A/N: I know I have other stuff to work on! I know! I am working on it! The next chapter of Woods should be out sometime next week.

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Maia sighed, drumming on the steering wheel as the rush hour traffic crawled by, as slow as if the wheels were running through tar. The light changed, and she advanced on the intersection, her ear glued to her cell phone. "Look, I told you I won't be home until later. Order some takeout from-." She was cut off by the speeding pickup truck that crashed through and rammed the side of her car.

Maia laid on the pavement where the impact had thrown her, a bloody halo spreading around her head and Mommy mommy help me Mommy her limbs spread-eagled. Passersby were shrieking, and sirens it hurts God it hurts am I dead wailed in the distance. Maia fleetingly thought about the mess she would leave, and then she thought nothing at all.

Pictures. A warm darkness all around her, then stills of a bright, blurry world. Warmth and the same heartbeat that had echoed in the darkness. The taste of mother's milk, and being placed into a crib with a small stuffed animal for company. The rest of her life played in slow mo, then darkness again.

Maia felt she was going insane in this darkness, punctuated by bursts of color. She screamed orange, sang purple and green, and wept a bitter blue. Her whole body was pulsing light in rainbow hues, shimmering and changing seemingly at whim. And suddenly a burst of emotions.

Rage at the cruel world.

Deep regret at the things she would never experience.

Envy and worry, hope and sorrow, joy and a deep, deep sense of failure came hand in hand.

She ranted and raved, pleading with the faceless God she prayed to for just one more chance at a full life. And someone, somewhere, heard and granted her wish.

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"Okay, Silverfern, here comes another!" Nightwing and her apprentice Blossompaw stood in the ThunderClan nursery, coaching a large dusky gray she-cat through her birth. The father, Redclaw, hovered nervously in the background until he was shooed away. This was the last kitten now, a beautiful golden- brown she cat. As Silverfern, panting, delivered the last cat of five to the world, Nightwing exchanged a swift glance with Blossompaw.

The young kit, new to the Clan, was not breathing.

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Maia stirred. Good, it was just a dream. Her eyes still closed, she stretched and rolled over, reaching for her glasses on the bedside table. Her hand hit grass, and her eyes shot open.

She was not in her bed, but lying in the grass on the shore of a pond. Her glasses were on her face. And she was awake.

Suddenly, it all came back to her. Driving home from work. The pickup truck that had ran the red light and rammed her. Her death. Shaking, she looked at her hands. They were whole and sound no sign of injuries whatsoever. Before, her hands had been bloody and broken. Shakily, she stood up. The pain was gone. It was then she felt the eyes on her back.