Main Author: the wolfs poet

It wasn't very long after Smolder had recovered, and the Time of Frozen Water had only grown worse; blizzards had become all the more frequent and, in effect, every critter had all hidden in their burrows to escape the cold.

"Why exactly does all the prey in the mountains decide to run into their burrows when it gets just a little icy?" Smolder meowed angrily.

"Because they're all beetle-brains that don't realize the Tribe needs to be fed!" Red replied, sharing the same indignancies as her apprentice. With that statement they both looked at each other, then to the pitiful caught-prey pile —which consisted of a mouse, barely the same length as its own tail, a sparrow hardly worth its own feathers, and a measly hare with ears the size of its own thigh. Smolder gave vent to an exasperated sigh.

"I guess we should take the hare," he said meekly, although they both would have preferred a bigger piece of prey. As Red bent down to pick the chosen piece of prey a rather familiar small white kit blundered into Smolder, the both of them tumbled for a moment before settling in a cloud of dust.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Ice that falls from sky squeaked as she scrambled to her paws. Her voice sounded like the sweet song of a robin when it celebrated the Time of Freed water.

He wished she was really a robin and that the ice had really thawed.

"That's all right." Smolder said, getting up and shaking himself. He was about to say something else, but angry yowling from the other side of the cave stopped him.

"You won't take her away from me!" It was Dove, her fur spiked up and her eyes wide. As if she were fighting, she swiped at any cat that was near her and continued to shriek about her kit being taken. Smolder raced over, pushing aside the cats that crowded around his mother. He put a tentative paw forward.

"Dove?" he meowed softly, which was responded to with deft blows on his muzzle. His body was racked with a moment of paralyzing shock towards his mother's actions but they were soon swept away as his mother drew him in with her tail, "Smolder, I told you to stay in the cave!" Dove hissed.

"But Dove, we are in the cave..."

Dove leaned in close.

"Smolder, now's not the time to be beetle-brained. Go back to the cave, where it's safe!" she hissed, pushing him closer to what she thought was the entrance to the cave and swiping the closest cat, which —to his satisfaction— just so happened to be Beetle.

Dove's endless yowling and 'fighting' continued on until sundown, when one cat —Snow that covers rock, Smolder recognized— worked up the courage to say, "Hare's gone, Dove! She isn't coming back, you can stop fighting now." The crazy she-cat's eyes widened in surprise.

"Tell me she's not!" she begged, but Snow only gave a solemn shake of his head before turning around and padding away, leaving Dove to break down in agonized wails when suddenly a white-silver figure padded up to her and nosed her flank.

"Dove?" Ice asked gently. Smolder tried to catch the she-kit's gaze but couldn't, though he saw nothing but pure, innocent compassion in her eyes. The conversation between his mother and Ice was just background noise as he walked back to where Red was sitting by the caught-prey pile.

"You kept it, didn't you Red?" Smolder asked. The limp body of the hare they had chosen that morning landed with a soft thud in front of Smolder's paws.

"Go give it to Dove, she'll need it." This was less of a suggestion and more of an order. Smolder had lost his appetite earlier that morning when he failed to calm his mother, so it seemed Red kept the hare. He looked back towards where Dove and Ice were talking. Moon was shooing Ice away and leading Dove back to her nest. Smolder padded over to Dove cautiously as others glared at him from everywhere, and set the hare down in front of his mother.

"Oh, what's this? Has my kit decided to bring me something to eat? How nice of him!" Dove said cheerfully, reaching out to nuzzle his ear. She bit into the hare. How anyone could change from fighting to cheerful Smolder did not know, all he knew was that his mother was safe and fed. Satisfied, he turned around and started to walk away but heard a cough and paused. His mother was fine, he was sure of that, but it didn't hurt to check, right? Indecision came through him in waves until her finally turned around. There was blood on the moss, staining the once-green tendrils scarlet, and for a moment he thought that it was the hare Dove had just bitten from, but the diluted scarlet trails of saliva that dripped from Dove's mouth were disconcerting.

"Dove, did you just..." he was about to ask about the blood, but the words left him, and seeing his mother eat as if nothing happened comforted him slightly. He spun around to leave once again, but—

"Dove!" Moon's sharp meow made him freeze. The she-cat was cornering on him angrily, hissing and spitting and circling him as Dove sank her teeth into the flesh once again.

"What did you do to her? What did you do to her?" the gray and white she-cat demanded, teeth bared and lip curl. She snarled, bloodlust shining in her eyes

"I don't— I didn't—"

"Stoneteller!" Moon's voice rose into a high-pitched wail as she raced out of the den after another sickly cough from Dove. Smolder was left alone with his mother and he tried to put a comforting paw on her shoulder. He could feel the tremors shuddering through her whole body.

"It's going to be okay, mother..." he mewed, feeling like a kit all over again.

Another cough wracked Dove's body, but she found the strength to lift her head and pull back the corners of her mouth to reveal red berries.

Night-seeds?!

Smolder pushed away his shock and managed to ask, "Who, Dove? Who did this to you?"

He got a raspy croak in reply: ''Me."

This time he managed only to say one word, one question: "Why?"

Dove did not answer. Her eyes opened fully, showing her beautiful amber eyes. Smolder found that he couldn't look away.

"Smolder... oh, my precious Smolder..."

Smolder's fur stood on end. This sounded like Dove... The real Dove, the Dove from before... Her voice was full of pure mother's love, not the fake cheery affection he'd had to endure all these moons. A fresh wave of pain hit him as he recalled the last day his mother had been sane, the day after Hare was taken; she's pulled him close, pulled him tight, and he could feel her love coursing through her into him.

"Dove..."

"Smolder... take care of Hare. Take care of your younger sister... just promise me..."

Raw pain was in her words, real pain, and it hurt him as well. He broke eye contact with her —how could he bear to see his own orange eyes reflected in her pleading amber?— and whispered an hoarse answer.

"I will. I promise," he said, and in his heart he vowed that it would happen. He would find Hare one day and take care of her like a good brother. For Dove.

He could feel the awry, ragged gasps for breath fall into a rhythm that grew softer and softer before dying out completely. Smolder wanted to say something, anything, but there was nothing except for the constantly whistling outside of the cave.

Warmth was still in Dove's pelt, and he pushed his muzzle into her flank, feeling wetness on his eyes. Salty liquid began to roll down his muzzle, plopping onto Dove's still, lifeless body. He'd only heard of these once, when he was young, in elders' tales; they were called tears, weren't they? And they were not shed unless there was grief, unbearable grief...

And suddenly something in Smolder clicked. Red's jaws, holding on to the poisoned rabbit on its stomach, where the deadly berries apparently were... Red!

He sunk even lower into Dove's mossy nest, listening to the quiet chatter outside of the kit-mothers' den, and caught three words that confirmed his fears words that meant the end of the world:

"Red's been poisoned."