For the LawlClan challenge: 'It lit up the sky'.

Rain was pounding on the roof of the nursery, a steady thump-thump-thump-ing beat, a smooth symphony of the outside world, it was cold, the sort of bone-chilling, tail-numbing cold that set the elders and warriors alike shivering and unable to move without a spasm or two. The air was wet, too, that sort of damp feeling that sucks up all the sound around you and leaving drops of water on your fur, even if the rain had let up for a moment or so.

While the weather outside was miserable, inside the nursery kits played and leaped around their mothers, unaware of the terrible storm whipping around outside of their safe little haven. Two of the future ShadowClan warriors were pouncing and tackling one another, Whitekit and Frostkit, despite having been told earlier that they had to be quiet so that Amberpelt could sleep.

"Kits," Grassfoot chided gently. "I've told you to settle down, and not jump on Amberpelt." The veteran queen licked her son's ear. "She's very tired from carrying her kits."

"But, mother, you told us we could play!" Whitekit wailed, attempting to remove himself from his mother's firm licking.

"I told you you could play quietly," she reminded them. "Not jump around the nursery like a herd of badgers."

"You won't even let us go outside," Frostkit complained. "We're stuck in here. We wanna have fun," he grumbled.

"It's all right," Amberpelt mewed softly. "I'm awake now."

"Oh, now look what you did," Grassfoot meowed at her kits. "She's awake now." With a sharp look at each of the young cats, she added. "I want you two to take a nap now. No more of this rambunctious behavior from my little warriors," she scolded.

"Yes, mother," the two kits mewled obediently.

She gave an absent purr, looking off into the cold storm, eyes glazed over with memories. It was a day just like this, she remembered. Raining, cold, windy... Still staring out into the cold rain, she tried to repress the memories that were gnawing at her from the inside, threatening to bubble out.

"Mom. Mom, mom, mom," Frostkit's voice finally cut through the layers of fog clouding her mind.

"Yes, sweetheart?" She mewed, shaking her head as if to clear it with the simple motion.

"I was trying to ask you for a long time..." the kit pouted. "Will you get me some fresh-kill? I'm starving." He glanced at his brother beside him looking mournful. "Oh, yeah, so is Whitekit."

The queen sighed at their hopeful faces. "Are you sure you're really that hungry...?"

"It's okay, Grassfoot." Amberpelt stretched, the fur along her spine rippling. "I'll take care of the kits for a while. Why don't you go for a walk? You've been very stressed lately."

"Thanks, Amberpelt," Grassfoot sighed. "I guess I have been pretty... scattered, lately."

The younger queen gave the elder one a wan smile. "I'm not surprised, what with your sons about to become apprentices and your- Well, it must be pretty hard for you."

Grassfoot could not think of anything worth saying back to that, and so she simply flicked her tail in acknowledgment and ducked through the curtain of moss that covered the nursery door. Once out of the stuffy, crowded den, she immediately headed to her favorite tree to climb, ever since she was an apprentice. Sitting in its bows, she always found that she could think more clearly.

Once she had settled herself into a branch mid-way up the tall pine, she closed her eyes and tried to organize her thoughts. It was a... stormy day,she remembered. Yes, a stormy day, very much like this one...

"Look, Grassfoot," the medicine cat, Quailnose, mewed. "You have three kits. Two toms and a she-cat."

Breathing still labored and muscles still sore, Grassfoot worked her head around to look at the three beings that her body had produced. "They're beautiful," her mate, Fogfur purred. "What do you want to call them?"

"Frostkit," she pointed her tail at the larger tom. "And... Whitekit," she gestured to the snow-white kit.

"What about the last one?" The last kit, the she-cat, had dark, reddish-brown fur, mottled with stripes, a darker version of her mother.

"I don't know." Grassfoot looked at her mate. "You decide."

"Well... that reddish color reminds me of a maple leaf. Maplekit?" He asked.

"Maplekit," she whispered, before falling into a deep, deep sleep.

Four days later, the rain still hadn't let up.

"Grassfoot, you need to go to the medicine den. You're catching a chill," Fogfur wheedled.

"Well, I can't leave the kits here, can I?" She sneezed out the last word.

"But you can't stay here yourself. I'm sure that Pinetail would be happy to look after them," he insisted.

"No mother should leave her kits alone," Grassfoot insisted.

"Fine," Fogfur rolled his eyes. "We'll bring them with you."

"Oh, but I don't want to get them wet... or bother Quailnose with so many cats..."

