Post by dumpster on Oct 3, 2020 8:21:31 GMT -6
terntail
redwoodclan
a black and white molly with yellow wounded eyes
elder
female
33 moons
A p p e a r a n c e
Short of stature and of coat, Terntail finds herself meeting the shoulder of most of her clanmates if she's lucky. What she lacks for in height and bulk, Terntail makes up for in the overall length of her form. It's clear by looking at her that she was built for hunting and sprinting; she boasts a runner's build that previously held muscles packed with endurance gleaned from long patrols and successful ventures in the woods... but has since deteriorated into a lean, thin figure spared from the rigors of most duties.
Made up predominantly of white and patched with black, Terntail's pelt is stippled together in a manner that did turn a few heads her way in moons past... but these days, instead of paying much attention to the soft, plush, short and double-layered coat that keeps Terntail warmer than most shorthaired cats during the cold moons, attention is often drawn instead to her face...
Once beautiful and most notable for her sparkling eyes, Terntail's face has become something that other cats either try to politely avoid looking at or simply stare at. Some short moons ago, both of Terntail's eyes were injured during the attack on RedwoodClan's camp and remain covered with pasted herbs and cobwebs, their future as uncertain as her career as a warrior.
Made up predominantly of white and patched with black, Terntail's pelt is stippled together in a manner that did turn a few heads her way in moons past... but these days, instead of paying much attention to the soft, plush, short and double-layered coat that keeps Terntail warmer than most shorthaired cats during the cold moons, attention is often drawn instead to her face...
Once beautiful and most notable for her sparkling eyes, Terntail's face has become something that other cats either try to politely avoid looking at or simply stare at. Some short moons ago, both of Terntail's eyes were injured during the attack on RedwoodClan's camp and remain covered with pasted herbs and cobwebs, their future as uncertain as her career as a warrior.
P e r s o n a l i t y
appreciative, dedicated, faithful, tolerant, emotional, self-conscious, envious, mawkish, possessive
ap·pre·cia·tive: feeling or showing gratitude or pleasure.
similar// grateful || Terntail is often the first to express her thanks to an individual or for a situation. She is keenly aware of the cruel and often unfair paws of fate that life can deal to those around her and has become determined in recent moons to ensure that no blessing goes graciously unreceived. She is known for going out of her way to express her gratitude and to let those around her know that she appreciates them and their work; if she can scent who it was that caught her meals, she thanks them. If a cat helps her groom, she spends most of the time period thanking them. Escorts for walks? Thanked. It could be said that no good deed goes unnoticed by Terntail.
ded·i·cat·ed: devoted to a task or purpose; having single-minded loyalty or integrity. similar// committed || There was a time when Terntail wanted to walk into the woods and never return - but she clamped down on her grief and stowed it away to at least bring her kits into the world... and when only her beautiful little Coalkit nestled in at her belly, she resolved to keep going for her kit. One paw in front of the other... again and again. Terntail is willing to endure anything so long as she can cling to those closest to her at the end of it all.
faith·ful: loyal, constant, and steadfast.
similar// trustworthy || Known for her sense of honesty and discretion, Terntail has found herself holding several secrets and dreams of those around her... and she has kept them quietly to herself. She does not partake in harmful gossip and does her best to redirect such habits in others. Secrets shared with Terntail are lovingly safeguarded.
tol·er·ant: showing willingness to allow of opinions or behavior that one does not agree with. similar// permissive || Unfortunately, Terntail's mostly agreeable nature has led to her tolerance of so many things that she should find intolerable. She disregards insults to her pride and pretends that she doesn't sense the pity wafting off of her clanmates. Her tolerance is rooted in two distinct places - genuine kindness and low self-worth. It is seldom recognized for what it is, and she is instead recognized as a very even-tempered and good-natured molly that can withstand and weather even the more dour and sour of sorts.
e·mo·tion·al: having feelings that are easily excited and openly displayed.
