#cloudberry au

So today is a very special day: it is my birthday!! So to celebrate, I’m posting one of my Warriors headcannons for this character. In the books, Cloudberry is the name for 2 different cats from 2 different stories. One is a dark gray RiverClan warrior with blue eyes who has kits with a WindClan cat named Ryewhisker in Code of the Clans, eventually establishing the rule against cross-clan relationships. Another one is a white ThunderClan medicine cat with yellow eyes who trains Goosekit after Ravenwing dies in Goosefeather’s Curse. My headcannon is: what if they are the same cat?

Connecting the two stories, Cloudberry is a newly named RiverClan warrior who serves under her father Emberstar. She and Ryewhisker have kits but are worried that they are half-clan. In a battle between RiverClan and WindClan Ryewhisker prevents Cloudberry from being killed but dies instead. Due to this incident the code is made. Cloudberry has the kits and raises them in RiverClan, but she still thinks about the battle that killed her mate. Sometime during this Emberstar is replaced by Volestar. When Cloudberry’s kits are apprentices, she asks Volestar to become a medicine cat instead, much like Mudfur. She chooses now so she doesn't have to disappoint her dad in her eyes. Years later she becomes a competent medicine cat. Suddenly, the ThunderClan medicine cat Ravenwing is killed by Mapleshade, so Cloudberry is asked to join ThunderClan as their new medicine cat. While her kits, now warriors, are devastated, Cloudberry accepts the role, wanting a change of pace since she is still haunted by Ryewhisker. She trains Goosekit into Goosefeather and lives the rest of her life in ThunderClan, seeing Ryewhisker in StarClan.

There are some issues with this headcannon, such as the appearance of Cloudberry, background characters, and timeline, but I’ve made some counterpoints:

1) Appearance: Cloudberry is a vitiligo cat in this headcannon. Vitiligo is a skin condition that causes the pigment in skin to become lighter as one gets older. This is why her design in the picture is the exact opposite of each other. This can happen to people and cats, and while it is rare, Warriors doesn’t really care about cat genetics. I mean look at all the male tortoiseshell cats. And just imagine the eyes change color as well, eye color isn’t consistent in Warriors either. I tried to add both colors in the cat, and it just changes over time.

2) Background characters: While we don’t see the same cats repeat from both stories, Code of the Clans doesn’t mention ThunderClan, and Goosefeather’s Curse doesn’t mention RiverClan. All that is mentioned is leaders and maybe medicine cats, and you can just say they died quick or something. As for her kits, since they are never mentioned again they can 1) accept that their mother left them, 2) Cloudberry was not a good mother to them so they didn’t care, or 3) they died young, pushing Cloudberry to move to ThunderClan more. Any idea can work. 

3) Timeline: While it does seem like a huge time gap, Cloudberry is very old by the time of Goosefeather’s Curse, so it is likely that she could have lived long enough through this. The current timeline of Warriors has a huge gap between Dawn of the Clans, making the code, StormClan’s Folly (and SkyClan leaving), and Mapleshade’s Vengeance. We don’t even know when making the code took place and how far apart it was made, so it is possible for a cat to be alive during this time if they were young at the start.

So TL;DR: Cloudberry is a warrior of RiverClan, has half-clan kits with Ryewhisker of WindClan, Ryewhisker dies, she becomes a medicine cat, moves to ThunderClan, and trains Goosefeather. Two cats becoming the same cat.