseclaw stopped to listen to Blueblossom, as did the others.
Blueblossom looked at the faces of the toms around her. "She seemed scared - like she thought that the body here would be Mustardstorm after all. But she wouldn't say anything else. We need answers." She looked at her brother, the Clan leader, expectantly. Jaycall couldn't help but do the same.

Redstar looked back and forth between the two cats - it was as though Thornstar stood with Blueblossom once more, if you ignored the fact that their eyes were identical. Gorseclaw made up for the eye color problem, with his amber eyes matching his father Thornstar's. Both Gorseclaw and Jaycall were sons of the previous Clan leader, though they had different mothers. Blueblossom, Redstar's sister, was Jaycall's mother, as well as the mother to three other warriors, by Thornstar.
Gorseclaw's mother was a long-dead she-cat named Patchfoot, which he shared with his littermate Sunmist. And now Gorseclaw had his own kits, out of his relationship with Blizzardgaze. And so the bloodline continued. Redstar suspected that in the end all of the cats of DarkClan would all be related to Thornstar, one way or another.

"We'll question her as soon as we get back to camp. We should hurry back." Redstar briskly padded up the slope, Blueblossom and the others close behind.

...

The chill mountain winds gust over the slopes, through the yellow grasses, the pines, between the rocks and carrying the loose, drying dirt from the scene of Mustardstorm's accident. As the scents of the Clan cats faded, the wildlife slowly returned to their daily routines, and the sounds of the mountain sang with more than just the desolate wind...