09.30.2019 → There has been some exciting changes on CD lately! We've added a new monarchy to the groups of cats on the islands, as well as restructured the boards a bit to allow for some space - thus, redrawing the map! We've also promoted Nifty to Global Mod! There are some auditions open right now for JungleClan Deputy as well as for all of the new Kingdom of Mokuhau high ranks - Artemis
09.12.2019 → Unfortunately Elaedria is stepping down as administrator due to life being too busy to keep up! The site will be going through some restructuring in high ranks as well due to this. Effective immediately, the word count is now 100 minimum. Some more changes will be coming in the future - members have been emailed a survey to help us figure out what to change and how to get better. Thanks for your patience! - Artemis
WEATHER
Year 55, Scorching Sands 09.05.2019 → The temperatures of the islands are a steady 98° F on land/ high 80s in water. There is almost no breeze, the sun is uncomfortably warm.
Prey during the day is pretty scarce due to the heat, however is quite active after the sun goes down.
Lost in the dense jungles of scattered islands, facing perils unimagined by their ancestors, are three warrior groups - The traditional JungleClan, descendants of the original clans carried aboard a twoleg contraption from their home long ago and breaking new ground on old beliefs. Second, the curious TidalClan, made up of kittypets who chose to abandon their long since passed twoleg civilization ways for those of true felines. Lastly, the mysterious Tribe of Twisted Roots, hidden in the mist from others with their strange ways and a deeper knowledge of the land around them. Together they must learn how to take their fate into their own paws if they wish to survive this land of erupting mountains and roaring waters.
Join our crew and dive into an island-based Warriors roleplay - a twist on the original series by Erin Hunter. We are a semi-literate site with a minimum of 100 words per post.
Description Sentence A short one-line sentence that nicely sums up your character's appearance. Example: A small thick-furred tom with black hair and green eyes.
Appearance This is where you can describe your character's appearance in more detail. Please have at least 100 words in this section.
Family Starling's Call, mother. Died under mysterious circumstances at 33 moons. Pine Smoke, father. Died of old age at 103 moons.
Pale Flower, sister. Died of sickness at 97 moons. Little Jay, brother. Died the night he was born.
Red Tail, mentor. Died in battle at 73 moons. Snowy Stone, steward. 83 moons. Lion's Roar, steward. Died in battle at 19 moons.
Brine Water, friend. Slipped on ice and died at 68 moons. Bat Screech, son of Brine Water. 61 moons. Penguin Wing, daughter of Brine Water. 61 moons.
History In the dead of the cold season (for Soothing Skies was never quite so soothing for cats who made their homes at the top of a mountain), a scout who had wanted nothing more than to become a consort sat silently as the tom by whom she had become pregnant fussed over the kits she had never wanted. Starling's Call and Pine Smoke had a deal -- these kits would never be known as hers.
He had been more than happy to agree. Their coupling had been a mistake, but he would never have dared share the same designation with his younglings.
Starling's Call told him that they were too small to survive, and then she stood up and returned to her nest, leaving Pine Smoke to take the three kittens to the matriarch who had already agreed to raise them. Her name had been Howling Wind, and she was without a doubt Pine Smoke's best friend. Her own offspring were of a similar age, and the hope was that nobody would question the appearance of the kits so that Starling's Call could continue her expected path.
Of course, rarely do our plans work out so well.
Little Jay did not survive the night, and the mourning seeped into every aspect of Pine Smoke's life. The skies had become duller and the seasons did not seem to change, but the kittens he called his own grew in great strides. Pine Smoke was not absentee, and his young always knew the warm embrace of their father, but they also knew that the she-cat who stared coldly at them from the common spaces had stake in their development as well.
Matters were not helped when the Shaman discovered that Pale Flower could not hear at all -- a side effect of being a white cat born with such clear blue eyes. Not that Hovering Fog ever minded. She had been communicating with her sister since they were born, and this certainly did not change things.
It was Hovering Fog who figured out that Starling's Call was their mother, long before her sister did. Still, that was not much of a surprise to either sister.
Other Notes
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Your Name: Dove Your Current Characters: Sand Where Stingrays Hide, and i'm working on making Heronfeather of JungleClan. Do you have any high ranks? If yes, would you like to relinquish any? I've got Stingray, but I'm holding on! Do you wish to archive any characters/threads you have on the go? Uhhh, I think chasingdusk.boards.net/thread/345/wicked-comes-open?page=1&scrollTo=1571 and that's it!
