Adamented -||- Slatestep -||- Male -||- 32 moons -||- dreamclan -||- WarriorPrompt;;He knew he was sick.
From his mother's first suspicions they had tried to hide it from him, but they didn't need to say anything for him to know it was true. Slatekit and his sister Pebblekit were born to Dreamclan during a particularly harsh Leafbare and even though the medicine cat had told his mother and father that they had been born strong, he could tell she was lying by the way her breath quivered ever so slightly, loud like thunder to his sensitive ears. It only served as proof of how he'd been able to tell if a cat was lying all his life, even as a small unseeing kitten in the nest with his mother and sister. He couldn't comprehend or begin to understand, though, what it really meant. What it meant for him was one thing, as a harsh burn began to form in his lungs from the cold winter air, he could tell something was wrong from the start. He was slow and sluggish, struggling day to day while Pebblekit leapt and bound around him, his attempts to join her excitement and games only leading him to falter and stumble. He'd heard the medicine cat, they said, "Give it a moon or two, he will grow into those long legs," and his mother had believed them. And for a while even with the sting deep in his chest, he believed that too, that he would outgrow this sluggishness to his livelihood.
Then came the coughing.
He had felt short of breath for a very long time, half a moon in fact, before he began to cough. His normal lethargic nature had become more than wariness of the pain, it was normal for him at this point to experience a sharp sting at every breath, what wasn't normal was when he woke to find his breaths gave him almost no air. His throat felt thick and his tongue felt heavy, as did the rest of his body. His torso heaved in his breathing, though he'd convinced him the pain would never stop him from behaving as a normal kit and accompanying Pebblekit he couldn't force himself to get up or move. This is where his mother's concern first started and it was late into that night when he began coughing, his entire body lurching with the motions as he heaved deep breaths. She had called desperately for the medicine cat, who looked ashamed and horrified. They had told his mother that he was born strong and capable, certainly able to make it through the winter, yet here he was lying next to her with his very life slipping away in every cough. Of course, they did whatever they could for his life, but in the end they told his mother it would be up to him now to make it through.
Then Pebblekit fell ill.
Early into her illness, she showed no signs of her pain. She must have been experiencing the same things he had in his early moons but she bound around the nursery with her usual fervor, never letting it deter her like it had him. It wasn't until her shaking limbs could no longer hold her and she was unable to catch enough breath to sustain her energetic actions that finally she collapsed to the sickness. He watched Pebblekit lose all her energy fearfully, she was a whole other molly this way, silent and still. His mother had to make a hard decision, either give it all she had to keep them warm so they would make it through and risk the chance that she herself would pick up the contagious disease, or walk away and let them die in quarantine. She was steadfast in her decision, practically smothering the two of them to keep them warm and soon a chill set itself within her bones. She strained herself daily, trying to get them through it. As they began to recover, she fell ill with the same lung infection. She promised them she would be fine, but the disease progressed in her unlike it had with them, turning into a much deadlier illness, and she tried her hardest to hide it from them up until it was clear she would die of it.
Slatekit and Pebblekit were with their mother up until her very last moments. They watched it take her from them, in an eternal sleep they couldn't comprehend as young as they had been.
Now, Slatestep knew better than he had as an ignorant kit. He had caught Whitecough as a kit, he had been born weak, and he passed it to Pebblekit and his mother. His mother's illness had developed into Greencough, which was lethal, and caused her death- he'd become a warrior after an apprenticeship plagued by knowing he'd done it. He'd killed her. He'd been responsible for her death, and the change that occurred in Pebblekit that caused her to lose her sense of self. She never returned to that lively child she had once been, forever clouded by her grief and loss.
Slatestep would forever look back on his life and wish he could change it, begging the Stars that they may send him back to fix it. After all, he could have prevented it all, sacrificed his undeveloped life so his mother and sister could continue theirs happily without him. He could have snuck out of the nursery late at night while they rested, when he first realized he was sick and unlikely to get better. He could have left them and faded into the night without endangering them like they had, they would have been happy, and he could watch their lives unfold from the Stars when he became one with them. It's the only thing he truly regrets from his past, having the knowledge that he did even so ignorant as he was at that age and doing nothing about it.
