It was often that Harekit and Alpinepaw were left with Fogfreckle while Moonstar went off to hunt, or to scout for a location they could settle down in permanently. Harekit didn’t much mind traveling in the way they had been, seeing new things every single day and setting paw prints where other cats may not have ever walked before. It was exciting, and it was fun, and he wished Moonstar would just let them all go with her on her excursions. She didn’t seem to want Fogfreckle to overexert himself with his whitecough (he had been sick for moons now, couldn’t he just get better already?), which made sense enough, even if Fogfreckle seemed rather huffy about not getting to do anything all that exciting. Harekit understood the feeling.
Abandoned fox dens and hollows carved into the earth, sheltered from the snow. These are places that Moonstar could find, places safe enough to spend a night sleeping in, but she hadn’t been able to find them something camp-worthy. Not a place for setting down new roots. Twelve moons of travel, a full cycle of seasons, fox-lengths and fox-lengths and fox-lengths of mountain range, and Moonstar hadn’t been able to find a single place for her cobbled together Clan to call home.
At night, while Fogfreckle slept curled around the kits, Moonstar gazed skyward and watched Silverpelt twinkle. Wispy white clouds curl across the expanse of black. She wished StarClan would give her some kind of sign, just a point in the right direction. If they were going to grant her leadership of a Clan, couldn’t they have at least told her which way to go?
The scent of fear spiked sharply in Alpinepaw's nostrils, the cats around him tense with terror and unease. Harekit was the exception – he seemed to have all the courageousness of LionClan coursing through him at the idea of standing up to the dogs Moonstar was screeching about.
"I'll fight a dog!" He crowed as Fogfreckle shuffled the orange kit forward, pushing at his flank to get him to walk. "I'll fight ten hundred dogs!"
“Why do we have to keep walking?” Harekit whined, trudging after Fogfreckle with his head thrown back for maximum volume. The kit was dragging his paws, creating furrows in the snow. “We’ve walked so much. My paws hurt!”
Moonstar’s paws ached with cold, her pads tough and worn from moons of traveling, but you didn’t hear her complaining. Knowing that Harekit was a kitten should have summoned at least a little bit of grace within Moonstar, but she was rather too irritated with the way Harekit’s voice bounced off of the snow-buried rocks around them.
“Because we have to find a new home,” Fogfreckle explained patiently, as he had been doing with all of Harekit’s questions since the sun had risen. It was just past midday, now. Fogfreckle was walking behind Alpinekit, who was in the lead, while Harekit trailed along at his heels. Moonstar followed behind the lot of them at a more sedate pace a tail-length back.
“We can’t just stop right here, out in the open,” Fogfreckle carried on, “a fox might get you!” With a mighty growl, Fogfreckle spun on his heels and bowled Harekit over with a gentle paw, sending him sprawling into the fresh snow. The kit exploded into giggles. His bubbling laughter ratcheted up as Fogfreckle nosed at his soft belly, tickling him.
Moonstar came up short as she was knocked in the chin by one of Harekit’s flailing paws. Biting down on a hiss, she glowered at the little kit as he laughed and laughed, entirely unaware. Alpinekit had paused politely ahead of them, head turned to watch the display.
Harekit pushed Fogfreckle’s face away with his paws. “Why do we need a new home?” He managed to ask between giggles. “Don’t you have one already?”
“Don’t you?” Moonstar muttered, smothering the unkind comment beneath Harekit’s laughter. She bent her head and licked at her chest fluff to hide her bitter expression. She could already feel a bruise blooming on her jaw. The pair of them could play later – just so long as they got to wherever they were going before Moonstar’s tail froze off.
Or before her patience wore completely thin.
“Our last home was… ruined,” Fogfreckle explained delicately. “So now we have to find a new one.”
Harekit pushed himself to his paws and shook the snow from his pelt, energy renewed. He was already firing off another question before he had got fully upright. “That’s sad,” Harekit stated matter-of-factly. He broke into a trot to keep up with Fogfreckle’s long strides as the cats resumed their trek. “Do you miss your old home.”
“Immensely.”
“Were you and Moonstar the only brother and sister at your old home?” Harekit continued to press, eyes blazing with curiosity. “I don’t have any. Alpine doesn’t either, right, Alpinekit?”
If Alpinekit was startled to be addressed suddenly, it didn’t show in his ever-level expression. He blinked his large, cyan eyes slowly at Harekit, then shook his head to confirm that, no, he didn’t have any siblings either.
Fogfreckle hummed thoughtfully. “Well, there was Pitchstar. He was the leader before Moonstar,” he explained to the kits, gesturing towards his sister. “Pitchstar had a sister once, supposedly. I don’t think us kits – Moonstar and I, I mean – were supposed to know about her. I don’t think he wanted anyone to know about her. Pitchstar never talked about his sister.”
Here we go.
