[Milestone1] that summer...

It was the coolest summer that MOTHER had suffered for years, when Drew was born the littlest— yet the roundest (and both Fleet and Rhubarb would be so pleased if they could've seen for themselves how darling their beloved third had been even back then)— of her litter of ten. Each and every one of the kits had fur that sparkled like pure gold; and some like her bore dark little saddles that were hardly an imperfection in the eyes of their doting mother.

All of them resembled their father, gone into the sulfur-coated wind, but was hardly a bittersweet memory for the old crone. They were all the final gift that he'd dispensed upon her, just to ensure her safety and the insurance that she could continue on not quite so broken-hearted.

And so, Drew remembers love and a warmth not so stifling that she wants to peel free of her fluffy, dense coat. She remembers both MOTHER and a mother as all the comfort that one could possibly need; milk-scent and a faint odor of asphalt baking beneath the sun and cracking between ever-growing sweetgrasses. It was an idyllic little childhood, far from the densely-clustered city that took her litter's unremembered father.

Nothing ill befell such a childhood. It just naturally drifted apart as their mother did, bones and life sifting into EARTH and returning to HER. Drew's okay with having moved on and away. She's always carried that love with her.