Stingray occasionally lamented his selection as witch. It was... unfortunate, the way he had been set apart. He would have much preferred to spend his time blending in with his siblings, not being noticed, and simply carrying on his life as everyone else. He just had to be special.
But stepping into this den almost always made him understand why he had made such a choice. He choked on the sudden overwhelming smell of so many cats. He was used to the smell of herbs masking the scent of other cats. While he knew that he carried the smell of lavender on his pelt everywhere he went (because he kept it in his nest), he knew that the smell was drowned by the sheer number.
Swabbies and navigators both were swarming and he groaned, slumping to sit down beside the pair of navigators that had not decided to be overwhelmingly energetic this early. He couldn't even remember why he had come into the den anymore. His ear flicked, and he took careful notice of just who Fern was talking to.
Firefly.
He did his best not to be rude and dipped his head to the pair of them. "Good morning. How are the pair of you?"
His pelt felt hot. The owl bone, of course, was so covered in notches that it was almost unrecognizable at this point. Most of the bones had a very neat array -- notches in neat rows, all exactly the same after the first three or four. Single pinpricks identical in every way, just deep enough to mark but never to break or damage. Except, of course, for Scuttle's.
Most of his tribemates with that many notches on their bones had ended up dying of disease, age, or blood loss. This many markings always meant that he was fearing for someone's life, desperate that the Goddess would keep her claws away. He did not like being caught in his insecurities any more than Monarch did.
"... Yes. I do not know if he is truly dead, so.." His words caught in his throat, and he felt like he was being crushed. It was the same paralyzing fear he felt every time he looked the Goddess in the eye. His fur had started to raise, just a bit. A natural response to his anxiety.
"Scuttle's used to be much cleaner. Then... then that awful storm happened, and then he was gone. There was no way to track him, and no way to know. Maybe the God of Water took him. Maybe he just... ran away." Of course, Stingray rationally knew that there was cowardice in fleeing and many of the tribe would have declared him dead either way.
Stingray couldn't bring himself to do so. If he declared Scuttle dead, then he'd have to bury a nest without a body on it. He'd have to bury someone for the first time, and he wouldn't even have a body to bury. He would not have a soul to send to the Goddess, nothing to mark as sacred in Scuttle's name.
So no. He had no intention of declaring his mentor deceased -- not unless a body was recovered that couldn't rationally be called someone else's.
The witch's nose twitched. Okay, so Monarch planned on staying. That was... fine. But Monarch's words concerned him. "I'm certain that's not true. You have seen the God of Fire, and you have looked the Goddess of Death in the eye. I can see that from the scars littering your pelt." And, y'know. Because he'd been in the nursery at the same time as Monarch. He tucked his paws underneath him. "... but I do suppose that not every navigator sees the Gods like I do." He curled his tail around himself, taking another bite of the meal he'd been brought. "I can understand your concern, though. I certainly felt it when I was younger. I used to worry that a mistake had been made," He laughed bitterly. "My most recent dream disproves that."
He glanced Monarch over. "I don't know if Tempest has told you yet, but I received a message from the mainlanders's gods. Something about the mainland cats fleeing their homes and potentially coming here. We've decided not to work ourselves up over it yet, obviously, but it's still concerning." Stingray glanced around and then shifted to his paws, retrieving from one of his many hidden places the bone he had for Monarch.
He added a fourth notch and set it down. "This one represents you. The notches are times I've worried for you. You have fewer than most, because you are a very capable cat. The tribe will come to understand in time why young blood is not damnation. When Tempest leaves this island in the company of the Goddess, you will have your own experience with the gods. Then they will speak to you. For now, it is not their responsibility to train you, but instead the responsibility of Tempest and the older navigators of the clan. If they haven't spoken, it is because they have not needed to.
It was his responsibility to speak to the Gods. Nobody else's. He settled back down, feeling admittedly embarrassed about the sudden wisdom he'd spit at Monarch's paws (though he supposed that having an old soul was not particularly strange for someone who spoke to the Gods on the regular).
