Chestnut past

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains detailed description of gore, fighting, animal death, grief and post-traumatic flashbacks.

Chestnut’s earliest memory is warmth. A soft material wrapped around his tiny body, the flanks heaving up and down very slowly. The warmth of his russet-coloured mother, her soft wings wrapped around her progeny. Some kits would’ve desired breaking free from the embrace, but he didn’t. And it was one of the first things he remembers: feeling safe, protected. Feeling at home, tucked in his mother’s belly, surrounded by the sweet scent of milk and moss under his paws. The nursery was silent back then, as there had been no births except his. A quiet atmosphere filled with the soft sound of Chamomileshard’s purring was enough to make him drown back into slumber.

Days rolled by without anything exciting, if it wasn’t for Flameshard’s first visit to the nursery. The bulky brown and golden tom had made a strong impression on the kit barely half a moon old. His strong voice and gentle gestures seem to have caught the kit’s affection, judging by the way he spent his day going after him to ask him to play. Flameshard didn’t decline at all, and father and son played various games such as mossball or hide-and-seek.

But after a moon of being locked in the nursery, Chestnutkit had started growing eager to explore the camp, meet new faces, taste new things. Although his mother was reluctant to let him go outside, she went past her protectiveness and allowed him to explore the ShadowClan camp. Accompanied by his father, he went on his first tour of the camp. He met a lot of warriors, apprentices, and even the deputy of the Clan. He went back to the den safe and sound, still euphoric over the encounters he had made over the day. His mother Chamomilebark struggled to put him to sleep in the end due to how talkative and eager he was to hate his incredible day.

The next day, he decided to go out in the camp again to meet more of his Clanmates. And he did so almost every day he could. He did not have any kits to explore with, so he mostly hung out with the apprentices or any other cat willing to have an eye on the chaotic kit. He made friends with almost every cat in the apprentices’ den as well as the younger warriors, even spending time with the herbalist, any cat he could have a good time with. He had learned to avoid older warriors and some elders who could be quite crabby when little kits came to disturb their day. Soon he knew the names of all the cats he could remember, how they acted like and who were their friends. He was quite extroverted when he was a young feline, eager to explore and know more about the world surrounding him, the cats he shared his food and daily experiences with. Cats he appreciated, some more than others, cats he respected and would learn to protect as soon as he began his training.

As he approached the age of five moons, little bumps appeared on his shoulders, indicating his wings wouldn’t last too long before popping out from under his skin. And before a quarter moon had gone by, two beautiful softly reddish-coloured pennons rested on his flanks, covering most of his back when they were folded. He was extremely eager to start using his wings, but his mother who had passed down the Flying type to her son warned him not to be too sudden, and to wait to have reached apprentice age and get a mentor before starting to develop his flying abilities. He could only obey, although deeply disappointed to not be able to start flying as soon as his beautiful ocre wings had appeared. He was often showing off his wings to apprentices and his Clanmates, pretending he already knew how to use them. Owning wings was not a very common thing in ShadowClan, so it intrigued quite a lot of cats. A rumour even went about him being related to WindClan as they were the Clan where Flying was the most common, but it died off quite soon before Chestnutkit could even hear a word of it.

One day, it seemed Chestnutkit had grown tired of being stuck in camp all day; seeing all his friends leave their dens to go outside on the daily never helped his bearing of his condition as a kit.

It was early morning. Most of the warriors were still sleeping, it was barely as if the dawn patrol had left the campsite. His mother and the other families in the nursery were still asleep, it was the perfect moment. He made his way out of the conglomerate of dens filled with sleeping felines, and made his way to the outside. And from then it was just running everywhere, tripping on every tuft of grass and chasing after the butterflies and other insects, even trying to try his luck on hunting his mouse, but his lack of knowledge and experience in the hunting domain got the better of him, and he didn’t even manage to place a paw on the tiny rodent. But he didn’t let this failure discourage him and push him into going back home, and instead he walked deeper into the undergrowth. He was still out as the sun had reached its zenith, projecting a blinding gleam on earth. Unaware that search patrols were starting to be sent out looking for him, he continued walking. His paws were sore and his fur was getting dirty, but he didn’t matter; he wanted to keep going, because he doubted getting such a golden opportunity to explore in the near future. And before he could even predict it, he heard a growl. A low, cavernous growl… a warning. His fur bristled on his spine as the strange sound repeated, this time louder. Getting more intense every second slowly rolling by, as if it was marching closer to him, approaching with its deadly sharp fangs. And soon, a bark. A cry piercing through the heavy silence of the tulgey, as if it was one last sign to run away. But Chestnutkit was frozen by terror, eyes open wildly and ears pinned back as a silhouette emerged from the thickets. A lanky shape with tall ears, indistinct dark colours, long legs, and a nose-attacking bitter scent. Drool dripping from its wide open jaw, revealing the sharpest edges teeth could seem to have. Even if he had never seen any beings like this one, he instantly understood who this animal was: a dog. His first thought was to flee, run away from the destructive animal, but before he could force his paws into motion, he saw the canine darting forward and grab him by the scruff, throwing him to the ground a tail-length further than where he originally was. Out of breath he pushed himself on his frail legs, but the dog jolted forward, charging towards the brown feline. Luckily, he managed to dodge the attack, sliding barely a mouse-length away from the beast’s snapping jaws. He gathered his thoughts in barely a half second before the predator could lunge forward once more and started running. He could feel the ground vibrate under his paws as the dog was chasing after him, loudly thumping against the ground as he barked louder and louder. Chestnutkit knew he would not be able to continue running any longer, and the dog seemed to have as much strength as he had in the first place. He had no chance of escaping now. He couldn’t hide in a tree, or make his way back to camp without endangering his whole Clan. He had to face this alone. And if he had to die to avoid his Clanmates being harmed by the hound, then it was the right thing to do. The decision any warrior would take to save his Clan. Finally grasping the last breath he could to stop running and face his destiny, he realised the dog was not behind him anymore. All he could hear were thumps against the ground, high-pitched screeching and loud howling. He trotted limply to where the noise was coming from to find a bulky brown feline fighting. But not one; there were three, and their number often decreased or increased as the battle went by. After a quick thinking, young Chestnutkit realised it was one single cat who had been creating illusions of himself, and this cat was no other than Flameshard. He wanted to dash in to help his father, but he had no fighting experience and would only burden his father, who was undeniably a skilled fighter. But should he just stay there?