"Fine, fine," Fogfur agreed. "But you have to take the herbs that Quailnose gives you."

"I can do that."

"Good," he purred, and began licking her ear, but was interrupted by a coughing fit. Sighing, he ran off to get the medicine cat.

Several days and dozens of herb bundles later, Grassfoot was still sick, and prescribed with whitecough. Not only had the queen gotten it, but two of her kits had as well. Frostkit and Maplekit were both sick, and not responding well to treatment inside the medicine den.

"I'm sorry, kits," Grassfoot whispered to her sleeping children before succumbing to the poppyseed that had already dragged them under.

When she awoke, there was something warm pressing into her side. One something.

One.

Head rising slowly, she simply hopes that her kit drifted away from her side in the night, but she knows it's impossible. There's the feeling of two lumps next to her... one warm, on cold.

One living, one dead.

She's afraid to open her eyes, afraid of what she'll see. Which kit will still walk upon this earth? Which one will she have to say goodbye to forever? In some part of her brain, she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to find out for fear of the pain the knowledge will bring. But on the other paw, she needs to know, as some part of her maternal instinct that must be satisfied. The little piece of her mind that must know if her kits are okay, even if she knows they're not.

But she desperately just wants to keep her eyes closed in blissful doubt.

Against all her judgement, and yet still within her reason, she opens her eyes to see one gray-and-white pelt slowly rising and falling.

And one maple-leaf brown pelt as still as the base of a pine.

"No..." the sound is barely heard as it makes it's way from her throat. "No!" She exclaims, the sound tearing strait from her heart and projecting it to the outside world, letting her sorrow known to everyone between the ShadowClan medicine cat's den to the old forest. "No, no, no..." she repeats over and over again, hoping that maybe it will bring her deceased kit back to life. "No," she mewls one last time, finally allowing herself to acknowledge her defeat.

"I heard you yowling, and I came in to see what was-" Quailnose is cut off as she notices the death-scent that surrounds the den. "Oh, no..." her voice trails off into nothingness. "I'll go get Fogfur."

But the mourning queen doesn't hear a word. So caught up in her grief, she has her nose pressed into Maplekit's cold fur, trying to breath in the last of her scent before it turns to the smell of rot. "Maplekit... oh, Maplekit, I'm so sorry..." she whispers into the fur of the dead kit.

After a few moments, she notices a cat padding into the den, and curling himself around his mate, pushing a comforting nose into her fur.

Her attention is snapped back to reality with the feeling of the warm nose pressing into her pelt, so different from the cold rain pouring down around her. "Fogfur," she meows. "Hello."

"I miss her too," he whispered. "I always will."

"I know," she replied. "But sometimes it just hurts." There was a momentary pause. "Sometimes it feels better when it hurts."

They sat there, watching the rain fall down around them for quite some time, contemplating her words. "Let's go back to camp," Fogfur finally mewed.

"Yes," she replied, slowly stretching her limbs. "Let's."

The days passed on slowly, taking their time, staying cold, rainy and wet until the third day when the cloud cover finally broke and the rain had stopped, the ShadowClan cats began to move slowly out of their dens at the will of a summoning from their leader, Redstar.

Grassfoot brought her kits out of the nursery with deliberate care, and made sure that they don't mess up their perfectly-groomed fur. "Come on," she mewled. "You don't want to be late to your own apprentice ceremony."

"Yes, mama," they said obediently.

"We are gathered here today to witness the naming of two new apprentices..." Redstar's words are drowned out from her mind by the sense of pride and joy she felt at seeing these two precious cats, two beings that she brought into creation become apprentices.

As the first beams of light break through the clouds, they hit the ground next to Frostkit and Whitekit, forming a strange, maple-leaf brown cat. Somehow the apparition, while being barely visible still lit up the whole world for Grassfoot, even the gloomy, storm-covered sky.

But within seconds, the kit was gone.

As the clouds dispersed completely, a rosy glow of sunlight hit the sky behind her kits, lighting them up with the intensity of a star. When the cheering for their apprenticeship started, she cheered the loudest of all.

In her mind, though, there was another name that was cheered out loud as well, the name of the kit who would never walked upon the same paths that her brothers walked along, but would stay with them in secret, and be there for them with the wisdom of all of StarClan ready if for some reason their strength began to fail.

Even if it was only in her mind, only a figment of her imagination that had once been real, she had a third kit that, and while that kit walked different paths than her mother, it was a kit that she was undeniably proud of.

~a/n: So, what do you think? Drop a review, please~

R&R

~Crane