pheasantstar.

"

it was late leaf-fall when shrewslip of the windclan tunnelers, a respected and well-known warrior, if stern and intense, announced she was with kit with her mate, wrenbelly. windclan elated at the news, and one moon later she was moved into the nursery to better prepare for her kitting. as an older she-cat she needed the extra custody and care.

it was well worth it when she delivered one healthy she-kit, who she promptly named pheasantkit for her wiry brown pelt, not unlike that of the moorland fowl's.

like any other kit her age, young pheasantkit was a bundle of curiosity and interest. she tried to escape the nursery at every twist and turn, to run amok in the late greenleaf sunshine, to tough and tussle with the other kittens in the nursery - however little there were that season.

when pheasantkit became better at moving, jumping, and overall learning to behave though is when shrewslip began to teach her kit tradition, class, and the honor of a tunneler. "we are not rare but certainly not the majority here on the moorlands that scrape the sky," shrewslip had told her one night when the crickets bayed loud. "it's your duty to carry on that legacy, for me and your father, and for all the tunnelers before and after us."

now, to little pheasantkit, these were too many large, deep-thinking words that a two-moon-old kit didn't understand. even a new apprentice would have trouble deciphering the meaning. but it stuck in her head, echoing - or perhaps that was shrewslip, making it a point to remind pheasantkit of her responsibility whenever she showed signs of straying from the ideology.

leaf-fall came during her kithood, following her to the cusp of it when the first snow fell. pheasantkit was stunned to see it, but became wary when her mother warned of the dangers snow posed to tunnelers; tunnel collapses, snow drifts, being suffocated if it snowed while you were beneath the ground - one would think she would've been disillusioned to tunneling after being told all this, that the life of a moor runner was easier in comparison - but an easy warrior did not equate to a good one, her mother told her as she stared out at the snow blanketing the camp clearing.

it came time for pheasantpaw's warrior assessment - where she would be judged on her tunneling and hunting by a miscellaneous warrior to avoid bias. she is assigned to her father's kin, she later learns, a little tom called snailfoot, who goes down into the tunnels with her as she is instructed to dig the customary assessment tunnel - one of many, many others to signify a windclan apprentice's graduation into a full tunneling warrior.

she tunnels without incident, passing her digging assessment. they begin to resurface to begin the hunting portion when they begin to feel the earth underpaw sift, and thinking quickly, pheasantpaw shimmies ahead and braces her shoulders on the mouth of the tunnel they entered through, ushering snailfoot through. before she can slip out, though, the soil collapses over her backside, trapping one of her hind legs and therefore her in the earth-slide.

snailfoot hastily digs her out, and helps her to limp back home - where he calls for bilberrythorn, explaining what had happened when a shocked crowd gathers around the injured apprentice. pheasantpaw is understandably mortified, fully expecting to be failed on her assessment for what, in her mind, was a mis-step that was fully her fault.

when harrierstar emerges from his den and hastens down, however, and is let in on what happened, he is impressed! he visits pheasantpaw in the warriors' den and commends her quick wit and courage - that she put herself on the line to save a fellow clanmate. surprised, pheasantpaw thanks him, but asks what would become of her assessment. he tells her not to fret.

when she emerges from bilberrythorn's den an hour later with a makeshift wrapping around her injured back leg, she's surprised to find the whole clan gathered at the tallrock, with harrierstar hailing her forward. he commends her for her bravery and resolve, and dedication to windclan - and names her pheasantstep, for saving the life of a clanmate - and being a step ahead in thinking - during a collapse event.

it would be ideal to say that pheasantstep's first few weeks as a windclan warrior were easy. her injured limb was slow to heal, with leaf-bare quickly coming and the cold bite to the air making her muscles ache as they got better. she grew antsy being stuck to areas around camp, forbidden from tunneling until her leg was better.

not only this, but there was controversy around the safety of tunneling after the collapse. apparently, she learned that a twoleg monster had strayed off-path and rumbled right over where their tunnel was, causing the collapse. it was out of their control, moor runners had said; they're endangering themselves. but the tunnelers argued back, stating that they were as pivotal a part of windclan as their running counterparts.

harrierstar, per usual, turned a blind eye to the conflict, calling it a natural part of windclan, stretching back generations.

while pheasantstep sulked in camp, though, one of her denmates began to seek her out, bringing her clods of earth to entertain her claws with, musing about how being stuck on the surface was so boring. she'd thank swiftstoat, and usually spend time in his company.

she did eventually get better though with some therapy from bilberrythorn, and was able to return to working full-time by the time leaf-bare was thinning, cusping on newleaf. she felt behind, indundated and weak despite the exercise she was able to do with bilberrythorn or swiftstoat.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

she discovered she was expecting swiftstoat's kits by an amused bilberrythorn, who remarked that he wouldn't have thought pheasantstep would have kits so soon. abashed and mortified, she hit the medicine cat in a friendly way, remarking that they loved each other.

she moved into the nursery a few weeks after, and soon gave birth to two kits: a beautiful pale tortoiseshell and a pale tabby tom, naming them basilkit and hazelkit respectively, and teaching them as they grew as her mother had the tradition and honor of being a windclan tunneler.

basilkit acted very much the same as a young pheasantstep, yet hazelkit seemed to be frightened away from the idea of tunneling the longer she spoke about her duties. he began to play with the litter of moor runner kits in the nursery, which earned strange looks from both pheasantstep and the moor runner mother, but she thought it was only kits being kits.

a moon later when hazelkit told her gently he'd like to be a moor runner, that illusion was shattered. she was ludicrous at first, insisting that it was only a phase, that he would come to see sense soon like his sister, that he wouldn't want to separate from her while he trained. when the kits were asleep that night she told swiftstoat in a hushed tone what hazelkit had told her, and he, too, was dubious, and the next morning he took hazelkit out to speak privately with him. they returned later, and swiftstoat looked subdued, but resolved.