similar// ardent || She has always felt her emotions rather strongly, but following the incident that left her scarred and minus both of her eyes, it could be said that she began to be even more deeply troubled with her emotions. She feels everything to greater degrees and can become overwhelmed with emotions both positive and negative - usually resulting in a few sobs no matter if she is happy, saddened, or furious. Because the physical displays of her emotions can often be difficult to pin to their roots, Terntail has taken to very quickly explaining exactly how she feels... except for when she is frightened. Any time her anxieties get the better of her, Terntail remains incredibly quiet and seems to struggle with attaching words to thoughts and communicating them. Her daughter remains the most effective at dealing with and drawing her back from such episodes.
self-con·scious: feeling undue awareness of oneself, one's appearance, or one's actions. similar// inhibited || Formerly a talented hunter and a frequent face among border patrols and gatherings, Terntail's previously broad life has found itself shrunken rather abruptly. She is struggling to find purpose in her life following the attack on RedwoodClan and her disfigurement... she just doesn't know how to find it. A great deal of her seemingly endless appreciation for others comes from her inability to appreciate herself or truly recognize her merits, accomplishments, and the positive impact she often has on those around her.
en·vi·ous: feeling or showing envy.
similar// jealous || She doesn't remember being envious as a youth, and it sickens her at her core that she finds herself feeling rather green over the last several moons. She prefers to ignore that green thing that lives inside of her, but by ignoring it - she does nothing to combat it... and it feeds itself. Found in the tightening of her muzzle and the smallness of her smiles, her envy makes itself known in subtle but visible ways when the subject of the green thing's ire finds itself near to her.
mawk·ish: sentimental in a feeble or sickly way.
similar// saccharine || Another trait developed following her marring, Terntail has become overly sentimental. She clings to her memories and is delighted by the creation of new ones. Terntail has a small collection of useless trinkets and items that have been given to her over the moons; among them is one of the first moss-balls that Coalkit ever played with (dried out and brittle now- threatening to crumble apart at any moment) and a feather that her daughter found on one of their first and only walks outside of camp before the attack. She is most fond of the things her daughter gives her but will accept and be delighted by gifts from anyone -- and very anxious if her carefully maintained collection is disturbed.
pos·ses·sive: demanding someone's total attention and love.
similar// overprotective || She doesn't want to be, but Terntail is rather possessive, particularly of her daughter and of her closest friends. It worries her if she doesn't get to spend some measure of time with those individuals each day (or as close to it as possible), and she can begin to feel rather odd towards those that they are spending time with. She does her best to keep her heart's claws to itself but still finds herself slipping into codependent habits here and there.
H i s t o r y
Mother: deceased, childbirth.
Father: deceased, illness.
Littermates: Unnamed x4, stillborn & malnutrition.
Mate(s):Burnetclaw, deceased. Lingering wounds.
Kit(s): Coalpaw (adoptable); stillborn x2
The womb felt cramped and pinching… were it not for the sudden cold that greeted her first gasped breaths, Ternkit might have been grateful to be ejected from its confines and the bothering wriggling of her closest littermate. But it was cold – and she didn’t understand what this new breath of life meant. She mewled and cried; her voice joined by just one other, though several others had grown in her mother’s belly alongside her…
But then that voice went quiet, too.
She never saw them, but she knew when she opened her eyes that belly she nestled into was not her mothers and that the kits alongside her were not her siblings… none of them were, and they never would be.
She had lost those things before she had even been able to love and appreciate them.
Though the other queens helped care for her and shared the burden of her hungry mouth between themselves, Ternkit never did come to feel as though she truly belonged to any family within the nursery… they showed her kindness, but she knew that something was missing from it all.
She spent the last portions of her kithood wondering with the first twinges of envy what it must have been like to know ones family… to have family at all.
Her first mentor was named Lakewhisker.
He was young and Ternpaw was his first apprentice – but he was kind and Ternpaw very quickly came to regard him as one of her closest friends and companions; a trusted confidant within RedwoodClan, someone that she could share her worries, hopes, and fears with… it was tremendously devastating to the young molly when Lakewhisker was brought back – slain in a border skirmish. She was reassigned, this time to a senior warrior of repute… she gave Ternpaw time to grieve the loss of Lakewhisker, and then resumed her training.
