#iaffl

i've been kind of vague with how starclan works.

mothwing's interesting because she spends a lot of time...almost having a connection to starclan, but at the same time, it's not the same way others do. she doesn't have clear dreams of ancestors from days past, she never knows what's up with the sightstone, and it's really easy to connect her experience of starclan as just a nightmare.

starclan has two moments of "okay, you can't really ignore that they Did a Thing": the first is in yellowstorm's piece with the sightstone (something i swear i haven't forgotten about), and the second is when leafpaw and mothpaw find the moonpool.

both of those exist as firm evidence because i needed certain things to happen in a certain way. and because well. it's supposed to be ambiguous and vague and Not Clear. that's just how i like to do things.

so. mothwing. she ties her spirituality in with her brother, yeah? she sort of...he's the one who fits into riverclan. she thinks of herself as being closer to her mother, in a lot of ways.

She pulled them each in. Mothpaw couldn't hear what she told Hawkpaw, but she wrapped her tail around Mothpaw and whispered, "I love you more than the moon and sun."

i liked this bit because...mothpaw doesn't assume sasha is telling them both the same thing. she kind of assumes her relationship with sasha is Unique and Different and Not Like Hawkpaw.

and so we get "i love you" as this connection to not being a clan cat that comes up again when she tells leafpool she loves her, after the kits are born. she repeats a clan approved blessing, but then she ties things back to her mother.

mothwing connects a lot of her spirituality to sasha and loner ideas. i didn't want to set up a lot of ideas that i couldn't follow through with in 3-4k words, so i focused on the idea of the fox and the cat. both clever creatures, caught in this endless chase. i think, where clan cats think of lions and tigers and leopards, of their ancestors as powerful creatures, loners don't.

they know they survive because they are small and fast and clever, not because they are strong and powerful.

so in the fox and the cat, which is mostly an allegory for death, you have this endless chase. the fox chases the cat, and that never changes, so it's not quite an afterlife story, but it has the same idea.

mothwing takes this particular story to heart, because she spends a lot of time building relationships and chasing after people she can't keep. she loses tadpole, sasha, hawkfrost, leafpool, and jaypaw. her brothers both die, but the others are still alive, she just can't be with them.

so for mothwing, death isn't really big barrier in her life. she doesn't want to talk to hawkfrost, and while tadpole definitely impacts her, it's much more about her relationship with hawkfrost than actual guilt over tadpole.

instead, it's clan rules and life that's keeping her from sasha, leafpool, jaypaw, and to a lesser extent, hollyleaf and lionblaze.

but my point here is supposed to be about starclan, not mothwing.

starclan is taught to her kind of as this series of deals. open your ears and they will tell you things: well, mothwing is listening, and they're not speaking.

she has some kind of connection with them as a kit, but does she? heck, kids dream of weird stuff all the time. it's not hard for a bit of imagination to start connecting false dots, and of course spottedleaf would leap on those.

i didn't want to tip my hand in spottedleaf's piece, but yeah! hawk is trying to manipulate the situation. he's just a kit, and the circumstances are different, but he definitely internally takes credit for it, and he tells her about it.

so this one thing, this one tether of belief: they chose me, they are not silent; that gets broken.

does starclan have an impact on her? when she gets a message via leafpaw, she traces it back to kithood stories, and this time, it's a riverclan story. it's nearly forgotten, even though the idea of the moon and the river is very fundamental to riverclan, and moth would have been inundated by stories as a kit.

so like. starclan could have given mothwing a sign. could have sent one that made her think she should pick jaykit.

but both yellowstorm and spottedleaf present choosing as intuition, not a tangible sign. it's one and the same in their minds, but from an external perspective, maybe they're just aware of the needs of the clan(s).

all of this is to say: it's up for interpretation whether starclan could have given mothwing a sign, and beyond that, it's up for interpretation whether or not they even would send her one.

i don't really want to come down conclusively on this, but there's not a wrong reading of it. i was deliberate about not including a specific answer.

