Spirit's Journey

CHAPTER 68- Diamond: Curled Up

I looked down my nose at Hannah's curled up form. She looked sad and cold, or a mixture of both, and I wondered why Blaze hadn't so much as twitched a whisker the day after the death-path incident.

Hannah was okay, wasn't she? My heart hurt that Blaze was gone, too, and I hadn't been able to get why his body didn't move after the death-trap hit him. Had it really killed him? If so, why hadn't it tried to eat his body, if the hunt was successful? Did humans just do things like that all the time? All these new words felt weird when I thought about them.

My stomach hurt, and I wished I didn't have those thoughts. Everyone looked so sad now that Fallan couldn't stand and my mother-cat's mate was dead. What did it even mean to be dead? I knew that it meant a cat couldn't move or stand up anymore, but where did they go after that?

"Mother-cat, where is Blaze now?" I rested my paws on her nose and wished she would look happier- in the two days since Blaze had been set into the ground, she hadn't played with me at all. She didn't raise her head to give me an answer. In fact, she turned it away but still swept her tail around me. I almost giggled because her tail was so fun to play with- but mother-cat's face showed she didn't feel like playing right now.

"He's with the Sky-cat now, in her hunting grounds. If it was night we'd be able to look up at him. But..." Hannah took a shuddering breath so I crawled forward, closer to her whiskers.

"We won't see him again until we go to join the Sky-cat, too," she finished. I thought she looked so down that her eyes were going to well up again but I couldn't tell because just then she turned her head towards me, burying her muzzle in my fur.

Poor Mother-cat. Why did the Sky-cat do that and take Blaze away from us? He was so nice, and always played with me. Plus, he was the only one who loved Hannah as much as I did. Something clawed at my chest as Hannah took deeper breaths, clearly trying not to show her sadness.

Spirit, Storm, Midnight and Aspen were talking quietly a few steps away. They seemed to do that a lot since Blaze had... Died. Spirit's eyes were still hollow and made me sad to look at, because they looked so much like Hannah's. She must really be feeling bad that her sister was hurt. Hannah must have, too, but even worse because her mate had died and her own sister had come close to that.

After Blaze had died, everyone tried to keep his body hidden from me but I'd still seen it without meaning to. It was horrible- I'd never even been scared before, until I saw that. Now I wanted to know what really happened- if the death-trap hit him, squashed him with it's huge paws, or hurt him in some other way.

And there was only one cat I would get the answers from.

My belly growled as I walked guiltily up to Storm, wondering if I could ask him to hunt. It seemed rude but it wasn't fair that I couldn't just hunt for myself now. One day Hannah had let me practice a hunting crouch while the other cats trained, but now I knew training was the last thing on everyone's mind. Still, somebody had to think about food, right? I'd heard Mother-cat say it before- we needed to hunt at least once a day for everyone to survive. Yet...

I wouldn't say anything about hunting. How might the big cats feel if they knew I was hungry? That might make them feel worse...

"Storm," I said confidently, and raised my tail when I walked up to him. His shoulders were hunched and I thought he had been watching Spirit, but I wasn't so sure now because his pine-tree gaze was on me. Was he glad someone was talking to him?

"I know the death-trap hurt Blaze really bad- but how did it?" He looked like he was rectulant to answer, but the curiosity was too much not to cock my head up at him. I just had to know.