Treasured (c)

Daisykit’s small ears perked as Lavendercloud called her kits back. Normally Lavendercloud let her and her siblings go play while the queens set up the nests when the walking was finished for the day. The bi-colored kit grabbed the bundle of bright yellow flowers she had been rolling in. Oh! She needed the white ones too. Lavendercloud would think they were so neat! The yellow ones were soft and pretty and the white ones were puffy and fun like clouds! The hollow stems broke open under the pressure of her teeth, and the juice was bitter against her tongue. She soldiered through, white tipped tail help aloft as she bonded back with her mouth stuffed full of treasures.

With a purr vibrating in her chest, the she-kit shoulder-checked her unfortunate littermates out of the way so she could reach the gray molly first. Daisykit dropped her bundle of slightly squashed flowers at her mother’s feet, looking up at her with pride swimming in her eyes. “Look what I brought you, I found them all by myself!” Her white front paws were entirely unrecognizable as being white, stained the same deep rich brown of the earth. Her nose and part of her chest were also splotched with mud, making her look more tortoiseshell than her actual bi-colored pattern. The kit looked down at her flowers, only to realize the once fluffy white heads were gone. Astonished, Daisykit peered down at the empty stalks. The yellow ones were okay at least. “The white ones disappeared.” She said, tail dropping.

The kit had failed to notice that the dandelion seeds were stuck in her pelt, having blown off in her mad dash to show Lavendercloud. The she-kit pressed herself against the queen’s shoulder for comfort, offering up an apologetic purr. “They did look really cool before, I promise! What are they anyway? And why do the white ones disappear? Are they supposed to do that? Did I break them???”

Daisykit’s amber eyes widened, pupils dilating to little black voids as Lavendercloud tucked the flower behind her ear. “I didn’t know you could do that with flowers!” She said, tail lashing excitedly. She made a mental note to go pick more tomorrow and put them in her fur. She thought her mother looked very pretty with the flower she had collected all by herself adorning her pale fur. The kit sat back on her haunches and listened intently to the queen’s explanation, visibly hanging off every word. Her small ears were pricked in complete interest and for a rare moment, the energetic kit was still. She nodded very seriously, staring down at the dandelions and their tiny wispy seeds being scattered by the breeze. “Not broken, just growing.” The bi-colored kit tracked the whirling of the seeds as the last of them were pulled from her pelt by the gentle rasp of Lavendercloud’s tongue. They almost looked like miniature warriors, running away with the wind. “Daisy is a flower too right? Like the dan-ee-lions.”The kit asked, starting to squirm a bit, clearly bored of her bath. “Is Lavender a flower too? What about Berry? Are we all named after flowers? Wait, Moles aren’t flowers. Why isn’t Molekit named after a flower? Did you not like him?”