Also a request from a while back. I got a request to write about Snowfeather's kits from The Abandoned Warrior. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE ABANDONED WARRIOR. This is just a lil short one considering I never role-played much with these guys, so I'm just letting a little bit of creativity shine and giving them a tiny story. This was going to be kind of sweet and wholesome, and I was not going to include the kits' deaths, but, uh, in the same tone as the actual novel, gotta keep it angsty I guess. (sorry fam)
The three kits had only heard stories of their mother. She was a beautiful she-cat, as their father described. She had silky, long white fur and bright blue eyes, and she was very brave. That was what Lionstripe said when his kits asked about her. For them, it was a strange phenomenon not having a mother.
Frostedkit was used to being called her mother's name. It sometimes happened to slip out of her father's mouth without him realizing it. It made her embarrassed at times. Her father never treated her like she was Snowfeather herself, but she could see the pain in his eyes when he realized his mate was gone.
Frostedkit only felt numb when she thought of her mother. She had never had one in the first place. Her mother had died in kitbirth, and her spirit only lived on in memory through Lionstripe's tongue.
In her early nursery days, she would ask around from FoxClan members and inquire about her mother, but they had barely known Snowfeather. She had died shortly into becoming a member of FoxClan.
Frostedkit was mostly reserved about asking her father for stories. She could tell it pained him, and she would much rather have him be happy. He did his best to keep up a joyful attitude, though even as a young kit, Frostedkit would watch him leave into the forest and hear stories about cats had witnessed him weeping in the woods.
Frostedkit did not like a tom of her own. She rarely had any comprehension of what it meant to fall in love. She knew of parental love from her father. He always visited her and her siblings each day and tried to spend as much time with them as possible. But she lacked the motherly love that she witnessed in the nursery from all the other kits.
Frostedkit didn't feel the need to have a mother. She only wished she could have understood what it meant for once.
She had been having dreams lately, dreams that she did not share with her siblings. With Lightkit's boldness and Pumpkinpaw's stubbornness, she did not want her stories falling into the wrong paws.
Sometimes she would dream she was in a glimmering forest where the stars shone much brighter than before. It was comforting being in this place. She did not quite understand why she ended up here sometime, but she always strangely felt called to the place of the stars and sometimes wished she could stay forever.
Another cat sometimes joined her in these mysterious woods. She looked almost identical to Frostedkit, yet much older. Her eyes looked sad and tired, though they sometimes lit up at the sight of Frostedkit.
Is this the future me? she thought, staring at the beautiful looking she-cat. She rarely spoke, but one day she said, "Take care of him."
Frostedkit tilted her head. "Who? Who are you?"
"Take care of him," she repeated before walking away. "Just as I will take care of you."
Frostedkit began to fear the place of stars after that. It only felt comfortable to be there again after a very cold leaf-bare and bad case of greencough.
In his first few moons in the nursery, it took a while for Pumpkinkit to get settled and feel comfortable around his fellow clanmates. He had been shy at first. Nowhere near as timid as Frostedkit, but still not as bold as Lightkit.
Lionstripe had first taught him how to play all the kit games. His father had explained he had learned all these games as a kit in MoonClan, a clan far far away from FoxClan.
Sometimes the other kits teased Pumpkinkit about not being an official FoxClan cat. He continually had to clarify that the MoonClan his parents were from was not the MoonClan known here as a place of evil clans. But he had to remember there were kittypets that joined FoxClan too. It was already a clan of mixed descents.
Everywhere he went, the clan cats told him how much he resembled his father. It was hard not to when the shade of Pumpkinkit's pelt was the same as Lionstripe's, and their eyes the same bright shade of green. Pumpkinkit liked looking similar to his father. His father was a good warrior, a great father, and a noble tom.
But sometimes Pumpkinkit was jealous that only his sister Frostedkit looked similar to their mother. Pumpkinkit always tried hard to envision his mother. He would shut his eyes tight, trying to conjure up an image of the deceased Snowfeather, but he could only keep imagining Frostedkit. Sometimes he found himself staring at his sister, thinking of his mother, and Frostedkit would notice and run away, feeling embarrassed. Though again, this was most likely due to her timid nature.
Pumpkinkit occupied most of his time playing with Lightkit, and occasionally Frostedkit, in the moments Lionstripe was not in the nursery. He wished his father could be with them all the time, like how the queens were, but without a mother of his own, he could not afford this luxury.
Sometimes at night, when it was cold with the onset of leaf-fall, Pumpkinkit would curl up close to his sisters and imagine his mother's presence. He imagined being nestled up against her soft white fur while she licked the top of his forehead, as he had seen so many other queens do before. No other kits he knew did not have a mother. It seemed so unfair.
Once, he swore he felt a cloud of heat behind him, but when he turned his head, there was nothing there. Lionstripe sometimes spoke of StarClan and spirits, but Pumpkinkit had never once felt his mother's presence. Sometimes he wondered if he had upset her in some way and that was why she never visited him. Lionstripe assured him that this was not the case, for Snowfeather never appeared in his dreams either.
