Warrior Cats: Gossamer

Prologue

Light sleet splattered against a large glass window, beneath which a silver queen sat with brows furrowed and emerald green eyes focused elsewhere. "I knew it'd be cold, but I wasn't expecting ice!" she fretted aloud, glancing behind her.

A tiny, fluffy, silver tabby kitten stared back, their snow-white paws shifting in excitement. "Mama! Is it time yet? Time to go on our adventure?"

The large molly sighed and plastered a warm smile across her face. "Yes it is, Myrtlekit. It's going to be very chilly, but I trust you can handle it?"

Myrtlekit puffed out her fuzzy white chest. "I can, I promise!" They smiled their own smile, wide and toothy, and her heart glowed when her mother laughed in response. "Don't you worry, Mama. I'll be strong just like you, like a warrior cat!"

"I'm sure you will," she purred, shaking the nerves from her pelt and scooping Myrtlekit into her jaws. "You'll be a big strong warrior in no time,  just like me and your dad."

Myrtlekit squirmed in excitement. Tonight was the night they'd meet her father, and most importantly, learn his name. "Does he have a warrior name like you do?"

Her mother nodded and started towards a cat flap in the back door of the house, one that she'd assured that the housefolk she was denning with had left unlocked. "His name will fit him, though. All warriors have names that fit them perfectly. Can you guess why I'm named Silverstreak?"

Myrtlekit braced herself as the pair pushed through the flap and out into the icy-cold shower, suppressing a shiver and pretending that they didn't already miss the warm den. "B-because you're gray-colored! And you're the fastest cat in the whole world, so you run so fast you look like a streak of silver."

Silverstreak nodded, crouching down and leaping over the fence that bordered the small yard she had called home for the past four moons. She broke into a light canter, crossing the small field that separated the Twolegplace into halves.

Long, uncut grass wet with freezing rain didn't waste time soaking Silverstreak and Myrtlekit's long coats. Myrtlekit whimpered, trying to curl up into a tighter ball. "How come you're not cold?"

"I am cold," Silverstreak said, making her way in between two houses and down the patch of lawn that divided them. "My fur doesn't get wet very easily, though. Yours will be like that too when you grow up."

"What? Why? And why isn't my fur like that now?"

Silverstreak made it to the road, looking both ways before crossing the rain-blackened asphalt. "Well, the water slides right off of my pelt because I was born in FloodClan. Your father's pelt is the same, because he was born in MireClan. Our Clans are across the river from one another, which means we all swim a lot."

"Oh! Because you swim, your fur needs to be waterproof!" Myrtlekit meowed.

"That's right. Whenever you shed all of your kitten fur in a few moons, you'll have a long, shiny, sleek coat just like us."

Silverstreak was nearing the edge of Twolegplace now, at the top of a hill that sloped down towards a bubbling river. Myrtlekit piped up again, "Why aren't you in FloodClan? Or MireClan, with Dad?"

Silverstreak paused atop the hill, continuing her walk down to the river after a moment of quiet. "Well... FloodClan and MireClan aren't very good friends with each other," she said, "They fight a lot over who gets to live where. I wasn't supposed to love your dad, but no matter what, I loved him and I always will. But that didn't stop our clans from fighting, and I didn't want you to be hurt while you were in my belly."

Myrtlekit was still confused. "Your Clan would hurt me even though I was in your belly?"

Silverstreak paused at the riverbank. The sleet was falling harder now, and it was getting more difficult to see. "Oh, StarClan no. They would never have hurt you. They just didn't know that you were with me yet, and I didn't tell them because I didn't want them to stop your father from meeting you. Speaking of..."