Chapter three: A new life

Lillypaw ran until she collapsed with exhaustion miles outside the city. Her paws were scuffed and bleeding. Her long coat was no longer silky, but slick with mud and slime. Her lungs were heaving from her non-stop run. She was hungry, tired and felt like her heart would never fully heal. Her stomach churned and at first she thought it was from sadness, but then she retched and threw up the small amount of food in her stomach.

Coughing miserably, Lillypaw dragged herself along the dirt road she was traveling across, feeling rain starting to slap her head. Tears continued to run down her face. She had never felt more hurt in her life. Finally, she found a shallow dugout on the side of the road and collapsed inside of it. She curled up into a ball, clutching her tail. The dugout did little to prevent the rain splatter her weak body. She pressed her paws to her face and felt something in her paw. She looked and saw that she was still clutching the spike from Tugger's collar in her paw. The skin on her pad was literally worn away from holding it so tight. She placed it beside her. Even though she knew her heart would never forgive Tugger (she refused to think of him as Rum Tum Tugger, it made her sick) for what he did, she still wanted to remember him for the good times they shared as kittens.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the combination of the rain dripping on her and the continued lurching of her stomach made it impossible.

* * *

The next several weeks were hell for Lillypaw. She was throwing up every single day and she couldn't hunt properly, because she had exhausted herself from running non-stop for a full day and the lack of proper sleep at night. It was difficult for her to breath evenly now; her lungs were worn out from the long run. Her fur was now hopelessly tangled and ratted, because she was too weak to think about hygiene. The worst was lack of water. The only thing she could do was lick rainwater out of puddles and suck the dew off plants in the morning.

One day, Lillypaw stumbled across a small pond a few meters away from her dugout. She gulped down as much water as she could, nearly dunking her whole head in the water. Then she stopped and looked at herself. She hadn't looked at herself properly since she had left the junkyard and was stunned with what she saw. Her face was lined and ravaged, like a cat four times her age. Her face was so dirty; she couldn't distinguish the black spot from the rest of her face. But something truly surprised her. From the lack of food, she had expected herself to be skinny, but if anything she saw that she had gained weight. He belly had swollen outward and her bust was sagging. Tentatively, Lillypaw touched her chest and cringed; it felt as if she was bruised. But then she saw a white fluid flowing out of her breast and her brain seemed to explode.

Everything was starting to come together. Being sick all the time, the extreme weakness, the fact that her belly was almost as big as Jennyanydots's and now she was producing milk. She was pregnant; with Tugger's kittens. Lillypaw was stunned, all the queens had told her she couldn't get she was pregnant because she was so young. She had never heard of a queen becoming pregnant just after becoming an adult. She had no idea how to raise kittens of her own, but the thought of returning to the junkyard made her feel sick again.

"Okay," she thought to herself, "Don't panic. The first thing is to figure out how far along I am. All right, the ball was about six weeks ago, so if most kittens are born at two months, I still have at least two weeks. That's enough time to work out what to do."

Content with her logic, but still more shaken and scared than she would admit, she weakly walked back to her dugout and to her delight she found that a small field mouse had died just outside the entrance. She ate it slowly, savoring each bite. Suddenly she cringed. She had just felt a hard kick in her belly. She smiled. Her babies were kicking.

With a yawn, Lillypaw curled up inside of her dugout and slept contentedly for several hours, but by nightfall she was in complete agony. Her belly was pulsing and contracting and she realized she was going into labor. She racked her brain, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong with her math, then wondered whether or not they were being born prematurely.

"It doesn't matter now!" she screamed at herself, internally, "What matters now is praying to the everlasting cat that these kittens will be okay. Now pull yourself together and push!"

* * *

Several long and exhausting hours later, Lillypaw was out in front of her dugout, burying the bodies of two of her kittens. She cried weakly as she said goodbye to her babies, who never had a chance to see the world. She knew the lack of care she had given herself was to blame, but there was nothing she could do differently now. All she could do was head back into the dugout and care for her one living kitten.

The little ball of gray and black fur was curled in the center of the dugout, but it came to life as Lillypaw curled around it, mewing weakly. She picked her kitten up and laid her by her breast and the kitten sucked greedily. Lillypaw smiled at her baby, the little queen truly was beautiful. She had a black body, a long silky gray tail, a fluffy gray mane with a small curl on her forehead, gray anklets and armbands and a small black spot covering her right eye. She was small, but not so small that she couldn't live a normal life. Her little paws scrabbled at her mothers' chest as she drank her fill of milk. Lillypaw stroked the kittens' fluffy mane and sighed as she thought of her life at the junkyard.

"Maybe someday," she whispered to her kitten, "You'll go back there."

The little queen yawned and Lillypaw lay her down next to her. She fell asleep almost immediately, but Lillypaw did not sleep for she had an important job to do, name her kitten.

Finally, the perfect name came to her and she leaned close to the kitten's ear.

"Asteria," she whispered, and then fell asleep, dreaming about what the future would hold.