LostHope's Path

Chapter 2

"FOX! FOX! RUN TO THE TREE AND CLIMB IT! FOX!" Thunderkit screeched. What? What's "fox" ? "Right behind you!" He screamed at Honeykit. A fox? What's a fox?

Honeykit whipped her head around and was suddenly face-to-face with a long, slender red-furred face, foam dripping from it's jaws, which snapped closer and closer to her hind-paws. She froze.

"Honeykit!!!!!" Fawnkit screamed just as Honeykit began to feel the fox's hot breath panting on her. "Run!"

Honeykit didn't need to be told twice. Paws thundering, she sprinted to the tree, barely missing the fox's snapping jaws. StarClan, help me! She cursed at her tiny legs and paws, which ached. Why was the tree so far away??? She wailed in fear, her yowling bouncing across the ice.

Finally, Honeykit's outstretched paws hit wood and she scrambled up the low branches, her paws barely missed from being shredded by the weird fox's snarls.

Suddenly Fawnkit began to squeak at Honeykit. "Higher, higher! The fox is starting to climb the branches." What in StarClan...?

Of course we are being chased...by a tree-climbing fox! "Very funny!" yowled Honeykit, her high, squeaky voice taunting.

"Honeykit!" Oh my StarClan, I'm climbing the stinking tree already! "Higher!" Honeykit pricked her ears at the new voice, older, deeper. Serpenttail! A deputy was helping us?

"Fine!" She launched herself next to Fawnkit on a huge, thin branch stretching over the lake's frost, she looked down with a gasp. The fox-thing was on the lowest branch! "What does it think it is, a squirrel?" she giggled, prodding her sister with her tail. Fawnkit didn't respond. Why does she look so scared. Foxes can't climb this high!

"Hey!" grunted a new, low voice as the black-furred deputy leaped of the bracken.

Serpenttail shot out of the bracken, a charcoal-black streak painting across the ice. He battered the fox off the branch as it yelped in surprise. The robust black warrior shot out his claws, raking them across the creature's white-flecked muzzle, until stripes of red, bleeding flesh shone. The fox howled and fled into the little clearing that was ThunderClan territory, then into the woods beyond. Honeykit shuddered as she remembered hearing about the blood that had been spilled over the measly strip of land.

Serpenttail grinned at the kits. "You'd think foxes would learn their place is on the ground!" He purred, then turned tail, chuckling, and pounced back into the evergreens bordering the ShadowClan camp.

"Oh, no, thanks, we're good!" Honeykit hissed as the deputy dissapeared among the forest fronds, but then stared at her paws, in shame. She hadn't meant to talk back to a senior warrior, even if he hadn't heard her. Or if he didn't have the heart of a fox! She hissed again and slowly made her way across the bark, for once thankful for her tiny paws and long, tangle-furred tail.

She glanced at Fawnkit, who was shuddering nose to tail-tip, her thick, light amber fur fluffy in...um, fear? She must be afraid of heights? assumed Honeykit.

Suddenly, Fawnkit let out a high, ear-splitting screech followed by the snapping of brittle branches.

The branch was going to crack and fall!

***

It all happened in a flash. But Honeykit knew this much to be true:

The branch had snapped, bringing Honeykit's helpless sister with it.

It should've been me.

No one was on the lake except Honeykit and Fawnkit, though Fawnkit's screams must've reached the camp.

Someone should've been there.

Honeykit had frozen, staring at her sister spiraling, falling through the snow-strewn air.

I should've jumped. I should've stopped the branch. Shoulda heard it cracking.

Of course there was nothing the dark ginger kit could do... But stare.

Shoulda... Woulda... Coulda...

She squeezed her eyes shut in spite of it. She didn't want to see...her sister...

Die. Die. DIE, Honeykit! You know you DESERVE IT! The thought echoed, growing louder, each time, in Honeykit's head.

She waited for the smack to happen. She waited for the ice to crack... to see blood...

to see her sister's innocent blood spilled.

"NO!" screeched a female cat, and Honeykit peered out of her lids to see a white and silver blur Frozendrop! hit and skid to the oak tree... But her voice was drowned out by a crack and dark, dark blood seeped from under her sister's head, her light tawny fur spilled out around her, touched golden with sunlight.

A halo for the fallen angel. The thought broke through Frozendrop's screams and sobs that echoed across the icy lake. "My kit! my kit!"

Honeykit felt her paws hit the ice like a dream. Numbness spread across her, she saw cats screaming at each other around Fawnkit's unconscious body, she tried to match the names of the older Clanmates to their pelts.

Cloverlark the medicine cat and her apprentice Mintypaw. The two cats grabbed her sister, gently tugging her across the ice, into the ferns, which were shrouded with the heavy snow, falling everywhere.

Tumblefoot. The kinky-furred tom who was their father stared at his daughter solemnly, fear glazing in his eyes, along with something else Honeykit couldn't place. Regret.

Frozendrop. The cat's beautiful mother sobbed into Tumblefoot.

Frozenfall. Dashblaze. Serpenttail. Wolfstar. Every cat rushed Fawnkit into the camp, leaving Honeykit sitting alone on the ice. Tanglemeadow, Cedarcry...

Playing with Thunderkit, Thrushkit, Duskit, and Fawnkit in the snow only happened maybe 20 minutes ago, but it felt like moons. The snow had seemed so beautiful, so innocent. A fresh start. Now Honeykit only wanted it gone.

Stop...make it stop...

The good memories felt so painful, now every frosty breath Honeykit breathed felt like agony, claws scraping her lungs, belly and chest.

She was alone on the lake. Shakily, she looked up into the frozen sky, seeing the broken branch. She heard screaming, of cats, "StarClan, let her be okay!"

StarClan! Honeykit let out a hiss, which ebbed into a tortured cry. What was StarClan, really?

Honeykit shrugged.

Whether there is a StarClan or not...we're on our own either way... The horrible thought pierced the storm in Honeykit's head like lightning...

We can't escape our fates!

That was the last though that struck her confused mind, until suddenly pair seared her legs, teeth ripped at her limbs, a tsunami of pain that roared through her, but it felt slightly numbed with Honeykit's grief. A cat screamed from the lake's edge... "HONEYKIT!" and she though, Fox...

And then the world sank into an endless obsidian night.

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