Tornclaw’s scarred visage came back from more than one battle – beat up, bloodied and bruised, but still living and breathing… She came back from so many fights that Ternpaw began to believe that perhaps it was safe to love her as the older sister that she had come to feel like…
And then Tornclaw died, too.
Ternpaw felt grief in abundance once more and something else that surprised her – anger. She was angry with LichenClan, angry with the survivors of Tornclaw’s patrol, angry with herself for not attending… angry with Tornclaw for leaving her alone once again. Her third and final mentor received her at one of her worst periods in life… he was patient and understanding towards her, but she didn’t let herself grow close to him. She wasn’t going to lose someone else – not so soon after Lakewhisker and Tornclaw. She trained and progressed, driven by a determination to be there for those she dared to love… her grief vented itself in her hunts and patrols, and with time she became Terntail, having never truly formed a meaningful relationship with her final mentor…
Perhaps it was for the best, though… he died two moons after her warrior ceremony.
“You’re going to scare all of the prey away,” Terntail whispered with a mixture of confusion and sternness as the red tom cat at her side kept talking to her. He’d been inserting himself into more and more of her patrols and duties lately – it still hadn’t clicked as to why.
“I’d rather talk to you than hunt, anyway,” Burnetclaw admitted confidently, holding her gaze as his whiskers lofted into a charming sort of grin.
“What?” she’d blurted.
“I’d rather talk to you, I said. I think I like you—I want to find out,” the tom cat told her.
Too many questions to voice surged through her mind. She stared at him and furrowed her brow, maw parting as her eyes searched his as though to see if this might have been some sort of jest… he was serious, though. Fear and surprise trickled through her.
“Look, we don’t really know each other that well—” Terntail tried, taking a small step away from him.
“Not yet, I’ll give you that.” Burnetclaw admitted with a crooked nod of his head, “I think that you’re pretty cool, though, so if I could maybe… have a chance to get to know you one of these moons…?”
“Why do you think that?” her eyes narrowed as Burnetclaw’s red paws followed her own.
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re a great hunter but you never boast about it, you’re always willing to pick up someone’s patrol for them, I’ve never heard you say a bad thing about anyone—there’s plenty of reasons to like you, Terntail… I guess I was hoping that maybe you might find some reasons to like me, too…” Burnetclaw smiled at her again, but it was less confident this time… hopeful and unsure.
“I—” Terntail’s ears shifted as her eyes desperately sought out some sort of distraction, “We should finish this hunt,” she eventually blurted in a rush.
Burnetclaw’s ears had fallen – but he didn’t press her.
It took over six moons before Terntail finally found herself relenting to the feelings she’d garnered for Burnetclaw. Despite her initial rejection, Burnetclaw did his best to remain in her life – he didn’t press her romantically again, accepting instead his role as her friend… even that was something of a struggle to attain, as fearful as Terntail had become of loss and death and the threat of grief.
It was moons of this friendship where he asked nothing of her other than her time that planted what began to grow into genuine shared affections. He waited for her – he let her set the pace in every part of their relationship… and one night on a shared hunt, Terntail touched her nose to Burnetclaw’s and told him that she would rather talk to him than hunt.
They’d returned to camp giddy – their heads full of mutual fantasies of the future… of shared nests and long moons together, of eventual bundles of kits nestled at her belly, a mish-mashed of each of their likenesses…
Those eventual bundles came far sooner than Terntail had bargained for.
“Why not now?” he’d said, red paws busily making biscuits on one of her haunches as they curled beneath the stars, “If we tried now, we’d be out of leaf-bare by the time the kits came… prey’s still been alright, even with the cold season… LichenClan hasn’t given us any trouble – they can’t take a chilly breeze,” Burnetclaw snorted out a laugh and shook his head. “C’mon… you’d make the best mom in RedwoodClan,” he asserted.
He was so sure… it was hard not to feel infected by his hope.
