Twisted Betrayal

By Mistleheart

Life's twisted.

Life's betrayal.

Life's darkness and gloom, and you have to get used to it.

The long, winding paths up steel cliffs and through deserts.

The thorn-sharp pain of betrayal.

You don't want to experience it, but you can't avoid it.

Resist, and you'll be forced to endure a much more painful fall into the talons of doom.

I can still remember my mother. The positive traits; but her occasional cruelty too. And finally, when she decided I wasn't worth hunting and fighting for, she left.

Left her own kits, helpless and young, to fend for themselves.

Left us, all for a new mate we barely knew,

Everything crashed upon me that day, agonizing and relentless. My mother, my only family other than my weak sisters, had abandoned me.

She didn't care, and never would.

She would never feel regret.

She'd never...

Feel life.

And life is twisted.

Life is betrayal.

You can stand back and watch it all happen. But as your claws ache with a longing to stop the torrent of pain it's causing for everyone...

Youre helpless.

Life is agony.

Life is a lesson to your crimes.

Life is a prison, waiting to leap from the shadows, silently as a fox. A prison in hiding, its intentions to trap you.

My sisters, weak and tiny, died barely a moon after our mother left.

I cursed my mother that night.

My name is Ember. My sisters were Teal and Swift. And my mother...Honey. She is golden like her name, but her heart is nothing like it.

Her heart is empty, cold of emotion.

She says she loves us.

She doesn't.

She says she'll always be there for us.

She leaves a few days after saying this.

She says she'll never let us down.

She did.

Life is lies.

Life is brutality.

Teal. The tiniest of our litter. She'd always been barely able to raise her head. Her silver tabby fur. Her green eyes.

Swift. A bit larger, but no more healthier than Teal. She was a light flecked brown with a white chest and paws.

I remember them clearly.

They will always be scars, wounds, unhealed dents in my heart.

My mind.

Myself.

Their bodies curled up together in their nest of stones, each trying to gain warmth from the other to last the night.

Both lifeless and limp.

Their eyes, sea-green and sap-golden, alive and haunted by miseries and confusion, but alive at the very least.

Glazed over. Clouded. Staring.

My sisters, my poor, poor sisters.

They shouldn't have had to suffer for a mousebrained mistake of my mother's. They were entirely innocent.

My mother will pay.

She will pay dearly for her crimes to me and my sisters.

She is poisoned nectar. Venom in honey.

I unsheathe my hooked claws, clutching the earth, and display them in the bright, gleaming silver moonlight.

My breathing ragged and hoarse from lack of sleep, I allow a wicked, malicious smile travel onto my face.

Still panting unevenly, I grin and whisper, "Watch out, Honey. You'll be my first victim - and not my last."

I need revenge on everyone. One cat wouldn't be enough to satisfy my thirst for vengeance on these scoundrels.

"I'll let her new mate wail over her lifeless body," I hiss, relishing the scene.

My smile widens.

Life's twisted.

Life's betrayal.

Ans from experience, I know that...

Life's twisted betrayal.

The End