He watched Monarch stalk away like a panther in the grass, leaving him staring in dismay after the tom who was essentially abandoning the witch swabbie. Then Ember shifted, too, his whole body changing like the wind, and he was apologizing to Stingray as if he hadn't just used him like a woodpecker uses his beak. At being addressed, the ice on Stingray's paws shattered as his chest started to heave. His ears were flat against his head and every hair on his pelt stood straight up, the rancid smell of terror pouring off of him in waves.
He could scarcely hear what Ember was saying. It all just sounded like whalesong, and all he could really hear was his blood pounding in his ears. His pupils had dilated and he was breathing heavily with his tail curled at his side. The swabbie seemed to be making himself smaller despite all the posturing, his back arched as every part of him shook. Then his breath was coming in heavy sobs, and it felt like there were ants crawling all over his pelt. The lights were too bright and he felt like he was being suffocated.
He was absolutely certain that he was being electrocuted, or maybe dying, or probably both. His thoughts weren't even making sense anymore. He nearly threw himself into the lake just to stop the sensation of being on fire. Maybe this was the war the God of Fire had warned him about. Maybe he had been meant to mediate between them, but he had failed, and now the fire of the Gods was burning him from inside out.
Of course, to everyone else this reaction might have looked like Stingray was ill, but he was currently hyperventilating and trembling in every limb, looking quite a lot like he needed the comfort of his father.
tag || Artemisnifty || notes || forged in fire? || ▲
Stingray was frozen to the ground as the cats passive-aggressively fought over him and what he should do as a proxy for their own distaste of each other. He didn't like any of these cats speaking for him, but he couldn't bring himself to make a sound. The thought of hunting made his stomach turn, He liked all of these cats well enough, but this conversation was quickly deteriorating his opinion of them. His ears had gone flat and every muscle in his body was tense as he tried to figure out what to do.
If he went with Dragonfly and Ember, he'd have to hunt. He was already exhausted, and the thought of trying to kill anything made him want to crawl into a hole and die. But, if he went home to get some rest, he'd be siding with Monarch. That wasn't entirely a bad idea, seeing as clearly neither of these two were explicitly fond of him, but that could also set a precedent he was uncomfortable with that he always sided with whoever was the loudest (and that wasn't how he wanted to be known).
Stingray was on the verge of bursting into tears. He hated conflict in all its forms, but he couldn't will himself to run away or speak up, so he just... froze. Then, Monarch asked him a question directly, and he was able to take a heartbeat and snap out of his stupor. "U-Um... no. I... he-- no." His voice held a tension that betrayed his distress if his body language didn't. He wanted to let the ocean swallow him. He hated this so much.
He wanted to tell them off. He was allowed to, wasn't he? He was a swabbie, sure, but he was a witch, too, wasn't he? Was he?? Dragonfly's hesitant warmth had vanished like mosquitos in the breeze just as quickly as Monarch started to purr. Ember's chill made him shiver, and he felt like he was standing in the middle of a blizzard with ice growing on his whiskers. His paws were frozen to the ground and his tongue was heavy in his mouth as his heart started to beat faster. He hated conflict. He hated it so much.
tag || Artemisnifty @sovereign || notes || forged in fire? || ▲
When Monarch approached, Stingray had been in the midst of working. He'd been fussing over the jaw bone of an owl, snapped jaggedly from the skull by clumsy paws a pawful of moons ago. It had several notches in it already as he held it in his paws, eyes closed as he murmured to himself and made close-together notches with his claws every few seconds. He startled when Monarch came in, and the bone snapped in half in his paws. He stared at it in dismay. "... That one was for Scuttle..."
He still hadn't actually accepted that his mentor was dead. He had no proof, so why should he believe that he is? However, the breaking of the bone was... a bad omen. "Well. I'm pretty sure they just spoke," he sighed. Stingray tucked the two pieces into the nest he still hadn't removed (it was tucked to the side and squished up with old moss, but still there). He settled down across from Monarch and started to work at the prey he'd been brought. He hadn't eaten yet today.
"I've been well, I suppose." He didn't know if he was really supposed to tell Monarch about his dream, so he resigned himself to his half-truths. "They're never silent, Monarch." That was true enough. He saw the Gods in everything he did, including these bones. He started to eat as he thought about Monarch's. He hadn't been sick for some time, which was good, but he still had one. It was the forelimb of a squirrel with three notches in it already.
