Chivethistle

Chivethistle, one of MarshClan's rudest and most opinonated young warriors, is a force of chaos. And not necessarily in a good way. While she's mellowed out somewhat following the death of Viceroytuft, her reputation from her apprenticeship still looms over her every move. She was two-faced and a bully who took advantage of and intimidated her denmates solely for the sake of the power trip. She realizes now that she was falling into the same cycle as her mother, and while she does regret it, her pride and shame stop her from really trying to make amends.

## Relationships

### Parents

Jess (mother, dead) & Rat (father, irrelevant)

### Siblings

Echo (sister), Rippledusk (half-brother), Stream (half-sister), Creek (half-brother, dead), & Drip (half-sister, dead). She doesn’t know about her half-siblings, though.

### Other Relatives

Puddlespirit & Turtleheart (cousins), Joel (uncle, dead)

### Friends

Lapwingfeather! Kind of Bluecloud, some of the time. And formerly Viceroytuft, but she sorta forced him into it and he's dead now. Also formerly Widowflame for like one moon, but not anymore.

### Enemies

Oh, let's see. Currently, she's hated by Echo, Cardinalflight, Rillwing, Widowflame, to a certain extent Graydusk... and she used to bully Bluecloud, Firsong, and Skylarkspring. And Viceroytuft never really liked her anyways. She's doing great.

## Appearance & Personality

### Appearance

Chivethistle is a lean and limber young she-cat with scruffy, wavy fur. It isn’t long by any means, but it’s thick and it’s dense, and it has a tendency to stick up into spiky tangles and tufts. It gets caught on everything and is impossible to groom flat. She stands at a fairly average height of 9.2 inches, although she’s noticeably light and wiry. She has strong legs and solid, hardened paw pads, the front left of which has an uneven old scar cut into it from a crow attack when she was a kit. The tips of her ears fray into pointed wisps; not exactly tufts, but similar. There is also a slight kink at the base of her tail that she tries not to flex too much. Just from, y’know… having the circulation cut off every night for several months when she was younger. The first couple inches of her tail are completely numb, and the nerves on the rest of the tail are very dull; any pain in it feels more like vague pins and needles. As a result, she sometimes steps or sits down rather hard on her own tail without noticing. She is embarrassed by this perceived weakness and would rather die than share it with anyone.

Her pelt is a rusty shade of light reddish-brown, mottled all over with dusty flecks and jagged, broken spots of darker brown, the most notable of which being a spattering of freckles across her face. There are paler reddish-orange markings on her toes, chest, chin, and above her eyes, which are sharp and bright green. She always holds herself with confidence and apparent pride, although her posture is typically more relaxed and nonchalant. Her tail is usually high in the air and her chin is not far below it. She puts a lot of effort into trying to look like she puts no effort into the way she moves, if that makes sense. Like… she’ll walk with a very contrived trot or stroll that’s supposed to come off as carefree, but it’s the furthest thing from natural. She’s smirking most of the time and her face is very punchable.

### Personality

(+): Witty, daring, cheerful, resilient, confident, quick-thinking, persuasive when she wants to be

(=): Unfiltered, sarcastic, smug, slow to trust, dramatic, assertive, loyal (if she decides ur worth the effort 💀)

(-): Lazy, rude, self-centered, impatient, disorganized, secretly pretty insecure, superiority complex

### Kithood / Early Life

Mildew, or simply “Dew” as she was nicknamed, was born in the first month of summer, the younger kit in a litter of two. Her sister’s name was Echo. Mildew ended up being jealous of Echo’s name once she was old enough to know what their names both meant. Now, the reason they had dumb names is because they were born in a grimy old twolegplace parking garage, and their mother, an roughcast ex-kittypet named Jess, was not exactly the most creative cat in the coop. She was alone when she gave birth and her naming inspiration was limited to her surroundings. So, as it were, that resulted in the unfortunate name of Mildew.

