#alpinekit

“Because we have to find a new home,” Fogfreckle explained patiently, as he had been doing with all of Harekit’s questions since the sun had risen. It was just past midday, now. Fogfreckle was walking behind Alpinekit, who was in the lead, while Harekit trailed along at his heels. Moonstar followed behind the lot of them at a more sedate pace a tail-length back.

“We can’t just stop right here, out in the open,” Fogfreckle carried on, “a fox might get you!” With a mighty growl, Fogfreckle spun on his heels and bowled Harekit over with a gentle paw, sending him sprawling into the fresh snow. The kit exploded into giggles. His bubbling laughter ratcheted up as Fogfreckle nosed at his soft belly, tickling him.

Moonstar came up short as she was knocked in the chin by one of Harekit’s flailing paws. Biting down on a hiss, she glowered at the little kit as he laughed and laughed, entirely unaware. Alpinekit had paused politely ahead of them, head turned to watch the display.

Harekit pushed Fogfreckle’s face away with his paws. “Why do we need a new home?” He managed to ask between giggles. “Don’t you have one already?”

“Don’t you?” Moonstar muttered, smothering the unkind comment beneath Harekit’s laughter. She bent her head and licked at her chest fluff to hide her bitter expression. She could already feel a bruise blooming on her jaw. The pair of them could play later – just so long as they got to wherever they were going before Moonstar’s tail froze off.

Or before her patience wore completely thin.

“Our last home was… ruined,” Fogfreckle explained delicately. “So now we have to find a new one.”

Harekit pushed himself to his paws and shook the snow from his pelt, energy renewed. He was already firing off another question before he had got fully upright. “That’s sad,” Harekit stated matter-of-factly. He broke into a trot to keep up with Fogfreckle’s long strides as the cats resumed their trek. “Do you miss your old home.”

“Immensely.”

“Were you and Moonstar the only brother and sister at your old home?” Harekit continued to press, eyes blazing with curiosity. “I don’t have any. Alpine doesn’t either, right, Alpinekit?”

If Alpinekit was startled to be addressed suddenly, it didn’t show in his ever-level expression. He blinked his large, cyan eyes slowly at Harekit, then shook his head to confirm that, no, he didn’t have any siblings either.

Fogfreckle hummed thoughtfully. “Well, there was Pitchstar. He was the leader before Moonstar,” he explained to the kits, gesturing towards his sister. “Pitchstar had a sister once, supposedly. I don’t think us kits – Moonstar and I, I mean – were supposed to know about her. I don’t think he wanted anyone to know about her. Pitchstar never talked about his sister.”

Here we go.

Both kits were looking up at Fogfreckle with wide, curious eyes. Moonstar had heard this story before, back when they were still apprentices and tasked with the duty of clearing moss from the elder’s den. Moonstar had found the activity rather soothing, but it had bored Fogfreckle to tears. There weren’t many elders in their camp, but they’d been around long enough to know Pitchstar when he was young, and liked to tell tales of their early NimbusClan days to keep the pair of them amused.

“Before Pitchstar was leader, Clan leadership only ran in the family. It was passed down from parent to child – to the firstborn litter, to whichever kit StarClan deemed held the most promise.” Fogfreckle swished his tail, eyes glittering. “When the Chosen kit came of age, they’d become deputy – that’s what I am – and begin training to become the next leader.

“Anyways, I guess Pitchstar’s sister was real upset that her brother was chosen for the role of leader instead of her, so she gathered up a bunch of their Clanmates and set off to make her own Clan.”

Moonstar interjected with a responsible, “but that’s just a kits tale,” at the same time Harekit blurted, “and then what happened?”

“Dunno.” Fogfreckle shrugged, electing to ignore his sister. “Never heard from them again, I guess. I wonder if that’s why Pitchstar never talked about it – he was too sad about losing her, maybe. It happened way before Moonstar and I were born.”

“Pitchstar never talked about his sister because she doesn’t exist,” Moonstar insisted. “We never ran into a Clan like that at our borders. It’s likely just a tale our elders made up to keep us busy while we changed their moss. Elders love to gossip.”

