Otterleap

Otterleap is a long-furred black-and-brown tabby she-cat with hazel eyes.

## Personality

Otterleap is playful and constantly happy. She gets attached to cats easily, and can be surprisingly agressive. She loves younger cats, and will easily play with any kit who is open to. She's also very dense, and can't pick up on hints for the life of her.  While she is not a very mature she-cat, she likes to act as if she is; however, now that she is a queen and has kits of her own, she is worried that she'll make a mistake and do something wrong.  Otterleap is a cat that goes through life with a mentality of how she shouldn't worry about most things, as she simply doesn't have the time to.  She soaks in the experiences given to her and lives her life fast and loose, happily playing around with her mate and kits and her younger sister.

## History

Formerly known as Otter, Otterleap was born to a loner she-cat named Little alongside her three littermates; Spots, North, and Otter. Little refused to tell the four who their father was, until he came to visit them when they were so young they could barely remember him. A few moons later, Little gave birth to two more kits - Paws and Ice. Looking at the two, none of the older siblings could believe that they had the same father, but their mother reassured that they did (although, if this was a lie, no cat has discovered it yet).

Little died from greencough. When she had the disease, she had separated herself from her kits. North, Spots, and Ice were the cats who found her body. The six kits buried her, but stayed where they were living. When a wildfire occurred, the six were split up. Shade, Spots, and Ice found a home in WaveClan, becoming Forestpaw, Splashpaw, and Streamkit. North, Otter, and Paws found a home in MarshClan, becoming Northpaw, Otterpaw, and Pathkit.

She was killed in a plague that swept through all the Clans, after she'd found a mate in Stormstrike and had a litter of kits that grew to become warriors before she died.

## Long Posts

### wave/marsh sibs conversations, volume two

Otterleap plodded off on her own after offering goodbye to her new apprentice (and, of course, telling her to have fun) and offering her mate an affectionate nuzzle (and, of course, telling him to try and have fun), slowly weaving her way through the throng of cats - for now, comprised of just MarshClan and WaveClan cats, but she imagined that would change soon enough. She offered tail waves and friendly smiles as she went, though she didn't stop and try to make any conversation just yet, more focused on trying to catch sight of any sign of a familiar pelt than she was on trying to make new friends.

She paused mid-step as she caught sight of a white-and-gray pelt, a grin stretching across her face. "Streamshadow!" she called happily, bounding happily towards the WaveClan she-cat as Streamshadow turned her head to look at her and offered her a smile.

"Hello, Otterleap," she greeted as the tabby settled down in front of her. "How are you?"

"Great! I just got another apprentice before I came here."

Streamshadow's ears perked at that, and she blinked, appearing to be pleasantly surprised. "Really?" she asked. "That's good."

"Mm-hmm," Otterleap hummed, drawing out the sound. "Her name's Deerpaw - I think that we'll get along pretty well."

"That's always a plus," Streamshadow mewed. "I haven't had an apprentice of my own, but Forestflight and Bluesky have seemed to get along with the ones they've had."

Otterleap tilted her head at her younger sister. "You know Bluesky, too?" At the questioning look sent her way, she elaborated, "Forestflight mentioned her before."

Streamshadow hummed her understanding at that, then nodded. "I've known her for longer than Forestflight has, actually," she informed. "We've been friends since I was an apprentice, and her and Forestflight only became friends after I became a warrior. Mainly because they can bother me together, I think."

The MarshClanner huffed a laugh at that. "Someone has to, don't they?"

Streamshadow did not look impressed with her. Oh, well.

"Any other tidbits to share?" Otterleap questioned, leaning forwards to listen eagerly.

The colorpoint she-cat nodded her head. "Yes, actually - Forestflight has a mate, now."

"*No*," Otterleap gasped, green eyes wide. "Really?"

"Really."

"Is it Sunblaze?"

"Yes, it is. Did she mention him before?"

"More like *bragged* about him before," the tabby corrected.

Streamshadow's whiskers twitched just slightly. "That sounds like something she'd do."

Otterleap tipped her head to the side. "That's when she first mentioned Bluesky to me and Northwater, actually, so I just thought that they'd been friends since... well, probably since you all joined WaveClan."

"No," Streamshadow mewed with a shake of her head, "they are pretty close though. I'm guessing that Bluesky thinks that maybe Forestflight will be spending less time with her, now, because she's been pretty depressed, lately."

"Huh," Otterleap pronounced, one of her ears folding backwards in confusion. "Most cats are usually happy when their friend gets a mate."

"She is happy," the other quickly assured. "She's just... also being a bit weird about it, I suppose."

The tabby was silent for a few moments. "Maybe she'll start talking about it soon?" she proposed.

"Maybe," Streamshadow agreed with a nod.

"Anyways," Otterleap mewed, ruffling her tabby some, "*I* have some news to share."

"What's that?"

"Pathstride," she paused after the name - dramatics were important when it came to things like this, after all, "has a mate, now!"

The WaveClanner was silent. She blinked at her, then blinked again. "Pathstride?" she checked. "Not Northwater?"

"Pathstride," Otterleap confirmed. "And it's *Breezeflight*, of all toms - the gentletom to beat all gentletoms."

Streamshadow stared for another moment, blue eyes a bit wider than they usually were. "Well," she mewed, "at least we don't have to worry about him treating her badly."