The kits’ father, on the other hand, was a noncommittal and flippant born-rogue named Rat. He was charismatic, sure, and could tell the most fantastical tales that painted him in a light that would make any she-cat swoon, but he was… not exactly father material, to put it lightly. The biggest source of their issues was that Jess’s owners had kicked her out of the house upon realizing that she was pregnant. Naturally, she had gone straight to Rat, assuming he would happily let her live with him— only to find out that he was not, in fact, overly pleased at the prospect of having to actually take care of his family. So he just brought her to a sheltered corner of some random parking garage with the excuse that it was safer and left her there. Great. After the kits were born, he only visited or twice a week to drop off prey and prove that he remembered they existed. Most of the time, he was just off doing who-knows-what. This forced Jess to leave her newborn kits alone fairly often so that she could hunt for herself. Jess was not happy with this arrangement, but she couldn’t exactly yell at Rat about it because he was never around. So she kinda just had to deal.

This went on for the whole first moon of Mildew and Echo’s lives. Mildew was an energetic and inquisitive little kit, wriggling around and sniffing and touching everything in sight from the minute she’d opened her eyes. Jess ended up actually having to physically block her and Echo into corners before leaving to hunt because she was so worried that Mildew would go scooting out into the open and get run over by a car. Jess was quite a bit paranoid about this, actually, and she started teaching her daughters to stay under cover and stick to shadows before they could even walk. Jess had lost her fondness for humans after being thrown out of her house and made sure to pass her wariness down to her kits. Fear cars and don’t trust people. To the best of her knowledge, those were the two most important life lessons she could teach them in a place like this.

Speaking of which, as soon as Mildew and Echo were weaned, Jess knew that she had to do something about their current state of living. The next time Rat came by, dismissive as ever and in a hurry to leave, Jess held him up. She let him know, and not in the kindest fashion, that she was not too thrilled with him for leaving her to raise their “little scraps” on her own. Jess hadn’t exactly been expecting to have kits with Rat, either, but it wasn’t like *she* could just walk away from them. So how come *he* got to? Rat took a dim view of this criticism and tried once more to leave. Jess blocked him and suddenly it was a standoff. Jess demanded to know why Rat was acting like a different cat than he’d been the whole time she’d known him. Rat snapped at her to let him go. Jess refused and angrily told him that it was his own fault he had kids now, so it was his responsibility to help her care for them. Rat did not like this. Rat attempted to push his way past her. Jess snagged her claws into his fur to stop him. He spun back around hissing, and a pretty nasty argument sparked from there.

In the midst of this argument, Rat seemingly decided that trying to salvage their relationship wasn’t worth it, because he suddenly dropped a great big bombshell on her: he’d actually had a mate before Jess. Like, *very* soon before Jess. As in, he was *actively* cheating on *both* of them with each other. And that his previous mate had *also* had his kits eleven months prior. And only six months ago, he’d found the bodies of said mate and two of their four kits, as they’d apparently been brutally killed by something. So he reasoned that *clearly* it was a bad idea to be with him anyways and Jess might as well just forget it.

It turns out that Jess was not too keen on the whole ‘forgetting it’ part. She clawed him across the face. Rat did not take kindly to this and lashed back at her and before they knew it, they were fighting. Rat scored a pretty hard hit on Jess’s side, and it hindered her to the point where he was successfully able to get away. He never came back after that. So that’s definitely *one* way to divorce, I guess. Jess went slinking back to her kits, but instead of having improved things by talking it out like she’d hoped, everything was worse now. She was officially a single mom and was also injured. Mildew and Echo, still only one moon in age, were not yet old enough to really know or care about what was happening, but Mildew certainly tried her hardest to be utterly unhelpful. She was curious about the blood on her mom’s fur because of how weird it smelled. She kept poking and pulling at the wound. Jess did not appreciate this. Mildew did it anyways.