Fogfreckle ignored her once more, leaning low to grin at each of the kits. Moonstar’s tail lashed. They, too, weren’t paying Moonstar any attention, rapt with Fogfreckle as they were. “What if we meet her and her Clan when we get to where we’re going, hm? What if they set off in the same direction as us?” At these words, Harekit’s eyes blazed, and even Alpinekit’s pricked ears perked higher.

“Let’s go! We’re gonna find the lost Clan!” Harekit shouted, bounding ahead of the cats and kicking up little flurries of snow as he went, his exhaustion apparently forgotten. Alpinekit padded after him, gait slower but tail raised happily.

“Not too far!” Fogfreckle called after them. A small, pleased smile was curving his muzzle.

Moonstar fell into step beside her brother. Her tone was flat. “Telling the kits ghost stories?”

The smile dropped from his face. “Have you got a stick for a tail? It’s not a ghost story. For all we know, it’s totally true.”

Moonstar huffed. It seemed like she wasn’t invisible, after all. “I’m just staying. It was probably made up to keep us entertained.”

“Well it’s working, isn’t it?” Fogfreckle flicked a paw in the direction of the kits, who were bumbling along in the snow ahead of them. Harekit was chattering animatedly at Alpinekit. Moonstar had never seen the brown kit look so pleased in all their moons of traveling together. “And anyways,” Fogfreckle went on, “what does it matter if it’s true or not? It’s making the time go by, and StarClan knows we have plenty of that to get through.”

“We’d reach our destination faster if we didn’t have kits to be keeping track of.”

“It’s leafbare. We’re not reaching our destination any faster even if we didn’t have them with us. We don’t even know where our destination is.”

“Fogfreckle,” Moonstar sighed. She wasn’t going to be able to knock any sense into him this way. Her tone softened. “We shouldn’t be dragging kits into this. It’s not… stable.”

“You’re the one who picked up Harekit,” Fogfreckle shot back accusingly, whirling around to face her. “What other choice do we have, Moonstar? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

Moonstar is reminded of Harekit, sat alone in the snow under a bush, staring up at her with his big, green eyes. “Well– no–”

“Then what? We can’t just leave them, especially not now that we’ve taken on responsibility for them. They have to come with us. It’s not an ideal circumstance to be raising kits in, sure, but it’s not something we have control over. Just see it as more incentive to find a camp to settle down in.”

Incentive? Incentive? As if Moonstar hadn’t been pushing forward on incentive alone since they’d left the rubble of their old camp behind. Her tail lashed. “I’ve had incentive. Remember when you got attacked and I was the one who licked your wounds and said we should find somewhere new to stay?”

“Why are you being so argumentative about this? You’ve already admitted we can’t leave the kits behind – what do you suggest we do? You need to be supportive for them. You’re our leader, Moonstar. You could at least act like it.”

Moonstar’s brother departed with a lash of his tail, hastening to catch up with the kits. Moonstar stood frozen in the snow, stalled not by the cold but by her brother’s words. Her tail drooped. Her paws stung and the deep snow gnawed up her legs, but all she could do was stand and watch as her brother walked away. Fresh snowflakes began to swirl down from the sky, landing on her whiskers and blurring her vision.

Alpinekit was, really, almost too big to carry. Judging by his size, as Moonstar had nothing else to go on, he had to be somewhere around four moons old. In a few short moons, he’d be apprenticing age. Moonstar squinted at the pair of them judgmentally. Alpinekit had to curl his long, skinny back legs close to his body to keep them from dragging on the ground, and Fogfreckle had his head hoisted high in the air so as not to kick him while he walked.

Leafbare was settling across the mountain. It had snowed the night prior, leaving every surface glittering upon waking. It made Moonstar nervous. The higher up this mountain they climbed, the farther from their old territory, the worse it was going to get. Windier, colder, deeper. She had no experience with this, as she’d never even dreamed of being this far from home, but she’d heard tales passed down through the generations. The mountain got harsher higher up. That’s why NimbusClan had settled somewhere near the base, overlooking the meadow. 

They had never braved a mountain leafbare this high up before – and never alone. Certainly never with a young kit to care for. The responsibility was weighing heavily upon Moonstar’s shoulders.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Moonstar pressed, lowering her head to squint suspiciously at the kit. “What’s a kit doing alone on the side of the mountain?”

