Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mosspaw shivers, her sleek RiverClan fur bristling in the harsh leaf-bare winds. But still, she does not leave nor move.

She'll get her warrior ceremony tomorrow, however she hovers over the graves of siblings she never knew, siblings that might not even be hers.

Sighing, she presses her muzzle to the grave marked 'Mistykit, Daughter of Graypool and Rippleclaw' and knows it isn't right.

The clan used to give her curious stares, and that used to bother her.

The clan still give her curious stares, but she now pretends that it doesn't, instead of running back to Graypool, tears in her bright blue kitten-eyes.

The vibrancy of her turquoise eyes had never faded, even as her spirit had.

Willowbreeze has curled her tail around her only niece and only apprentice once long ago, but now she waits for Oakheart to come collect her, glancing over at her old mentor's grave as she awaits her new one.

She gently places down a small and rather faded rose atop her sisters grave, leaning over that to place another on her brothers, wiping the snow off of the small dirt mounds.

Mosspaw then places some daisies on top of Swankit, Morningkit and Splashkit's graves. She'd spent hours looking for suitable plants.

(Suitable plants for pseudo littermates she'd never known or met.)

She blinks snow and tears out of her eyes, swiping at her frozen muzzle as she sniffs, and then shakes snow out of her pelt. It only takes seconds to resettle on her fur, and she knows she should go back to camp.

But she can't bring herself to move, can't bring herself to stop mourning long enough to go back to safety.

Forcing herself to move away from the small, kitten-sized graves, she stops in front of two larger, adult-sized ones, wiping the snow off of them long enough to glance at the names carved into gravestones.

"Graypool. Daughter of Fallowtail. Sister of Willowbreeze. Mother of Swankit, Morningkit, Splashkit, Mistykit, Stonekit and Moss"

There was a gap at the end of her name, just so that they could put her final suffix on there when she inevitably dies.

She morbidly hopes she dies quicker, so that no cat takes the gap in between Stonekit and her mother. If there's any place she'd like to be buried, it'd be here, in the willow-tree clearing, by her family.

Mosspaw glances at the second grave.

"Willowbreeze. Daughter of Fallowtail. Sister of Graypool. Mother of Minnowkit, Willowkit and Silver . Mentor to Moss "

They'd once again put gaps where the end of her name, and Silverkit's names should be, and she tries to wipe away tears that still would fall on her ex-mentors grave.

Her aunt had become a second mother to her, well, she always had been, but she'd been the one Mosspaw would go to after Graypool died young.

Willowbreeze shouldn't be there.

Quietly, she presses her muzzle to the stone, sobbing quietly, and shivers as Oakheart comes up behind her, shielding her from the snow, and gently begins guiding her back to camp.

"Plenty of time to mourn."

Mosspaw's sense of reality fades into nothingness.

But will it be enough?