But in any case, the three of them stayed in the parking garage for about another moon. As much as Jess hated it there and wanted to move as soon as possible, she also wanted to wait for her injury to heal a bit more and to give Rat enough time to get far away in order to avoid stumbling across him by accident. During this time, Mildew and Echo first started to learn the basics of walking and talking (this is when Mildew first started to go by ‘Dew’ instead of her full name. Echo couldn’t pronounce her L’s yet and just called her ‘Dew’ and it stuck. At least it sounds nicer than Mildew). While Echo was much more thoughtful and aloof, Dew was loud and bold and *immensely* eager to please. Jess griped constantly about how Rat had abandoned her and about the lengths she was going for her kits, and as a result Dew took it all to heart and adored and idolized her mother to an extensive degree. If Jess wanted her to burn off her energy, she would. If Jess wanted her to shut up and hide, she would. Echo was a little more defiant, though, often warranting their mother’s ire, and Dew teased her for it relentlessly.

When Dew and Echo were a little over two moons old, Jess finally decided it was time to move them out of the garage. Her intention was to bring them all the way out of twolegplace and finish raising them in the wild, where she hoped it would be safer and where her past couldn’t get in their way. When Jess shared this plan with the two of them, Dew had never been more excited. She couldn’t wait to see what the world was like. Thus far she had never been out of the garage before— never seen the sun, never felt the breeze in her fur, never felt anything but cold, hard concrete beneath her paws. So when Jess showed them the way out, Dew was bounding ahead the whole time and managed to nearly get hit by two different cars. She didn’t, though, so good on her. She did, however, make it outside first and then promptly burst into tears because all the lights and bright colors hurt her eyes and now she didn’t want to leave the garage anymore. Jess ignored her, so she tried throwing a temper tantrum about it. Jess was not impressed by this, either. So Dew begrudgingly accepted that she would have to just live outside now and followed her mom and sister out into the world.

The next moon was an adventure-filled trip across twolegplace. It was nothing like Dew or Echo had ever seen before— there was so much space and so much motion and so much to explore. Dew would wander off at every opportunity, although she never strayed from her mother’s sight. She’d been taught better than that. Echo, on the other hand, *would* just take off randomly and force Jess and Dew to go and hunt her back down. Dew didn’t understand her sister’s need to rebel so much. Dew thought that their mother had been through enough already and that adding more stress to her plate would only make things worse. Dew didn’t know how to communicate this, though, so she just stepped on Echo’s tail and chewed on her ears a lot and decided that ought to be enough to suffice.

Their family was moving for most of each day, stopping only to either rest for the night or to give Jess an opportunity to hunt. They only sheltered occasionally with other cats due to all of Jess’s trust issues, instead mostly sticking to lonely drains and gutters. Because of this, all of them ended up with painful sores on their pads from the constant moisture seeping in combined with all the walking. Dew cried about it a lot. Jess mostly just told her to suck it up, but when it got particularly bad she would provide Dew with some chewed up plant leaves to rub on her paws that served to relieve the pain just a little bit.

Now, for more on that subject, Jess actually did know some things about medicine. Her old owners had been big believers in alternative treatments using herbs and such, and they would often use such methods on her whenever she was achy or scratched herself on a tearing window frame or something. So Jess was able to more or less treat her kits’ sore paws— as well as her own old scratches from Rat— by pulling plants she recognized out of people’s gardens and using them to the best of her knowledge. Dew and Echo were quite interested in the whole concept, and so Jess began to teach them most what she knew. Whenever she went out hunting, she would bring back herbs to show them along with the prey— and on bad days when she couldn’t catch anything, she’d just bring the kits some edible plants and tell them about its properties as they ate.

Their herbal knowledge ended up being especially relevant, however, about three weeks into their journey through twolegplace. While out hunting for her kits one day, the mouse Jess was stalking got stolen out from under her by a bigger, stronger street cat. Jess was pretty angry about this. She had mouths to feed and the street tom looked well-fed enough. So she demanded her mouse back. He pointed out that he’d been the one to catch it, and therefore it was his. Jess made the poor decision to attack him, and, as it turns out, the big and tough-looking stray was, in fact, stronger than her. He reopened the wound on her side, gave her a few bonus scars to remember him by, picked up the mouse, and left. So Jess came crawling back to her kits with no food and a gaping gash in her flank.