"Thank you for the prey. How have you been?" Stingray wasn't meeting his eye, but that wasn't exactly peculiar behavior for the young witch. He was usually avoiding direct eye contact if he could help it; it still made his pelt crawl. Instead, he was focusing on Monarch's paws, just so the other tom would understand that he wasn't being ignored.
tag @sovereign || || notes || Snips, snails, and puppydog tails|| ▲
The witch swabbie hadn't minded when it had been just Ember hanging out by the pond. Company was always nice when he was so shaken up! Dragonfly's appearance had been fine, too... but then they'd started talking, and then Monarch appeared, and honestly he was even more overwhelmed with this whole conversation. "U-Um. It's nothing, haha, I just didn't sleep last night. Got restless I guess, came out here to get a drink, and well I ended up losing track of time. Nothing to be worried about, promise! Just... should... um, probably go. Sleep. Now. Yeah."
Of course, a swabbie of seven moons engaged in a conversation with two navigators and the quartermaster was... a strange situation, even if he was in training to be the witch of the tribe. Stingray still didn't think of himself as anything more important than the average swabbie. After all, how could he be? He was just... Stingray. The only real difference was that he was hunting for herbs instead of prey, and fighting was a lot less of a focus of his training. And that he didn't sleep in the same place as the rest of the swabbies, but he didn't mind that so much. He didn't get along all that well with his brother, so being away from him was... fine.
But now that Stingray was thinking about it, hadn't that started when he'd become the witch swabbie? His whiskers twitched in thought. It sure had. Was his brother jealous? What was their to be jealous of? Maybe he was a little more important than the average navigator, but the witch still had to do what the commander and quartermaster said like anyone else. The only real 'perk' was that he talked to the gods, but that was usually terrifying. Physical incarnations of death, the ocean, and war sort of had to be. His ear flicked, betraying his discomfort. "A-Anyway, um..."
tag || Artemisnifty @sovereign || notes || forged in fire? || ▲
Description Sentence An elegant black-and-white she-cat with green eyes.
Appearance There is something about Heronfeather that screams serpentine -- something reflected in her sinuous movements, her elegant posture, her cool and calculating eyes that make the wise remember not to underestimate her. To underestimate Heronfeather is to walk blindly into a den of vipers that could have easily been avoided had you not been lulled in by the sweet words and beautiful architecture. Heronfeather is objectively beautiful, with long limbs and an elegant form, but attractive is another story. Her sleek black-and-white fur is meticulously groomed, and her green eyes are always flashing with her next plot or scheme. She walks with purpose, every paw step light as if she were in the middle of a hunt. Every movement of her body is perfectly measured, everything she does meticulous.
Personality
Please list at least three positive and three negative traits for your character below.
Personality A lady is always polite, quiet, and calm. She knows her place and fits there without scorn. She is as sweet as any balm With a tongue sharper than any thorn. As beautiful as a flower, but deadly as the snake that strikes from beneath it in the morn.
---
Heronfeather was once the type to attract toms like a pitcher plant attracted flies. She would seek the thrill of doing something she was not meant to do, spend her night or nights with them, and then go back to curl into Ducknose's nest before he awoke the next morning. However, she has matured since then, at least a bit. Heronfeather remains a calculating genius, able to read another cat like an open book, but nowadays she mostly puts her skills towards making sure her son Anispine is mentally sound.
Even after she stopped her escapades in the night, she remained manipulative. After all, one has to be, with a life built on lies. She is not afraid to pull strings and whisper in the ears of others to get her way, though admittedly these days she is mostly using this skill to the benefit of her family and friends. Honestly though, this is what she has always used her skills for. Even when she conspired towards the death of Tinyglow and the exile of Ducknose, it was to protect her relationship with the tom she really loved.
Heronfeather is also no stranger to responsibility. She is willing to stand up for what she believes in and face consequences whenever they come. She has not disillusioned herself -- what she did was wrong, and she understands that she will one day have to answer for herself in StarClan. For now though, she will do everything she can to keep Newtclaw and her kits safe.
Heronfeather is also polite -- painfully so. She keeps her head in every situation, and is the master of a back-handed compliment. She is unafraid to use kindness and delicacy to get her way rather than brute force and cunning. When it comes to spying and influence, she is exceptionally skilled. Of course, that is not to say that she does not also excel in combat...
