Time

Prologue

As Ember padded out of the den she realised that something wasn't right, it was sunhigh and no cats were anywhere to be seen, she padded into the healers den, nothing, no stale scent nothing, she wandered back into the centre of  the loners camp but nothing was there, not the dens, not the wall of reeds surrounding our camp. Just nothing except the scent of cats approaching and the quiet murmur of worried voices.

"We can't go on much longer Candy will kit any day now!" Called one of the unknown cats, Ember could see it was a broad shouldered light grey tabby tom with a scar over one eye. "We'll take shelter here then and try find a permanent home tomorrow, silver you get the queens to shelter a storms coming I can feel it"this time the speaker seemed to the leader of these cats, a small brown patched tom. The grey tabby, silver as they called him helped a pure white queen into a hollowed our hole in the side of a rock, the area were the leaders den should be.

Ember  had escaped before the cats had noticed her and found shelter in a hollow on the side of a tree. Just as the leader had warned a storm came and almost destroyed the forrest around them, trees fell and the river down that crossed through the middle of the land around them overflowed, flooding the forrest surrounding them, the tree Ember refuged in had survive the floods though it would not for much longer, so as soon as the flooding was gone enough for her to check on the strangers she took her chance and ran.

The unknown cats had survived, though as she looked down at them from the top of a ledge she saw the body of the white queen lying dead in the middle of the camp area , the tom named silver  was crouched next to her mourning three kits were lying next to her drowned in the flooding there eyes would never open. The brown tom padded over and tried to move silver though he fought back and refused to move. Eventually the leader gave up and headed into the  hole where the leaders den should be and a red-brown queen padded out, by the size of her stomach kitting looked to be in the near future for her. In the queens mouth was a kit, it look fairly young less than a quarter-moon old, it was white as the dead queen in the centre of the camp, its mother Ember guessed. As the queen beard the mourning tom the kit made a squeaking sound alerting Silver causing him to look up, happiness crossed his face only to be replaced again by the overwhelming sadness of loosing a mate. The queen placed the kit next to the tom and it instantly snuggled in to his long fur. Silver sat protectively around the kit keeping it warm as he looked at his mate.

Silver stood waking the young kit causing it to squeal in alarm, "I'm ready" he stated and the leader walked slowly towards him "Are you sure?" The leader questioned, his voice sounding tired after the stress of the flooding " yes, I am ready to bury her, like she deserves". Silver and the small leader slowly carried candy on the shoulders supporting her wait between them her body already stiffens and reading with the scent of death. Silver and two other cat ember hadn't seen earlier were carrying a kit each and by the time they reached a are that even Ember's buried the dead a grave had already been dug in the wet soil, two larger than average toms were cleaning there pelts bear by as they were covered in mud. As they placed Candy's body in the hole they curled her into a ball and placed her back tail over her face maki g it look like she was going into a infinite slumber, her kits were placed next to her and they looked like a family. As the final mound of dirt was placed back over the dead the rain started again causing sighs of annoyance and sadness toting around the trees though as the started to sway Ember could tell even from up in the trees that this would not be the last time these unknown cats would walk the track to the dead.

Ember was following the cats when something caught her eye a rock with a crack though the middle. Ember new this crack a badger had made it one night in a fight with a fox, she'd watched it crack. So this weird dream...thing, she wasn't quite sure wha it was couldn't have been in the past like she'd first thought  it had to have been in the future, but then where are her clanmates?