different eyes see different things[o]

The flowers were disappearing, and that greatly upset him. He didn't mind the loss of green from the trees and bushes-- they were boring, anyway, and he personally thought the fire of new colours were a much better alternative-- but the flowers slowly wilting and not growing again? But why? They looked so beautiful, like pretty little bursts of colours in the otherwise plain scenery of the RiverClan Camp, and they looked even better in his fur, especially the yellow ones. Those matched his eyes, he found, and he adored looking into the clear puddles in the Camp with pretty yellow blooms strategically woven into his part of his fur and tucked behind that part and watching his reflection greet him, all soft and beautiful. If he groomed his fur a certain way, he found, his face would look rounder, prettier, and if he scattered the petals over the water he could hide the parts of his reflection he didn't want to look at.

But now the flowers were dying. There was nothing else to adorn his pelt in quite the same way. He had tried weaving shells together with reeds, but they needed a lot of work to get them to shine, and even then they looked too dull to stand out much. The reeds were brown and boring. He missed the bright bursts of pink or purple or yellow at the top of his head or in his mane or woven around his tail. Whenever he asked the elders or queens why the flowers couldn't stay, the answer was always the same: Leaffall was setting into the forest, and soon Leafbare would be upon them. He didn't get it. Why did the seasons have to change? Why couldn't the leaves always be firey-red and the flowers always bright and the sky always mid-sunset? Why did the sky change and the sun fall when it could always stay in its perfect, beautiful state? Why would anything want to be anything other than how it was most beautiful?

Milkkit found time to be an annoying concept. First, it took away his precious flowers and the gorgeous sunset, and soon, the elders told him, it would take away even the red of the leaves and the green of the grass. Soon, everything would be white and cold, and the river would freeze over too and he could no longer swim or play outside, because it'd be too cold. Why? Every time he demanded an explanation, he was told that that was just things were. It was annoying that even the elders could not understand why such things happened or how to stop them. And worst of all, he seemed to be the only one immensely bothered by this knowledge.

Time was making him uglier too, he found. The roundness of his face and the softness of his fur was slowly disappearing, turning into a stockier build and a sleeker frame. He didn't want to be all big and stocky, or have fur that was oily and clung to him all the time. There was nothing wrong with cats like Dovetail who had big, stocky builds-- his father looked handsome, sure-- but he just couldn't imagine it on him. He wanted to be soft-furred and slender like his mother. It wasn't fair that he couldn't make time stop, or choose what he kept and what time took.

He was sulking yet again, too ashamed to even look in a puddle today. No amount of oak leaves could cover the unsatisfactory, he found bitterly, without filling the water with leaves. Instead, he hung around the nursery, too bored to go back inside and too upset to wander around the Camp just in case he ran into something remotely reflective. It was a rather funny sight, a small ball of white fur glaring angrily into the distance, fuming at nothing and everything, while still trying to resemble some sort of grace.