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 Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:24 pm
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Foxpaw had grown up considerably from the frail, sick kitten she had been. Now that she was eating regularly, her form had begun to fill out. She was a bit smaller than the other apprentices and it wasn't just on account of being younger than many of them. She had been apprenticed to Barkfang, the only cat in the entire Clan she could truly trust. Barkfang would take her aside and tell her all manner about what RiverClan did to her mother.
How they murdered her in cold blood, even though Foxpaw's mother knew how to speak cat and tried to communicate with them. How LightningClan had pleaded to communicate with the fox, but RiverClan stole her away. Barkfang also fed into Foxpaw's own disgust, agreeing that it was heartless of her Clan mate, Bumblebreeze to wear her dead mother's pelt as a trophy. How Foxfur, a tom had skinned her mother and given it to the younger tom. How her mother hadn't even received a proper burial. All of these things only served to fuel the loathing Foxpaw had for her so-called Clan mates. Only a few cats, Barkfang and her fellow apprentice, Fadingpaw, seemed to share in her resentment of these Clan cats.
She'd contemplated leaving, but leaf-bare was harsh and what if she caught greencough again? She wouldn't be able to survive without the catmint that Stonebelly provided. Even if she were to raid his stores and escape, the supply she took wouldn't last long. Besides, Barkfang encouraged her to learn, to appear like she was fitting in with the others. Make friends, Barkfang had said, make everyone think you're well-adjusted and happy here. They'll never suspect a thing.
That was the whole reason she'd befriended Fadingpaw, to fit in and look like she was growing up happily. As though dark, clouded memories didn't haunt her dreams. She spent many a night writhing in her nest and waiting up with a silent jolt. Tonight was no different.
Within her dream, Foxpaw watched as bodies of now-familiar cats surged up to attack her mother. Her mother, who looked every part the kind vixen she knew as a kit, would scream for her kit, before being dragged under a mass of bloodthirsty cats. Foxpaw would try to move forward, but Flamedapple, Bumblebreeze and Shadowstar would come to stop her. Then, with a fianl pained screech, her mother died and the cats around her vanished. She began to run towards the body, but it began to drift away, or maybe she wasn't making any progress towards it. Whatever the case, she'd never been able to catch up to it.
"Mother!" She called out into the darkness. "Mother, please! Don't leave me!" RiverClan taught her that ForestClan was where she would go when she died, but they had never told her if her mother would be there. Would her vixen mother always go where she couldn't follow? The body disappeared and Foxpaw slumped to her paws, crying in a heap. Yet, she did not wake from the dream, almost as though there was something else keeping her from waking... or someone perhaps.
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:55 pm
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Foxpaw was surprised to find that the cold ground under her paws gave way to a soft, feather-light feeling. Looking around in surprise, she found that the darkness gave away to a golden field. This wasn't usually how her dreams went! Pale eyes going wide, she turned around quickly. Where was she? She spun around in the other direction, before her gaze finally settled ona
a dark grey tomcat, who seemed... not all there. That wasn't to say that he was mouse-brained, though she didn't know him, so she supposed she didn't know for sure, but he was literally fading away in front of her... or it seemed like it.
She flattened her ears at the sight of him and slid out her claws.
"Who are you?" She spat. "Where am I?" She was dreaming a minute ago, but this place seemed so real... It scared her more than her dream had. That, painful as it was, had been familiar. When he spoke, an old name burbled towards her memory. She stilled, shock rippling through her.
"Little Cub... Only my mother only ever called me that." But, no, that wasn't quite right. "Only my mother and..." She closed her eyes, remembering a time when she was sick, before RiverClan had treated her with catmint. A dark figure that loomed over her nest, that had fur that swirled and danced like falling leaves. Only... it wasn't quite fur.. "Death..claw?" She asked, hesitatingly. "Why... are you here?" She wasn't dying again, was she?
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:11 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:39 pm
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“We are kin,” Deathclaw said, matter-of-factly. “I take all cats that have died to where they need to go. If a Forestclan believer passes, then I will take them to the border and pass them off to Forestclan.” He stood, his ashy body dancing rapidly around his body. “No, not all dead cats look like me. I died in a forest fire many, many moons ago. My form is the result of that. Of course, not all cats that died like I did share this with me. When you pass on, you will more then likely retain whatever form you were when you died. Like, if you allowed me to take you as a kit, you would have been forever a kitten. You would be in Forestclan with the rest of your cat family…”
He sat down next to Foxpaw. “Do you feel unwanted in Riverclan?”
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:48 pm
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Foxpaw blinked.
"Kin? Before I was sick, I'd never seen you once in my life. How are we kin, exactly?" She asked, flicking her tail this way and that in her irritation. "I have no cat family. The only family I had was stolen from me by RiverClan." She frowned. The closest thing to family she had was Barkfang, but her mentor made it clear that it wasn't the love that Foxpaw had shared with her vixen mother, but something more... professional in nature.
"Unwanted?" She asked when he sat next to her. "I... No. I feel like I'm being taken advantage of." Her tail lashed. "They act as though they did me a favor by killing my mother. My proclaimed brother, Bumblebreeze, wears her pelt and doesn't even act like he's doing anything wrong! My leader says that they were right to kill my mother, instead of reason with her. She spoke cat! She was trying to find me and they killed her, but I bet you, if I stole a kit away from a queen and then killed that queen, they'd look at me like a monster, but not realize their own hypocrisy!" She growled and stood up. "But I can't leave until I'm a warrior. Barkfang says I have to be patient. That I have to be cautious and act the part until I have all the training to survive on my own." She glared at the golden field. "Maybe my mother would still be alive if I had been allowed to go with LightningClan." She shook her head. "But it's too late now. I need to focus on becoming a warrior and then I can worry about what comes next." She said.
