My father, you see, he loved telling me bedtime stories when I was just a kit. The one which I consider to be his best tale, and perhaps the most morbid in hindsight, went something like this:
Inside a camp, there was a den. Inside the den, there was a nest filled with leaves. Inside the nest, there was also a tiny kit. The kit couldn't sleep, because outside the den there fell a storm, and inside there came, every once in a while, the flash of the lightning bolts and the blast of the thunder.
In the face of so much sound and so many lights, the kitten shrank himself and began meowing with fear. His cries alerted his mother, and she, seeing her nap interrupted, murmured, "Why are you crying, little one?"
And the kitten answered. "The storm is scaring me!"
The mother, who had once been a fearful little kit, too, wrapped her black-and-white tail around her son.
"There is nothing to fear," she told him. "You're safe in here with me."
But when another flash appeared, followed by another blast, the kitten got scared once again. Trembling, he tucked himself against his mother and asked, "Momma, why are there so many lightning bolts? And why are they so loud?"
The mother had to think hard about that answer. Although she knew many things, there were many others that not even queens or warriors like her could explain with certainty. Luckily, that she-cat had known a very old and very wise elder, who taught her many things about the forest, the moon and the stars.
"A long time ago," said then the she-cat to her son. "Someone told me that lightning bolts are Starclan spirits that fall from the sky."
He looked at her with wide eyes. "Really? And why do they fall?"
The mother placed the kit between her legs as she answered him.
"It happens that, when rains are heavy, all of that water makes a few of our ancestors slip right off their hunting grounds. And when they fall, they light up everything around them, with how bright they are. If you look carefully, you can see how the lightning bolts are actually the path left by the Starclan spirits as they make their way to the ground."
The kit's ears jerked up all of a sudden. "And the thunders are the sounds they make when they crash!"
The mother nodded, and once again, the kit began trembling. That time, however, he trembled from the excitement, for although he was fearful, he was also very curious.
"And do our ancestors stay down here?" he whispered. "Can I go and meet them?"
The mother purred loudly as she answered. "Of course you can, little one. You'll get to talk to as many of them as you want. But before you go and find them, you have to let the storm pass, and for that, you need to sleep."
And so, the kit closed his eyes, hugged his mother and soon fell asleep, dreaming of standing before every single one of his ancestors, their spirits forming a sea of infinite stars.
I can't remember all too well the first time that my father told me this story. If I had to guess, I would say that it happened not too long after my mother, Emberspring, died of a lightning strike.