Whitefern

LichenClan

A rumpled white she-cat with a cataract over one eye.

Age has weathered this old broody considerably. With each passing moon, a little more of her grace fades—in the ease of her gait, the supple firmness of her build, even the luster of her fur; with time, all such things will be taken away from her, just as her vision, which has already begun to recede. Her coat is oddly rumpled, bare in some places to reveal nasty flares of scarred pink flesh from past battles and, in some instances, excessive grooming. Her face is similarly haggard, bearing a rawness about the eyes and a feverish light in her blue eyes that suggests declining health. Her ears are tattered, her coat, once unmarred and beautifully pristine, riddled with age-old scars that flare grotesquely against her fur. In size, she is also of a certain diminutiveness, one that was appealing in her youth, but has taken on a different quality entirely in tandem with the jut of hunched shoulders and the stooping of a weary neck.

sharp-wit·ted | /ˌSHärpˈwidəd/ | quick to notice and understand things. || There is very little that this old crone doesn’t know. She considers herself proficient in the art of trivial gossip and even moreso in deciphering fact from fiction; as such she misses very little—even the smallest scruples of information glean pleasant results to one as trained in such matters as she.

dis·cern·ing | /dəˈsərniNG/ | having or showing good judgment. || A trait that allowed her to excel in her environment even in the absence of a superior, Whitefern can evaluate a situation at a minutes glance. For her it is clockwork, be it in deciding the best possible hunting route or the route one should take in the midst of a conversation. As such she is rarely steered astray.

par·a·noid | /ˈperəˌnoid/ | unreasonably or obsessively anxious, suspicious, or mistrustful. || A deep-rooted suspicion has dogged her since her conception. Be it in a passing glance or a small comment, she trusts few and with, in her opinion, good reason. She understands LichenClan and sees it for what it is—duplicitous and war-mongering—and as such puts little faith in the promises of others, with her wellbeing and that of her daughter.

re·pres·sive | /rəˈpresiv/ | inhibiting or restraining the freedom of a person. || As a mother she believes it her responsibility to shield her daughter from the haunts of the world. After all, who better to understand them than herself, thrown to the wolves as she was at such a young age? And as such, who can fault her for restricting her daughter If not a little, for minding the meals she eats and those who she surrounds herself with? She only acts as a mother aught.

mach·i·a·vel·li·an | /ˌmäkēəˈvelēən / | cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous. || What she considers a means to an end is, to others, scheming and cruel—but it is no matter to her, the opinions of common sheep. She acts with purpose, rarely acting out of impulse but after long and astute evaluation to possess the best possible outcome for her needs, whether it mean harming some or spinning sweet lies to others, it is no matter. It is all, in the end, for a worthy cause.

dil·i·gent | /ˈdiləjənt/ | having or showing care and conscientiousness in one's work or duties. || Her success is in part due to her assiduous ways. Her methods are succinct and precise, never too much and never too little—just enough and without fault. And so she has performed, in both combat and in tasks as menial as constructing a nest. Nothing is worth anything less than perfection.

me·thod·i·cal | /məˈTHädək(ə)l/ | orderly or systematic in thought or behavior. || One’s workplace should by tidy, she insists, and so too should be all else one imparts themselves with. In thought you should be meticulous—always minding your p’s and your q’s—and in action you should be equally so. Scrupulous, punctilious, it does not matter how one chooses to word it, it should be what one strives for, even in day-to-day living.

pe·dan·tic | /pəˈdan(t)ik/ | excessively concerned with minor details and rules. || Particularly when it comes to her own appearances and the ordinance of her den, it is not often she is not adjusting some small bauble, trinket or patch of fur. A nest at a slant is an offense, sullied fur worthy of high punishment. One’s hygiene, both in their living space and outside of it, should be impeccable, and so she enforces such beliefs tirelessly, much to the chagrin of anyone tasked with enduring her company.

They should never have been born, yet they had been—in part because she could not will to kill them herself, and also, in some larger part, to spite those who deemed them unworthy of living. Yet they lived nonetheless, small, tiny, begging for her milk, of which she deprived them cruelly, standing over them, looking down upon them, her highborn visage implacably still.

She did not love them. She loved him, but not them—the product of him. But she had loved him enough to see the children they had been robbed of, and as they writhed in that nest, white as snow amid the thundering boom and crash of thunder, she allowed herself a moment to think on what could have been but never would be.

Never.

And then there was no point thinking about it anymore.

It didn’t matter what she thought or if she loved them. He was gone, and soon they would be gone too when the rain rose, and the cold crept over them and chilled the life from their tiny, mewling bodies. Then their legacy—his legacy—would be all but gone, never to be gleaned, only known to her.

It was a cruel fate, but one they deserved, or so she had been told. And the sooner they pass, the better things will be.

Another waited for her at home, and he was of a more refined stock than her last. He was poignant and poised and handsome; they’d make a beautiful brood. That was what she should think on, not the tom who left her fat with child with naught but fickle words on commitments he was unwilling to make.

He was gone, and soon so, too, would they be.


Though Blackfur never told her—never truly—who her parents had been, she knew they had been important, or important enough to garner the looks of all which she passed. And with those looks came words, of which there never seemed to be any significant shortage. They spoke of a highborn she-cat, a wasted opportunity and suspicious nattering over the contents of her father’s lineage of which none had become privy to, much to their immense dissatisfaction.

They spoke freely, without restraint, and so she heard such things, and when asked about them, was met by a grand sweep of a tail that whisked her to warm, black flanks that hummed and thudded with the pounding of a lazy heart.

“Do not listen to them, my little star. They’re only jealous your mother lived where they did not. Do you understand?” Whitefern could not remember what she had felt for Blackfur then, but she knew of her own disbelief, the frustration and smoldering betrayal that roiled within her.

