White Rapids Prologue

Prologue

The black-and-white she-cat yowled in pain and the dark gray tom thought his heart was being ripped out.  

"Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?" he mewed impatiently. She could merely flick her tail in acknowledgement, curling herself up into a ball.

"Go get Willowshine for the kits," she hissed to him, then licked the flood off her fur coat furiously.

"No!" he meowed. "I won't leave you, Poppyfur!" The she-cat, Poppyfur, hissed at him in annoyance, but was forced to bite her tongue due to pain.

The tom was nearing panic, pacing around the small island that they were on. One side was the lake, while the other sides were surrounded by rivers. He knew that there was no way that Poppyfur was going to make it back to camp, yet he could not bring himself to leave her to get help.

"Why are they coming so early, anyway?" he meowed, his tone slightly higher pitched than usual.

"I don't know, these things just happen, Stoneclaw," Poppyfur snapped back at her mate.

He came over to her at last, pressing his nose to hers, desperately hoping that she would live. Stoneclaw wished he could give her all his energy, all his life even. Anything so that Poppyfur lived.

The she-cat sighed slightly, her pain diminishing as she floated between life and death. Poppyfur summoned the energy to point out her kits to her mate. "Dapplekit," she mewed softly, pointing to the kit that looked eerily similar to her mother. "Ivykit," the queen meowed next, tail touching a black kit with a white tail tip. "And Moonkit," she finished, her tail touching a purely white cat with a black tail tip. Poppyfur closed her eyes and let her head fall to the ground.

"Wait, don't leave me, Poppyfur!" Stoneclaw exclaimed, jumping up. "I love you. You can't just leave me."

"I love you too, Stoneclaw," she murmured, already losing consciousness. "Take care of our kits." Her last words were said in a raspy tone as her last breaths came in and out and her spirit flowed out of her beautiful body.

"No, don't leave me," Stoneclaw mewed in a softer tone, pressing his nose into her fur for the last time. He knew that she was gone. "I love you," he added in the quietest tone yet.

The two mates lay there for a long time, Stoneclaw's face pressed firmly into Poppyfur's coat. Soon the tom realized that he could not stay there forever. His kits needed him. Two of them, Ivykit and Moonkit he realized, were mewling at the top of their small lungs.

"Alright, let's go to camp," he meowed, his voice horribly grief stricken. Then he saw Dapplekit. She was the spitting image of her mother, with a black and white coat and dazzling blue eyes that were already staring curiously up at him, though she had just been born a few moments before. Strangely enough, the kit was silent.

Shaking the feeling that something wasn't quite right with Dapplekit, Stoneclaw picked her up first and headed for camp, intending to take them one at a time.

He splashed into the stream when the realization hit him that his mate was dead. Unintentionally, Stoneclaw opened his mouth to omit a mewl of grief. Dapplekit slipped out of his jaws and into the rushing water. Stoneclaw tore after her, but the rapids were already pulling her away. He had nearly reached her when a thought dawned on him. He didn't have to keep the kits.

Before he could decide otherwise, Dapplekit was already too far gone for him to reach her. Stoneclaw supposed that was alright, though. He certainly did not want a constant reminder of the mate he had lost. And what of the other two? He didn't really need to keep them either. In fact, he did not want to keep them. He was afraid of them opening their eyes. Stoneclaw did not want to find out if Ivykit and Moonkit had eyes that would haunt him like Dapplekit had.

Hurrying back, he picked up Ivykit and dropped her in the river. Stoneclaw repeated the action with Moonkit and watched as the two rushed down the river, white rapids causing them to bob up and down. For the rest of the tom's days, he would never forget watching his kits fly down the river to the lake.

Before they were completely out of sight, Stoneclaw pulled himself onto shore and started running toward camp.

Willowshine was the first cat to see the total devastation in his eyes. "Is it Poppyfur?" she asked, preparing to launch herself into the trees to help the beautiful she-cat. They had gone out for a walk a short time earlier, though Willowshine had warned that Poppyfur's kits could come at any time now, though they weren't due for a while.

"She's dead," Stoneclaw replied in a hollow tone. Willowshine gasped.

"Dead?" she whispered, grief filling her eyes. "And what of the kits."

"The same," he lied, knowing it wasn't too hard a story to believe. And they would probably be dead soon if they weren't gone already. "I buried them near their mother."

Willowshine pressed her nose into his in grief. "I'm sorry," she mewed. "We'll send warriors to get her body so that she can have a proper burial. She was a great warrior." Every word was spoken with importance and sincerity, as Willowshine always spoke, but somehow it was different this time for Stoneclaw. He had betrayed his mate. And he had killed his kits. Or so he thought.

~***~

The tom stared at the kit in wonder. How had it managed to wash up in WindClan? Where had it come from? He knew neither answer, so he picked up the pure white kit with the black tip tail, intent of having Whitestar and Kestrelflight have a look at her. As he approached camp with the kit in his jaws, something seemed to tell him not to show her to the whole Clan. Maybe Echosong could raise her. Their kits were about to be born as well. He went into the backside of Whitestar's den.