She couldn’t exactly move after that for fear of causing herself to bleed out, so she had to instruct Dew and Echo on exactly how to help her. Dew opted to stay with Jess in order to put pressure on the injury while Echo decided to be brave and go out alone to try and find the herbs that Jess was describing to her. So they did that. Echo disappeared around the corner of the rain barrel they were sheltering behind, and Dew was left by herself with her bleeding mom. Dew was honestly pretty scared, but she did her best to cover it up just by talking the entire time. She talked about how cool the scar would look once it had healed over and about how that tom was mean and awful for not giving her back her mouse and about how Echo was definitely going to come back soon and everything would be *fine.* And it took close to thirty minutes, but Echo eventually did return with the right plants and Jess was able to more or less patch herself up and it *was* fine.

For the most part, anyways.

The problem was that she still couldn’t move around too much and therefore couldn’t hunt. And this meant that the family had to resort to scavenging for already-dead animals and eating rotted twoleg food from dumpsters and trash bins. This resulted in a lot of bellyaches and frequent vomiting all across the board and it was just generally not a fun time. Dew made the mistake one time of starting to eat a rat that had been killed by rat poison, and she *probably* would’ve died if Jess hadn’t found an herb to make her hurl it all up really quick. She and Echo also got attacked by a crow at one point. It left a cut in Dew’s paw and took a chunk out of Echo’s ear and Jess had to fight it off. She wasn’t able to kill it, though, unfortunately, so there was still no meal for them. It was miserable. Luckily, it only lasted for about a week before Jess decided that, severely injured or not, she had to provide for her daughters. So they kept moving after that, albeit at a slightly slower pace since Jess and Dew were both limping.

The only other incident to befall the trio before they made it out of twolegplace occurred when they were only a couple days’ worth of walking from the edge. Jess was away in an attempt to get food, so Dew and Echo were alone beneath the hedge where she had left them. They were messing around to entertain themselves and each other as they usually did. By this point they had already come up with a variety of games to pass time, such as their own versions of charades and I Spy, but more often than not they would just quietly play-fight. And that’s what they were doing when a human suddenly bent down and found them.

Now, this human was actually just some high school kid on her way home from school and she saw some filthy, scrawny baby cats under a bush and was like “ayo who left these here???” and reached out to try and pet them. Unfortunately for her, Dew and Echo had been strictly taught since birth that humans were evil and bad and couldn’t be trusted, and so they responded accordingly: by shredding the absolute heck out of her entire arm. It worked, and the kid left them alone. But on the downside, she figured that any kittens acting that aggressive surely had rabies or something, and so she called the local animal control so that they could be dealt with. The crisis was averted when Jess came back soon afterwards and moved them before anyone else could show up, though. So nothing ever actually came of the event.

In the end, everyone’s efforts ultimately paid off, because when Dew and Echo were roughly three and a quarter moons old, they and Jess made it out of twolegplace. The land past it was mostly flat and moorlandy with the exception of the road cutting through it, and in the distance there was a little bit of light forestation. All the green was a welcome change from all the gray, though, and Dew spent a solid forty minutes just frolicking up and down the little hills and rolling around in the grass. She got to see wildflowers and pretty birds and feel real wind for the first time. She was thrilled. That isn’t to say that everything was alright, though, because it wasn’t. They still needed a place to stay now and a plan for what would come next, and so Jess started about that straight away.

After a few hours more of walking, putting as much distance between themselves and the road as she could, Jess and the kits came across an old rabbit burrow that had been long abandoned and seemed to be stable enough. Jess figured that it was about as good as they were gonna get, and so she started digging and expanded the interior until she and her daughters could comfortably and safely fit inside of it. They settled down there and Jess rested for a bit while Dew and Echo ran around collecting grass and flowers and such to decorate their new den and put together some perfunctory nests.

