Curled Silence *Completed*

Chapter One

"Fire! Wake up, fire!" I opened my eyes to see a gray tabby face peering down at me, green eyes like mine wild with terror. "Didn't you hear me? Get up!" I scramble to my feet and try to look around in all directions at once.
"Where? I don't see it?" I look at my brother and realize his whiskers are twitching. He's amused.

"I gotcha good, didn't I?"

My ears burn at this. "That not funny!" I swipe a paw at him. "What if there really is a fire next time?"

He turned around and stalked away. "Then it's your problem if you don't listen," he called over his shoulder. "I'm going to go get my breakfast. Maybe a finch or two."

"Wait, Tabby!" His gray tail had already vanished behind a waving fond of bracken. As I took a step, a fat drop of water landed on my nose. I looked up to see a green-gray sky of churning clouds, and another drop of rain plodded onto my face. "Great," I muttered under my breath.

I had picked up the trail of a vole and was stalking the timid creature when Tabby appeared out of the underbrush, the same vole I was stalking in his teeth. "Fome to ve barn wif me," he mumbled through his freshly caught prey. I nodded accepting this as an apology, I trotted after him to the barn, our home.

Just then, all the memories of my kitten hood and how Scoop, our mother, used to love the barn. She would sleep in the pokey hay that the horses ate and doze in the sunshine. I was still very young when the wildfire swept through the forest. Scoop had been teaching his sister, Scarlett, how to hunt when it first started. They never made it back to the barn.

Luckily, his father with his long and fiery legs had somehow managed to outrun it with only a singed tail. Whenever he or Tabby brought it up, Blaze changed the subject quickly. All he said was that she was a creme colored cat with darker colors on her muzzle, tail, and paws. His father was a sturdy but quick legged tom with a fiery orange long haired coat.
"Do you want to share or not?" The growl jerked me out of my memories.

I twitched my ear. "Sure. Let's eat, I'm starving!" Tabby and I sat across from each other, gulping down the small animal. I looked around the old and decaying barn house as it creaked in the increasing gusts of wind. "I hope this old shack doesn't collapse in on us!" I meow, trying to squeeze a chuckle out of my brother. It doesn't work.

"Is that you two down there?" I look up to see my father Blaze jumping down from one of the hay bales. His high-pitched mew doesn't match his big and sturdy build. "That storm up there sure is putting up some racket, it sure is hard to sleep. Wanna go and check it out?" I nod and get to my paws, then give my long and thick fur a short grooming.

"Let's go!" I trot over to the big wooden doors of the barn, Tabby and Blaze following behind me. They are slightly ajar, showing the rainy world outside. It's chaos. To the right, a small play set for young humans is being threatened to tumble over and become airborne. In front of the barn, the dark green leaves of the oak and birch trees wave wildly in the strong gusts of wind. A flash lights up the darkened late afternoon sky and a bright streak of light speeds from cloud to tree. The oak bursts into orange and red flames, but is smothered by the hissing rain. A loud crack of thunder follows. To my left, I see the town. I hear faint human screams and shouts, then realize that two shapes are sprinting toward the barn.

"Who's that?" Tabby asks in a low voice. I shrug. When they arrive panting, we welcome them into the barn. One is a silver tom with some darker flecks, and the other is a small wiry golden-brown she-cat.

"I'm Nickel, and this is Penny" pants the silver one. "We have come to warn you."

I frown. "What is there to warn us about?" We obviously know about the storm...

Penny blinked her emerald eyes with fear. "If you hear the loud wailing, run for cover in a rabbit hole or somewhere underground. It's safest there."

"Safest from what?" Tabby growled. He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. I bump him. "Don't be too angry at them. They've obviously run a long way to warn us," I meowed fiercely at him.

"The Great Wind." In mid-sentence, a deafening wailing started up, echoing around from the town. Both Nickel and Penny's eyes widened to full moons and the two small and worry cats sprinted out of the barn into the storm.

"You heard them, go and find a rabbit burrow to hide in!" Blaze warned us.

Tabby's eyes narrowed. "What if they were lying?"

"Better safe than sorry." Blaze hustled the two small cats out of the small barn and we sprinted across the clearing. Finally, I made it to the tree line and looked back to see the green-tinted clouds swirling like a circle in an odd fashion. Then, right before my eyes, a strange cone stretched slowly down from the upper clouds, and reached the earth below. It looked like a fantasy dream. This must be the Great Wind Nickel was talking about. It looked as if it was consuming the whole town, all only maybe a mile away. Suddenly, a big object the size of a large dog hurtled across the clearing toward Blaze, and shocking me back to reality. It was headed toward the Great Wind.

"Blaze watch out!" I screeched at him, desperate for him to move. I'm to far away to help, and by the time I get over to him, it would be too late. Tabby looked over and saw the flying object and shoved his father out of the way. In the process of this, the debris smashed into Tabby instead of Blaze and I could hear bone crunching. The force of the impact and the added wind made him airborne. He vanished into the trees on the left, to where the Great Wind was. "No! Tabby!" I couldn't stand losing him, I just couldn't. All I could think about was the look of fear and determination on his face as he sacrificed his life for Blaze's.

It was as if I was blind to everything except the one bush where Tabby's gray and white tabby marked shape had disappeared. I didn't even notice part of the play set coming at me at the speed of a monster. Realizing I didn't want to have the same fate as my brother, I crouched as low as my legs would allow me to, and the thing whizzed over head, not a mouse length above. Trembling and weak from the scare, I instinctively loosened my grip on the rain-soaked grass, and suddenly felt myself being lifted into the air by a strong gust of wind.

"No! I won't lose you too!" I looked down to see Blaze leap up. I reached down to the orange cat to get a grip and hooked my claws with his. My father yanked me down to the ground, but it wasn't enough. I unsheathed my claws to try to get a grip on the slippery mud, but it was no use. I was getting sucked towards the Great Wind. My paws left the ground as I saw Blaze run for cover in the trees, thinking that I was trailing behind him. Perhaps it was better this way. He wouldn't have to see me die like he did Tabby. It wouldn't do any good anyways to call for him to help, because the wind was getting stronger the closer I came to the cone-shaped cloud. I dared to look down at the sight made me queasy. I was at least double the height of the houses in the Town.

Then I felt myself dropping, faster and faster. The Great Wind is dying down, I guessed. I felt a strange calm, as if I wasn't really heading for the hard and unforgiving land below me. I shot one last glance at the Great Wind and saw it was now no more than a wisp, and it looked more like the smoke the came out of the humans' dens than a great and sucking monster, destroying everything in its path. I closed my eyes and tried not to think what would happen next.

Then I hit.