maybe starclan is real, maybe not. i don't know what happens in oots but there's a reason all of the oots medicine cats are skipped. (apologies, flametail. you have an interesting story that won't get told.)

we also aren't getting to the broken code, we're stopping with alderheart in avos. because i don't want to answer the reality of starclan, i want reading stolag to feel like i felt reading tpb: you can see these tangible effects. bluestar comes back to life after being dead. fireheart has prophetic dreams.

but like, i had several dreams that came true as a kid. it doesn't mean there was someone nudging me to know what the future is.

and basically every omen is super, super hazy. i firmly believe we should have more omens instead of prophecies, because they're more interesting. and vague. what's the difference between an omen and an imagination? it's never explored, which is a shame.

would've been cool to show that in leafpool and/or jayfeather's training, considering they're both said to have a connection to starclan.

mothwing is trans now!

i know i never addressed it specifically bc i'm not sure cats care at All about it but i like to think it's there subtly. i certainly know it's there.

specifically, when ferncloud has a sick kit, mothpaw sends leafpaw to deal with it, and the conversation with leafpool and mothwing implies that mothwing could have been their other bio parent.

anyway in Non Trans Mothwing news:

i have a playlist for this fic which is weird i usually listen to Silence.

mosspelt has a litter in "a shadow in riverclan," but they're never named, so i named them. duskkit, ridgekit, and dapplekit. i'll let you guess which one is which, they're named purely on their design.

mosspelt's design is so pretty tho. i love her.

what else...uh i realized i kind of had to post this asap bc father's day. idk. it felt fitting. i don't Do Father's Day so. mothwing spends a lot of time being like "fathers fucking suck don't have one" which yes correct

(if u have a good dad that does not apply to you.) /gen

so yeah this was finished in an inspired run i'm not sharing what time it is here.

afkjl this is a weird one bc like. i just. do not talk about Any of the canon events.

like i thought cinderpelt's piece was bad? no. nope. this one. this one is worse.

tigerstar who? hawkfrost dying what?

oh! the three don't have powers in this. or like. maybe they do. it's Complicated.

their powers, if they do have them, are subtle enough to not Necessarily be a power, y'know?

anyway i'm getting ahead of myself with that.

it's really fucking weird that cinderpelt and spottedleaf are alive, but barkface and runningnose are dead. major brain fuckery.

oh, if you're curious, at the end of this, the seer set up is:

mothwing and flamepaw in thunderclan

spottedleaf and kestrelpaw in riverclan

cinderpelt and willowpaw in shadowclan

and leafpool and jaypaw in windclan

i may add some shorter stories for flamepaw and co after i finish the main arc. depends. they don't have like. i have an eight fic arc that they're not a part of. but they're still fun characters.

esp. willow.

oh uh! yeah i didn't forget about the sightstone the tradition just fucking dies with mothwing bc she doesn't have a starclan connection whoops.

yellowstorm is real fucking angry about it.

"next seer in a line unbroken" my ass.

alright that's all for now.

no i lied i'm editing instead of reblogging but. whoops.

oh uh i had cats actually say i love you which is like. not something i usual do(tm) and i really need to go to bed but.

anyway so saying the problem here is seers aren't supposed to be in their family's clan is like saying, "yellowstone just erupted, and also there's a power outage."

i mean yeah those two things Sure Are problems, but one of them makes the other basically irrelevant.

as far as the cats are concerned, jaypaw isn't related to crowfeather and leafpool. (short of like. he couldn't have kits with a half sibling that would be Bad.) but squilf adopted leafpool's kits, leafpool's kinship ties are broken, that makes them squilf's kits.

so Even If there wasn't a bigger problem, the being leaf's kit thing wouldn't be an issue.

she didn't even nurse them for longer than like. a quarter moon?

anyway. crowfeather is definitely irrelevant here. he didn't raise them in the Slightest, he's not their dad.

