Have you ever felt abandoned? Of course you have, we're human, we can feel emotions. It's whether we decide to listen to them. When your only friend is sick for one day and you're left alone on the swing at the school playground. You feel lost, lonely, like you're back to square one with your heart aching to see them come back and give you that smile you've learned to love. Without them, you have nothing to do. The silence becomes so loud it's unbearable. You wish you could do something, get your friend back so you can run together.

After some time, you learn the hard way that it was just 'one of those days' where they were gone. You wait for the next day and they aren't here. You force yourself through another abnormally long day without them at your side. The next day you start to worry about them and their well being. Days tick on, days weave into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. By then, you learn they've left you all alone. They were the highlight of your day and now they're gone. Nothing's bringing them back.

Whether you learn to make new friends to fill that hole, you know that the scar will remain. Times where you stop in silence and think of them. We all know that, maybe some of us feel pain from within, some may wonder what is going on with them. Either way, we had suffered through loneliness or we recovered, but we know the feeling very well.

But how does it affect you, truly? Do you ignore it and hope it passes away? Do you dwell on it and never see the sun? What happens to yourself? Do you look in the mirror at yourself later? And wonder where everything went?

Why did things just disappear when you needed them the most?

X X X

Within three moons of Echoflight's birth, MeadowClan had lost another kit.

Some cats knew that the she-cat had no chance of raising four kits on her own. Tiny bundles of energy that would turn on and off at different times of the day and go through the night was enough to give any cat gray fur. Not like the queen already had silver fur that helped prevent actual gray hair from showing. Still, no cat showed any surprise as to the third kit of her litter, Gorsekit, went missing under the leaf of night. Not even the father, Ripplestone, cared that his son was missing.

When kits first started to disappear, cats had worried. Future warriors and leaders had been taken away from them. As days weaved into moons, missing kits had turned into a natural thing. Just like missing warriors or apprentices, it became something unsolvable to the medicine cat and leader. So, just like how every single queen acted in the past, Echoflight was heartbroken the first day; then completely fine the next day.

A solution to this problem was make the queens constantly give birth to kits, so when a kit went missing, there would be more kits to replace that one. This solution only worked for a moon. Swanflame, mate to Rabbitbranch, went missing a few moons before giving birth. MeadowClan suffered from the act greatly, not just losing a healthy warrior, but losing the kits she was going to have. The Clan agreed to never come up a plan like that ever again and just wait for StarClan to send a prophecy to Dapplefur, their medicine cat. 

Waiting for a solution seemed to be the best plan any cat could think of. Offending StarClan with a plan to hopefully revive their situation and get in their way wasn't even an option. StarClan had been known to save the Clans with enough patience. If it meant cats had to go missing, then so be it. Below such graceful skies where they roamed was a suffering Clan that looked to the sky for one sign - even if it was a mere twinkle in the sky, it was plentiful. 

No cat seemed to have patience. Theories as to what StarClan could be doing ranged from sleeping all day and to being taken over by the Dark Forest. The last theory was one from the jubilant Bubblepaw, who, went missing the day of her warrior assignment nine moons ago. It was believed her energy and enthusiasm had gotten the best of her until the bitter end. No cat ventured out to find her body, and the Clan accepted the fact that the apprentice had died. 

As apprentices neared their warrior assignments, more kits were born into the Clan. The number of missing cats and kits soon grew to outgrow the number of new warriors and kits. The latest batch of warriors, six apprentices had taken it at the same time, only two had come out alive: Firefleck and Frostlight. What happened that night four apprentices died was unknown, even to the two warriors. All they could collect from the two was blurry scents on the border and unfamiliar voices. MeadowClan became more skeptical around the apprentices, restricting their freedom to roam through the territory that was once safe.

Border and hunting patrols grew smaller and smaller through greenleaf. The season where the grass flourishes with lush green blades and the sun shimmers brightly overhead and casts its warm beams on the land. Prey is plentiful and healthy with very few diseases running around the camp. Now, near the end of the green season and leaf-fall creeping closer and closer with each passing day, prey was starting to dwindle. Catching a few scrawny mice was a miracle in the meadow. If split properly, it could feed all the queens and kits. A rabbit could feed most of the warriors. Birds were uncommon within the borders, but anytime they could land a successful blow on one and bring it to the ground, it could feed the entire Clan if getting a kit's pawful of meat was considered a meal.

As more cats go missing, the prey starts to drop. Borders begin to weaken with one border patrol sent out to check the entire territory in one day. Getting more apprentices into warriors would benefit if the queens could produce more kits each day, but without prey and safety, a newborn was as good as dead. No matter what happened, it was already confirmed that any new batch of kits that entered the Clan, at least one or two would die before reaching apprentice rank.

The only strand of hope cats could lean on was StarClan was watching them. They were up in the stars watching over their suffering family. Dapplefur kept telling the Clan that their ancestors are there and will continue watching out for them for moons to come. 

Like that was going to happen.

MeadowClan hasn't improved in any sort and as kits go missing, cats lose their faith. How long would they have to wait for the starry cats to come down and give them advice? The past two leaders, Sandstar and Daystar had lived their life protecting the Clan and keeping it alive and healthy. The efforts only lasted so long and with every life lost by their current leader, Ashstar, the faith in StarClan goes down. Hope for StarClan was low, there wasn't a single cat in the Clan that seemed to fully believe StarClan was coming. 

Across the meadow lies the small forest of CinderClan, a Clan of nimble tree-loving cats that hangs out in the trees and swoop down from the branches to take their prey away. Missing cat reports have come from their forest as well. It wasn't before long before they began to accuse MeadowClan. The forest-dwelling cats remain hostile toward the meadow dwelling cats, if a whisker was seen out of sight, the other Clan would attack. 

Truces have been settled between Ashstar and Aspenstar, CinderClan's leader. Even with it hovering over all the cats, there aren't any ways to stop the glares the Clans give one another. Ever since the truce, CinderClan has remained shut in their forest dealing with their problems and has skipped Gatherings. Meeting the other Clan was rare and some kits weren't even exposed to the idea that there was another Clan living among them. 

Now all that was left is to wait. Hope that StarClan does in fact exist. 

And just how many cats are going to die for the pointless wait?