“… alright,” she relented, “we’ll try—but if nothing takes, we wait until Green-Leaf before we try again,” Terntail bargained with her mate.
“Deal!” Burnetclaw practically barked, ducking his head down to nuzzle into Terntail’s black and white patched fur. “They’ll take…” he purred, “I’m not leaving your side until I make you a queen,” he vowed.
In the end, Terntail found herself heavy with kits at the end of leaf-bare…
And burying Burnetclaw.
Her grief surged and roared in many forms.
She left herself hoarse from sobs and choked screams, exhausted from the bitter thoughts that kept her awake long into the night, resentful of the very breath that she and so many others still breathed… she wanted to claw down the stars from the heavens and demand that they give her answers – why had she lost so much? What had she done? Why was it that for everything that she gained, she lost so much more? Terntail’s choked sobs became almost as common a sound of the nursery as the mewling of kits birthed before her own – kits whose fathers were still alive to love them.
She resolved during one such choked breath that her kits would not be without her.
She wouldn’t walk into those woods in the deepest parts of the night – she wouldn’t become a husk, either.
Terntail would keep living as long as they did… no matter what else she had to endure.
It was with determination and loving zeal that she bore her brood into the world, bearing down hard and long and pushing through every discomfort; her screams of fear and triumph filling the camp as she brought into the world… only Coalkit. She was wordless and breathless as she stared down at the pitiful runt at her belly—her two stillborn littermates already disposed of with tender care by more experienced queens.
“It’s going to kill her if Coalkit doesn’t make it…” she’d heard one queen gossip outside of the confines of the nursery.
“It… doesn’t look good, does it?” came the reply.
“I don’t think they’re going to make it,” was the solemn admission.
Terntail frowned as she stared down at her kit—the runty, weak little thing that she had to help through even the most basic of bodily functions… They’re wrong about you, she thought, determination igniting a maternal fire like no other inside of her. You’re a fighter, Terntail dipped her head down and gently touched her nose to her daughter’s pitiful shoulders… she barely had strength to suckle, it seemed.
But Coalkit lived.
With every day that passed, Terntail’s sense of satisfaction and pride for her daughter grew. She beat the odds—even after coming down with kitten cough during her second moon. Coalkit fought for her life, and for every heartbeat and each breath, Terntail was beside her, urging her on with loving and prideful purrs—nurturing and rewarding every bit of spunkiness that shown through in her kit.
She began to thrive.
There’s not anything in this world that she can’t overcome, Terntail beamed.
She couldn’t wait to see her earn her apprenticeship… to see the fiery glow in her daughter’s eyes.
But that, too, was taken from her.
LichenClan swarmed their camp.
Her ancient and lifelong fears of loss crashed upon her like the weight of their redwoods as the scent of the cave-dwelling Clan filled their camp. Yowls and hisses filled the air, the smell of blood washed through their dens… and one such villain found their way to the nursery.
Panic and rage drove her forward, her muzzle wrinkled into a snarl as she charged out to meet the ominous white-pelted figure that drew nearer and nearer to the nursery with purposeful malevolence.
“Show your talons near my daughter, I dare you!” Terntail shrieked as she flung herself and her claws and fangs and all of her fear at the molly from LichenClan… but the cat she faced was a monster in her own right. For every blow that Terntail landed, it seemed that Whitefern delivered three of her own. She was losing—she could feel it in her bloodied claws and see it in the delighted glimmer in the other molly’s eyes…
One misstep was all it took. Eyes widened with terror met the full rending fury of her attacker’s swipe… it felt like lightning ripped through her face; white hot and searing as her eyes were gouged and left bleeding profusely, their future uncertain. She tried to blink away the blood and found the motion stung even more; she grew desperate.
Her scream of pain drew a defender too late—another molly that found herself bloodied by the savage she-cat that toyed with them.
Whitefern’s delight was the last thing that Terntail ever saw with pristine clarity.
“I’ll be fine, it’ll get better!” Terntail’s hoarse voice tried to reassure Coalkit.