"he wants to be a moor runner, love," he told pheasantstep softly. "who are we to deny him that? the way his eyes lit up when he saw a sparrow fly over us just now, how he loves the grass - we would deny him his life if we denied him this."

it took longer for pheasantstep to come around. she never truly warmed up to the idea of her son, her kitten, becoming a moor runner, even during their apprentice ceremonies when he took the exam and passed, and was allowed to train as a moor runner while basilpaw became a tunneler.

_ _ _

on one of the last weeks of leaf-fall, basilbriar and hazelhare were made warriors on the same sun, despite their difference in allegiance, and pheasantstep was incredibly proud for them both - even though she still ached with confusion that hazelhare preferred being a moor runner to a tunneler.

___

late that same leaf-bare, the clan deputy rushcloud passed away from a case of greencough that went untreated due to the fact that he was too stubborn to see bilberrythorn in his den before it was too late. pheasantstep couldn't help but think it was a foolish endeavor to not seek help while sick, but then wondered if she would have sought help herself, being as proud as she was. she saw the same pride in the former deputy.

that night, a grieving harrierstar called the clan together, announcing he had made his new selection of deputy. he called pheasantstep forward, to her surprise, and enquired if she would be willing to succeed him and become windclan's leader when the time came.

she accepted, honored to silence thereafter as her father, mate, friends, and kits all congratulated her.

when sloestar of riverclan heard of the loss of rushcloud at the gathering, he took advantage of the clan's displacement by pushing on their borders once more. pheasantstep raised these reported concerns to harrierstar, who only remarked that riverclan couldn't hunt on meadowland, that they would lose hope. but she didn't want to hear it, and assembled a patrol to firmly rescent the bordermarkers, led by swiftstoat. she urged them that if riverclan came, to stand firm - and to fight if they continued to antagonise and try to mark inside windclan again.

if she had known the patrol would return with swiftstoat limp on their backs, she never would have sent it.

she was on patrol herself when the patrol returned, and re-entered still picking the clods from her claws when she saw a crowd gathered in the clearing - notably, basilbriar and hazelhare, who were wailing. her heart stopped when she saw the ginger pelt between them, marred with soil and blood that she hoped and prayed to starclan was not his.

of course, hopes and prayers are never fully answered. swiftstoat had been killed when following her order to aggress if riverclan tried to cross the border again after sustaining too many injures when he was ganged up on by two riverclan warriors, as their patrol had outnumbered windclan's - a deliberate battle patrol, not a border patrol.

windclan was enraged, demanding harrierstar do something about riverclan continuing to push on their traditional land.

___ some war stuff

compared to the longevity of rushcloud's deputyhood, pheasantstep's was rather short-lived. you see, harrierstar was an elderly cat; he led while pheasantstep was but a kit, and only aged as she did, too, now almost scraping five full greenleafs.

after only about one year of being deputy, all these events wrapped into that year -- harrierstar passed away from old age in the night. even though every cat had anticipated such an event, it still shocked the clan when it was announced by pheasantstep that harrierstar had died in the night.

...this response was met with mixed reactions, however. some cats grumbled that it was uncanny that it happened out of the blue, when they swore that harrierstar had been fine just last afternoon, with a normal appetite, aptitude, and attitude. moor runners muttered that he had been poisoned, or that foul play was at hand - that harrierstar had been killed, and not died alone.

pheasantstep firmly denied these allegations with a stern, solid paw - that she expected better of her warriors than to gossip. but she worried, not knowing what conversations were being held by the moor runners behind her back.

..even more perplexing, though, as she was taken to the moonstone to become leader with lavenderface, harrierstar was missing. it was a very bad omen, lavenderface fretted, despite other members of starclan coming to bestow a life upon pheasantstep.

shrewslip, a life for old tradition and honoring it to the fullest.

moorhentail, a life for learning to listen, and then to learn.

snailfoot, a life for dedication to oneself and one's clan.

swiftstoat, a life for destiny - that every cat's is in the paws of starclan.

a starclan cat that she did not know, introducing herself as twitefeather, gave her a life for faith - in starclan, in herself, and in her clan.

two more strangers appeared to give her two more lives, two young apprentices practically identical in looks, named frogpaw and perchpaw - riverclan apprentices who had died when she was but a kit in a border skirmish with windclan. they gave her a life for protection, to her bewilderment.

but harrierstar did not show. known only to lavenderface, pheasantstar lacks her last and final life - with eight total.