Falling Darkness

She has not been seen in StarClan by any living cats, nor will any other cat in StarClan comment on her whereabouts. However, it is not unheard of for young StarClan apprentices to not contact the living, so she is assumed to be somewhere in StarClan, exploring with the other young apprentices and living the life she was unable to live in the clans.

As of late, she has been hanging around with Stonefang an awful lot, and the couple have a great dynamic with Heatherstripe’s good-spirited grumpiness and Stonefang’s endless enthusiasm. Though Heatherstripe has not announced that she is expecting kits yet, it is clear to everyone that she will soon move to the nursery.

She’s far quieter and more reserved than one would expect from such a bulky warrior, but Icefeather wants to be known for more than her skill in battle. She enjoys staying around the nursery and telling stories to the kits or telling them of old clan lore. Abigail also enjoys spinning tall tales to the kits, so Icefeather spends a fair amount of time debunking her stories. No, if you eat a bird tail-first, you don’t suddenly grow talons, please, Goosekit, stop trying to make Creamkit do that.

Though a very experienced warrior, she is often mistaken to be a newer warrior. Silverflight struggles to make decisions, often getting hung up on little intricacies, even as small as which patrol path would be the most efficient. As such, she’s often delegated to following others and not making her own decisions. While she has a strategist’s mind, she’s also full of anxiety and can’t be counted on in crises. Although she was in the running for the name of Silverfrost, she proved too unreliable and was chosen to be named for her speed and agility. She is often involved in strategy meetings for the clan, but never for anything too short-notice or spontaneous, as she is absolutely no help then. As she is very good at ‘what-if’ situations, she is often chosen to give strategy lessons to apprentices and help them prepare for stressful situations.

Despite being the former medicine cat apprentice, Spruceberry is rather… squeamish. Being able to clean wounds took a very long time, and he had received his full name before he was able to retrieve the bile from a mouse. He became the medicine cat apprentice to help his clan and become useful, however, he was not very well suited to the practice. Despite trying his best, he eventually decided to step down from his position and become a warrior. Though he doesn’t feel like he excels at that either, he’s quite determined to do his best. He’s a frequent and voluntary victim of border patrols, using the opportunity to gather herbs he recognizes and keep track of what’s growing where, much to the pleasure of Gingerpetal.

As a young cat, Frogkit was a magnet for trouble and very excited about that. He’s mellowed somewhat with age, though he’s still more enthusiastic than most apprentices. He spends a lot of time repairing the camp and has created a new weaving method with reeds and grasses to help uphold the structures. Every so often, he holds a workshop for the apprentices to learn how to weave, but the combination of his short attention span and antsy apprentices makes it very difficult for anyone to learn much from him. Recently, he was appointed as Mistpaw’s mentor, in an attempt to bring the younger tom out of his shell and to help Frogstep learn how to teach. Unfortunately, the two do not click very well, leaving Mistpaw on his own a lot as Frogstep runs off ahead to do whatever he wants.

Over the moons, she has become tolerant of sudden change, though it will never be her favorite. Her clanmates help her out by making sure to let her know about anything that could throw off her routine, and Duskclaw always sends her out on the same time of patrol. Around seven moons ago, she moved into the nursery after having Barleykit and Briarkit (she hadn’t wanted to move dens before) and more recently, she had Eelkit and Creamkit. While the kits can be a pawful, they’re significantly tamer than Stonefang was and she enjoys caring for them, though she is also eager to return to her warrior duties and watch her kits grow into strong warriors (or medicine cats).

Barleypaw has ended up with her life solely dedicated to becoming the best medicine cat she can be. While she chose to become the new medicine cat apprentice, she was a little unprepared for the amount of work that came with it. This led to her isolating herself from her littermate to focus on her difficult training. She has shown an affinity for caring for the small in-camp garden of herbs, spending much of her time carefully tending to the small plants and learning the properties of each one.

The young molly earned her full name in a time of sickness, finding a previously-unknown patch of herbs and working out how to solve the epidemic. She can be rather possessive over her stock of herbs, freaking out if any cat other than herself or Barleypaw even looks at them, and being wary of helping other clans if she feels there might not be enough herb stock to go around. Although both her mentor and apprentice were skilled with growing herbs, Gingerpetal found herself frustratingly lacking in that department, even the hardiest of plants wilting under her neglectful and challenged care. She is currently in the process of trying to train Barleypaw, though there’s struggle from both ends on that endeavor.

Over the moons, he would occasionally sneak out to the moonpool in hopes of seeing Dawnpaw. He never did, and this still weighs heavily on him. When Thistlefrost saw the tom still mourning, she gave him Ashpaw to mentor. He taught the young tom to become a skilled warrior, and when Ashstorm earned his name, Thistlefrost realized that when she became leader, she would make Duskclaw her deputy. She did this, and on their first visit to the moonpool as leader and deputy, he realized that if becoming deputy was not enough for Dawnpaw to visit him, she was not intending on visiting him at all. Understanding this, he has decided to be the best deputy he can be, knowing that pushing for leader would be pointless.

When the former deputy was killed, Thistlefrost was chosen to fill the position. She took to the position quickly and with ease, and when Snowstar passed away, she proudly took up the mantle of leadership. Although she has had a relatively uneventful leadership, Thistlestar feels pressure to continue rebuilding the clan and camp after Snowstar’s legacy, leading to somewhat stricter training and more time than average spent repairing fixtures around camp (much to the apprentices’ frustration). She also deals with her troublesome niece, Abigail, who likes to loiter around and cause minor disturbances every so often, and a mysterious prophecy from Gingerpetal that has set her on edge.