Froststar's Destiny

Chapter One

"Open your eyes, little one."

"Yeah! Hurry up!"

"Shush, Windkit."

"I've opened mine for three days now."

"Windkit. Let Frostkit take her own time."

What's the hurry? Frostkit wondered. She certainly agreed with the feminine voice, probably that of her mother. That Windkit, probably her brother, was horribly impatient. Still, should she open her eyes just to spite him? She already knew she wasn't going to like him. Obvious, wasn't it? Letting out an inaudible sigh, Frostkit blinked open her eyes. At first sight, she only saw a small gray kit and a silver she-cat.

"See! She just needed a little rushing!" Windkit growled. The silver she-cat cuffed his ear.

"Hello, Frostkit. I'm Hopeheart, he's Windkit, and that's your other brother, Cloudkit." the silver she-cat purred gently.

Frostkit looked over to the other part of the nest and saw a small white kit almost identical to herself curled up on that nest.

"Her eyes are blue like mine!" Windkit meowed triumphantly.

"Shush, you. They're only blue for a day, before they change into her real eye color," Hopeheart meowed with a long-suffering sigh.

Windkit growled in annoyance. "But Cloudkit's turned amber! I want someone to have my eyes! And yours are green!"

"My mother's were blue. And your father's are amber. So that means little Frostkit here might have my green eyes."

"Or they might be your father's color!" Windkit protested.

Hopeheart purred in amusement. "My father's are amber, too. True, she might be amber. Don't you know my father by now?"

Frostkit listened intently to their conversation, figuring out all the cats in the Clan. Hopeheart's mother, Lunarfur, was dead and gone a long time ago, barely after Hopeheart's birth, and her father, Grassfeather, was a grumpy, big tortoiseshell tom. Frostkit's father was a black tom called Shadowflight, who was on a hunting patrol at that moment and wasn't there to witness when his only daughter opened her eyes. She got a little huffy at that. Hopeheart spent every moment with them, so why couldn't Shadowflight? But she didn't think complaining was the way to go about it, since her mother was constantly cuffing her brother's ear and it looked like it might really hurt. For some reason, Hopeheart thought cuffing three-day-old kits was alright.

There were other boring and unimportant members of the Clan, too, but the most important were their denmates. Silverlight and her three kits, Ashkit, Stormkit, and Brightkit. Their litter was the opposite genders, one tom and two she-cats. Frostkit would've loved to have had a sister, but after a moon or so, Stormkit became like a sister to her, and Frostkit was seldom seen without her.

"BADGER! HELP! BADGER!" there was a shrill scream from inside camp. It wasn't a voice Frostkit recognized, probably some unimportant cat from the Clan, but the word 'badger' was terrifying. Frostkit considered jumping to hide, but she was an adventurous kit. She knew Windkit would never agree, he was too annoyed at her about everything, but maybe Cloudkit would?

Frostkit hurried over to her brother excitedly. "Cloudkit, do you want to jump on that badger and get a real badger ride?"

"Count me in!" Stormkit hissed from the side. The three kits grinned at each other and charged outside. Silverlight was standing at the entrance but she didn't have a chance to catch the three wily kits.

"What - no! Stormkit! You're four moons but those two are barely one moon old! And what are you doing out of the den? There's a BADGER IN CAMP!" Silverlight roared, the horrifying deputy part of her emerging and submerging the gentle mother that she could be. Frostkit had been taught to hate Silverlight, since she'd apparently been Hopeheart's awful mentor, but she honestly didn't find Silverlight that bad. She was going to be leader someday, so Frostkit couldn't let hating Silverlight earn her a horrid place in the Clan.