Caiquebeak - Son of Ducknose Orioleheart - Daughter of Ducknose Towheefeather - Daughter of Ducknose Gracklepool - Son of Newtclaw Caracafrost - Son of Newtclaw Anispine - Son of Newtclaw
History Before, there was a she-cat and her lover. Tallflower was an elegant she-cat whom the clan thought highly of. She was on the path to becoming the deputy of JungleClan, and had every intention of following her dreams. However, caught up in herself, Tallflower spent a night with Darkfang. That was all it was meant to be. One night. Of course, things are never so simple.
Then, there was Heronkit and Tinykit. Heronkit took after Tallflower, and Tinykit after the tom she didn't bother calling her mate. The kittens were never close, and never spent hardly any time playing together. One would have been hard-pressed to find the pair of them together, even when they were small, though not for lack of trying on Tinykit's end. Heronkit idolized her mother and wanted to be the best. The tallest, the prettiest, the smartest. She wanted to be everything Tallflower was and more -- so that didn't leave her much time for playing.
Later, there was Palekit and Duck-kit, and everything changed. The two of them immediately accepted Heronkit into their friend group, and the trio started getting into trouble together right away. They'd run around in the mud and play clan, or Palekit would tell them the most interesting stories, and it was always just wonderful. Tinykit continued to watch from the sidelines, but Heronkit barely spared her sister a thought. Tinykit was the furthest thing from her mind when she could be occupied with the toms. In fact, Tinykit and Duck-kit's brother, Newtkit, were far closer than either of them were to their siblings.
Apprenticeship was a tricky time for Heronpaw. Palepaw was whisked away and named the medicine cat's apprentice, leaving her and Duckpaw to get into trouble while Palepaw and his stories became more and more occupied with responsibility. He became quieter, more observant, and ten times as cunning while Heronpaw grew into her long-leggedness and Duckpaw chased after the oblivious she-cat like a dog after a car.
Meanwhile, Tallflower was doing her best to get her daughter to shape up. Tinypaw was an energetic and bright young she-cat, albeit a bit shy, while Heronpaw was mostly just a poor imitation of her mother. Being friends with Palepaw, it was no wonder that cunning came more easily to her than diplomacy and grace.
One day she was on the territory with her mother and two other warriors when she learned a very important lesson. Both of the warriors were toms, and they had been talking under their breath about Tallflower through the entire patrol. They kept saying such horrible things about her, and about her kittens, and about what they thought of her. Heronpaw couldn't believe that her mother would just sit so quietly and take it, but she knew better than to speak out against a warrior. Then, as they passed across the border with the jungle, she noticed her mother very pointedly guide her a few mouse-lengths to the left. Heronpaw followed, and watched as the two toms tripped face-first into the thorns. Tallflower's eyes shone as she said to her daughter, "Never let them know when you are scheming."
She liked the sound of that.
In her warrior days, Heronfeather finally managed to grow into herself and her confidence. Her relationship with Palepaw had grown strained, and she couldn't shake how odd it was that she was a warrior while he still carried his apprentice name. Her and Ducknose got along better and better while she continued to be oblivious about his growing crush. She developed her skills, and learned exactly why her mother was so effective -- she was calm. Heronfeather learned not to let her emotions show unless she could fight it, but she still couldn't help but chase the thrills she so craved.
Then, Tallflower finally pulled her aside and asked her when she planned to stop stringing Ducknose along. She was confused, of course -- she'd scarcely given it any thought, and had no clue that he'd shown any sort of interest in her. How wrong she was. Tallflower explained that he'd been in love with her for moons, and insisted that she either give in or let him move on. After all, Tallflower had said, a she-cat was strongest when she had a tom to protect her interests. She could understand that.
Over the next few moons, Ducknose was ever-present in her mind. Palepaw had become Paleleaf, but they still didn't hang out together. Despite her reluctance, Heronfeather could find no reason to let Ducknose become her mate, so she gave in. However, she was... reluctant, to say the least, about giving up on her thrill-seeking. Strangely, after she became mates with Ducknose, she did not feel any guilt about her escapades across the border and her trysts with TidalClan or even other toms in JungleClan.
In fact, having a mate to hide it from made the thrill that much more addicting.
Kits were inevitable. Thankfully, they were Ducknose's -- there was no imagining otherwise when the litter was born. A litter she had never wanted, but learned to love. Three tiny kittens nursed at her belly for the next two moons, and Heronfeather was going insane. Ducknose was a wonderful father, but she quickly went stir crazy in the nursery and desperately wished for anyone other than Tallflower to break the monotony. Her mother was a wonderful she-cat and knew just what to say and do to keep her from completely losing it.
