Echo on the Rise

Prologue: Newcomers

   "Five?" The elderly badger questioned. "Blossom, that's impossible!"
He sat up straight in his nest of soft ferns and moss.
"You are right, there should only be three kittens, you would know if there were more, and that's why I'm here." A young female badger whose splashes of white fur were tinted a salmon colour,  replied calmly. "Two were very recently found in our territory, next to the pond. We could not just abandon them.." The older badger only snorted.
"Their mother could have been more sensible to keep them to herself."  He implied, rather rudely.
The younger badger lifted her head, which had a black diamond-shaped mark between the stripes on her face, as well as the older badger.
"Emperor Raven, you know that whatever has happened  to their mother, young animals are not to be abandoned." She told him, almost challenging him to defy her. The older badger just shook his head.
"Where are the two new kittens?" Raven demanded.
"Frost is with them now," Answered Blossom, her mind painting the talented white iguana, the silvery-blue diamond on his forehead reflecting the moonlight. Throwing her mind back into the present, she turned to her leader. "We don't think the smaller one is going to make it." Raven's eyes showed no emotion change.
"That means less wasted food on another member of the colony.." He grunted. Blossom's jaws stretched open.
"How could you say something like that?!" Swinging her head around, she marched out of the den's entrance tunnel. "If you've nothing nice to say, I'm going to check on them!" She called back, charging into Frost's wooden first-aid cabin. It was built out of hard oak wood, by members from long ago. The pink-tinted badger entered the cabin, hopeful to find two healthy kittens. The snow-coloured iguana looked up.
"Oh. Hi, Blossom.." He seemed distracted and tense. Blossom was confused at first, but her spirits plummeted as her gaze rested on the two almost-unmoving bundles of soft fur on the ground. The two cats were there, side-by-side, a slinky white one and a short-legged greyish-brown tabby one. They were both toms. Blossom let her gaze hover over the tabby. His breathing was shallow and barely audible. She held her breath as she listened to his small heartbeat. Her eyes met Frost's, and he gave her a look full of sorrow. This kitten would not survive the rest of the cold winter night. Blossom curled herself around the two kits, —Especially the tabby— until streams of the rising sun crept into Frost's cabin.

It took Blossom a moment before she realized where she was, in Frost's medical room. It was quite open in there. She gazed around when her eyes rested on the two young cats. The white one was pressed up against the his brother, batting at him playfully. Blossom knew that they would never be able to train with magic together, or form an unbreakable family bond, because the tabby was already dead.
A few moments passed. The white kitten started mewling for food.. But before Blossom got up to fetch Frost, she noticed the mews were bouncing off the walls because of how roomy the cabin was. She looked down on the tiny white scrap, a new warmth in her small eyes.
"Echo."