"I found a kit," he mewed, trying to act dignified. "She doesn't have any scent, as she had washed up from the lake."

Looking puzzled, Whitestar got on her paws and examined the small figure. "Well that's odd," she commented. "I am glad that you brought her here, Emberfoot." Whitestar paused for a moment, as she wondered what to do about the small kit that had happened upon her Clan. "I will go get Kestrelflight, and we'll see what he has to say about this," she meowed, and then went out the main entrance to her den.

She returned a few moments later with the Clan medicine cat, Kestrelflight. The new tom immediately began sniffing the kit, as well as licking her to warm her up. Her eyes opened and all three cats were shocked to find that she had two sparkling eyes, one blue, one green.

"Where am I?" she asked timidly, her voice sounding hoarse.

"Home," Emberfoot said before the others could say anything. Content with this answer, the kit fell silent.

"I think we should keep her until the next gathering, and then ask the other Clans if they're missing any kits," Kestrelflight suggested.

"No," Whitestar replied harshly. "If they're missing kits, they will mention it, not us. She's probably a kittypet's kit that wandered off. But I think we should keep her, raise her as a Clan member. Emberfoot, can you convince Echosong to take her in? She can just be another one of your kits."

Just then there was a yowl from the camp. All three cats jumped, then hurried outside to see what was wrong. "Echosong's kitting," Kestrelflight meowed, then hurried over to the nursery, which was unusually empty. Heathertail had taken her kits out for a little while. "Bring her in and we'll tell the rest of the Clan that she's your kit as well."

Emberfoot nodded and picked up the now sleeping kit and rushed over to the nursery. He dropped the kit by his mate. "She's yours," he meowed quietly. Echosong merely nodded, her first kits already coming.

A little while later, the she-cat spoke to her mate. "We have four kits now," she mewed. "Robinkit, Firekit, Ravenkit, and now Snowkit." Her tail pointed last to the snow-white kit that Emberfoot had found. "I think she's meant to be with us," Echosong added, with a tone of finality.

"So do I," Emberfoot agreed, pressing his muzzle into his mate's. He would love Snowkit as much as he loved his other kits.

~***~

Shrewfoot knew he should be with his mate, and yet he was out near the lake, pretending to hunt. He knew he wouldn't catch anything; he was far too distraught for that. Dawnpelt was kitting, and yet he couldn't bring himself to watch her in pain. He would come back once he knew his kits had been born.

Shrewfoot spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. There was a kit, straggling on the shore, moving just barely. He bounded over and licked the small black kit, willing her to life. She looked like she had been nearly drowned.

A few licks later her eyes sprung open, seeming to stare into the depths of his soul. One was blue, the other green. Unnerved, Shrewfoot stood for a moment, wondering what to do. At last, he decided that he needed to take her to camp. Surely Oakstar would keep her, wouldn't he?

Picking up the black kit, he noticed her white tip tail as well, and found that to be quite amusing. She seemed the right coloring for a ShadowClan cat, though the Clan didn't have as many black cats as the other Clans often envisioned. But something about ShadowClan had always seemed to be defined as black. Perhaps it was their attraction to night.

He padded back to camp, his paw steps quiet against the soft forest floor, thinking of his mate the whole time. He hoped Flametail was with her by now. He supposed she probably was, as Flametail was a great medicine cat and seemed to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But when Shrewfoot pulled into camp with the kit in his mouth, he found it unusually empty, and the smell of Flametail was fairly stale.

Shrewfoot stepped into the nursery. He found, instead of Flametail, the medicine cat apprentice, Emeraldpaw, tending to Dawnpelt, who had three kits already lying beside her.

He set the black kit down next to her, along with the other kits. "How are you?" he asked, pressing his nose into her fur. "I found the kit by the lake. I though Oakstar would let us keep her."

"Perhaps," Dawnpelt replied quietly, her voice unusually quiet.

"Likely not," Emeraldpaw mewed, speaking up from near the queen. "Oakstar would assume that she was some sort of kittypet and kick her out of the Clan. It would be best if you just pretended she was yours." The young cat's green eyes sparkled mischievously, a trait rare in the future medicine cat.

Shrewfoot nodded to her, realizing that she was probably right. Oakstar was pretty strict about those sorts of things, after all. "Yes, you're right," he meowed, surprised at how well the newly made apprentice knew her Clan's leader. "Dawnpelt, what to you think?"

Dawnpelt grunted slightly, clearly exhausted. "Her name is Blackkit, then," she mewed quietly, and then laid her head down.

Shrewfoot raised his tail contently and touched his nose to hers momentarily, before turning back to Emeraldpaw to learn the names of his other kits. The three cats were bound never to talk of the scene again.