Reviews:
Each time I post a new chapter, I will answer five of the most interesting reviews. So, here are the ones for now:
Berryfur: thank you for reviewing, and I appreciate your suggestions. I understand that the names are a little different, but I like names like that and I'm sure that many readers will too.
Indigo Claws: like I told Berryfur; yes the names are a little different, it makes the story more interesting. Erin Hunter's warrior names are getting weirder and weirder too. Like Havenpelt, for example. Do cats know what a haven is?
Red-gold and lavender shards of light filtered gently down from the auburn and blue of the dawning morn, bathing the waving moor grass is misty light. The usually silvery-blue lake water was now cloaked in rippling black-and-gold, like molten fire.
Scarlet beams of light poked through tiny holes in the dusty, thorn-studded walls of the WindClan nursery.
A sleek, ginger-and-grey tom slipped into the nursery, stepping lightly through the mossy nests. Heatwhisker gently set his leaf-bundle of herbs on the leafy carpet of the nursery and placed his tail-tip on the panting queen who lay panting at his paws.
He softly ran his paws along her rippling flank, and she looked up at him with wide, pleading amber eyes. Heatwhisker murmured softly to the tabby queen, and she licked up an herb, to exhausted to wince at the bitter taste.
"Heatwhisker?" A lithe, silvery form appeared in the door of the nursery, her grey-blue eyes filled with surprise and question.
"Swiftbrook's kits are coming." Heatwhisker confirmed, not turning away from the laboring she-cat. "Get the stick, will you?"
Pepperfog dipped her head and ducked out of the nursery, her sleek tail waving behind her.
Heatwhisker felt a nervous prick his paws as he looked down at the shuddering flank of the knitting queen. He could clearly remember her last kitting, though he had been only just earned his full name at the time. Three kits had been birthed, everyone of them dead.
"StarClan help her." He muttered as Pepperfog returned, a thick, sturdy black stick clutched in her teeth. The medicine cat apprentice placed the stick down by Swiftbrook's open mouth.
"Bite on the stick. It helps the pain." Pepperfog murmured softly, tapping the stick toward her mouth. Swiftbrook clamped her sharp white fangs onto the stick, sinking them deep into the wood. Her amber eyes rolled back so that the whites flashed like crescent moons in the scarlet-gold light of the bracken den.
"The first one's coming!" Heatwhisker whispered, his mew strained. He glanced nervously at Pepperfog, who sat calmly by Swiftbrook's head whispering soothing words into the silver spotted queen's ear.
Swiftbrook wailed as the first kit slid out onto the moss. Pepperfog leapt into action, and her glowing white fangs flashed as she nipped the birth sac. She rasped her tongue over the shivering white scrap, licking the kit's fur the wrong way.
Another wail sliced through the den as the second kit slid out. Again, Pepperfog showed her fangs and sliced quickly through the birth sac. As she did, it struck Heatwhisker just how ferocious his apprentice could've been, if things had been different.
He was snapped from his thoughts as the third kit fell onto the moss. Leaving Pepperfog to tend to it, he ran his paws over the queen's spastic, rippling flank. Pepperfog glanced up at him, and he gave her a brief nod.
"There's one more." As Swiftbrook's body jerked again in the final spasm, Heatwhisker felt his panic ebbing. A weight lifted off his chest as the final kit slithered onto the mossy floor. Pepperfog nipped the sac, and Heatwhisker gently placed the four bundles by their mother's side, where they clamped their tiny pink mouths onto her teats.
Swiftbrook wrapped herself around her four tiny kits and drifted into unconsciousness.
Heatwhisker sat back, watching the little scraps as they nursed. "Oh...Pepperfog. Have Sweetpaw or Rabbittail get fresh bedding for Swiftbrook."
Pepperfog purred and headed for the opening of the nursery, the black stick in her jaw. She swerved just in time as a ginger and white tom forced his way inside, his eyes stretched wide in fear.
"What happened? Is she okay?" The tom demanded, tripping over the moss nests in his haste to get to Swiftbrook. Heatwhisker flicked his tail over the ginger tom's mouth.
"She's asleep. Foxflame, these are your kits."
I hope you all liked it! Please leave reviews, I love any kind of criticism, but please don't be rude in your reviews. Please refrain from using any kind of offensive language, but other than that, have at it. Thanks for reading!