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Snowpelt stared at the tightly-woven walls of the nursery, and considered climbing them.
Little puffs of warm kit-breath tickled her belly, and the air was heavy with humidity, a far cry from the outside where snow blew in the harsh winds. Larktail snoozed in the nest beside her, adding to the feeling of closeness.
She hated it. The snow was falling right in front of her nose, and she couldn't go out to play in it without leaving her kits.
But, Starclan, if I have to sit in here much longer I won't be in a state to watch them, She thought.
She had to get out, into the brisk, fresh air. Now.
"Larktail, could you sit with my kits for a while? I want to go take a quick walk."
"Sure, Snowpelt. Stay warm." She murmured sleepily, sleepily picking herself up and landing with a soft sigh in Snowpelt's nest.
Snowpelt's tail flashed by the camp guard before Larktail first snored, thinking how warmth was the last thing she wanted.
Something about the falling snow that changed the air, making it thinner. The frozen claws of the wind tugged the air out of her lungs, making each breath an effort. The bits of ice mingled with the snow were sharp enough to pierce through her pelt.
Snowpelt loved it, standing right in the middle of the budding storm.
There was something special, she thought, about being surrounded by your namesake. Crowpaw would never revel in being in a flock of crows, and she highly doubted Honeytail would ever find herself in a pool of honey. But Snowpelt could stand amid this dazzling world of white, and take joy in it.
.The way the cold in the air made her fur stand on end, and made her more alert overall and alive, was possibly her favorite sensation in the world. Many days in the summer, she'd sit in the sun feeling as if she was melting. Complete torture.
She hadn't been able to play in the cold since the kits came, and she'd felt a bit claustrophobic, and cramped. She loved the little fur balls, but the stifling warmth and closeness of the nursery had threatened to drive her insane. She needed to be free in this frozen expanse, in a way that was hard to define. Snow was the only place she felt truly like she could do whatever she wanted.
It would only be a short time before they decided she'd been out long enough, or her kits got hungry or some such. So she began making the most of the short time.
Her mate never believed her when she said that she was still a kit, happy to play as long as the sun shone. He just liked her head, and purred something about how she was settled with kits of her own. Stormclaw would always be her closest friend, but he would never completely understand her.
But now she was free, from the judgment of her clan mates and the responsibilities of being a mother.
So she leapt, flying through the cold air and landing, belly first, in a drifted pile of snow. She lay there for a moment, enjoying how the falling snow joined with that under her to form a snug nest.
She pulled herself up, purring as the snow made her pelt appear lumpy. Her whiskers quivered, and her fur bristled. The cutting wind seeped through her fur, at first painful but then resigned to numbness.
She played in the snow, dug herself into burrows, anything to felt the chill. Leapt, danced, and dashed, through the falling pieces of snow.
Until, at least, her muscles were spasming in their efforts to be warm and the pain was too much to bear. So she picked herself up, and with shaking limbs, carried herself back to camp.
As she went the flurries falling from the clouds strengthened, to hunks of ice-like cold that landed on her pelt with the force of an attacking warrior. For the first time in a while, she was happy to fall into a den and out of the cold.
"Thank you for watching my kits, Larktail. I really needed to get out of the den." She panted, quickly grooming herself.
"No problem. I understand the feeling." The heavily pregnant she cat rose and waddled back over to her own nest.
Snowpelt slumped into the nest, curling tightly around her kits. To her surprise, they wiggled away.
"What's wrong, kittens? Don't you want to nurse?" She asked worriedly,
Larktail looked up a bit from her nest. "Snowpelt, you're freezing. You'll make them cold."
She groomed herself again, licking her fur backwards and trying to get clean. Her white fur, turned grey by the moisture slowly faded back to its original color.
When her tongue was raw and her kits were mewling in the cold, she finally settled into the nest. The extra layers of moss and feathers felt like they were going to crush her, but she knew her kits loved it. Frostkit would burrow her soft white head into the space between her belly and the nest, and Breezekit loved to knead it with his tiny paws.
