Accompanied by a rainstorm, Anise was born in a small litter to Nettle, a lonely wanderer. Scared of her kittens being taken away from her if she stayed as a housecat, Nettle fled her house and wandered into the forest, where she tried her best to teach herself to hunt and fight. She wasn’t accustomed to the lifestyle, but was more terrified of the thought of being parted with her children than getting sick or hurt herself. Because she wasn’t a great hunter though, she was less healthy than she would’ve been had she stayed, and Anise was the only one of the litter to survive the night.

This completely killed Nettle inside. She had left to save her kids, but that choice might’ve been what condemned them. With what little strength she had, she named the litter and tried her best to live for Anise. It was hard for her to go on, though. She would spend most of her time listless and sleeping, trying to forget about Anise’s siblings. Nettle thought it too painful to live when they hadn’t gotten the chance to.

After Anise was weaned off of milk, Nettle half-heartedly taught her to hunt. At this point, the little cat had gotten the sense that no matter what she did, Nettle would never feel better again. It seemed that her mother had lost all hope. So Anise took it upon herself to become enough of a parent for the both of them. This is when she would start to create loose schedules for the day, trying to make up for a lack of structure in her own life. Nettle didn’t care much for what she did as long as she stayed close to the den, so Anise would hunt for them and make up games for herself.

When Anise was six months old, she returned from hunting to find that her mother was gone. Panicked, she searched desperately and tried to follow her scent, worried that perhaps a fox got her or Nettle had wandered away and gotten lost. Anise couldn’t remember the last time Nettle had left the den - there had to have been something wrong. To her astonishment, though, by the time she circled back around to the den, Nettle was back, and more shocking was the three kittens she had with her. Nettle told Anise that she had heard the kitten’s plaintive cries, and found them all alone and abandoned. Anise was surprised to say the least. Nettle hadn’t been taking that great care of her - why did she think that she could raise three new children? But she didn’t complain, because there was a hope and brightness in her mother’s eyes that she had never seen before. Nettle named them Dandelion, Mistle, and Yarrow, keeping with the wild herb theme that had named Anise as well. Maybe this was a turning point for her life.

Anise was wrong. Nettle seemed to have taken in the kittens with the hope that they would fill the void that her last litter’s deaths had created, but that was too big of an expectation to put on any newborn, and it didn’t recreate what Nettle had hoped for. Once again, she retreated back into the den once she realized that she wasn’t going to feel better this way, and Anise hopelessly tried to rectify the situation. She built up their lives with more rigidity - she wanted to make sure that she could prepare for whatever was going to come up in the day, and nothing was going to take her by surprise ever again. As Nettle turned away from the daylight, Anise stepped up and tried her best to become the parent that Nettle had wanted to be. She raised her new little siblings with great care, priding herself with how much energy she devoted to them. Anise was never done until they were happy.

adulthood

By the time she was a year old, and her little siblings were six months old, Anise taught them to hunt. Mistle and Dandelion were naturals at it. They were particularly good at tracking. Although Yarrow fell a little bit behind them, he was good at climbing trees, and liked to scurry above their heads and watch out for danger. They adored Anise. The three of them would scavenge little gifts for her while her back was turned, and although they liked to cause trouble, there was nothing they enjoyed more than to cuddle in her long fur at the end of the day.

They would complain about the tight schedule Anise put them on, but always followed her rules and directions with little incidents. Although Anise adored her siblings right back, she also found herself constantly tired with no break. She was burning herself out early, but Nettle would rarely ever help her out. Anise couldn’t even bring herself to rebuke her mother, as if she would hesitantly broach the subject of Nettle starting to hunt for them, the mother would tear up and apologize for how awful of a mother she’s been. Nettle would thank Anise for all she’s done, and say how unfair it’s must’ve been, and what a good daughter she was, but she would always shut down the topic of helping out herself. She would ask for a little more time. She couldn’t seem to bring herself to leave the den for more than a short while, if at all.

So Anise compensated for this by promising herself that Yarrow, Mistle, and Dandelion would never have to feel the same burnout and exhaustion that she was. They were turning into fine young cats, and she loved them more than anything else in the world. It wasn’t their fault, after all, that Nettle wasn’t fit to be a mother. Anise worked twice as hard so that they wouldn’t feel their mother’s absence. They would never cry a day in their life if she had anything to say about it.

By the time Anise was sixteen months old, she had incorporated scheduling so deeply into her life that if anything came up unexpectedly, it would feel as though something was terribly wrong. She became strict and meticulous, but still allowed the kittens (now nearing a year) space to explore their passions and be themselves. She never wanted to force expectations upon them that would feel impossible to live up to. Yarrow continued to climb trees, bragging about the natural talent he had, and taught his littermates and Anise as well (though she much preferred her paws on the ground). Dandelion liked chirping as though she was a bird, mimicking the songs and cries until sunset. Mistle spent her days drawing in the dirt with her claws, insisting that she was going to decorate their den and it would be the prettiest of all dens. Anise adored them. She wanted to give them everything. The three of them deserved the world.

Disaster struck Anise one stormy day when she was hunting. Because of the cold, prey was scarcer, and the rain made it harder to track, so Anise had to go out a little further than she usually did. By the time she got back, she discovered that nobody was home. There was the drowning scents of a fox scattered all around the area, but it was almost as if her family had disappeared completely. There was no blood, no clear signs of a scuffle -- they were just… gone. Anise was completely devastated. For the rest of the night she tried to track the scents as far as they went, but the rain washed away the scents quicker than she could follow it.

She went back to the den to wait for them instead, hoping that her siblings had just been hiding and they would come back. It was another one of their silly games, to throw her schedule off. Yarrow would jump down from the branches above her head, and Dandelion would kick dead leaves at her, before the diplomatic Mistle would bring her her favorite berries and flowers as a consolation for her siblings’ games. It had to have been one of their games. Because otherwise - otherwise, the truth would be too much for her to bear.

Anise waited for a long time. The rain passed, and the leaves shook off of the branches, and yet her siblings never returned. Finally, although the truth struck her belly with the sharpest claws, she turned away from the den and left.

And after that, she traveled for a while. Her scheduling and strict self control gave her some semblance of normalcy, because what else could she do? It was the only thing she had left. She found the Lake Colony territory, where she heard more about the Colonies and the swathes of cats that spent their lives there. Anise more than eagerly jumped at the chance to join. She knew she would thrive in the Lake Colony’s structured environment, and hopefully it would give her a chance to fill the hole in her heart. Maybe, even, her life could be more than the responsibilities she was burdened with at such a young age. She missed her three little siblings more than life, and as she joined the Lake Colony as a commoner, she hoped that they would approve of her decision. Maybe they would even give their blessing for her to move on.