Her face was and had been plastered with pasted herb mixtures and cobwebs ever since the attack—pain still throbbed and pulsed through her entire skull to a degree that was just shy of numbing. She never saw the bloody mess that Whitefern had left of her face… she didn’t see that her daughter had, either.
She couldn’t see the light in her daughter’s eyes any longer for all of the medicinal mixtures that coated her swollen and painful gaze, but she knew that something in her had changed… but she was alive – that was all that mattered to Terntail. She would weather anything, even this, if it meant ensuring that Coalkit still lived.
But her daughter changed.
Privately, she mourned the loss of Coalkit’s innocence.
She was not dissuaded from loving her, however. In fact, following her wounds and her disfigurement, Terntail devoted even more of herself, her time, and her heartfelt feelings to Coalkit. She clung to her daughter and to the too-few remaining moons they shared together in the nursery as fiercely as she could.
“You’re the ember the keeps me going, my little Coalkit… I love how brightly you burn,” she’d whispered to her during the final night that they shared in their small nest tucked into the recesses of the nursery. “I know you’re going to make me proud—you already do,” Terntail purred, rasping her tongue through Coalkit’s fur, squinting and struggling to make out her mottled form to see her bathed for her apprenticeship ceremony.
“You’re tough and you’re strong—there’s nothing that you can’t overcome,” she told her before mother curled around daughter, drinking in the very last of her kitten smell.
Their lives would change tomorrow… she wasn’t sure if it would be for better or for worse, but she would endure… so long as she had her daughter.
She thought that she would feel the joy that she had fantasized about back with Coalpaw was still Coalkit, small and too weak to even writhe at her belly… she did, in part, but it carried with it a weighty heaviness that she didn’t know how to carry.
Finchstar called them together—himself recently marred as well—and Terntail had shivered with pride as she sat back within the medicine cat's den, still quarantined, just waiting to hear her called forward… It was then that her impossible mixture of emotions began to run together. She felt pride in abundance, of course… there was some bit of worry that she assumed was only natural for all mothers as their kits left the nursery—but what she hadn’t been ready for was the profound sense of hollowness and sadness that filled her the very moment that Coalkit rose to her paws and strode forward to receive her new name and mentor... locked away and unable to attend her daughter's proudest moment in life so far.
She couldn’t see the fire in her eyes.
She couldn’t see if she held her head high.
She couldn’t see if her paw-steps were quickened with excitement or stuttered with nervousness.
She couldn’t see her daughter—not now as she was granted her new place among the Clan, and she worried that she might not see her later, either, as she took her place as a warrior of RedwoodClan. The last time she had seen her daughter clearly, she had been shivering with fear in the back of the nursery on that damned day… it was a painful last image to hold of her.
She missed seeing her. Her smoldering eyes, the quickness of her mind that shone through them… the vibrancy of her pelt and how she had been such a perfect mix of Burnetclaw and herself.
What would her eyes hold when she caught her first kill? Would her sight have recovered to see it?
It took time for her to remember how to breathe again. She smiled for her daughter’s sake though she remained separated from her within the medicine cat's den; she pushed every troubling thought aside to raise her voice even within her quarantined nest and away from the ceremony taking place to call out Coalpaw's new name to welcome her.
And later, in the latest hours of the night when she believed herself to be alone, Terntail wept for what she had missed.
Father: deceased, illness.
Littermates: Unnamed x4, stillborn & malnutrition.
Mate(s):
Kit(s): Coalpaw (adoptable); stillborn x2
The womb felt cramped and pinching… were it not for the sudden cold that greeted her first gasped breaths, Ternkit might have been grateful to be ejected from its confines and the bothering wriggling of her closest littermate. But it was cold – and she didn’t understand what this new breath of life meant. She mewled and cried; her voice joined by just one other, though several others had grown in her mother’s belly alongside her…
But then that voice went quiet, too.
She never saw them, but she knew when she opened her eyes that belly she nestled into was not her mothers and that the kits alongside her were not her siblings… none of them were, and they never would be.
