Gravelfur assured her that her eye was fine, it was just a rather large eye. The only real problem was that she only had one of them, and thusly lacked depth perception. He also warned her to avoid fights, as it was a major weak spot. She was four moons old now, timely for two things, according to Mudmellow. First was freshkill, and second was snow! Swampkit herself was a muddy brown cat, and stuck out in the snow.
"You're lucky to be a Bogclan cat," Grasswhisker had told her when the snow first fell, "Because we can hunt fish even during leaf-bare!"
Thusly for her first winter, Swampkit remained well-fed. She also got to see her nursery-mates turn into apprentices. Frogpaw! Minnowpaw! During the ceremonies, she found another cat to admire. Specklestar had been named after her coat pattern. She was a graceful cat, and very quiet. Her voice was law, however, and very few cats dared question her authority. Fishheart got even cooler in Swampkit's eye when she found out he was the deputy. He was in the minority of cats who were willing to argue with Specklestar. In fact, he was probably the only cat.
Both cats demanded authority just with their presence. Oh yes, how Swampkit wanted to be like them. "I want to be leader when I'm older," she told Mudmellow.
"Oh?"
"Yeah! Specklestar is so cool!"
"If you work hard enough, I'm sure you could become leader. It may take a while though, she still has all nine of her lives."
"I don't care! I'll just wait a long time!"
Mudmellow laughed. "You do that. You're almost old enough to be an apprentice. Gotta start small."
"I am small!" declared Swampkit. "So I've already started!"
Mudmellow licked her affectionately. "You started four moons ago by being born."