Shard. Shard and Quite. They were always meant to be together. It was if fate itself had out these two cats together. Loners, only able to count in each other. In a world of uncertainties, it was the one truth that both of them knew, even when it was not spoken - they were always going to be there for each other. To have each others back. To protect each other from things, from animals, from anything that could hurt them. A united front always is a better strategy.
But now, everything had fallen apart. It had started out as a normal day - hunting for food, drinking from the stream, trudging through more and more woods - just another normal day for two normal cats.
If only it had stayed normal.
The fox scent had attracted Shard. He had hoped that he would be able to drive them away, drive them from the territory that the two rouges had spent so much time and energy trying to keep other cats from infiltrating.
But then the fox changed everything. The two cats had parted with muzzles touched, breathing in the warm scents of their mates. Shard padded of to where he had found the foxes.
To put it plainly, the foxes won. They left his body, broken and battered, where it had fallen. The fur on the cat was stained crimson red, blood being soaked up by every hair on the pelt of Shard. They left him there at sun high. He was still alive, wishing he was dead. The pain was unbearable.
Broken bones in both back legs restrained him from getting up to go and find his mate.
Fortunatly, she found him. He, by this time, was fighting for every breath. Every breath, like it's own tiny battle, tiny battles that came together to form a losing war campaign. She screamed, a scream that sent birds from nearby trees scattering to the sky.
She tried to stop the bleeding, but she was a loner. What did she, or any loner in fact, know about how to mend broken bones? How where they supposed to know that cobwebs stopped the bleeding? That the spiders wonderful contraption of webs would stop the gushing blood above Shards eyes?
To put it plainly, she didn't. She couldn't help her mate. They didn't have much time, not enough time to help Shard even if she had known that poppy seed would at least ease the pain? At this point, it was impossible to tell which was in more pain. Shard, who's life was bleeding out of his broken and bruised body?
Or Quite, who's entire life had been to protect Shard, as he protected her?
No, the pain was almost equal in both of them.
Shard's breaths were coming quicker and faster, shallower. He was dying. Quite tried to keep him calm. She tried to keep herself calm. But she couldn't. He said goodbye one final time, and his eyes closed for the last time. His flank stilled, and the warmth quickly left his body.
Quite's whole life had fallen around her. It had skipped through her fingers, or claws, if you will. Things would never be the same. The rouge had left her new kits at the den, and she immediately ran back, pushing through the loss and the grief to try and protect the kits.
The fox had beat her to it. The fox's muzzle was stained red, the traces of the kits long gone. Upon seeing Quite, the fox dashed off, it's belly full. Quite was heartbroken. Literally everything her life was, her very existence - had just been torn away from her. Life is brutal, and she learned that now.
Thats when the kit stumbled down the cliff. It was barely old enough to walk. "Are you lonely?" She was answered with a pathetic, sickly mew. "Oh, come here..."
Never had a rouge taken in a clan cat before. She never knew that the cat was the lone survivors from the black cough - and honestly, she didn't need to. She took it in, the sick cat. She fed it with the milk that had been meant for her children, who had their lives taken from them at such a young age.
As the days drew by, the pain started to subside. The cat, who was named Leaf, grew. Then came the time when the mother and daughter had to part ways. It was a rainy day, and with a touch of muzzles, Leaf set off to start her own destiny. Quite watched her walk off into the rain, proud that she had raised such a fine young kit.
Leaf took the name of her ancestors, Leafstar. And then she stumbled upon a kit, a young kit, taking it in as she was taken in so many moons ago.
Yes, that fateful day in the rain.
That fateful day in the rain all started with a final goodbye between two lovers, one of which who went to the stars.