"How can I make her proud?" Pumpkinkit as Lionstripe one day, watching as he almost brought his father to tears.
"Become a good warrior. Live a good life," Lionstripe said.
"That's all?" Pumpkinkit wondered.
"She just wanted you kits to have a normal life, I think. A good life in the clans, where you could become warriors and never know too much suffering," Lionstripe explained.
"Then I'll do that," Pumpkinkit said before retiring to the nursery to sleep.
I'll be the best warrior ever, Mom, he thought. When I become an apprentice, you'll be so proud of me!
He never got the chance to truly show her how he would have lived out his life as a warrior.
Lightkit had always been angry that she had been robbed of a mother. She had fun playing with the other kits in the nursery and sharing stories, but she always envied how they got to curl up with their mothers at night. She was upset when the kits upset their mothers. She would often lecture her friends at how selfish they were being. She would never fight with her mother if she were still alive.
Unlike her brother and sister, Lightkit was curious. As a kit, she had always been asking questions from her father about her mother and the life Lionstripe once shared with her. Her father oftentimes had to tell her to quit asking, as she often grew too antsy.
"There will be another day," Lionstripe said.
Even the other cats she asked about her mother from were little help. Yes, she had been a member for a limited time. She had died giving birth. But at one point, an elder had let slip that she had been missing during the moons of her pregnancy, that it was a surprise even to Lionstripe when Snowfeather had been giving birth.
It always seemed strange to Lightkit. Lionstripe fit the role of a father well. He certainly seemed prepared for the job even if he had not known in advance how his life was going to change.
"You kits were sickly when you were born," the medicine cat, Mistyfall, had once told her. "I was afraid you might die. You were born premature, and we had to scramble for a queen to nurse you all. But like your mother, you were fighters, and you made it."
"Was Snowfeather a fighter?" Lightkit asked Lionstripe after that.
She watched him stiffen. "What do you mean?" he asked, almost angrily.
"Well, Mistyfrost said we were really sick when we born. But we fought, like Snowfeather. What does that mean?"
"I don't know what that means," Lionstripe said as he stalked away.
The questions never seemed to stop with her. Lightkit made her presence known whenever she went, and wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She knew it got on her father's nerves, and her siblings often begged her not to upset him too much. They said again and again that it must hurt him to lose his mate.
"But it hurts me to not have a mother. To have not known her," Lightkit argued.
When the sun was setting in the early evening one day in leaf-fall, Lightkit sat next to her father in camp. He was quiet and ate a piece of prey as Lightkit shuffled her paws in the dirt.
"Why won't you tell me about Snowfeather?" Lightkit complained.
"I..." Lionstripe's voice trailed off. "Well, what is it you want to know? I've already told you the cat she was."
"But you never tell us how you two met, why you came here, what life was like for you..."
"Because it's complicated," Lionstripe answered. "And I don't like talking about it."
"Why won't you tell me?!" Lighkit complained, tears stinging her eyes. "I can't even miss her! I can't even say I love her! I don't know her!"
She watched Lionstripe's shoulders shake.
"I don't know what to tell you!" he exclaimed. "I didn't even know she was pregnant...not until she started giving birth. I became a father and lost my mate in a day."
Lightkit grew quiet, suddenly feeling sorrow for her father.
"Why was she gone? One of the elders said she was gone," Lightkit murmured.
"Complicated reasons."
"Why can't I know?!"
"Because you're a kit!" Lionstripe snapped. "There are a lot of things about Snowfeather's life you shouldn't have to know. There are things I don't even know. She did not have a good life, not until the last few moons of it. I think she was happy with me. I know it. And I think she would have liked to stay in MoonClan if..."
"Why did you leave MoonClan?" Lightkit whispered. "What do you mean 'stay in MoonClan'?"
"Snowfeather isn't a MoonClan cat, like me. She belongs to a clan much worse than the MoonClan that existed in this forest. That identity ruined her reputation most of the time, despite the fact it was never who she truly was. I can't pretend to understand her completely, but I know she was happy for a time, that StarClan blessed her with a bit of joy. I still think it's unfair she died. She seemed so happy when she looked at you kits and smiled her last moments of life. I wish...I wish she could raise you. I think she wanted to be a mother. She loved her own mother more than anything. And I'm sorry I can't give that to you. I can only be a father and try to do what she wanted. We weren't even mates for that long..."
Lightkit was shocked. The information was still vague, but Lionstripe had packed in so much.
"Tell me more," she pleaded.
"No," Lionstripe answered. "There will come a day she can explain it to you yourself. I can't. I won't. Instead, you can be grateful for the life you have, the life she lost to have you. Make her proud. Be bold, be kind, and strive for greatness."
Lightkit was disappointed the talk had come to an end. The sky was beginning to grow dark, and her father was issuing her off to bed. She hoped she would meet Snowfeather in her dreams to speak to her mother for the first time and ask what truly had made up her life.
That night, Snowfeather did not come. But halfway through her apprentice days, Lightkit finally got the chance to ask when she joined Snowfeather forever.