"Do you watch all of your kin, or am I special?" She asked with a snort.
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:10 am
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“I am from your bloodline,” Deathclaw stated. “You can say I am your ancestor, and if I knew of others like you, then I would watch over them as well. You are the only one as of right now.” Deathclaw sighed a little. “You did at one point have a cat family. You cat mother didn’t survive when you were very young and that’s when the fox adopted you. It was odd thing for a fox to do… Generally, foxes will kill cats. That’s why most cats tend to avoid them.” He tilted his head a little as she spoke about her mentor. What exactly has been going on in Riverclan? Most of the cats there were Forestclan believers, so he generally didn’t pay much attention to them. “Foxpaw, you can leave whenever you want. You don’t have to play a role. If you can hunt and fight, then there shouldn’t be anything holding you back from giving Riverclan your tail to lick.”
Deathclaw had his own reservations with the clan. He would have to warn not only Shadowstar, but also Bumblebreeze. “I understand what you’re saying. It was a bad situation that was handled poorly. However, a cat kit can’t survive from a fox’s milk. You would have died from starvation. I’m not justifying them killing her. I would have tried to chase her away without killing her, or try to convince her that you would have been better off living with cats for that same reason.”
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:30 pm
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Foxpaw tried not to let the confusion show openly on her face. Barkfang had been teaching her how to hide her emotions, but... she felt like she could be honest with this tomcat. Despite his eerie name, he felt... almost comforting. Was it because she knew him as a kit? Or because he had no part in the death of her mother? Maybe it was both.
"How did you find out about me? When did you realize we were related?" She went on to ask. "Do you know how you're connected to me? Whether it was through one of my parents or..' Her ears perked up. "Are you related through Mama Fox?" She asked, though some part of her new that couldn't possibly be true. He was a cat, after all. Or at least, the parts of him that weren't floating around like stirred up leaves were feline in nature.
When he went on to telling her that she could leave whenever she wanted, she stared at him for a long moment and then shook her head.
"I'd like to stay. I haven't learned how to kill a cat yet. I think Barkfang's waiting to show me that one." She raised her head proudly. "But I will learn. And then I'll show them by going to find my fox kin and living with them. I couldn't have been Mama Fox's only cub. Maybe there are more of us out there!" She mewed, looking elated, before quickly looking embarrassed. "Promise you won't tell anyone?" She hurried on to add. She hadn't ever told anyone about that dream of hers. Not even Barkfang, who she told everything to.
"Barkfang says that LightningClan didn't want to kill her. That they wanted to talk to her. Maybe they aren't so bad, but... but RiverClan, regardless of their motives... I can't ever forgive them." Foxpaw replied adamantly.
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:51 pm
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Deathclaw listened intently as Foxpaw spoke to him. This poor cat had such a twisted way of thinking. This Barkfang was filling her head with stupid ideas and lies. “The tom that fathered you is my relation. I did an intensive search to find this out. There are many many moons between us.” He thought for a moment. This cat was thinking dangerous thoughts. Could he really try and reason with such a fragile mind? He could try, but slowly.
“Killing a cat is a bad taboo,” Deathclaw said sternly. “It’s highly frowned upon by both clans, however, if your mentor is teaching you how to fight, then you already know how to kill a cat.” Deathclaw remembered his life briefly. He remembered the cats he had killed himself, some of which were in Starclan. It was one of the main reasons why he did the work that he did. He himself didn’t want to face his demons.
“I can’t speak for Lightningclan,” Deathclaw said, returning to the present. “however, you should speak with someone that was there. That would mean looking for a Lightningclan cat to do this.” He thought again for a moment. Foxpaw would also benefit from talking with her own clanmates. “Tell me, have you actually spoke to any of your clanmate? Or is everything you believe from your mentor, Barkfang was it? I hate to be the barer of bad news, but it seems to me that Barkfang isn’t telling you the whole truth… and that’s the same as lying.”
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:22 pm
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Foxpaw flicked her ears. She didn't remember her father, but she didn't remember her feline mother either. She briefly wondered what their names were, but shook the thought off. It didn't matter to her anymore. She had no way of knowing if Deathclaw was telling her the truth or not, but there was no harm in trusting him about this particular matter.
Her ears went flat when Deathclaw started to preach to her and she bristled. "Oh of course a StarClan cat would say that!" She growled. "You may think you know what's best, but I know the ForestClan code. It says that when you're fighting, you give it your all and if another falls than it's because they were too weak!" She stood up. "Don't talk to me as though you know everything about me, Deathclaw! You've been observing from afar and while you say you're my family, you're not my friend!" She spat. "You sound just like everyone else in RiverClan. I don't have to explain anything to you. I don't have to do what you tell me!" She began to stalk away. Foxpaw hated being talked down to like she was a kit again!
"Just because we have different views... And I thought he was different! I thought he was kind!" She hissed at her own foolishness. "But I was wrong. He's not kind, he's manipulative. He's trying to use kindness to make me think like him, but I won't! I won't ever think like a StarClan cat!"
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 5:18 pm
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Deathclaw could hear the cries of Foxpaw. He didn't know what he could do to comfort her. He watched her dream. Her chasing after a mother that was never going to return. He was very much disgusted. These stupid cats didn't heed his warning. He would need to have another visit with their leader. 
