plumpoppy

"

chamomilepetal's pregnancy was complicated. stubborn, the she-cat refused to retire to the nursery until shortly before her projected kitting date in the dead of leaf-bare; and the medicine cat uttered this as the reason why, when her large litter of four were born, they were all born frail and sickly.

toadwhisker, their father, pleaded with her to rest now in the nursery, to which chamomilepetal haughtily sniffed and curtly agreed. she named her only daughter petalkit in her namesake, and the three toms boragekit, burnetkit, and thymekit.

their first night, both boragekit and thymekit passed away while chamomilepetal was asleep. she woke to them cold and still. she grew desperate, frantically coddling the tiny petalkit. when toadwhisker would enter to check on them, he grew frustrated with his mate when he noted burnetkit being excluded from her coddling.

two suns later, and petalkit, too, had passed away in the night. chamomilepetal woke up distraught to find the only female kit still and cold, leaving burnetkit in the care of another queen while she went out to personally bury her daughter. toadwhisker came in during this, and while burnetkit couldn't quite understand or comprehend the idea of him yet other than warmth and safe - slept with him that night.

tentatively, as though burnetkit might bite at her, chamomilepetal tolerated burnetkit at best as he opened his eyes and his ears unfolded. toadwhisker was resigned, beseeching his mate to be kind to their last living kit - his kit as much as hers.

chamomilepetal eventually did warm to him, albeit was nowhere near as doting to him as she was to petalkit - and toadwhisker noticed. they would bicker over burnetkit, who could only stare dumbly up and wonder why they were meowing so loudly and sharply.

as he grew older and larger chamomilepetal began to 'warm' to him: teaching him tradition and many, many rules - far more than his denmates had. do not leave the nursery before sunhigh, be back before the sun descends. always let mother eat first. don't roughhouse with the other kits in the nursery. burnetkit grew frustrated, but soon felt awful for feeling so angry about it; she was only looking out for him, wasn't he? but his denmates would always sigh when he said he couldn't play with them because his mother had said so.

the clan leader came into the den while burnetkit was asleep, asking to speak to chamomilepetal outside. she ceded, and he informed her quietly that a scramble had happened to the border patrol, and a battle had broken out with tensions high while prey was still staggeringly thin despite newleaf's arrival. toadwhisker had been badly hurt, and was getting treated. chamomilepetal did not return until late that night, with sharp blood-scent on her paws. she bluntly told burnetkit that toadwhisker had just died in the medicine cat's care.

burnetkit was shocked, crying out to want to go and see him, but chamomilepetal forbid it and told him to go back to sleep.

when he woke up that morning, toadwhisker's body had already been taken out to burial.

with only his mother now, burnetkit naturally flocked to her, despite his unease that she said was trivial to feel, for she was his mother. she provided for him. and he leant into this notion, clutching it like a crutch for she was all that he had.

the morning of their apprentice ceremony was nigh, and both kits were taken out unto the moor by cowbud to select the berries for their christening. plumkit recalls lichenfrost's teachings, uttered conspiratorially in her ears - and asks for bilberry, different from her sister. pearkit is stunned, but the ceremony carries on, and the next morning they are made apprentices.

it was a surprise to the clan when lichenfrost was allowed to mentor young plumpaw - it wasn't common, if not unheard of, for a father to mentor his own kit. but gopherstar rebutted with the fact that lichenfrost has an immensely capable warrior, and had personally requested this change of pace in order to ensure the best training for his daughter. plumpaw positively preened under the spotlight, hardly minding at all when pearpaw was given to a cat who was most definitely not their esteemed and skilled father, but harrierhop, a grand tom that, in plumpaw's eyes, absolutely paled in comparison to that of their own father.

lichenfrost held true when he stated that he would not be soft on plumpaw as his daughter in training. he was sharp and he was dictatorial, accepting nothing but the best from his daughter - even when she was only beginning to learn. this instilled in plumpaw a sense of required perfection - she needed to excel, less she be deemed inferior or unworthy of her clanmates' respect and trust - two feats that lichenfrost insisted was a must in social circles.

the longer she trained with lichenfrost, often not permitted to train with pearpaw and harrierhop but with the other apprentices lichenfrost labeled worthy of training with her. (way to embed an ego complex, much.) as a consequence, the sisters began to drift apart from one another - but the clan would be never the wiser, for they still sat pretty and smiled together when their parents told them to, to form a good impression upon those looking on at the noble windclan littermates.