If she loved us, thought she, thinking of her sister and herself, orphans found by chance, she would have kept us and raised us no matter what anyone said. And so, she could only shake her head. Because she did not understand, and perhaps never would.

“Perhaps you are too young to,” Blackfur murmured softly, not condescendingly, but gently. “But believe me. She loved you, and fiercely. But she could not keep you, and that is why she came to me when my brood passed in the storm. She gave you to me because she knew you would be loved—that you would be safe—because she did not have the heart to see you wither away and die, though her duty deemed it necessary.”

Whitekit thought on that, young as she was, and as the moons passed, she thought on it more and found she detested her mother despite that—that she despised her father even more so—and that she would be like neither. That if she bore kits, she would love them, and she would let nothing harm them. Never. Not as her mother had.


Her ascension to apprenticeship was not one embellished by lofty words or high expectations but was carried out in muted acceptance as she and her sister were passed under the tutelage of two warriors who bore nothing in the way of loft achievements or grand deeds. Both were plain, simple, and asked little, only stooped to brush their noses against the two sisters and take them into their territory, where they learned only as much as they needed and nothing more.

But where Heatherpaw contented herself with the menial tasks of apprenticeship, Whitefern steeped herself in training. She found a she-cat, old and withered, and from her heard stories and so filled her head with the heroic deeds she wished to achieve.

There would be many, she vowed, and when the time came, she would be feared—feared as few she-cats were. That would be her future, and then, when the time came, she would court a highborn tom and bear a litter and solidify her place, a bastard no longer, but a hero.

Young as she was, such wishful thinking spurred her to the point of fatigue. She grew swift and cunning, a wily young thing that honed her small size and gracefully thin proportions to deadly efficiency, one that bested even the most veritable of foes. And so she proceeded, under her mentor who she shadowed in achievements long before her warrior title had been earned, and of the many skirmishes she fought, only continued to add to a loft collection of scars and tales to boot.


It was no fault of anyone’s, Heathermist’s passing. Nor had it been anyone’s fault either when Blackfur fell sick with the bite of the cold and was taken by a raucous cough. It was nobody’s fault, yet she blamed them all the same and grew to trust few as the sickness ate at that small fragment of family she had been spared, as their hearts beat slower and fell still and their bodies grew as cold as the formidable snows.

When her own body waned before a great cough, still she did not allow her care to be entrusted to anyone. She only watched, spent her days idly beside the medicine den, and so learned what she needed—which herbs could soothe her throat and where to find them—and as her coughing ebbed by effort only of her own, she grew hungrier still for such knowledge, for she did not trust her health in the paws of any but herself.

Such a proficiency grew to cover a broad range of things—some to cure a cough or ease the bleeding of a wound, others to rouse the belly to fitful gurgling and a restless passing of bowels.


Her achievements on the battlefield earned her the respect of a dwindling family. They offered her their son, an older tom, newly widowed and without child. He was cold, and though Whitefern fondly remembers the feeling she felt, striding alongside him, she cannot recall ever having loved him for anything more than the status she so desperately craved.

And perhaps the same could be said for him. He never forgot his past mate, and for that, Whitefern never forgave him, yet he hunted for her and protected her, and when the winds blew, he would wrap himself about her and warm her nest. It was simple, it was necessary, and in time she repaid him by the swelling of her own belly.

She would bear him kits as his mate before had been unable.


She bore him many litters—many and more than he had any right to. Four in total, four, and none of them living, none except the last, that gave him one living offspring, a diminutive girl, birthed sickly with an umbilical cord wrapped fast about her throat. No breath surged from her lungs at first—Whitefern thought her dead—but then she had nipped away at it, freed her throat and lapped at her until the breath quickened and the life surged in her tiny body.

Her only surviving offspring, her only kit, her only daughter. She named her Meadowkit and vowed from then on—her body by then too old to bear any more in the way of young—that she would let nothing come between them.



Her daughter had always been sickly. Coughs racked her body, her stomach was prone to indigestion, and she was slow to wean from the teat, but all such matters were but minor hurdles in life. Whitefern nursed her until her milk dried, fed her herbs slipped from the medicine den until she grew strong, and as her vigor grew and her want to venture beyond their isolated shelter grew, she felt possessed by a mother’s will.

“You mustn’t leave my sight, my little star. Never, do you understand me?” she had told her one night, having caught her eyes wandering, towards the sound of playing kits, whose reckless abandon yielded many in the way of pained yelps and squeals. Whitefern would never allow them to hurt her daughter, not in that way—no. It was better if she stayed inside.

Yet Meadowkit grew, and as she grew, so too did her curiosity. Still, Whitefern suppressed it. When she got to be bold and cavorted with the kits whose presence her mother denied her, she fed her leaves that made her stomach too raw to hold down food. When her health recovered and the time came for her ceremony, she mixed the same cruel broth into her mouse meat (pre-chewed as always, for she had never been able to work her teeth at the tougher meat) until she fell deathly ill and for a time was possessed to stay under the watchful eye of Cinderface.

But when she recovered, and the matter could not be held, she relinquished her, but only for a short time. She had connections, and so used them, and when her daughter came into the possession of some war-born brute, she had them promptly separated, and her daughter returned to her care.

All for a mother’s love.

Time passed, her daughter, daintily thin, remained a constant, and she, too, was a constant in her life as well. The two shared their meals together, spoke together, groomed one another, and shared a nest together. She never let her out of her sight, not once, not as her mother had, and looked after her rapturously.

But as whispers of war grow within the Clan, her daughter has become harder to maintain within her grasp. Already she whispers of wanting more freedom, more time away from her. If only she knew the danger… and how desperately Whitefern must keep her well away from it.