Hi, guys. This is my first challenge for a forum called Children of the Shadows.

The challenge explains the backstory of your forum OC. Mine's Birchkit.

Hope you all enjoy!

My Past

"If I ever knew that I would one day have to give up my kit, I would have looked for a way to change that. I loved him more than anything. He didn't deserve to live the life I've had. He deserved more than life in a cold, dark alley, more than the constant fear of starvation, more than the isolation I've experienced for seasons on end.

That was my sole burden to bear.

I remember that I night I took him away from that place. I ran for so long that I believed I'd faint with him still clasped in my jaws.

The sounds of his mewling still visit my dreams.

I almost broke down when he started that night because I knew that I could not give him what he wanted. The only thing that kept me going was my desire to see him safe. I'd heard that there were others within the woods and on the hills. Some cat had told me they were monsters when he had seen them. Yet, being stubborn, I didn't believe him.

In my mind, he was nothing but a fool.

In my mind, they were the only thing that could protect him.

I left that cat without so much a a backward glance in his direction as I headed into the trees.

I didn't stop at all. Not for rest or food for us both. He was only a quarter-moon old and still needed me there, for his sake. But I couldn't risk it. I had no idea what lay in wait in the shadows of that place. Yet I kept running. Finding those cats would be the only chance he had. I had to take it for him. I searched the entire area and still saw no sign of them. All I saw was a break in the tree line. The tom who had told me of the "monsters" did not say where they were. Perhaps the fool had stayed silent out of fear. I raced for it with abandon, with my kit still swinging from my jaws.

The green expanse definitely did not match my thought of it. To describe it in a word: daunting.

Off in the distance, I could only just make out a dip in the ground which lay in the shelter of a cluster of bushes. My first thought shocked even me, I'll tell you. I'd thought for a moment that some wild predator lived in that place. Sometimes I still do. But I shook it away and pushed down my fears, for him.

As I moved closer, I began to hear voices sounding from within. Closer, louder. Closer, louder. Closer and closer until I forced myself to stop.

That was when I left him, set lying on the ground and mewling in a fit of fear and need that I wished I wouldn't have experienced."

"Do you think he's all right, Fox? Wherever he is."

"Yes, Clover; I do. Now are we going to go hunting or not?" He smiled and rose to his paws, exiting the drafty barn while I stayed behind in silence, looking up fondly at the white clouds the rolled across the sky through a high gap in the wall.

"Come on, slowpoke! The prey isn't going to catch itself!" Clover called from somewhere outside.

I got to my paws and went out to meet him, a smile on my face.

Birch, wherever you are, know that I love you. Forever and always. . .