Before he could even decide on what he should do, he heard a scream pierce through the forest. The humongous beast had grabbed his father by the neck, snapping its jaws tightly closed around the bark-coloured cat, and the last thing he could hear was a loud crack before the canine nonchalantly dropped his father’s body to the ground and ran in the opposite direction, leaving the body lying there in a puddle of its blood. Chestnutkit waited a moment, hidden behind a hawthorn bush, before he slowly crawled out of the thorns, slowly approaching his father. Blood was still gushing out of the deep lacerations on his body and mainly on his neck. He stared in horror at his father’s widely open eyes that had lost their spark of life and joy, replaced by a coldness which struck Chestnutkit’s heart harder than he would even think possible for anyone to feel. If he had come into the battle to help his father, would it have ended this way? was the only thing he could think of. Instead he stepped back, looking at his paws stained with scarlet, the blood that was also his, in a way. It was like his blood had been taken away from him; he was still breathing but it was becoming harder and harder, as if his ichor was being drained from his body, pumped directly from his heart, and he started feeling the world spinning, grow blurry and unclear… and it went black.

He opened his eyes. He blinked slowly, trying to clear his vision, and he recognised the visage of his ginger mother, ears pinned back in a blur of sounds and motion around him. He heard the worried voice of his birthgiver above all the others. As he managed to get his sight back to normal and collect his thoughts, he faced his mother who nuzzled him fiercely, as if she was relieved to see him alive. And all the memories rushed into his head. The dog, the escape, his father falling to the ground. Without thinking, he made his way out of the medicine den, ignoring his hurting limbs, frantically looking around the camp, expecting his father’s body to be laying there. He noticed the brown lump of fur being groomed off of the dried blood in his coat and prepared for burial by his Clanmates. He pushed the cats surrounding the dead body and stared at the corpse for a long moment, trying to put his thoughts together. But it was like his mind had been drained of its thoughts… left dead, just like Flameshard. He was pulled back into the den to a crying mother who instantly started scolding him for sneaking out of camp. But it was almost as if Chamomilebark was blaming her son for the death of his father. He didn’t really think of it that way before, but… was Flameshard’s death his fault? If he hadn't gone out on his own, his father wouldn’t have been forced to go look for him in the forest, risking his life for his kit. If he hadn’t been so stupid, his father wouldn’t have encountered the dog. He would never have died. He would’ve stayed safe and sound in his nest, sharing more blissful moments with his son and watching his kit grow up into becoming an apprentice, later on a warrior. It was all his fault, and everybody knew it, even if they would never dare say it to his face. The concerned wipers of his Clanmates seemed to have taken on a whole different sense now.

As he earned his apprentice name, he was forced to stay under the eyes of his mother, strictly prohibited from going outside of camp and forced to do duties in camp. Deeply annoyed by this decision of his mother, he started closing up on himself. He stopped talking with the cats he appreciated, he started becoming more and more silent, until pronouncing a complete sentence had become a rare event. Even the friend who helped him and comforted him after the tragic death of his father was being pushed out, a little less than the others, due to the debt he held for Runningpaw.

His mother was the next to leave the surface of the earth. She had fallen gravely ill over the last moon and he had been told that it was only a matter of days before she left to join the ancestors. His death pained him just as much as his father’s in a less direct way. Word was running that he was the one who caused his mother to fall ill so suddenly and die not so long after, which caused the Runningpaw’s parents to ask their son to stay away from Chestnutpaw, as they were obviously fierce believers of these rumours. He was found dead the same day in a ravine by a patrol. Chestnutpaw’s heavy death toll caused the feline to close up on himself, with no apparent possibility of going back to being the extroverted and happy-go-lucky spirit he was when he was a kit. He started getting strange dreams of reminiscing of his kin’s death, causing his nights of sleep to be greatly degraded. The thoughts hovering over his head never seemed to have gone away, and it doesn’t seem like they are ready to leave his mind any time soon.