#maplefall

I haven't been paying full attention to the seasons and moon-paces of the chapters when I first started, but now the story is more important to me than the simple "background thing" it was before, so here is the official time + some edits that I had to make!

SEASON:

Greenleaf [Chapters Quiet Here--Clanmates] (Two moons, making the months most likely July--August, or possibly August--September)

Leaf-Fall [Chapters Clanmates--??]

BREAKS IN TIME:

After Myrtlewing meets Nightfly, half a moon passes and they meet again at the gathering. This is where Myrtlewing's plan starts its formation.

Another half-moon passes when the Half-moon meeting takes place, and Myrtlewing goes to WindClan to speak with Nightfly. This is also the same time Alder starts bonding with Hootpetal.

Another half-moon passes between this and when Myrtlewing kills Fleetsong.

Another half-moon passes after Alder discovers Myrtlewing's murders and commits his own. He has been avoiding him for this time before deciding that he had to see it for himself to stop his spiraling thoughts--when Maplefall interrupts them by giving birth.

There! That's the part I had to fix--Maple got pregnant just before Myrtle met Nightfly, and I realized that she gave birth too early, so I created longer gaps and one gap where there wasn't one before (but it still reads fine).

[Cats are pregnant for about two moons, and this is half+half+half+half=two full].

----

It’s too horrific for her family to see.

Why hadn’t he just listened? Why had he put himself through the trouble of digging up her body, just to look and see what had happened to her and to stop his brain from imagining the worst possible injuries she could have faced alone in the woods?

Because he was the reason she was out there at all. Their insults toward one another had lessened in cruelty significantly in the past seasons, and came to a downright stop when Maplefall’s kit, Blossomtuft, died of sickness. But the quips continued to a more humorous extent, if nothing else than for them to find comfort in the familiar. 

It was one of these quips that had sent Maplefall to her doom. She had always been vain, and when she stated that she would be staying in camp throughout the storm–which really, had only been strong wind and rain, minor–to avoid getting the bottoms of her claws filled with mud difficult to dig out, Newtbeetle had suggested she was really doing so to hide the fact that she was a terrible hunter in the rain. Unwilling to let her pride and image go questioned, Maplefall had volunteered to go hunt, all on her own, so that no one could question that the food was from her.

Newtbeetle had chuckled to himself, as the rain faded to a drizzle and still she didn’t show, likely covered head-to-toe in mud in futile attempts to catch animals that are well hidden in their burrows. Two patrols had gone out during the storm and came back unharmed. He had never expected….never would have guessed.

It’s too horrific for her family to see.

That is what they were told when the news of Maplefall’s death hit the Clan. They couldn’t even see her body to confirm the shocking fact to themselves, they just had to accept that they had just seen her, strong, feisty, and alive, and now she was dead, died a death so horrible that she had to be buried without being brought to camp for a proper vigil first, because her body was too horrific for her family to see.

But while the sight proved Myrtlewing right and made Newtbeetle shudder down to his bones, it gave him a realization clear as ice dangerously thin. Maplefall’s jaw was torn entirely off her face, and on that mangled jaw was a hole that must have come from a rock or branch–but that would have indicated that she landed on something. But if her jaw was torn off, that could only mean one thing, surely? That it had not simply been a horrible accident, but a murder.

Netwtbeetle couldn’t be sure that his certainty in that fact or in who he believed did it could be reliable, but his mind was so overcome with a red cloud, wanting him to seek justice as soon as he could, that it seemed the only logical possibility.

He threw the dirt back onto Maplefall’s corpse slowly and with care in spite of his haste, chest painfully tight, as he knew that it would be his very last moments with her, with someone who he had spent years with. 

“You will get justice,” he promised her once he was done. Then he tore across the forest floor, bursting through the camp entrance so fast that he nearly slid into Rainbur.

“Alderstar!” he yowled, burning his throat.

Alderstar hurried from his den, running down to meet Newtbeetle. “Yes? Has something happened?” He scanned Newtbeetle for injuries.

“Maplefall was murdered,” Newtbeetle stated with a surprisingly steady voice. His eyes were fire, and he was slightly surprised that Alderstar had not set aflame by his gaze.

Alderstar stilled. “By whom do you believe that she was killed?”

“Hollowtalon!”

Gasps arose from the gathering crowd. Some turned hisses on Hollowtalon, who stared at Newtbeetle in shock. “What? Of course I didn’t!”

“Do you have reason to back up your claim?” Alderstar questioned, seeming calmer, ever so faintly.

“I looked at Maplefall’s body. I had to see it,” he added before anyone could ask why, they didn’t have time for details. “Her jaw was ripped off of her face, and it–” he stuttered, the truth of what he was saying catching up with him. He swallowed a hard lump and continued. “It had a hole in it, where her tongue would have been. It is my belief that the storm had caused her to land on something that impaled her, and then someone tore her off of it.”

