Fawnkit
You Say You're Not Afraid to Die
┍
Fawnkit was bored, oh so bored. The sun was hidden behind clouds, the camp was near empty, with most everyone out on patrols, and most of her denmate peers sleeping. What was she to do?
She thought she heard something, a flutter, a soft sound on the wind. She looked up but could see nothing. No.. wait.. she saw a lone feather trailing down from the sky, descending slowly. A new toy! Fawnkit did not wonder where a feather had come from nor who it had belonged to before. All her attention was focused on this new object of interest, something that could be hers and only hers to play with, for she saw it first.
She shot up, racing to where she thought the feather would land, jumping over rocks and tufts of grass. She stopped just below it, stretching her paws out, hoping to reach it before it fell to the ground, her eyes focused only on this one feather. Had she been a little older, she would have noticed the shadow growing bigger and bigger around her. Had she been a little more experienced, she would have heard the swoosh of wings in the sky, quickly getting closer. Had she been a little more careful, she would have questioned the origin of this feather. But Fawnkit was just a young kitten and none of these things crossed her mind.
The feather was within her paw's reach and she grabbed it out from the sky, tail high, proud of the prey she had caught. What a big feather this was - she had never seen anything like it before! All the prey her clanmates had been bringing to camp has had feathers a lot smaller, merely the size of her paws, but this feather was bigger than she was! She could claim it as her own and bring it to her nest, sleeping next to it, a soft addition to her bedding.
Fawnkit would have fantasized about her new feather more, but something in the corner of her eye made her turn around - she immediatelly arched her back and hissed as she stared into hungry eyes of a bird she had never seen before - cold, menacing, desparate. The bird, bigger than most warriors, with talons sharper than claws and beak thick and curved, stared right at her. Every part of her body told her to run, but her paws stayed frozen to the ground as she shook, her new feather completely forgotten. Now all she knew was terror. Yet she couldn't move, transfixed by the eyes staring at her, getting closer and closer...
┙