A/N: So I'm leaving Warriors Amino and posting all my crud here.

I was Spottedpath Of Flame my profile will still be up, will be inactive by 2018 at the latest.

Written December 19, 2016 for a prompt.

Character(s): Snowkit

Rating: K plus

Genre: Minor Angst? and Family

Warnings: Mentions of loss, bird death by gun.

It's hard to write a deaf character.

DISCLAIMER: Warriors and associated characters belong to Erin Hunter.

The Drag (CT Writ. Prompt 1)

'You felt sharp, slicing as talons dig deeper into your back; vibrating screeches rumbling in your chest as you will your mother to feel your danger. You're lifted up up up, until ground is gone and only up is left...

Then you are jarred, a THUNK felt as pellet hits talons that go through pelt goes through flesh and you go down down down down...

This is how you wake up, each time.'

Snow stood and stretched, his bell feeling clangy dink, and the smell of warm morning sun washing over him. He sat on his haunches and yawned, wide and wide, until he felt his muscles stretch enough and felt the air escape him. He liked morns.

He decided to move around before eats; after all, kind tall mother might be up. He liked tall father too, but he always thought of the long pellet-thunker that stopped the big bird when he saw him. He was thankful bad big bird had been stopped, but the pellet-thunker still scared him.

(But not as much as the drag; the feeling clung to him in sleep, and ghosted his waking hours too often.)

There! There! There! He rumbled his throat as he saw kind tall mother, sitting on soft boulder and tapping her twigs together. A soft thing was being made with them. Snow liked soft things.

The twigs would tap together, and weave string between them, making a big, soft square to nuzzle and cuddle with. When the snows came, kind tall father would stay more, and they'd all share soft squares, while looking at the bright square or the dancing fire (he remembered a cat of fire). Snow loved those times best.

Not that he knew it in all these words; he only knew some words, garbled thoughts he thought in sounds and lights and colors and smells. He meowed, but it was distorted. He couldn't hear it; only felt the mrrrrerrrr in his throat and chest. He knew something was different about him, because his kind tall parents would move their flat muzzles but he didn't understand them. He had sat close to their chests before and felt the rumble-tumble-rrrrrs they made, and connected that it had to do with their mouths, but he had no sense of their meaning.

What was he missing?

Was it what he was missing when bad bird took him suddenly from mother?

Was there something to tell him that bad bird talons were to dig in his fur? To drag him from one home to this other?

(What could have stopped the drag, the pull, the taking of home home-kind-cats-mother-home?)

He let the thought slide away. It didn't matter anyways; he had new home, where he rumbled-rrrerrrd-rumbled in his throat to chest until his whole body was happy feelings, and he knew he was loved, even if he didn't know it in words.

END