Still At War [closed, solo]

The sun came around on a cloudless morning, with the slushy snow giving way to a few meager sprouts of grass and squelching, thawed mud. What remained of the precipitation was a blinding white, shimmering into the wide barn doors and through a straw nest, lighting up the inside of a slumbering queen’s eyelids. Building her burrow had been nothing like constructing a warriors’ den, and was as drafty as it was fragile, but it did its job. No rain, snow, or wind touched her from the corner of the huge twoleg creation. However, the chill was hers to enjoy. Rolling over to shield her eyes from the coming dawn, Tavora wondered how long this would take. Though it had been just two sunrises since arriving in this place, it could have been a season. Time lost meaning… ever since these things attached themselves to her flank.

Only a few knew that she was leaving before she went: Theron and Rookfire. No one knew where she was. Just a few sunrises after conversing with the medicine cat, she had hobbled off in the midmorning, wearing her raccoon pelt as cover from prying eyes. Her stomach spun and roiled; she had never travelled this far alone. More agonizing still, she had only heard of this place in stories, described as a rest stop in a rogue’s journey hidden in a twoleg structure. A cat could be left alone out there. The judgement of clan cats were not shared by lone adventurers. The few cats you would connect with did not ask many questions. It was perfect for what she had to do.

The birth itself was unexpectedly intense. At times she thought she would not survive, but her will was stronger than her anguish. At every pause she begged forgiveness from the queens who she had silently judged for calling motherhood the greatest challenge of the forest. To be fair, it sounded rather narcissistic at the time. With every kit that she pulled towards her mouth to lick clean, she felt another piece of herself wither away, breaking off from the sum, and flying off on a distant and unreachable wind. Did it land in this infant? Was it now gone forever?

Nursing was easier. Instinct guided her paws to move her kits where they needed to go. There were five in total, all still wet and wiggling, with multicolored pelts of varying lengths. They looked like baby mice, but less pink. The sight of them twisted her gut. Something about them was off. Fundamentally. They were caricatures of their father, with bits and pieces of Tavora thrown in. It was disrespectful. She had created chimeras that she was not capable of loving, because as much as they were him, they were hers. And she could never justify looking into her own eyes and saying, “I love you.”

And she certainly couldn’t name them yet, either. That was something she hadn’t really considered. In the morning, she promised them, a languid yawn bubbling up from her jowl like thunder. Curling her body around her children into a taught ball, she tried to get a little bit of rest before the birds began to sing. It was no easy task. The kits were still wiggly.

But in the morning, with the slushy snow and the bright morning sun and the drafty den and the mud, she couldn’t think of a single reason why she was qualified to christen these poor, sorry kits. Despite her own concerns, she did have names for them. Without the framework of traditional clan names, it was an irritating, cumbersome task. Iniko would have done it better. There was no more time to agonize, though, or they may as well be Kitten One through Kitten Five forevermore.

The first born, a she-kit, was long furred. Her face was smushed in with a snub nose to rival her mother’s. She was also calico. Her clumsy way of approaching Tavora’s belly was almost amusing. “Faizah. Good luck to you, I hope.”

The second born, another strong she-kit, had calico markings covering her body in patches. Already, Tavora saw an intensity in her as she stamped over her siblings for milk. “Deadly flower... Hyacintha.”

The third born, with muted colors of brown and ginger tabby, was a tom. He, too, had a flat dog-like muzzle. He was already crying, tip-tapping his little paws. “Kirabo. You're a strange prince, for sure.”

The fourth born, a night-dark tom, had flecks of red fire dotting his long pelt. This one was quite silent, but he was full of energy and liveliness when prodded. “Little Galloway.”

Last born was a grey-and-white she-kit, who lay quietly sleeping near Tavora’s tail. She could have been a clone of her mother, but with a sharp face. No snubbed nose. Her coat was strangely fine and silky, without a kink or mat to be seen. The twist in her belly suddenly unloosened, the muscles in her face relaxing as her lips pulled up. Her relief was palpable. It was nice to see a version of herself that was so… uncorrupted. “You will be Pandora,” she whispered, leaning down to touch her nose to her last daughter’s flank. “And you will…”

With a sharp meow of alarm, Tavora felt Pandora’s cold and unmoving body, and realized that she had been dead for at least a few hours.

---

A quick and unceremonious funeral followed, while her four remaining kits lay sleeping in the nest. Pandora was buried at the foot of a stream, where the snow had melted to mud enough for Tavora’s claws to tear up soil deep enough for her daughter to lay undisturbed. No predator or twoleg would touch her eternal rest.

It was her fault. Even as Tavora paced in circles in her mind to rationalize the sudden tragedy, she always looped back to her own intrusive thoughts. For every time that she whispered about the causeless deaths of kittens, another voice howled back that she should have stayed awake. Each cry of objection returned a conspiracy that she had suffocated Pandora in her horrid fur. A medicine cat would not come to diagnose an Asylum kit’s corpse. Tavora would never know what became of her baby.

And she did not deserve to. She was not born or bred for motherhood. This was foreign to her. Foreign and wrong. Until the kits woke up and realized they were hungry, she had a moment of solitude. It was her last minute of freedom before she began the rest of her life. Tavora rolled over onto the snow. It soaked her bones. She lifted her flat muzzle to the skyline and observed the slow, even movements of clouds. They did not stop, slow down, or change direction. The wind had no bearing on them. Somewhere beyond those clouds, and the shimmering sun, stars dotted a darkened heaven which would not be hers to enjoy. Or Pandora’s. Whenever her kit had gone, Tavora knew she would not see her again. She had escaped to wherever Iniko went to. It was a place that her mother could not follow.

Torn between two realities, each one with an entrance locked from inside with brambles, thickets, and poison thorns, Tavora felt too emptied and dry to weep. No credible afterlife would take this sullied soul. An eternity of holy existence, refused. The more she lost, the less she wanted it.