CYRI: Thanks, Fioralba and World of Make Believe! I think that you can guess why...
DISCLAIMER: No way, no how, no what, no where, no why, no who. So, I don't own Warriors.
Two
The walk back to the copse was uneventful, save for their mother's anxious fretting and some stern words from their father.
As Lilac, Chicory and Pine approached their eighth moon, they reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their meeting with Beech. Lilac had even grudgingly agreed to 'keep the mooning to a minimum', as Pine had put it. Considering Holly and Heather's past relationships, it didn't seem wise to stir up unnecessary tension between them by making Holly feel she owed any debt, especially with the cats who they shared the copse with being so hostile.
When Windflower returned from a fight with one of the cats late one night, limping and lapping feebly at a bleeding shoulder wound, Chicory began to feel slightly worried.
She shifted in her nest so that neither of her ears were pressed against the moss, and pricked them, painfully aware that she wasn't supposed to be awake. But her father was hurt - what could she do but listen?
"Pine?" she hissed, mew low. "Lilac?"
There was no response. They were asleep, Chicory thought resentfully, she should have been able to tell that from her littermates' slow, heavy breathing.
"You can't keep fighting them, Windflower!" Chicory's attention turned back to her parents - Holly's mew was anxious, but was edged by impatience, as though they had had this conversation many times before.
Windflower's answer was abrupt, changing the subject. "He brought a kit."
Heart beating fast, Chicory silently willed her siblings to breathe a little more quietly as Holly lowered her mew.
"They have kits?" She sounded incredulous, as though she believed that such cats would naturally be cursed with the inability to bear offspring. "How old?"
"Around eight, nine moons," replied the brown tom. "There was only one - a little tortoiseshell - but for all I know there could be more."
"What kind of a parent would take their kit into a battle?" Holly demanded. Chicory imagined her mother's yellow eyes narrowing.
There was a humourless snort from Windflower. "Oh, I don't know that he invited his kit along. Quite honestly, I felt almost sorry for the cat when this little furball charged out of the bushes. More of a hindrance to him than a help," he added.
Pine snuffled and turned over in his sleep as Holly and Windflower lapsed into silence.
"But you're hurt." Chicory was surprised by the tenderness in the tortoiseshell-and-white she-cat's sudden mew - Holly was not renowned for being a soft-spoken cat. "I think-"
But what Holly thought, they never knew. Chicory sensed her sudden alarm as she broke off, and swivelled her own black-tipped ears forward and back, trying to pinpoint the cause.
A great rushing sound from the direction of the loch reached her ears, just as a crashing wave of fear-scent from Holly and Windflower hit her.
"The loch... What's happening to the loch?" Holly's mew was squeaky - terrified.
Windflower let out a thunderous growl. "Look - down there! Twolegs!"
"What are they doing?"
"Never mind that!" snarled Windflower. "The water will flood this copse soon, the way it's going - get the kits out, quick!"
Chicory scrambled to her paws, forgetting about feigning sleep. "I'm awake," she announced breathlessly. "What do you want me to do?"
"Run!" ordered Windflower, shaking a disorientated Lilac awake before starting on Pine. "Run, with your mother!"
"Come on," urged Holly, paws kneading the ground.
Scared by the fear-scent pulsing off of both her parents, Chicory hared off into the heart of the copse with her mother beside her, vaguely aware of the wind - or was it the overflowing loch? - rushing in her ears, and Lilac's paws pounding on the leaf-strewn ground behind them.
"I can walk!" Pine's frustrated mew sounded from somewhere behind them, but Chicory didn't turn to check on her brother.
An unfamiliar cat was yowling. "Get to higher ground!"
A thrill of fear coursed down Chicory's spine as she realised that she was heading straight toward the enemy cats' den on the other side of the copse, but her terror was unfounded - a faint scent of illness bathed her muzzle for a heartbeat before she saw that their den had already been abandoned.
The trees thinned until the three fleeing she-cats had left behind the copse altogether. All around, Chicory could see cats - more cats than she had ever thought the world could hold - dashing up the sparse hillside.
"Mother!" Chicory heard the terrified squeak of a kit and her paws slowed.
"Chicory!" screamed Holly, but the pale grey-striped she-cat wasn't listening. She darted through the crowd, quick as a fish, and deftly scooped up the tiny scrap before racing on to try and rejoin her mother and sister.
The kit had frozen with fear. "Who are you?" His voice shook with fright. "You're not my mother!"
"No, but I am saving your life," Chicory meowed grimly through a mouthful of kit-fur.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a pale brown tomcat gently nudging his mate, a grey-blue she-cat, up the steep hill. Her belly was round with kits, and she was predictably finding the journey particularly hard going.
Chicory's pads tingled with unease as she remembered what Beech had said - that Heather had been expecting kits. The young she-cat wondered if Heather would be able to make it out on such slowed paws, or whether the kits had already been born and would be lost like the one dangling from Chicory's own jaws.
With these dark thoughts clouding her head, the striped she-cat pounded on, only managing to catch up with Holly and Lilac when she found that the majority of cats had stopped running.
"Chicory!"
Chicory almost dropped the kit she was holding as a tortoiseshell-and-white shape flung herself at her and started frantically licking.
"Holly, I'm fine!" insisted Chicory as audibly as she could, ducking out of the way and trying not to harm the kit.
Lilac peered out interestedly from behind her mother. "How come you've got a kit?"
"Um..." mumbled Chicory. Choosing to ignore the question, she dropped the kit at her paws and asked, "What's your name?"
The ginger tabby kit remained rigid, seeming too frightened to move. Eventually, he managed to squeak out, "Snapdragon."
"Okay." Chicory forced herself to breathe. "Do you know what your mother's name is? Or... or you father? Or your littermates?"
Snapdragon's green eyes clouded in confusion for a heartbeat. "There's just me and Marigold..." he revealed quietly. "But she's gone..."
"It's okay." Holly surprised every cat present by giving Snapdragon a tender lick on the head. "We can find your mother."
Raising his tiny, ginger-furred head hopefully, Snapdragon's eyes glowed with hope. Chicory felt the first spark of calm she had felt since Holly had seen the loch overflowing.
"I'm Chicory," she introduced herself to the tom kit. "This is my sister, Lilac, my mother, Holly, and..." The end of her sentence trailed off.
She exchanged a look of horror with Lilac as panic gripped them like a claw.
Windflower and Pine had not reappeared.