This, at least, finally got a response from Fogfreckle. “What are we doing alone on the side of the mountain?” He managed around the bundle of fur in his mouth, sliding his gaze towards Moonstar. Even with one of Alpinekit’s gigantic, bat-like ears blocking half of his face, Moonstar could clearly make out the challenging glint in his eye. The unspoken “leave it”.

Alright. Enough prodding.

Only a beat of silence passed between the pair of them before Moonstar was talking again, clawing a desperate escape out of this tension-thick silence. She leaned in close to Alpinekit, who shot her a confused, wary sort of look, the corner of his lip quivering like he was shaping his mouth around a hiss. Rude little thing. That was fine – she wasn’t overly fond of him, either. He shrank away from her, curling his lanky body into a tighter ball. “He’s got to be only a few moons shy of when you and I were apprenticed. Don’t you think?” She addressed Fogfreckle. He was once again staring resolutely forward at the glittering landscape, ignoring his sister. His wide gait was leaving soft paw-shaped indents in the snow, Alpinekit’s long tail dragging a thin line between them. “I wonder which of us I should choose to mentor him, when the time comes…”

Alpinekit’s little brow furrowed in further confusion, though he stayed as silent as Fogfreckle. Peas in a pod already, Moonstar thought grimly.

She straightened back up with a sigh, tipping her head skyward as she padded alongside her brother and his newly adopted son. Puffs of white clouds scudded cheerfully across the expanse of blue, as if they hadn’t dumped a world of snow on them just the night prior. She wondered if,  should they get high enough up the mountain, she’d be close enough to the clouds to see her ancestors frolicking among their puffy white peaks.

It was weird to think that her brother was a dad now. That made her aunt to this scraggly little kit, technically, which was an even stranger thought. She didn’t feel quite ready for it. She had always thought her parents would still be around to see her or her brother forge families of their own. Fogfreckle had accepted responsibility for this lost kit so quickly, without hesitation, without question. He had jumped at the chance to take on this kit as eagerly as one would pounce on a mouse. An extra mouth to feed, an extra life to look after. Someone new to protect.

A pang of grief spread through Moonstar’s chest like a roll of distant thunder. Despite the horror and the trauma and the hardships, Moonstar had gotten used to traveling with just her brother at her side. NimbusClan was no longer just the pair of them, anymore. That was the weirdest thought of all.

The ground sloped gently downward around a bend, their parth curving past a pair of prickly pine trees that were leaning against one another. A small clearing opened up before them, dotted with evergreen bushes topped with little nests of snow. Leaf litter poked up through the snow on the ground, crunching underpaw as they padded into the clearing. On their way through, a faint mewling sound reached Moonstar’s ears and she paused, ears swiveling.

“Do you hear that?”

Fogfreckle slowed and turned to face her, a questioning expression on his face. Alpinekit’s ears were tall atop his head and his intense eyes were focused on a spot somewhere beyond Moonstar.

The soft mewling started up again and this time Fogfreckle’s ears pricked, his eyes going round and curious.

Moonstar followed Alpinekit’s stare, turning to look over her shoulder. Her ears flicked. “I think it’s coming from this bush.” Moonstar padded cautiously over to one of the evergreens. The mewling strengthened as she got closer. Moonstar dug a paw into the needly branches of the bush to part them.

Beneath the bush was a kit.

Another kit.

This one was smaller than Alpinekit, younger, with an orange tabby pelt and striking green eyes. Its mewling ceased as Moonstar parted the branches. It looked up at her with a fearless, curious tilt of its head.

Fogfreckle padded up behind Moonstar to glance curiously over her shoulder, and the siblings shared a look of surprise.

At least it’s not a fox kit, Moonstar thought with short-lived relief. Before Fogfreckle could get a single word out around Alpinekit’s scruff (he still hadn’t put the kit down), the kitten reprised its raucous mewling. Moonstar’s ears flattened against her skull, but it didn’t do much to block out the noise. Heaving a sigh, she bent to sniff at the orange kitten. There was no milky mother’s scent that clung to his pelt, nor the scent of any other cat at all. He must have been alone for a while, though he didn’t look too worse for wear. He was skinny, but his eyes were bright and his pelt smoother and fluffier than Alpinekit’s.