Otterleap grinned at her again, shaking her head. "Not at all," she agreed. "He was raised right, that's for sure."

"If only all toms could be."

Otterleap barked a laugh, lifting a paw to bat at her little sister's muzzle, and for the rest of the night the two of them bantered with each other, only pausing for a few moments when the MeadowClan patrol entered the clearing before they picked up right where they left off.

### otter and splash being happy kinda

moment ago, Otterleap had been surrounded by the sound of cats gasping and wheezing and coughing, so much and so hard that she wondered how they could even breathe, before she remembered that she was a part of the noise and realized that the answer was *barely*. She felt so cold that she was shivering, but every time that Silverstream or Palesky checked on her they kept saying something about how her fever hadn't gone down (but how could that be right? Couldn't they tell she was freezing?) and when they weren't checking on her temperature, they were busy trying to get her to force down herbs or meals that she didn't have an appetite for. Her only comfort was the fact that her mate and daughters weren't in the den with her.

She must have fallen asleep at some point. All that reached her ears was the sound of the wind rustling through the grass, and distantly she could hear leaves brushing against each other, as well. When she breathed in — easily for the first time in what felt like moons — she smelled the warm air that came with greenleaf rather than the cool scents of leaffall. When she opened her eyes, she saw lush green grass and trees dotted throughout the land, reminding her distantly of the forest she'd grown up in.

Her ears twitched at the sounds of approaching pawsteps, and she turned her head to watch as a familiar ginger-and-black tom with stars in his fur (of course there were stars in his fur, he'd been dead since she was an apprentice, but what that meant for her hadn't clicked just yet) padded towards her, seemingly without noticing her. She felt her eyes widen and it felt like her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest, and she managed to take a few staggering steps forward before her paws stopped moving entirely. Finally, the tom's eyes moved from the trees to her and he froze mid-step, his eyes widening.

"...Otterleap?" he asked, voice as weak as she'd ever heard it.

A grin split itself across the warrior's face, and hearing her brother's voice was all the encouragement she needed to rush forward, knocking him over with a loud laugh and a happy yowl of, "*Splashpaw*!"

Splashpaw let out an oof as she knocked into his smaller form, and he didn't have a chance to try and catch himself and stop the pair of them from falling over. They landed heavily on the ground, Otterleap easily managing to pin her littermate down, but she didn't get to revel in her victory for long before his paws started battering at her belly.

She let out a yelp, backing away from her brother and swiping at Splashpaw's haunches and tail as he rolled back onto his paws, the stars now tangled in her fur only registering in the back of her mind. Splashpaw took the hit, leaping towards her and knocking into her chest, knocking the breath out of her and making her fall onto her back.

"You're so *heavy*," Otterleap complained, shoving at him with her paws, but he didn't budge.

"There's a lot of good prey in StarClan," he defended.

That was when it clicked — waking up in a strange place, no lingering sickness, stars in her fur, *Splashpaw*. She should have noticed it earlier, and she felt like a fish-brain for not doing so, but she supposed that the smart one in the litter was Northwater, and Streamshadow took her place in the one that followed.

She was dead.

Splashpaw lifted his head, frowning. "What's wrong?"

"I left them behind," Otterleap meowed. "Stormstrike and Rainbriar and Splashcreek."

How would Stormstrike react to the fact that she wasn't ever going to get better? Or when her kits found out that their mother was gone, now?

Splashpaw only nodded his head, then he stood. "Come on," he meowed. "Let me show you something."

Otterleap only hesitated for a moment before she rolled to her paws, padding after him as he headed back the way she had come and stopping in front of a pool that she hadn't noticed before. The water was perfectly clear and still, and the pair of siblings stood at the edge of the water, but neither one of them paid it much attention just yet other than Otterleap's initial curiosity.

"It's called the Gazing Pool," Splashpaw told her, looking up at her.

"What's it for?" Otterleap asked, one of her ears folded backwards in confusion.

"Watch," the tom told her, then he looked back at the water. He lifted his paw and pressed it against the surface, a few gentle ripples spreading across it at his touch. "Rainbriar, MarshClan," he requested. The perfectly clear water morphed into an image of the MarshClan camp. She could easily see Rainbriar chatting with Berrylight, and she watched as she grinned and wrinkled her nose at the other she-cat, even in the light of the almost-set sun.

"You mean…" Otterleap trailed off, swallowed, then started again. "You mean I can see them from here?"

Splashpaw nodded his head. "And all of our sisters, too." He offered her a smile, but she could only see it out of the corner of her eye, too preoccupied with the image of her daughter too look up at him. "Clan borders really don't matter that much up here."

Otterleap found that she couldn't speak — her throat was tight all of a sudden, her eyes burning with unshed tears that she couldn't tell whether were happy or sad, and even if she wanted to speak she couldn't think of anything to say. In the morning, her mate and her daughters and her sisters would find out that she was gone. Sometime after that, the news would be passed onto Forestflight and Streamshadow, delayed by their inability to pick and choose when they could go to Gatherings or even bump into each other on border patrols.

But she could watch over them all, guide them from where she was now. More than that, she was with Splashpaw again, after they'd been separated once they'd joined different Clans and separated again after he'd died far too young.

Right then, that was all that seemed to matter.