PETALPAW

LICHENCLAN

LONG-HAIRED DILUTE TORTOISESHELL MOLLY

Large round eyes and delicate facial features planted on a wide upside-down rounded triangle-shaped head/face. According to her parents, she is “beautiful,” but don’t all parents say that about their kits?

In color, her eyes are yellowish with flashes of green sprinkled in, mostly surrounding her pupils.

An average-sized molly, one of Petalpaw’s most notable physical features are her tiny paws. She can fit them into small crevices to grab at prey, but they don’t land hard in fights.

A long and plumy tail destroys any semblance of camouflage for Petalpaw—excellent for Clanmates to see her in the event of a predator attack, less excellent while she’s trying to hunt and it brushes against foliage.

Petalpaw’s coat is contained chaos, primarily gray with bursts and dashes of cream. Her fur is long and soft and an absolute hassle to keep clean, but she would hate to be seen looking ratty and matty by someone outside the Clan.

+ Loving, enthusiastic, genuine, hard-working

- Panicky, gullible, complacent, fawning

~ Trusting, pious, sentimental, innocent, compulsively honest

Loving and enthusiastic, Petalpaw enjoys chatting up other cats, making friends, and spreading joy wherever she goes, to the best of her abilities. She wants to be everyone’s friend and feels overwhelmingly sad when someone doesn’t like her. She is hard-working and aspires to be a cornerstone in ensuring a bright and happy future for LichenClan.

Outsiders, however, terrify her. Her parents always warned her about them—that they’d try to pull her away from StarClan, that only LichenClan cats were good followers of their ancestors’ teachings.

When faced with tough decisions or emergency situations, Petalpaw crumbles and panics. She defers to others constantly, too terrified to make her own decisions. She’ll shut her mouth and go along with bullying or abuse, only to confess about it later, reconstructing the situation in her head to justify her actions and protect herself. She is complacent and accepts that things are the way they are without taking active strides toward changing things. Compulsively honest and genuine, Petalpaw cannot stand to tell a lie, no matter how much trouble her honesty will bring, and she cannot grasp why others tell lies.

Petalpaw fawns over any cat who gives her attention and praise, especially if they are higher ranking or extremely confident. She is easily-influenced and gullible, and while she is fairly smart, her innocence leads her to the conclusion that her Clanmates would only ever want the best for her, as she does them.

Petalpaw has a passion for history. Pious and sentimental, she loves listening to elders’ stories, learning about her Clan’s ancestors, and daydreaming about long-deceased cats and what their lives might have been like. She has only been an apprentice for a moon and already misses the nursery, happy as she is about training and contributing to her Clan.

Born to two highly respected parents (Sandpelt, mother; Firestep, father) hailing from reputable LichenClan lines, the family’s path was well-worn, a timeless tale of strong LichenClan warriors who cared deeply for their ancestors, hunted and fought without complaint, and brought many kittens to life for the Clan they loved so much.

Though she couldn’t hear them, Petalkit’s parents told stories and expressed their love throughout the entire pregnancy. Maybe that was weird. Maybe it garnered whispers and strange looks. But they didn’t care.

This wasn’t their first litter. Their first had been tragic, with only one surviving kit—Azaleastripe—after an intense labor that nearly killed Petalpaw’s mother.

Over a year later, the couple was expecting again. This time, they had four kittens: Petalkit, Petuniakit, Tulipkit, and Flowerkit.

They played and enjoyed their kittenhood, but try as their parents might, the kits were not entirely sheltered from the realities of Clan life. Talk of rebels and someone named Minnowstar drifted through the camp.

Petalkit and her littermates heard curated and twisted versions of events from their parents, playing up this Minnowstar, claiming she was just trying to help everyone understand StarClan’s wishes. Their older sibling, Azaleastripe, loudly refuted their parents’ historical revisions, confusing the kits and upsetting Mom and Dad. Petalkit remembers an argument breaking out between them once, but from then on her parents insisted they still loved Azaleastripe and that it was just a misunderstanding. That satisfied young Petalkit’s confusion.

Petalpaw and her siblings were named apprentices during their sixth moon, as usual. Life was great.

A moon later, the island flooded.

Screams filled her ears, but she could do nothing to help them. Petalpaw ran and ran until their calls for help were so distant they were indistinguishable from birdsong, high-pitched buzzing barely grazing her mind.

In that flood, Petalpaw lost her parents and two of her littermates, Tulip-paw and Flowerpaw.

Life is disjointed and disorienting now, and Petalpaw wonders if it’ll ever return to normal. Will LichenClan be able to return to their rightful home and rebuild?

Grief is finally breaching the shock that has gripped Petalpaw for so long. How can she become a great warrior without her parents beside her? And what of her siblings, who never made it to the warriorhood they were promised from such a young age?

At least she still has Petuniapaw and Azaleastripe, right?