Even So

 Even So

 BladeOfHope

1. Introduction

It’s… hard. Living in a place like this, y’know? Where chaos runs rampant, and no one really knows what to do. Though… honestly, the storms are the worst part of it all.

My name is Lash. I’ve lived here almost my whole life, and never once have I ever understood why the cats around me are all the way they are. It’s like, why would you force a group of cats to try to survive in a world like this? It’s probably the worst possible idea; no cat I know even wants to be alive. Not with everything that’s been going on lately.

There’s not much to be done about it, though. We wake up, we do whatever chores are assigned to us for the day, we eat, and then we sleep. If we’re lucky, we might be able to sleep from midnight to dawn. Sleeping any longer than that is considered quite the luxury around here.

I seriously don’t get it. Why do there have to be such structured rules? It’s… infuriating.

My position here is high-hunter. I’m actually pretty high up in the hierarchy here, though of course I’m nowhere close to the highest position – overseer. No, that position belongs to one cat and one cat only, and it’s been the same cat ever since I’ve been here. They say he wasn’t the founder, but I hate him anyways. Regardless, my job is to lead the other hunters in tracking and catching food for everyone.

Even in eating, there’s a social hierarchy. The overseer gets to eat first, however much he likes. Normally that means that all of our best prey goes to him, while the rest of us get whatever’s left. After the overseer come all of the other fully-grown cats; there are four of them, I think, and at least two of them are related to the overseer. After that, cats like me who have higher positions get to eat, and then finally all of the low-workers get to scrape up whatever they can find from the remains.

I try to leave as much as I can for the low-workers so that they don’t starve. A lot of them work for me on a daily basis, after all. But if I were ever caught… well, there would be a pretty harsh punishment for taking pity on the cats who aren’t as “valuable” as I am.

I’m only seven moons old, but already I’ve been forced into such a life as this. My workers and I are physically fit, as far as things go here; hunting takes a lot of effort, and even though we might not always get the most or best of our catches to eat, we make it work. If one of my cats wants to eat something they catch while out on the hunt, I turn a blind eye and let them. No one has to know, and besides, everyone else relies on us. Where would they be if we were starving to death on their outskirts?

A lot of the hunters are actually kits. Barely three moons old, Faith is the newest cat in my group, and probably the youngest; the oldest, Slate, is only about a half-moon younger than I am. I hate having to work them like this, especially the youngest ones; they’re so enthusiastic about life, barely noticing how harsh the world really is. Since the overseer scooped them up out of ditches and storms, they’re fiercely loyal to him and would do anything in the world to please him.

I guess I should be the same. I remember when I was found. I was one of the stormborn cats; it was a fierce blizzard in the middle of leaf-bare, when the prey was all hiding in burrows and warmth was hard to come by. I had been wandering in circles for days before I finally collapsed in a snowdrift, fully expecting my life to end then and there. I was delirious for quite a while, but then I felt paws grasping me, lifting me out of the snow. I had been found.

I should be grateful. I know that. But my two-moon-old mind had already come to terms with the fact that I was going to die, and so being snatched away from that was one of the worst experiences I’d ever had. It was like I was being saved from something that wasn’t a threat, something that I had expected to be my savior.

I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I don’t really care. That’s just how it is.