She had lost those things before she had even been able to love and appreciate them.
Though the other queens helped care for her and shared the burden of her hungry mouth between themselves, Ternkit never did come to feel as though she truly belonged to any family within the nursery… they showed her kindness, but she knew that something was missing from it all.
She spent the last portions of her kithood wondering with the first twinges of envy what it must have been like to know ones family… to have family at all.
Her first mentor was named Lakewhisker.
He was young and Ternpaw was his first apprentice – but he was kind and Ternpaw very quickly came to regard him as one of her closest friends and companions; a trusted confidant within RedwoodClan, someone that she could share her worries, hopes, and fears with… it was tremendously devastating to the young molly when Lakewhisker was brought back – slain in a border skirmish. She was reassigned, this time to a senior warrior of repute… she gave Ternpaw time to grieve the loss of Lakewhisker, and then resumed her training.
Tornclaw’s scarred visage came back from more than one battle – beat up, bloodied and bruised, but still living and breathing… She came back from so many fights that Ternpaw began to believe that perhaps it was safe to love her as the older sister that she had come to feel like…
And then Tornclaw died, too.
Ternpaw felt grief in abundance once more and something else that surprised her – anger. She was angry with LichenClan, angry with the survivors of Tornclaw’s patrol, angry with herself for not attending… angry with Tornclaw for leaving her alone once again. Her third and final mentor received her at one of her worst periods in life… he was patient and understanding towards her, but she didn’t let herself grow close to him. She wasn’t going to lose someone else – not so soon after Lakewhisker and Tornclaw. She trained and progressed, driven by a determination to be there for those she dared to love… her grief vented itself in her hunts and patrols, and with time she became Terntail, having never truly formed a meaningful relationship with her final mentor…
Perhaps it was for the best, though… he died two moons after her warrior ceremony.
“You’re going to scare all of the prey away,” Terntail whispered with a mixture of confusion and sternness as the red tom cat at her side kept talking to her. He’d been inserting himself into more and more of her patrols and duties lately – it still hadn’t clicked as to why.
“I’d rather talk to you than hunt, anyway,” Burnetclaw admitted confidently, holding her gaze as his whiskers lofted into a charming sort of grin.
“What?” she’d blurted.
“I’d rather talk to you, I said. I think I like you—I want to find out,” the tom cat told her.
Too many questions to voice surged through her mind. She stared at him and furrowed her brow, maw parting as her eyes searched his as though to see if this might have been some sort of jest… he was serious, though. Fear and surprise trickled through her.
“Look, we don’t really know each other that well—” Terntail tried, taking a small step away from him.
“Not yet, I’ll give you that.” Burnetclaw admitted with a crooked nod of his head, “I think that you’re pretty cool, though, so if I could maybe… have a chance to get to know you one of these moons…?”
“Why do you think that?” her eyes narrowed as Burnetclaw’s red paws followed her own.
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re a great hunter but you never boast about it, you’re always willing to pick up someone’s patrol for them, I’ve never heard you say a bad thing about anyone—there’s plenty of reasons to like you, Terntail… I guess I was hoping that maybe you might find some reasons to like me, too…” Burnetclaw smiled at her again, but it was less confident this time… hopeful and unsure.
“I—” Terntail’s ears shifted as her eyes desperately sought out some sort of distraction, “We should finish this hunt,” she eventually blurted in a rush.
Burnetclaw’s ears had fallen – but he didn’t press her.
It took over six moons before Terntail finally found herself relenting to the feelings she’d garnered for Burnetclaw. Despite her initial rejection, Burnetclaw did his best to remain in her life – he didn’t press her romantically again, accepting instead his role as her friend… even that was something of a struggle to attain, as fearful as Terntail had become of loss and death and the threat of grief.
It was moons of this friendship where he asked nothing of her other than her time that planted what began to grow into genuine shared affections. He waited for her – he let her set the pace in every part of their relationship… and one night on a shared hunt, Terntail touched her nose to Burnetclaw’s and told him that she would rather talk to him than hunt.
