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Midnight tasted blood.
It was everywhere, splattered in every place possible around the vast cave in the mountain. The cave echoed with the shrieks and yowls of cats. The cave that they had called their home for countless moons. And now it was about to become the mountain cats’.
He was crouched near the nursery, nestled tightly against his mother’s pale grey pelt. He flexed his claws, his paws itching to go out and fight. To join his brother. He couldn’t stand to see everycat getting slaughtered in front of him. He was almost 6 moons old anyway. He hissed furiously.
“Flame!” His head jerked up at his father’s voice, and was just in time to see a blur of orange fur under a mountain cat’s claws. He heard a cry of anguish. He shook his head, not willing to believe it, but as his gaze focused, he saw his brother, a small limp form rested in a pool of blood, saw his father, with his similar fiery-like pelt rushing forward towards Flame. He could feel his mother yowling a warning, but it was no good. He watched in agony and horror as a mountain cat pounced on his father and tore his pelt to pieces.
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Midnight tasted blood.
It was dry blood, the faint smell of the stuff that had leaked out and was now plastered on the cold cave floor, forming dark red puddles. He wondered which one of those belonged to his father and brother.
He was padding slowly across the cave, towards the entrance. They had eventually found and killed his mother too, but not him. They had let him go, surprisingly. It was probably a way, an act to show that they were kind, a gesture that showed they weren’t pure evil. Midnight scoffed. As if. For all he knew, it was some extra torturous way to die, out in the wild, vulnerable to all the threats of the outside world.
The enemy wouldn’t even need to lift a claw to finish him off.
He tried not to look at the bodies of his fellow cats, his friends, his father and brother and mother. He stared numbly but resolutely forward, determined not to satisfy the leering, smirking mountain cats surrounding the cave. Their cave. His ears flattened.
As Midnight stepped onto the snow-covered grass, he took in a deep breath, trying to suppress the feelings of grief and longing that were threatening to spill over. He was going to try and not die, to survive and come back one day. Come back to avenge his friends and kill the cats that had taken away his home.
He followed the sun. He always followed the sun. He felt sure that he would eventually reach a place of brighter dawn, where he could leave the memories of the past that were a heavy stone on his heart behind and embrace the future.