Okay. Here goes nothing. This is the first chapter of the story.

A screech of pain sounded from the nursery where a queen was having her kits. The queens wrapped their tails around the ears of their own kits.

Thornclaw dug his unsheathed claws into the ground. He looked up at the stars and shut his eyes, wailing silently, "Help her, StarClan! Please…"

Thornclaw looked into the eyes of Ferncloud. "She'll be okay, Thornclaw," Ferncloud said, though the tiniest flicker of doubt crossed her face. "It'll be all right."

Thornclaw heard an exclamation from Jayfeather- "A she-kit! Come on Quailsong, there's just one more to go!"

Thornclaw's heart exploded with joy. A daughter? He popped his head in the nursery to see her.

"Jayfeather, can I look yet?" His mate was curled up in a nest, the last rays of the sun touching her dark pelt, her jaws clenched. "Not yet," Jayfeather said.

Thornclaw went back outside and waiting. He heard a few small groans and then a huge shriek of agony. Thornclaw flipped his head back and wanted to wail with her.

Suddenly the wails cut short. "And a tom! You did well, Quailsong."

Thornclaw shouldered past the bracken and sat down, wrapping his tail around his paws. Jayfeather had given Quailsong some herbs and the two kits were nursing from their mother.

Jayfeather gave Thornclaw a look so knowing he almost forgot that Jayfeather was blind. "I'd better leave you two alone." Jayfeather left then, and there was only four cats in the milk-scented nursery.

Thornclaw licked his mate's head gently. "You did it. We have the most beautiful kits in the world. They'll be the fastest, strongest, the best hunters in the forest."

Quailsong licked his muzzle. "I know."

She gently nudged her she-kit closer to her belly. "What should we name them?"

Thornclaw looked at the she-kit. She was not a dark tortoiseshell, but a pale tortoiseshell, with a pelt colored gray and beige. The last dying rays of the sun dappled her pelt. "Dapplekit," he said with finality.

Quailsong licked her kit's head. "I love that name." She looked at her tom kit, who's pelt was medium length and as white as the moon. "Snowkit," she whispered. "He's the color of snow."

"Snowkit and Dapplekit," Thornclaw murmured.

Poppyfrost, Ferncloud, and Daisy marched in, each holding a kit. Jasminepetal followed slowly after- she would have kits too soon.

Molekit ran up to the kits. "Wow! Two kits! Can I play with the white one? What are their names?"

"They can't play yet," Poppyfrost said gently to her son. "And what are their names?"

"The tortoiseshell is Dapplekit, and the white tom is Snowkit," Quailsong said.

The queens settled into their nests and soon everyone slept. Thornclaw went outside for a minute and looked at the stars.

"Frostfur, Lionheart," he murmured to his dead parents. "Can you hear me? I have kits. I'm a father."

When he was a kit a long time ago back in the old forest, his mother showed him a small space between two stars. "When you go to StarClan, Thornkit," she had said, "that will be your place. Your soul will become a star and shine down from there."

That place, soon after, gained a star the night after his father had been killed in battle. A few moons after his mother had stayed behind in the old territory, another showed beside it- he was sure that was his mother's star.

He looked at the place that would be his and blinked. He blinked again. Was he hallucinating, or did that small space grow- enough for two more stars?

Thornclaw went to the warriors den, went into his nest, and slept. Tomorrow would be a day with his new kits.

Start the comments! I will give small spoilers if you ask, but not any that will ruin the story! Please make the reviews precise!

~BobwhiteQuail8