That wouldn’t last for long if they left him here. It was a wonder he hadn’t attracted a predator with all that mewling before they came upon him. Perhaps the kit’s parent had left him here in the safety of the bush to hunt, and met an unfortunate end before they could return. Moonstar shuddered at the thought. Perhaps he had just wandered away and got lost. Either way, her conscience would weigh on her if she left him here.

Moonstar skirted a glance at her brother, who was smirking at her around Alpinekit’s scruff with a knowing kind of gleam in his eyes. With another sigh, she hoisted the ginger kit up by his scruff and dragged him out of the bush.

Straightening up, she caught Fogfreckle’s entirely-too-pleased expression in her periphery. “Don’t”, she warned around a mouthful of orange fur, and the four of them set off back up the mountain.

Panting, Moonstar tightens the grip of her right paw – she’s managed to sink her claws into a thick root that is growing through the side of the cliff. She’s dislodged it a bit – that must have been the cracking sounds – but it holds fast to the cliffside and Moonstar doesn’t hesitate a second longer.

Gathering all of her strength, she swings her other paw up to sink her claws into the root, shoulders shaking as she pulls her body up. Her back paws windmill in the air until she’s able to find purchase on the cliff, digging her back claws into the rock and dragging herself up onto the slope.

Shaking all over and sick with adrenaline, Moonstar’s aching limbs want nothing more than to collapse out from under her. She flexes her claws in the loose gravel under her paws and eyes the dirt warily, as if it’ll suddenly heave forward and send her sailing over the edge of the cliff again. Muscles screaming, Moonstar moves her shaky, aching body to firmer ground.

Safe for the moment, she slumps at the base of a pine tree and shakes.

She almost died.

She almost died.

Quest for moss entirely forgotten, the only thought Moonstar can dredge up is the idea of getting back to her brother and collapsing against him, taking comfort in his familiar scent and his solid, grounding presence at her side. She’d assured Fogfreckle just last moon that she could handle being on her own, but now she’s not so sure she’s going to survive the hunt for a new home without him.

Ignoring the sharp ache of pain in her shoulder where she caught the root that saved her life, Moonstar struggles to her paws and slowly sniffs out the trail she took to get here, retracing her pawsteps through the fog and back up the mountain.

Limbs dragging, a wash of relief splashes Moonstar like ice melt on a hot day as she spots the clearing where they’ve scraped out their dens. Through the trees and the mist, she can just make out the light color of her brother’s dappled pelt moving around in the clearing. There’s something dark swinging from his mouth, likely freshkill, and, feeling relieved, she pulls herself through the trees and towards him.

Only pawsteps away, Moonstar opens her mouth to greet Fogfreckle, but stops in her tracks. 

It’s not freshkill.

“Moonstar!” Fogfreckle’s ears flick back a second before he turns at the sound of her arrival, eyes bright and shining with happiness. “Look what I found while I was out collecting moss!”

Tucked at Fogfreckle’s paws is a kitten. A skinny thing, with short, raggedy brown fur and dark, reddish tabby stripes.

Moonstar’s relief swiftly vanishes.

The kit is quiet, motionless, almost expressionless, but it stares at Moonstar like it can see through her, past her pelt and muscle and down to her bone. Unnerved, Moonstar meets its intense bright blue eyes with her own. They’re not cobalt blue, like her brother’s, or ice blue, like her own. They’re an otherworldly blue.

She’s snared by that unblinking, unwavering gaze, and something about it seizes Moonstar with a feeling of pure, crawling dread, like somebody has set ants loose in her pelt. The kit sits neatly with its tail curled over its paws, still and silent unlike any kit Moonstar has ever interacted with before.

She feels rooted to the spot, as if to make any move closer to her brother – closer to the kit – would be dangerous, somehow.

Fogfreckle grins, wide and happy, apparently unaffected by whatever has taken hold of Moonstar. He bends his head to give the kit an affectionate lick atop the head. “I’m going to name him Alpinekit.”