THE GARDEN ✧ sunlitkit

[SCORCHSTORM]

The air grows chillier with each sunrise. The clan grows sicker with each sunset. Scorchpaw grows older among it all; trains harder to catch frustratingly small amounts of prey, thinks more about the strange she-cat at the gathering, grows more and more distant from her littermates. It is a hard start to leaf-fall. But there is at least one shining ray of happiness: new kittens. Today she has picked one from Wolfsong and Sunstride's brood to hang out with, a welcome relief from her usual apprentice duties with Badgermoon. Though he is her father, he certainly does not take it easy with her training, and briefly she wonders who will mentor these kits. What apprentices would be warriors when this litter came of age? She shivers at the thought of Snakehiss taking any of them on. She would pray to StarClan that the litter would not meet such a terrible fate.

Scorchpaw crouches at a tunnel entrance in camp, bi-color gaze flicking around its mouth to identify any insects that might crawl out. It is bittersweet to see it up close again. She and Luckypaw used to be small enough to fit in it together, and now she would never have a hope of entering the tunnel even on her own. There isn't much time to ruminate on it, though, when a millipede comes creeping out of the soft earth. "Oh, look," she coos, tail flicking. "That one's got so many legs. Do you think it could race the moors well?"

@sunlitkit​

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[sunlitpaw]

shadow of the moon
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The strife that had swallowed WindClan long before Sunlitkit was born had been blissfully out of her awareness as she aged. Her fathers were diligent in attending to their children, in sheltering them from harsh realities before they were ready. Sunlitkit knew of a sickness affecting the Clan, but she did not have a mind for the severity of it. She did not know her father had the sickness, did not know it ran her ðir's paws ragged when he was heavy with pregnancy. Sunlitkit knew the heart-filled smiles of her father, knew the charming chuckles of her ðir. They spared her and her siblings the mercy of their crisis. But they were still important figures within the Clan - that, Sunlitkit certainly knew. Not for a sake of boast on her parent's part, but rather to understand why sometimes they couldn't always be there with her. Sunlitkit found herself in the company of apprentices more than warriors when her fathers were away, and she found them less stressful to be around. Cottonpaw was her most prominent caregiver when neither of her parents were available, keeping an eye on them in Wolfsong's den. But today her ðir had Cottonpaw out with him, and Sunstride was out on his own business which left Sunlitkit in the company of Scorchpaw.

Sunlitkit did not know the multicolored molly well, meaning she tailed the apprentice around in near-silence. For Sunlitkit's quiet demeanor, she stuck as close as she possibly could to Scorchpaw, nearly bumping into the older girl's paws a few times before the two of them settled in around the entrance of a tunnel, Sunlitkit absolutely entranced by the portal to nowhere. Oh how she so badly wanted to go exploring down there but oh how she so badly feared the dark pit that loomed before her. The kit stared unblinkingly down the dark drop, as if she could focus enough she might manifest something. And it almost worked! A strange creature crawls out of the tunnel, making Sunlitkit giggle excitedly as Scorchpaw draws attention to it. "Why does it have so many legs?" Sunlitkit asks, tilting her head so far left her eyes are almost perpendicular with the soil. A snowdrop paw carefully raises as she listens to Scorchpaw, slowly reaching forward. "I think so! It could run faster than a rabbit because it has more legs, right?" Sunlitkit drops her paw suddenly on the millipede, squealing in surprise when the bug jerks in response. Sunlitkit hops up to her feet and scoots backwards, pressing into Scorchpaw for comfort. "Oh, look - look! It's running!" Watching all of it's legs move was pretty gross! "It's not very fast, though. Can I... can I eat it?"

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