Alderstar considered him. A clamor rose up among the warriors, but he silenced them with a single wave of his golden tail. “Myrtlewing was there.” He looked to his medicine cat. “What happened?”

Myrtlewing shook his head sorrowfully. “What Newtbeetle says is right. We found her together, hanging from a naked pine branch. She was stuck, and alive. Hollowtalon began pulling on her–I tried to stop him–sorry! I should have tried harder!” he ended in a wail, bowing his head and shaking with the guilt.

Even through Newtbeetle’s haze of anger, he felt a flash of sympathy for the medicine cat. Were both responsible for her death, he thought to himself. But there would only be one of them that was to be punished. His insides writhed uncomfortably at the detail of Maplefall’s suffering.

“That’s not true!” Hollowtalon practically screeched. “He-he told me to! He said it was better than to leave her there!”

“Our medicine cat told you to pull Maplefall off of a tree branch so hard that her jaw broke off?” Russetnose wrinkled her nose in doubt. 

Myrtlewing turned round, pleading eyes on Alderstar. “I swear, I would have come to you sooner, had I suspected it was anything other than blind panic. I just..I just couldn't bring myself to believe that a Clanmate next to me could do something so horrible on purpose. I told myself he didn’t hear me, that the wind was too loud or he was just too frenzied to even realize that I was talking.” The medicine cat spoke quickly, and in a quivering voice that made Newtbeetle strain to make out individual words. “I should have...I should have stopped him. I should have said something sooner. I don’t know why I...I should have...” 

“That’s not what happened!” Hollowtalon insisted, fur lifted all along his spine. “He’s lying!” Newtbeetle had to dig his claws into the earth to prevent himself from lunging at the brown tom.

“Did you kill Maplefall?” Alderstar demanded. 

Hollowtalon gaped at him, seemingly unable to believe how he could have possibly been caught.

Alderstar narrowed his eyes. “Did you kill others, too?”

Newtbeetle shuffled at that, at the idea that their other Clanmates who have gone missing or died in different, yet always horrific disasters were all caused by someone on the inside, someone they trusted.

“Murderer!” Newtbeetle hissed, and was joined by others. 

Alderstar had more trouble settling them down this time, but eventually he was able to raise his voice above the clamor. “Whether you are lying or not, you cannot stay here,” Alderstar decided. That was fair, though Newtbeetle only subconsciously knew it. If Hollowtalon was innocent, he would still be in a camp surrounded by warriors that thought him guilty of killing their friends and families. “Leave, now, while we still allow you to keep your pelt.” His words dripped with venom.

Hollowtalon gaped some more, then looked around in bewilderment at his Clanmates closing in on him. “But..But I..” Then Molespots swung claws, raking Hollowtalon across the nose, and that finally allowed his situation to register for the tom. He turned tail and fled, crashing through the entrance.

Newtbeelte’s shoulders loosened. His old bones creaked, and he sank down to the earth without considering heading to his nest. He blinked at the grass, watching it shift in the breeze numbly while everyone spoke around him.

He had avenged Maplefall, just as he promised. It wasn’t enough to satisfy his empty heart. He wanted to see her smile again, or to grimace in disgust or roll her eyes in annoyance. Instead, the last thing he had ever seen of her, the face that would follow him forever, was the face of her mangled body.

And it wouldn’t be until half a season later, when he joined his friend in Starclan, that he discovered that Hollowtalon had been telling the truth–Myrtlewing had been the true murderer, and Alderstar, their leader, his accomplice. To make matters worse, it had been Newtbeetle’s blind rage that had sent Hollowtalon to his death. After all, Myrtlewing and Alderstar couldn’t risk the tom entering the territory of another Clan and telling them of Myrtlewing’s deceit. He was unlikely to be believed, as he had been when confronted by his own Clanmates, but it wasn’t a risk they were willing to take.

Besides, to them, his death was only another move in a game.

====================

--Man I love writing Myrtlewing’s good acting and manipulative ways. 

--Newt already knew that Hollow was there when Maple died, since they are the ones that brought the news of her death. He never suspected Myrtle.

So Myrtlewing shows up and yanks on her.

But another Clanmate comes by and tries to help, but Myrtle convinces them that the best course of action is to yank her free (’she has a chance and if we leave her she could stay here long enough for a predator to come and eat her alive’ or some similar excuse that makes leaving her alone seem worse)

--Blossomtuft (Maple’s and Wolf’s daughter)

--Wolf and Maple then have Boulderkit to help with their grief

--Maple is killed

--Boulder is killed