She was there the first time he panicked.
They were only a few moons old and they were play-fighting. Fur colours clashed, kit teeth were barred. Back paws attempted to push and they rolled. It was all colours and blur until somehow they got untangled and rolled opposite ways, laughing and mewling the whole time.
It was Foxkit who got to his paws first. He was ready for a rematch; in which he would practice hissing once more. But then he looked around and realized he wasn't in the warm, safe interior of the nursery any longer.
Warriors bustled around him, muttering about things he couldn't even begin to comprehend. He spun on his paws, looking for Echokit and sighing with relief when he found her relatively close-by, gray and white fur glistening in the sunhigh light
"Echokit! Where are we?" he asked. She knew everything, she had told him that. So he was a bit discouraged by the answer he received.
"I, um, I'm not sure," she replied, giggling with embarrassment.
That's when the fear set in. He felt it heating up in his paws like a stone left in the sun on a hot day. He looked around and couldn't see any cat he recognized except for the blue-eyed cat before him. His breath got shallower. They were doomed. No one would find them. They were out in the open. Dead meat.
"Echokit…I don't feel so good." He was unfamiliar with this feeling of panic and intense fear. He never had to feel that. He was always safe.
He looked down at his ginger paws, afraid to look his friend in the eyes. How mouse-brained did he look right now? But the tom-kit couldn't help himself, because the sky was pushing down on him and the ground was sinking below him.
The she-kit must have realized because she was quick to stop the games. "Foxkit, it's okay, calm down. We're fine. We're in camp, I know it."
Foxkit had to repeat her words to himself several times to get himself to truly believe it. And when he did believe it, he was able to look into her eyes, and somewhat absorb the calm radiance they gave off.
"Trust me."
She was there when he couldn't sleep.
Foxkit's eyes had popped open around moonhigh, and he didn't feel quite right. Although he was curled tightly into his mother's belly, he could see into the next nest, where Echokit slept against her mother.
He had awoken from weird dreams of being dragged into that horrid camp once again, and this time there were so many cats that he couldn't see past them. It was dark and he could hear loud claps of thunder above him. Rain pelted down on his fur and he was screaming for Echokit, but she couldn't hear him, because she never came.
He stared at her sleeping form. Fur relaxed, eyes fluttered shut. Her tail covered her nose and her back rose and fell softly. Foxkit told himself that she was here. Echokit was hear because he could see her and he didn't have to scream to find her. He tried to breathe in and out along with her.
Echokit is here. We're friends. She'd never leave me. And I'd never leave her.
Somehow, eventually, he fell back into unconsciousness.
She was there when he got a thorn in his paw and was filled with that same anxious feeling he had got the day they got "lost". Yowling and crying, she came with him and his mother to the medicine cat's den where it was removed easily and almost painlessly. He had thought he was dying, but Echokit told him a funny story and he forgot all about it.
She was there when he refused to eat his mouse because he could have sworn to StarClan that it was still alive, that the tail had totally moved, and he feared it crawling on his insides if he ate it. Needless to say, the warrior who had caught it was a bit upset to hear what he believed was an insult, but Echokit defended Foxkit. She always did.
Then there was that time that they were up after their nesttime. They hid in the back of the den because their mothers were so absorbed in conversation that they didn't really care at that moment that they were up.
"Foxkit, why are you always so scared of things?" Echokit had asked innocently.
The tom-kit in question kneaded at the ground with his paws. "I…I don't know. It's just that everything is scary. We're never safe."
She looked him in the eyes and he knew that this eye contact was too important to break.
"We're protected by the ones that love us, Foxkit. And I'm going to protect you."
When he heard that, when he heard the one she-kit he wanted to hear that from, Foxkit smiled. That helped, a little bit.
In fact, it helped a lot.