When her kits were six moons old, she could not have been more excited. She loved them all, of course, but it was so much more time-consuming than the she-cat had been used to. Heronfeather was the type of warrior who was constantly moving, and her long legs had never been immobile for so many moons before. Immediately, she started back on her trysts. Guilt had begun to build in her heart now that she had kittens to anchor her to Ducknose, but their existence did not change the fact that she did not love him. He was her best friend, and she did not want to hurt him, but she still wasn't ready to settle down, and she certainly never would be with him.
For the past moon she had been occupying herself with Newtclaw, slipping off at his side and telling him that she loved him. However, with each escapade, she slowly had started to realize that it was true. Heronfeather had never spent enough time with the more aggressive of the brothers, but she could understand why Tinyglow was so taken with him. He was a wonderful tom, and Heronfeather could not deny her attraction.
Disaster struck -- at least, for Heronfeather. She was returning from a night with Newtclaw when Tinyglow caught them. Heronfeather looked at the lamplike eyes glowing back at her, reading disgust and betrayal and disdain. Tinyglow was going to tell Ducknose -- she knew it... but Heronfeather couldn't let that happen.
Newtclaw moved to her and tried to talk her down. To Heronfeather's relief, as she watched them talk, she realized that Tinyglow had never told Newtclaw that she loved him. Heronfeather had wondered what might have happened in another world. If she did not hate her sister, if she truly loved Ducknose, if she had stayed friends with Paleleaf. The trio returned to camp, and not a word was spoken of it, but Heronfeather's mind would not stop working.
Newtclaw was in her mind, and so was her sister. With every day that passed, she knew that Tinyglow, self-righteous and responsible Tinyglow, would see fit to tell Ducknose. Worse, she might see fit to tell Newtclaw, to tell him that she loved him, and rob Heronfeather of the only cat she had ever truly cared for more than her kits and her mother. So she acted.
Less than a half-moon after they were caught, she went to talk to her old friend Paleleaf. If anyone could help her, it would be him. She explained what was happening to the frustratingly silent medicine cat, watching his eyes sparkle in interest as he toyed with his own morals at the idea of her plan. Finally he agreed -- on the condition that they never, ever spoke of this again and Heronfeather stopped her escapades.
It was easy to agree.
That night, everything went smoothly. The evidence was laid carefully and even Abel would not have known what awaited. Paleleaf himself testified that Ducknose had attacked her, and what motivation could the medicine cat, one of Ducknose's best friends, have possibly had to lie? Nobody knew that Heronfeather's coldness, her apparent lack of focus, were to distance herself from what she had done rather than what Ducknose had supposedly done. He was exiled, and less than two days later his body was found mangled on TidalClan territory by some predator. Heronfeather had won, but at the cost of her best friend's life.
Heronfeather and Newtclaw grieved together. While some of the clan members were suspicious when they became mates, there was no real evidence to say that they had conspired. Heronfeather knew that she was ready now, that she loved Newtclaw. She also knew that she could never let him take the fall for what she had done. She swore to him one night shortly after the bond was official that she would never let herself hurt him, promising that he was different, that she would never do anything wrong by him. That she would always take the fall for him.
And she was telling the truth.
This time, she wanted the kittens given to her. Three perfect little tom-kits were born while Paleleaf watched cooly from the medicine den. Newtclaw made himself into a perfect father, and the secret that Heronfeather had bound in her own blood was kept. Paleleaf mercifully spoke nothing of it, but every time he shifted away from her or asked her to leave his den left ice settling in her core until she ultimately decided that it was no longer something worthy of speaking about. Friends grew apart, and there was no reason for her to acknowledge what she had done.
Heronfeather was not a doting mother, but she loved her kits dearly, and this time was reluctant to leave the nursery with their christening as apprentices. However, the mentors of her kits kept her in touch, and she was thankful for it as she tried not to be overbearing. She had noticed, however, that Anispine was... struggling. His mentor was constantly beating him down and picking fights. She had quietly spoken to the leader about such things, but was routinely encouraged to leave it be, as apprentices needed to learn how to deal with difficult cats.
