"Come on, Heatherstripe! You can do it! This is the last one," Hawkfeather encouraged.

Heatherstripe slumped against her nest, exhausted, as her second kit came out.

"A tom and a she-cat, both healthy!" the medicine cat said happily.

"Now there's only one thing left for me to do before I die," Heatherstripe rasped, coughing. She could feel the sickness in her veins, working its way through her.

She hacked again, cursing the leafbare which had brought on this bout of greencough.

"You're not going to die! You were getting better just yesterday!" Hawkfeather protested.

"And that was before I spent an entire afternoon kitting, now wasn't it?" she replied testily.

"I won't live to see their Warrior ceremony, so I'd like to request their Warrior names, so that I may at least know what they are called, even if I never get to know them." Heatherstripe broke off into a cough, feeling herself weaken with every breath.

"For the tom... Lionfrost, after my dead mate." Heatherstripe paused, this time coughing up blood.

"For the she-kit, Larkgrace, after my mentor," Heatherstripe said. Or at least, that's what she was trying to say; she had only gotten past the first word before a fit of coughing hit her, mangling her words as they left her mouth.

"Heatherstripe, Heatherstripe! Sparkface? Did you say Sparkface? Breathe! Breathe!"

She could feel the medicine cat working frantically to clear her lungs, but Heatherstripe knew that she was dying. Oh, please, StarClan, just let me get out this one word! She begged. She had to fix her kit's name, before it was too late.

"Larkgrace!" she tried to say, but she couldn't stop coughing, and now there was more blood coming up with the coughs.

No, no, no!

"Larkgrace, Larkgrace!" she cried out, but fluid was rising up from her lungs, cutting off her words and choking her. She lay convulsing on the ground for a few moments before Hawkfeather stepped back and sighed in regret.

"Is she gone?" Lizardstripe asked from her nest at the back of the queens' den.

"She's gone," Hawkfeather confirmed. "I need you to take her kits," the medicine cat said, picking up the two bundles and setting them next to Lizardstripe's own kit, a one-month-old tom.

"Did she have time to name them, before...?" Lizardstripe trailed off.

Hawkfeather sighed, shaking her head. "Yes... She requested their Warrior names, as well as their kit names. For the tom, Lionkit, later Lionfrost."

"And the little she-cat?"

"Well..." Hawkfeather hedged, "I couldn't hear her very well, through the coughing, so maybe I heard wrong. But it sounded like she said... Sparkface."

"Sparkface?" Lizardstripe asked incredulously. "I won't raise a kit named Sparkface," she objected.

"Well, you'll have to," Hawkfeather replied sternly. "There's no one else to take care of them." With that, she huffed off to tell the Clan what had happened.

Lizardstripe stared down at the the two kits, who were now mewing for their mother. She gently nudged the tom, Lionkit, towards her stomach, but left the she-kit to fend for herself.

She refused to bear the shame of seeming attached to a cat named Sparkface.

When Sparkkit found her way to Lizardstripe's stomach, the queen sighed in regret. She had almost hoped that the thing would die, but that was not to be.

Well, fine, she thought. I'll raise her, but only to the bare minimum. It won't be my kit who bears the name of Sparkface.

Written by le Amazing Annco!