little shadows --open

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The sun rose, and a river of colours streamed through the sky, painting the earth gold, amber, crimson and pink where it had lay dark and formless. Leafy chestnuts and large pines shifted in the breeze as they woke. It was as if the new warmth of dawn had roused them, just as one kitten had been, by light streaming through the cracks in the nursery walls like golden silk. 

Her name was Littlekit, and it suited her as names did. She was the smallest of the nursery's downy-furred inhabitants, but by no means the youngest. As she woke, her maw opened briefly in a soft yawn, and her mismatched eyes followed suit. One was the powdery azure of cold, unforgiving, leafbare frost, and the other the warm amber of melting honey. 

Littlekit's paper-thin ears swivelled, capturing the steady breathing and the peaceful snoring of kits and queens alike. Her gaze flickered, trying to catch even a leaf's depth worth of wakeful movement, then lowered to her smoke-hued paws in failure. 
She bunched her miniscule limbs, odd-eyed gaze narrowed with concentration, and leaped. She landed, as she had intended, safely on the moss-strewn floor. 

Littlekit moved slowly through the nursery, almost as if she was a shadow rather than a young kitten slipping between nests, undetected. Her eyes darted, not to a small puddle of water, near the entrance, but what she saw in it. Her fur was a dark grey, like dusk. It spiked out at every angle, but was neatly groomed beneath the natural disarray. Her eyes were intense and solemn, despite their almost comical diversity.