When he was born, the wind howled like a mourning wail through the trees, and the world was carved from ice.
It was the coldest night of leaf bare in seasons. Snow clung to the branches like ghosts unwilling to pass on, and the river - the lifeblood of the forest - lay still beneath a brittle sheath of ice. In the hollow of a frostbitten hill, deep within the warriors’ den of StoneClan, a queen cried out with her last breath of strength.
She was thin, her ribs showing through her dull pelt, and her breaths came in shallow gasps. The cold had stolen most of her warmth, and the long hunger had done the rest. But her eyes-oh, her eyes burned with something fiercer than the leafbare wind: hope.
Around her, the medicine cat whispered prayers to StarClan, crushed herbs wafting bitter smells into the air. Another queen hovered close, trying to shield her from the worst of the cold, but even their warmth felt like little more than smoke on the wind.
And then, in a hush as sudden as it was sacred, he came.
A tiny, silent kit, wrapped in the color of frost-kisssed stone. His body was warm, impossibly warm for a night like this, and he made no sound - not even the smallest mewl. His breath fogged faintly in the frozen air, and his wide, silver eyes opened the moment he touched the earth. Not searching. Knowing.
The queen - her name was Lightwhisper - cradled him to her chest with trembling limbs. She did not speak for a long time, only looked down at him with awe, her pain forgotten. Then, in a voice that danced on the edge of death and dream, she whispered: “He came with the wind…the silence between storms.”
And then, as if her task had been fulfilled, Lightwhisper let go of the world and passed into StarClan.
The clan mourned her quietly that night. They buried her beneath the stone ledge near the warrior’s vigil site, the snow covering her like a blanket spun from stars. But her kit remained.
He was named Spiritkit, for the ghostly-white mane of fluff that surrounded his neck - pale and soft as morning mist. And for the quiet stillness that followed him like a shadow.
No one expected him to live long. Born too late in the season, too small, motherless.
But live he did.
