AN: Hey everyone. This is a little darker than what I
As always, any characters involved are the property of Erin Hunter.
Premature
By Steel Plated Bambi
Life wasn't fair, he'd decided.
The pounding rain of the day before had left the soil damp and loose, and his claws sank easily into the earth as he restlessly clenched and unclenched his paws. Loose soil also meant that the task of her burial had been an easy one – physically, at least. But the pain of her loss was felt like a weeping sore throughout the clan.
The mourners had already been here today. Almost every cat in the clan came to pay their respects, sigh a prayer, shed a tear for her. She had been well loved, without exception. No one could imagine how the life of one so young could be snuffed out so quickly, and they came in droves to lament the injustice of it all with their neighbours.
Now, however, only one mourner remained by her resting place, as he had throughout that hated day and into the long night. His head was bent in grief, and he barely moved, nearly as still as the silent fallen one he kept company with.
It was a lovely spot they'd picked out for her. He thought she would've liked it had she still been alive. Moonlight filtered down through the treetops and cast a glow on the scene, touching the surrounding foliage to silver. A single sweet-smelling flower rested on the earthy mound, the tiny pink bud still closed in remembrance of a young life cut short.
Spottedleaf...
He clung to his last memory of her - not as she had been when he'd found her behind the nursery wall, split navel to nosetip, with dark blood staining her tortoiseshell fur - but as she had last looked, how she had smelled, when she had bid him good bye for the last time. She had been sweet as the herbs she worked with on a day-to-day basis, her scent lingering like the intoxicating scent of catmint in his nostrils. He wanted to remember her like that for always – her pretty amber eyes alive with warmth, and her fur smelling like herbs, not like coppery tang of blood, as it had the day she died.
His eyelids slid open a fraction, taking in the darkness of the forest around him. He knew he ought to go back to camp and join his fellow warriors in slumber, as he had only dreamed of doing for moons on end. Yet he felt that he couldn't lift his head if he tried, and was as exhausted as though he'd run from sunningrocks to the moonstone and back in a single afternoon. In light of recent events, of her parting...that all seemed so insignificant now.
Why did he feel so strongly about her death? He knew the answer, but it had taken him far too long to realize just what she meant to him. Only now, when they were seperated by a physical barrier of earth and soil, did he understand that he'd never wanted them to be apart. And now it was too late to do anything about it.
"I never told her..." his voice was hoarse and cracked from disuse, and he could barely choke out the words. Never told her that he'd wanted her. Needed her. Loved her more than he'd ever thought possible. And now she was gone, before he'd even had the chance to realize that his apprentice's crush had been something stronger all along. He wanted to scream the unfairness of it to his warrior ancestors, who seemed cold and distant in the dark skies above.
Oh Spottedleaf...why did you have to leave me so soon?
The stars offered him no answers.