Both kits were looking up at Fogfreckle with wide, curious eyes. Moonstar had heard this story before, back when they were still apprentices and tasked with the duty of clearing moss from the elder’s den. Moonstar had found the activity rather soothing, but it had bored Fogfreckle to tears. There weren’t many elders in their camp, but they’d been around long enough to know Pitchstar when he was young, and liked to tell tales of their early NimbusClan days to keep the pair of them amused.
“Before Pitchstar was leader, Clan leadership only ran in the family. It was passed down from parent to child – to the firstborn litter, to whichever kit StarClan deemed held the most promise.” Fogfreckle swished his tail, eyes glittering. “When the Chosen kit came of age, they’d become deputy – that’s what I am – and begin training to become the next leader.
“Anyways, I guess Pitchstar’s sister was real upset that her brother was chosen for the role of leader instead of her, so she gathered up a bunch of their Clanmates and set off to make her own Clan.”
Moonstar interjected with a responsible, “but that’s just a kits tale,” at the same time Harekit blurted, “and then what happened?”
“Dunno.” Fogfreckle shrugged, electing to ignore his sister. “Never heard from them again, I guess. I wonder if that’s why Pitchstar never talked about it – he was too sad about losing her, maybe. It happened way before Moonstar and I were born.”
“Pitchstar never talked about his sister because she doesn’t exist,” Moonstar insisted. “We never ran into a Clan like that at our borders. It’s likely just a tale our elders made up to keep us busy while we changed their moss. Elders love to gossip.”
Fogfreckle ignored her once more, leaning low to grin at each of the kits. Moonstar’s tail lashed. They, too, weren’t paying Moonstar any attention, rapt with Fogfreckle as they were. “What if we meet her and her Clan when we get to where we’re going, hm? What if they set off in the same direction as us?” At these words, Harekit’s eyes blazed, and even Alpinekit’s pricked ears perked higher.
“Let’s go! We’re gonna find the lost Clan!” Harekit shouted, bounding ahead of the cats and kicking up little flurries of snow as he went, his exhaustion apparently forgotten. Alpinekit padded after him, gait slower but tail raised happily.
“Not too far!” Fogfreckle called after them. A small, pleased smile was curving his muzzle.
Moonstar fell into step beside her brother. Her tone was flat. “Telling the kits ghost stories?”
The smile dropped from his face. “Have you got a stick for a tail? It’s not a ghost story. For all we know, it’s totally true.”
Moonstar huffed. It seemed like she wasn’t invisible, after all. “I’m just staying. It was probably made up to keep us entertained.”
“Well it’s working, isn’t it?” Fogfreckle flicked a paw in the direction of the kits, who were bumbling along in the snow ahead of them. Harekit was chattering animatedly at Alpinekit. Moonstar had never seen the brown kit look so pleased in all their moons of traveling together. “And anyways,” Fogfreckle went on, “what does it matter if it’s true or not? It’s making the time go by, and StarClan knows we have plenty of that to get through.”
“We’d reach our destination faster if we didn’t have kits to be keeping track of.”
“It’s leafbare. We’re not reaching our destination any faster even if we didn’t have them with us. We don’t even know where our destination is.”
“Fogfreckle,” Moonstar sighed. She wasn’t going to be able to knock any sense into him this way. Her tone softened. “We shouldn’t be dragging kits into this. It’s not… stable.”
“You’re the one who picked up Harekit,” Fogfreckle shot back accusingly, whirling around to face her. “What other choice do we have, Moonstar? Leave them to fend for themselves?”
Moonstar is reminded of Harekit, sat alone in the snow under a bush, staring up at her with his big, green eyes. “Well– no–”
“Then what? We can’t just leave them, especially not now that we’ve taken on responsibility for them. They have to come with us. It’s not an ideal circumstance to be raising kits in, sure, but it’s not something we have control over. Just see it as more incentive to find a camp to settle down in.”
Incentive? Incentive? As if Moonstar hadn’t been pushing forward on incentive alone since they’d left the rubble of their old camp behind. Her tail lashed. “I’ve had incentive. Remember when you got attacked and I was the one who licked your wounds and said we should find somewhere new to stay?”
“Why are you being so argumentative about this? You’ve already admitted we can’t leave the kits behind – what do you suggest we do? You need to be supportive for them. You’re our leader, Moonstar. You could at least act like it.”
Moonstar’s brother departed with a lash of his tail, hastening to catch up with the kits. Moonstar stood frozen in the snow, stalled not by the cold but by her brother’s words. Her tail drooped. Her paws stung and the deep snow gnawed up her legs, but all she could do was stand and watch as her brother walked away. Fresh snowflakes began to swirl down from the sky, landing on her whiskers and blurring her vision.
Alpinekit sank his needle-like claws into the tree branch he was balanced on, eyes closed. All around him, pine needles rustled together with a soothing, susurrus sound. This sound, Alpinekit had found, was so far the only thing that could block out the voices that called to him. The voices that dogged him sunup to sundown.
