AN: This is IC's newest Collab story! We put a lot of hard work into this, and while everyone collborates together to edit it, someone writes it first. If you like the writing style of a certain chapter, be sure to check out the main author's stories!

Main author of this chapter/prologue: One Twinkle in a Million

Prologue

I remember it so clearly, even now so many seasons later. The orange leaves were crinkling in the wind, blowing to the ground like dust one by one. The faint shriek of a falcon echoed throughout the sky. A breeze blew past my ears, tickling the tips. I could smell on the air the frozen moons to come, and the stone beneath my paws —hardened by the mountain— felt gelid to the touch. My nose burned with cold as I inhaled deeply, lost in the scent and sights of home...

"Hey! What are. You. Doing? Runt!"

They often spoke like this to me; afraid of the curse I would put on them if they spoke to me too much, afraid of a tiny little to-be.

"Pay. Attention!"

"Shush, Beetle," a ginger she-cat murmured, flicking his muzzle with her slender tail. This was Red sun hanging over sky — my beloved mentor— who had spoken. She was the only one who accepted be, the only one who didn't believe in those stupid, superstitious rumors.

I loved her like I would love a mother; after all, she was more of a mother to me than my real one was. She didn't have vacant, blank eyes and unresponsive moments. She was full of life, she was comforting, she was everything a kit could wish for as a parent.

She was Red.

"Anyways, we're only here to hunt," a silver tabby meowed. "The sooner we get it over with, the better."

"Straight to the point as always, Fish," a pale brown tom responded with a twitch of his whiskers. Amusement shone in his eyes.

Then all of a sudden they were ignoring me. Again.

Then, an unexpected, brisk current of wind caught our attention. All five of us looked up immediately, pelts bristling and muscles tense.

It was a hawk, we saw, a hawk that had already caught some prey and wasn't going to attack us, but why was it flying so low? There was a white bundle in its talons; a hare, one of those special white ones that came out during the Time of Frozen Water, my naïve apprentice side told me. But apparently Red thought differently.

The ginger she-cat narrowed her yellow eyes. "Is that— no, it can't be!" she looked horrified, as the rest of us —at least, the three prey-hunters, since no one wanted to meet my gaze— exchaged confused glances.

What happened next happened in a blur. Red had taken off, the only sign that she'd ever been there a cloud of sand and dirt that took its time settling back down. I had never seen a cat so fast in me life, nor do I think I will ever see one like that again.

I started to panic. Red was the only cave-guard of this hunting group! If she left, all of us would be exposed to predators like other hawks, eagles, and falcons. The three other cats shot rabbit-swift glances at me; me, Red's to-be, a cave-guard in training. I was supposed to know exactly what to do in situations like here. I had been taught, over and over again what to do.

So why did my mind refuse to work?

Shame burned my pelt. At that moment, all I wanted to do was run, run and follow Red and escape these stares that lasted less than a heartbeat.

If I left, I know what would happen. When I came back they would beat me. They would beat me and call me names, forever brand me as the useless coward.

But still I ran away.

It took a long time before I even saw a ginger speck; Red was still following the hawk, unaware of anything but her hot pursuit. The hawk screeched, but was too greedy to let go of its bundle.

The sight of my mentor renewed my energy, and with a new burst of speed I had passed Red and spring onto the hawk's back. It shrieked once again, flapping its wings wildly and smacking me in the face, but I stuck with it as we fell and even after we hit the ground. I sank my fangs into its bony neck, tasting the metallic, salty tang of blood on my tongue and tried not to recoil away from the squirming dappled brown monster.

I'm not really sure what happened afterwards. I was dizzy from pain —in both my legs and my head, though to this day I'm not sure why— and my vision was fuzzy. I could only see a ginger blob nosing a smaller white blob away from the bloodstained feathers, and my brain didn't even stop to wonder what the white thing was. But then it turned its head to me, eyes squeezed shut, and for a split second opened them — big, bright, emerald orbs that filled up my sight and were the last things I saw before collapsing of exhaustion.

Later I would learn that the white creature I'd saved was a kit; a kitten, almost perfectly white with the faintest silver tabby stripes I'd ever seen, and those moon-big eyes that seemed to bore straight into my soul. They called her Ice, Ice falling from the sky, and they explained that it was because she kept whimpering in her sleep about how her mother was going to name her "Icefall". And what struck me most, even more than the green eyes, was how she looked disconcertingly like her.

Little did I know this would be a huge ...problem... later on. But that doesn't matter now. My name, you, ask? Smolder —Smoldering embers of dead flames. But that is not of importance either.

All you need to know is that this was the beginning of a cold season that seemed to last forever.