Greykit loved to shred it under her thorn-sharp kit claws. Snowpelt sympathized with her the most.
The snow began to fall harder still as the kits nursed and fell asleep. She would have been exited if she was lying in the warriors den, a few days of patrols in a crystalline world and chilling winds were her idea of fun. But now that tiny voice in the back of her mind, the one that told her when her kits were hungry or cold, made her worried. What if they got sick? What if there wasn't enough prey for her to make milk for them to nurse? What if it became too cold for them-?
For the first time, she was faced with a huge conflict of interest. The beautiful cold, her oldest and most constant companion, was a danger to her kits, who were the thing she loved most in the world.
Before the kits were born, she would have panicked. Probably have been some mix of anger and confusement. Now, all she felt was numb.
Of course, her kits health would be more important than her own happiness. She would keep them warm, stay in the den with them until apprenticeship. But she wouldn't like it. Today's fun may have been the last for a while.
When a cold wind blew into the nursery, she bristled. Her old friend had taken on a menacing look.
"Mama, what's that white stuff?" Frostkit asked, her green eyes bright with curiosity. Greykit was poking at the little bit of snow that had swept under the den's entrance, and Breezekit observed it from a makeshift hunting crouch.
"Snow, dear. It's cold, don't get covered in it." She nuzzled the tiny kit before it bounded over to play with her sibling's. Larktail's kits looked over their mother's tail, wide eyed and curious. They were always watching her kits play, but hadn't played with them yet. Larktail's over protectiveness rivaled her own.
Snowpelt turned her attention back to her own kits. At four moons, they were growing up. The snow would be long gone in a few days, but this little bit was the most they had the time to play with, before Snowpelt would whisk them back into the den. She had kept them safe in the den until the storms had stopped coming, and even then she was wary. She longed to bring them out to a tall drift, play and run and jump through the soft flakes. But she doubted that they would be able to handle it.
Her mate seemed to agree, as did most of the clan. She noticed that the general mood of the clam was lightening with the reappearance if the warmth through her own mood changed between sadness in her friend leaving her again, and relief that she would no longer need to shield her kits.
"Hey, mama, this stuff has the same name as you! And it kinda looks like you! How did that happen?" Breeze Kit asked, his eyes crossing to see the lump of snow that had found its way onto his nose.
"Well, my mother named me after snow because I looked like it, just like I named Frostkit after frost because it's close to the color of her pelt, and Greykit because she's grey."
"Well, what am I named after?" he asked, tilting his head. The snow slid to the ground, but none of the kits paid it any heed. They were all staring at her intently.
"Well, you look the most like your father. His name is Stormclaw, so I named you after the winds that blow in a storm."
"Wait! Greykit has seen grey, and Breezekit has seen Stormclaw, but I've never seen frost. How can I tell if I really look like frost if I've never seen it?" Frostkit whined.
"Well, I don't know. It's still awfully cold…"
"Nonsense, Snowpelt! This is the warmest it's going to be and there still be frost, there's no reason for you not to show them." Larktail mewed, rising a bit from her nest.
"Well... I guess you're right. But if you get too cold," She mewed, turning to face her kits, "you let me know so we can come back in."
She stood up, and gathered the kits around her legs. They all bounced as they walked, purring and squealing.
She led them to the Clan Tree, a tall willow with a low branch where the leader spoke and a hollow for the leader's den. There was also a fine crust of frost over the roots, gleaming silver-white in the sun.
"There it is. It's lovely, isn't it?" She mewed, looking at her kit's wide eyes. The entire camp was decorated in shades of grey; they wouldn't be dazzled by the many colors of the world for a few more moons.
But now they were in awe at the beauty of frost and snow and cold, and it made her heart soar. She wasn't the only one who appreciated the delicate intricacies of ice on a spider web, or the softness of new fallen snow.
Even if it was only some open minded kits, squealing at their namesakes, it was something, something that sparked hope deep in her.
Just like that, Snowpelt could feel her old friend wreathing around her.