- Aug 9, 2022
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Her nights were often sleepless, a rasping in her throat and burning in her lungs kept her up and the hollowed roots of the old willow often did not defend from he harsh winds that worsened her already spiraling health, but the old she-cat persisted. Humbled with purpose, chewing grass to settle her stomach on the worst days and sleeping through the entire morning on others claiming she prefered to hunt at night actually. Today she awake to the black bundle that often tucked against her back missing, the lack of warmth jarring enough to rouse her earlier than preferred.
"Ember?" Moss' warbling voice broke the silence, the birds in the area began to chatter louder in response to the new sound and she spotted him at a distance hunched over the edge of the river with a bowed head. The old molly stiffly rose, bones cracking and creaking and a low groan escaping her maw as she made her way over to find him frantically dipping his paws in the water and splashing about like a kit at play.
"What are you doing?" Her harsh, impatient tone snaps him out of his frenzy, orange eyes widen as he turns sharply to face her and there is a fear in his gaze that briefly softens her annoyance.
"Am I dying?"
It was the first question he uttered without explaination, shoulders shaking as he continued to splash his right paw in the water as though compelled and she raised a paw to stomp down on his arm and stop him from continuing; eyes narrowing to examine it. His paw was white. It was such a strange sight to behold. When she had come across him spitting and hissing in two-leg place he was a solid black cat, not a spot on him; a shadow of a scruffy tom with burning embers for eyes and a patchwork of scars on his back. The white paw was new, sudden. She had no explaination for it.
"Moss?"
"Quiet. I'm thinking." He was just like her, taciturn and solemn, often not one to fret over themselves, living each day like it was the final one; focusing on survival only. To see him so worried over something like the changing color of a paw. Cats changed color sometimes. She'd seen powderpuff kittens born solid white only to grow darker limbs and tails, little masks and ear tips. She'd seen a sick queen give birth to an entire litter of ashen feverfew coats that eventually faded into brilliant blue, brown and white. She had never seen a cat develop white markings like this.
"Does it hurt?"
"Well, no, but.." No immediate concern then that it was an illness, the molly flicks her tail in thought. "...ignore it."
"What?" He stands then, shaking his coat free of droplets and looking to her with an incredulous stare, "What do you mean ignore? How can I ignore it? My paw turned white!"
"It's not killing you or hurting you right now, if it starts to then we worry. Until then consider it payback." She turns to briskly walk away and he follows with a moment of confused hesitation.
"Payback?"
"For turning my fur gray."
"You do that YOURSELF YOU OLD HAG!"
She put him on the ground before he even realized she'd turned around, teeth in his scruff and a jerk of her head flipping him onto his back in the dirt before continuing to stalk away from him to resume her rest. Kits these days...