They’d returned to camp giddy – their heads full of mutual fantasies of the future… of shared nests and long moons together, of eventual bundles of kits nestled at her belly, a mish-mashed of each of their likenesses…
Those eventual bundles came far sooner than Terntail had bargained for.
“Why not now?” he’d said, red paws busily making biscuits on one of her haunches as they curled beneath the stars, “If we tried now, we’d be out of leaf-bare by the time the kits came… prey’s still been alright, even with the cold season… LichenClan hasn’t given us any trouble – they can’t take a chilly breeze,” Burnetclaw snorted out a laugh and shook his head. “C’mon… you’d make the best mom in RedwoodClan,” he asserted.
He was so sure… it was hard not to feel infected by his hope.
“… alright,” she relented, “we’ll try—but if nothing takes, we wait until Green-Leaf before we try again,” Terntail bargained with her mate.
“Deal!” Burnetclaw practically barked, ducking his head down to nuzzle into Terntail’s black and white patched fur. “They’ll take…” he purred, “I’m not leaving your side until I make you a queen,” he vowed.
In the end, Terntail found herself heavy with kits at the end of leaf-bare…
And burying Burnetclaw.
Her grief surged and roared in many forms.
She left herself hoarse from sobs and choked screams, exhausted from the bitter thoughts that kept her awake long into the night, resentful of the very breath that she and so many others still breathed… she wanted to claw down the stars from the heavens and demand that they give her answers – why had she lost so much? What had she done? Why was it that for everything that she gained, she lost so much more? Terntail’s choked sobs became almost as common a sound of the nursery as the mewling of kits birthed before her own – kits whose fathers were still alive to love them.
She resolved during one such choked breath that her kits would not be without her.
She wouldn’t walk into those woods in the deepest parts of the night – she wouldn’t become a husk, either.
Terntail would keep living as long as they did… no matter what else she had to endure.
It was with determination and loving zeal that she bore her brood into the world, bearing down hard and long and pushing through every discomfort; her screams of fear and triumph filling the camp as she brought into the world… only Coalkit. She was wordless and breathless as she stared down at the pitiful runt at her belly—her two stillborn littermates already disposed of with tender care by more experienced queens.
“It’s going to kill her if Coalkit doesn’t make it…” she’d heard one queen gossip outside of the confines of the nursery.
“It… doesn’t look good, does it?” came the reply.
“I don’t think they’re going to make it,” was the solemn admission.
Terntail frowned as she stared down at her kit—the runty, weak little thing that she had to help through even the most basic of bodily functions… They’re wrong about you, she thought, determination igniting a maternal fire like no other inside of her. You’re a fighter, Terntail dipped her head down and gently touched her nose to her daughter’s pitiful shoulders… she barely had strength to suckle, it seemed.
But Coalkit lived.
With every day that passed, Terntail’s sense of satisfaction and pride for her daughter grew. She beat the odds—even after coming down with kitten cough during her second moon. Coalkit fought for her life, and for every heartbeat and each breath, Terntail was beside her, urging her on with loving and prideful purrs—nurturing and rewarding every bit of spunkiness that shown through in her kit.
She began to thrive.
There’s not anything in this world that she can’t overcome, Terntail beamed.
She couldn’t wait to see her earn her apprenticeship… to see the fiery glow in her daughter’s eyes.
But that, too, was taken from her.
LichenClan swarmed their camp.
Her ancient and lifelong fears of loss crashed upon her like the weight of their redwoods as the scent of the cave-dwelling Clan filled their camp. Yowls and hisses filled the air, the smell of blood washed through their dens… and one such villain found their way to the nursery.
Panic and rage drove her forward, her muzzle wrinkled into a snarl as she charged out to meet the ominous white-pelted figure that drew nearer and nearer to the nursery with purposeful malevolence.
