"Her earliest memory was shivering in a meadow at moon-high, on the coldest day in leaf-bare, with no mother, warmth, or food..."
When a kit stumbles into Thunderclan territory barely old enough to open its eyes, they do as they know they should, an...
Her earliest memory was shivering in a meadow at moon-high, on the coldest day in leaf-bare, with no mother, warmth, or food. She wasn't even a moon old at the time, and had just opened her eyes. The kit had only left her nest for a lap of water. The stream that usually flowed in the meadow was frozen over. The kit tried to break the ice, but it was completely solid. She gave the surface a tender lick, and her tongue stuck. With a surprised mew, she wrenched her tongue away from the slippery frost, and it stung like it had been burned.
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The air was cold, and the kit's breath billowed from her nose to the air beyond when she took a deep breath, as she did now. The freezing temperature of the world around the kit crawled through her fluffy kitten pelt and chilled her from nose to tail-tip. The kit had only left the safety of her nest for a minute to come back to it empty, covered in the stench of badger. She took a step into the nest, and immediately pulled it back as it touched something warm and wet. Her paw pad was red, and was covered in blood.
The kit feebly cried out "Mother?" into the blistering cold air. "Mother, are you alright?" She looked around, and stepped into the tall wheat grass that drooped under the weight of snow. The kit climbed to the highest point of the nest, and tried to jump on top of the snow, but when she landed, she fell through and hit the ground with a 'thud.'
The snowy surface was lifted above her tiny whiskers, and each step was a struggle as the newborn kit plowed her way through the field. She followed a trail of snowy pawprints and red dots, which she thought, with an eerie note, it must be blood. She kept following the trail, and soon began to shiver. She was cold even before her mother had disappeared, and now she felt numb, unable to feel her paws. Suddenly, the blood trail stopped. The wind was blowing hard, and the pawprints that left the trail had already been covered up.
She took a few steps in each direction, and walked wherever she thought just. The kit continued the random wander until she began to shiver fiercely. Soon, she heard a rustling in the icy grass a few tail lengths away. It was something big. Big as or bigger as the kit's mother. Maybe mother has brother and sister too. The kit thought hopefully.
"Mother?" The kit wailed.
A badger leapt out at the tiny kit, who wailed in terror. It snarled at her, and she immediately ran, terrified, away from the badger and towards the tree line, making her way into the forest. But there she felt no safer, and raced blindly through the undergrowth and trees. Thorns scraped her skin and grazed her paws, and she didn't take the time to stop and look where she was going. Though a little kit cannot run very far at a certain length of time, she kept running as long as she could bear, afraid the badger might catch her.
The smells, creatures, and sights were all new and foreign and scary to a small frightened kit. She smelled other cats, other animals, new animals, prey, and especially badgers. Every time she slowed down, she thought she could hear the snarl of a badger, and the pounding of huge, lumbering paws chasing her past her limit, whether it was actually there or not. When she could run no longer, she slowed down and looked behind her. To her relief, the badger had not followed. It was gone, and had been gone for quite a while, but she'd kept running in fear it was still there.
The kit was cold, hungry, and more lost than she had ever been. She wanted to find some food, but didn't think she could take more than a few more pawsteps, much less chase down prey.
Finally, exhausted, the kit, whiskers drooping and paws dragging in exhaustion, her chest still heaving from the length of her run, she found shelter. It was inside a hollow cave dug out under a tree's roots. It had an earthy scent, but didn't smell like a badger or anything else bad. The gnarled roots formed a tightly woven roof above her head, and it didn't look like it could fall on top of her as she slept. So the kit drowsily curled up to fall asleep; hoping it all was a bad dream.
But she did not wake up to her mother's soothing purr, or the mewling of her siblings crying for milk, or even the warmth of a rising dawn. Rather, the she-kit awoke, so startled at first she thought it was a badger again, to a gruff snarl from a large, black, angry-looking tomcat with glittering, hungry eyes staring down at her in her makeshift nest.
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