She did not like seeing her son suffer, but did as she was told. When Kapokstorm attacked him, the surge of rage at her son being insulted would not settle. Heronfeather was willing to do anything to keep her son safe, and once more went to Paleleaf's side... only to be told in no uncertain terms to leave.
The rage settled from a boil into a simmer when Paleleaf began to spend more and more time with her son. Despite the cold distance between them, she trusted him, and knew that he would ultimately do right by Anipaw. She was more than happy to lend him to Paleleaf's company, and couldn't help the swell of pride when he was chosen as Paleleaf's apprentice. She knew rationally that this too would drive a wedge between her and Paleleaf, and the same wedge would stand between her and Anipaw, but that did not matter.
All that mattered was that he was going to be safe.
Moons passed, and then he was named Anispine, and she could not have been more proud. That is, until that night she sat awake, watching from the nest she shared with Newtclaw as Anispine and his brothers talked and laughed with their half-siblings. Heronfeather still felt guilt over the way she had nearly abandoned them; she loved her first litter, but she had never connected with Orioleheart and Towheefeather the way her mother had connected with her. She had certainly never connected with Caiquebeak, her firstborn.
She did not want them putting ideas in Anispine's head, but knew that she could not say anything. So instead, she just watched. There was no reason for any ill conclusions to be drawn. The worst that could have been assumed by anyone who was not Tinyglow or Paleleaf was that Ducknose -- though that name had been stripped upon his exile -- had died, and Heronfeather had sought out his brother as a form of replacement.
Then Paleleaf died.
She buried him, along with a few others.
StarClan knew she should have seen it as a blessing. Two could only keep a secret if one of them was dead, but... Paleleaf.
At the other end of the lake, the witch swabbie might have been a statue he was sitting so still. It was hard to even see him breathe, and everything from his whiskers to his ears to his tail were perfectly still. He was staring into the water with his eyes unfocused and his head tilted at an angle that had to be somewhat uncomfortable. The orange light of the sun in its rising refracted across the water, making it look like a sea of fire reflecting in his wide green eyes. He was barely even blinking, his pupils round with focus.
The God of Fire was one of combat and pride. He tore and burned like a wildfire and ran alongside the Goddess of Death in battle, leaving her behind like the scorched pawprints he carried. Now, he seemed to be swallowing up the fresh water, swallowing up the thin and spindly witch swabbie without a scar on his pelt, swallowing up everything timid and easygoing in his heart.
In the water, Stingray saw war. Of course, the other cats on the island were always ones for war. They were no strangers to it. Their own pelts were raked through with scars, and the ancestors they had brought with them whispered words of violence even in times of peace. The war of the trees and the waters never concerned him, but in the water, he saw the tribe drawn into that war. He saw fire blazing all around them like the sunrise making his pelt glow, and jerked back to himself very suddenly. Stingray was breathing hard as his eyes caught Ember across the lake, and for a split second he could have sworn that the tom was the god he'd seen.
Of course, he reassured himself, nothing was set in stone. The only god who's word could not be argued was the Goddess of Death, the panther calm in the hurricane.
Regardless, Stingray was shaking in every part of his tiny body. There was every possibility that his overactive imagination had bred the 'vision' -- it wasn't even a true vision, not really. It was just him zoning out in the middle of getting a drink of water, and it didn't help that he hadn't slept the previous night (he wasn't meant to wander around alone, he really wasn't, but he'd snuck out. Something had pulled him to sneak away). Stingray took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
He wouldn't tell anyone. It could very well be nothing. He wouldn't tell anyone until he needed to. Witches misinterpreted things all the time. For all he knew, the God of Fire could have just been telling him about a perfectly innocuous battle to come. It wasn't as if they were uncommon! For Stingray to see fighting in the fire didn't have to be at all damning, no matter how much he thought it might be.
He remembered his father's words. It wasn't good to get worked up over what could very well be nothing. He'd think about telling Scuttle, but there was nothing set in stone. Never anything set in stone.
Stingray started to make his way around the lake, tail high in greeting. He was too shaken to be shy right now. He needed to talk to someone. About... anything. Just... talk. "Hey Ember. How's your morning going?"
ok so my cat heads look different from everyone else's (because i made my own without a reference) BUT i have an explanation for all of my things!! (also they're transparent <3)
jungleclan is vines tribe of twisted roots has three flowers to represent their three gods tidalclan is an attempt to draw seismic echoing that might cause a tsunami (often called a tidal wave)