(they have no father, they have two moms. squilf and mothwing. mothwing isn't supposed to be a parent but uh. well. she Loves Them a Lot a Lot a Lot.)

but yeah, nominally at least, the cats wouldn't hold jaypaw's bio parentage against him in any way.

being in windclan is definitely highly sus for him, because they take this stuff The Most seriously, but they also. so as a reminder, the status at the end of iaffl is

mothwing and flamepaw in thunderclan

spottedleaf and kestrelpaw in riverclan

cinderpelt and willowpaw in shadowclan

leafpool and jaypaw in windclan

(some of them may have their full names but i'm being quick.)

and so there's really no possible solution to the problem? like. okay, so...jaypaw and willowpaw are a Potential swap, since both flamepaw and kestrelpaw results in someone returning to their birth clan, but shadowclan wouldn't want to give her up because she knows all the Clan Specific Deal. (jaypaw would know stuff for windclan, but significantly less.)

anyway, you see the difference between ideals and politics here. ideally there wouldn't be a problem, but the clans would not like it.

but of course! leafpool is a seer. and so figuring out What to Do about Her is way much very much the bigger problem.

at the end of ibpta, she basically has three choices: die, be exiled, or abort her kits. she chooses option four: try to avoid her other choices.

like, the clans are uh, very much Not Pro Choice. okay general reminder: my warriors worldbuilding does not reflect my views about the world. i am not trying to build a good world, i am trying to build an interesting one.

anyway.

when your infant mortality rate is ca. 50%, every kit's life is precious. killing kits (including unborn ones) is a crime punishable by Instant Death.

leafpool is a seer so who fucking knows what would happen, because harming a seer is punishable by anything from a Big Time Long Term punishment to Exile to Death. highly dependent on the level of harm (accident, accident but serious, any level of intentional harm), but like. cats know who the seers are. it's important to know before you bring an apprentice to battle.

god it's been Ages since i rambled about stolag's world building. mothwing's piece is like. the biggest chance to expand on that and it's through such a low-battle time it doesn't come up. why must i be like this.

so yeah so! who knows what would happen bc by that logic you get: leafpool kills kits → leafpool must be killed → leafpool either has to kill herself or whoever kills her must be killed

(you might be saying, "wouldn't a murderer for punishment purposes get immunity?" to which i say, "this is not that type of world. the rules about seers trump every other rule. even where it doesn't make sense.")

anyway, obviously that's not super relevant because that doesn't happen.

if leafpool was discovered when she was pregnant or nursing, the kits would have been given to a windclan queen. they may or may not be told about their birth, but the other clans certainly wouldn't.

leafpool would be exiled or killed. it's not super clear what would happen, but either way, she would lose everything.

kestrelpaw is the oldest apprentice, i believe, but willowpaw would be chosen for obvious reasons. windclan is probably best equipt to deal with this Particular situation, because windclan elders share the burden of knowing the whole hymn. so willowpaw would have people to teach her everything she needs to know.

willowpaw would receive her full name after learning the full hymn, and windclan would have to trust that the stars would guide her to oversee the correct rites. (singing days, fasts, and approving names of kits.)

(and who would name her? she would be instructed to pray on it and starclan would give her a name. not sure what i would name her. windclan doesn't have any sense of passing names on, so while if this were in thunderclan or shadowclan she would be named willowface, willowbark, or willowleaf with some level of certainity, there's no such convention.

i might name her willowshine or willowlight.

which might give away that her name isn't necessarily going to be willowshine in stolag.

but i digress.)

anyway! that makes willow the youngest medicine cat, and cinderpelt the oldest (without an apprentice). so shadowclan jaypaw instead.

anyway! yeah the fact that she's his mother is certainly a problem, but it's almost insignificant to the greater problem that a seer had kits.

a scuffed knee compared to a broken femur, if you will.

so yeah, there'd definitely be a problem, it just wouldn't have much to do with the family relationship. if, say, he was a squirrelcrow kit, windclan would be a-okay with him staying, because crowfeather isn't his father in any meaningful sense.