“Show your talons near my daughter, I dare you!” Terntail shrieked as she flung herself and her claws and fangs and all of her fear at the molly from LichenClan… but the cat she faced was a monster in her own right. For every blow that Terntail landed, it seemed that Whitefern delivered three of her own. She was losing—she could feel it in her bloodied claws and see it in the delighted glimmer in the other molly’s eyes…
One misstep was all it took. Eyes widened with terror met the full rending fury of her attacker’s swipe… it felt like lightning ripped through her face; white hot and searing as her eyes were gouged and left bleeding profusely, their future uncertain. She tried to blink away the blood and found the motion stung even more; she grew desperate.
Her scream of pain drew a defender too late—another molly that found herself bloodied by the savage she-cat that toyed with them.
Whitefern’s delight was the last thing that Terntail ever saw with pristine clarity.
“I’ll be fine, it’ll get better!” Terntail’s hoarse voice tried to reassure Coalkit.
Her face was and had been plastered with pasted herb mixtures and cobwebs ever since the attack—pain still throbbed and pulsed through her entire skull to a degree that was just shy of numbing. She never saw the bloody mess that Whitefern had left of her face… she didn’t see that her daughter had, either.
She couldn’t see the light in her daughter’s eyes any longer for all of the medicinal mixtures that coated her swollen and painful gaze, but she knew that something in her had changed… but she was alive – that was all that mattered to Terntail. She would weather anything, even this, if it meant ensuring that Coalkit still lived.
But her daughter changed.
Privately, she mourned the loss of Coalkit’s innocence.
She was not dissuaded from loving her, however. In fact, following her wounds and her disfigurement, Terntail devoted even more of herself, her time, and her heartfelt feelings to Coalkit. She clung to her daughter and to the too-few remaining moons they shared together in the nursery as fiercely as she could.
“You’re the ember the keeps me going, my little Coalkit… I love how brightly you burn,” she’d whispered to her during the final night that they shared in their small nest tucked into the recesses of the nursery. “I know you’re going to make me proud—you already do,” Terntail purred, rasping her tongue through Coalkit’s fur, squinting and struggling to make out her mottled form to see her bathed for her apprenticeship ceremony.
“You’re tough and you’re strong—there’s nothing that you can’t overcome,” she told her before mother curled around daughter, drinking in the very last of her kitten smell.
Their lives would change tomorrow… she wasn’t sure if it would be for better or for worse, but she would endure… so long as she had her daughter.
She thought that she would feel the joy that she had fantasized about back with Coalpaw was still Coalkit, small and too weak to even writhe at her belly… she did, in part, but it carried with it a weighty heaviness that she didn’t know how to carry.
Finchstar called them together—himself recently marred as well—and Terntail had shivered with pride as she sat back within the medicine cat's den, still quarantined, just waiting to hear her called forward… It was then that her impossible mixture of emotions began to run together. She felt pride in abundance, of course… there was some bit of worry that she assumed was only natural for all mothers as their kits left the nursery—but what she hadn’t been ready for was the profound sense of hollowness and sadness that filled her the very moment that Coalkit rose to her paws and strode forward to receive her new name and mentor... locked away and unable to attend her daughter's proudest moment in life so far.
She couldn’t see the fire in her eyes.
She couldn’t see if she held her head high.
She couldn’t see if her paw-steps were quickened with excitement or stuttered with nervousness.
She couldn’t see her daughter—not now as she was granted her new place among the Clan, and she worried that she might not see her later, either, as she took her place as a warrior of RedwoodClan. The last time she had seen her daughter clearly, she had been shivering with fear in the back of the nursery on that damned day… it was a painful last image to hold of her.
She missed seeing her. Her smoldering eyes, the quickness of her mind that shone through them… the vibrancy of her pelt and how she had been such a perfect mix of Burnetclaw and herself.
What would her eyes hold when she caught her first kill? Would her sight have recovered to see it?
It took time for her to remember how to breathe again. She smiled for her daughter’s sake though she remained separated from her within the medicine cat's den; she pushed every troubling thought aside to raise her voice even within her quarantined nest and away from the ceremony taking place to call out Coalpaw's new name to welcome her.
And later, in the latest hours of the night when she believed herself to be alone, Terntail wept for what she had missed.
