A.N. Ok, here's the first chapter! This is a re-written, eventually longer version of my old story No Love Lost. I eventually abandoned and deleted it, and began the long task of re-starting and improving it.
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I picked my way slowly over the ferns, hardly able to see a thing. It was dark, the moon my only light, but enough to create darker shadows. Shadows of dens, a pile of food-and a cat. I couldn't tell whom by sight, so I breathed in the air. It was a scent I hardly dared to recognise, the scent of a cat that I loved and left. Would she ever forgive me for what I did?
I ran away from Iceheart many, many seasons ago. I left my Clan, and all that I had, behind. I left because I couldn't cope any more, because I needed to clear my head. I had loved Iceheart almost since we were kits, in the nursery at the same time. And then, after a long time, I had felt my emotions changing, another cat had taken my affections-the ever busy, ever important Blueshadow. We loved each other in secret for a while, and then came the dreadful news from Blueshadow. She was carrying kits. My kits.
I couldn't cope with that, because something inside my head told me that it was wrong, wrong to keep Iceheart in the dark, to pretend as though she was my mate when she wasn't any more. I left without a word, such a long time ago, because I didn't want to hurt her. Either of them. And, I suppose, I did it to protect myself too. I knew that Iceheart would never forgive me, and probably get me exiled, and I couldn't have stood that. So I took off, never to be seen again. Or maybe not…
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I could hear noises. The sound of a cat trying and failing to keep their pawfalls silent. And a scent, so strange and yet familiar at the same time that I thought I must have been deluding myself.
It smelled so much like Snowfire, but it couldn't be-he left so long ago, and in the middle of leaf-bare too. And difficult leaf-bares they were, no cat could have lived, exposed to the elements, alone. The Clan's had suffered many losses; green cough had been rife among us all. I'd hardly been able to speak to my own friend, Blueshadow. We'd been warriors and then queens together, and we'd helped each other. But then our medicine cat died, and Blueshadow was the only cat in the Clan with an inkling of medicinal knowledge, so she had to take over. Then we lost warriors, and she had to start hunting too. She worked herself into the ground.
I had mourned Snowfire since he left, just knowing instinctively almost that he had to be dead. I had to be a mother to his kits-my kits. He should have been here, to be a father to them. Instead, they only got a grieving mother.
But we were ok, sort of. I looked after them, and they grew up, strong and healthy. And I loved my kits. They were my last reminder of Snowfire, and I was not losing this. No way. They all took good paths, the right ones for them. Three kits I'd had. Two of them warriors; one of them a medicine cat apprentice. Snowheart and Swiftfoot were my two strong warriors, and Ashtail was the medicine cat apprentice. She took to it well, and Blueshadow was soon able to debate coming back to being a warrior. I was so proud of them, my kits.