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she passed all parts of her warrior assessment with ease and excellence, meeting lichenfrost's expectations, but not surpassing them - to her silent dismay. to fail her father was to fail herself, her clan. she channeled this frustration into pearpaw when she, too, returned to camp after completing her assessment - she, too, had passed her exams.

windclan was called together as the evening grew duskier. plumpaw could feel lichenfrost's calculating gaze on her back, and she stood taller on instinct because of it. gopherstar congratulated them both and named them pearpoppy and plumpoppy - to celebrate the supposed closeness of their relationship, intending for the gesture to be thoughtful and tender.

plumpoppy withheld her innate desire to stifle and scoff when gopherstar ceded the ceremony, leaving them to their voiceless warrior vigil. in her mind, all of her training had been rendered naught in one fell swoop by the leader: by lumping her in with her sister, erasing the individuality that she believed she had carved for herself in lichenfrost's name. (do you see the irony in this?) with resentment burning in her chest, she stood tall and sat pretty that night, scanning the winking expanse of silverpelt as if they might answer her and prove her feelings were valid - which were, when she thought she saw a starclan warrior flick across the sky.

hazelheather's early warriorhood is relatively typical for a warrior. at first, she receives a bit of imposter syndrome among the clan's warriors, especially when daisydew is so cozy with barleybush. she overcomes this feat, however, when egretpaw and her littermates become warriors not too long after, coming into the warriors' ranks as egretswan, ryerunner, and martendance - though hazelheather only really cared for the sake of egretswan, knowing how chiding her siblings could be. she was just relieved that they were finally at equal rank again, always being two strides behind her friend every leg of the way up to then.

juniperfang passes away during a battle with thunderclan trying to save gopherstar's life only a few moons after being appointed deputy. despite herself, hazelheather cannot feel too distraught by the loss as more than a warrior could grieve their deputy falling. daisydew, on the other paw, was stricken, resorting not to confide in hazelheather but to barleybush. she didn't really mind, ignoring the sting in her chest.

however, hazelheather was elated when gopherstar, in his progressively old age, elected egretswan to be his successor. whatever envy she might have felt for gopherstar's choice was nullified, knowing that her friend was going to do good things for windclan in gopherstar's wake. but that elation is a guise, shielding the envy that her friend - hardly older than her and already having trained an apprentice in cherryhop while hazelheather was left with none - was already going places. she hoped, still, that when egretswan became leader, she would elect hazelheather as her second-in-command. she had to.

greencough sweeps windclan, and cowbud, the old medicine cat, passes away and his apprentice frecklehare steps up to become the sole medicine cat.

soon after, not even a full season-- gopherstar is found dead in his den by frecklehare. hazelheather mourns the loss of the clan's long-term leader, having respected his stringent method of handling clan affairs and proving windclan's valor to the rest of the lake. when frecklehare takes egretswan to the moonpool, hazelheather prepares to be elected deputy when her friend returns.

when egretswan comes home with the new name of egretstar, hazelheather readily joins in the meeting she calls in her wake. however, she's stricken with dismay, hurt, and frustration when egretstar elects not hazelheather to be her deputy, but ferretflurry. that night she considers storming up into egretswan's new den and questioning why it wasn't her, but seeing how weary she was after the moonpool, failed to have the heart to do so. so she turned away, tail lashing.

daisydew announces to windclan that she's expecting barleybush's kits. hazelheather's indifferent to the news, if not a bit disappointed in her sister for bitter internal reasons. it was silly to be upset about, but they'd sworn as kits they'd never let themselves be like their mother.

two moons later daisydew has her kits, two, meadowkit and sporekit, just like juniperfang had. hazelheather is bemused by this, and a little concerned, noting the similarities between daisydew and juniperfang's prim manner of mothering. however, her sister appears to be very doting and almost overprotective of her kits - so she lets it lay. she just hopes that daisydew doesn't expect her to be an active part of their lives as their kin - and fortunately, she doesn't.

a blizzard overtakes the lake, cold and callous and cruel. snow piles up in the hollows of the moor and it takes constant upkeep to prevent their own camp from being flooded with the stuff. wildstar of riverclan dispatches a patrol to windclan to tell them that the gathering is cancelled that moon, as the log to the gathering island is overtaken with snow. she notes on patrols that thunderclan's scent on the border is remarkably faint, even with all the snow.

the snow eventually dies down and settles half a moon later, just in time for daisydew's kits to become apprentices. meadowpaw comes a warrior apprentice while sporepaw becomes frecklehare's apprentice, which bemuses hazelheather, as the squirrely medicine cat had hardly been his own cat for a year since cowbud's unfortunate death.

time daisydew returns to the warriors' den, as prim and proper as ever, it's as if she's an entirely different cat. somehow, she became even more uppity while caring for kits for six moons, and hazelheather decides she wants nothing to do with this judgmental cat that daisydew has become. she worries that her friends in windclan begin to shrivel, wondering who's been there for her as passionately as she's been for them in her life, doubting their intention and truthfulness.