Username: Flatterina
Cat Name: Broken
Gender: Male
Rank: Future Guardian
Clan: The Unknown Age: Five years
Prompt: If he could turn back the time, he would do it.
He had prayed to the ancestors to give him another chance, but they had turned their back on him.
As had she.
And he knew that he deserved it, though it still did not hurt any less.
He went to sleep thinking about her and woke up with her name on his lips after a night of restless thrashing and cries that pierced the silence of their – no, his alone, now – camp.
Every breaking twig was her, as was every scent he did not recognize immediately. Every noise he heard made him turn around in excitement, hope shining in his eyes, only to die, over and over again. Sometimes he thought he could hear her call out to him, but after many a desperate search he knew his heart was playing tricks on him.
She was never coming back.
In his nightmares she told him how happy she was now, without him. How much better she was doing. How freely she could breathe and enjoy her life.
Those were the nights he woke up screaming, gasping for air through the tears.
It was not as if he did not want her to be happy. Of course he did. But he also did not want her to forget about him.
She was the only thing he had held dear, the single most important being in his life, more important to him than his own life.
After she had left, he had spent days looking for her, perhaps weeks. He could not remember how long he had not eaten, not slept, out of fear that she might slip away completely.
But she had. And now she was gone.
And with her all the colour from his life, all the joy and the happiness and every reason to live except his task of finding her.
He dared not think about it, but he did not even know if she lived anymore.
Thinking about the possibility made him feel like he might come apart, breaking from the inside out. His heart was shattering already, he felt it pierce his lungs every time he breathed.
How had it even come to this?
There had been an argument. He had been stressed, she angry. There had not been any food in days, the cold winter air driving the prey underground. He had tried to hunt with her, but she had refused.
Had wanted him to take care of it. He had called her lazy. She had started yelling, scaring away what was left of the prey.
And he had snapped.
When he closed his eyes, he could still hear his final words to her.
Telling her that it would have been better if she had died instead of her mother.
She had stared at him with those sad, sad eyes and he knew what he had done.
But he had just been so angry, too stubborn and proud to apologize, and she had turned and left.
And now his daughter was gone, forever.