Once everything was mostly set up, Jess sat her kits down in their new living space and laid out her plans to them. She wanted to teach them how to hunt and defend themselves, first and foremost, however long that would take. And after that? She didn’t know. But she made one thing clear: they were *not* going to leave her. Not now and not ever. Her kits were all she had left, and she absolutely wouldn’t just let them go wandering off and doing what *they* wanted while *she* still needed them. Really, this ought to have been perceived as a red flag. And to Echo, it was. But Dew, devoted little Mildew, saw nothing wrong with it. She just nodded along and agreed to everything and promised to stay with her mother forever. So… that was definitely something.

See, the thing is, Jess was kind of starting to lose it. All of the stress and the pressure was a lot to handle, and she had grown up in a soft and easy environment where she’d never been prepared for a life like the one she was living. It was too much for her. She needed to have some form of control over *something.* And the only things that she was in any position to control were her kits. She loved them more than the air she breathed, but by the *stars,* it wasn’t easy. She was filled to the brim with bottled up resentment towards Rat, and Echo had his eyes and his habits, and Mildew had his stature and his personality, and Jess had no idea how else she could possibly find the strength to keep going if she didn’t try and shape her kits into what she wanted instead.

So Jess had changed. She started acting different after they’d made their new home in the rabbit burrow. Dew didn’t notice it at first, but Echo brought it up to her one afternoon after a particularly long hunting lesson. She pointed out— in a whisper since Jess was, in fact, only a few feet behind them— that Jess had much less patience and a much shorter temper now, and that she never let them stray more than ten tail-lengths from her side. She was starting to get a bit rough with them whenever they disobeyed her, too— something that she’d never used to do. Dew was more perplexed by the observations than anything. It really wasn’t a problem in her mind; simply just do as Jess said. Then she wouldn’t yell or swat at you. Problem solved. Echo only seemed disappointed to hear Dew say that, though, and Dew couldn’t understand why.

In other news, though, life carried on. Jess did as she’d said and showed Dew and Echo how to hunt and how to fight. Both of them were pretty good when it came to the fighting, and they had a lot of fun learning different moves and tactics and trying them out on each other, even if Jess snapped at them for messing around. Echo was just ever so slightly better than Dew and it drove her up the wall. Dew was determined to show up her sister and earn approval from Jess. Jess didn’t seem quite satisfied no matter how well her kits performed, though. She would always find something to critique, always make up some wild scenario in which their skills would be inadequate. It may have frustrated Echo, but for Dew, it only served to give her more resolve. While the competitiveness between her and Echo was usually friendly, there sometimes *was* an underlying bitterness to it— more so on Echo’s part, as she was starting to be very openly irritated by Dew’s desperateness to appease their mother. Dew was, in turn, annoyed by Echo’s annoyance. They fed off of each other’s irritation and it kind of sparked a cycle that didn’t seem likely to break for the next few moons.

Hunting was an entirely different issue. Echo did fine. Within a moon, Echo was able to catch mice and voles and small birds and she even managed to come up with a *grass snake* one time. Mildew, on the other hand… not so much. Dew had trouble catching *bugs,* let alone actual prey. She was too impatient, too wiggly, too loud— it just didn’t work. The one time Dew had tried to catch a rabbit, it had kicked her hard in the face and hopped off in peace, leaving her in tears and with a bloody nose. And it wasn’t like she could just do what they’d done in twolegplace and fake it by bringing back something that was already dead, because Jess and Echo were always right there watching her. Jess was getting increasingly frustrated with Dew’s failures to catch anything in spite of all her instruction, and for Dew, letting down her mother was the absolute worst feeling in the history of ever. Jess told her that they’d have all the time in the world to work on it, though, so she tried to at least take comfort in that.

When Dew and Echo were four moons old, their den caved in. They had been play-fighting and Echo had pushed Dew up against the wall just a tad too hard and the sides all collapsed. No one got hurt or anything, because Jess was easily able to dig a way out and get the kits safely onto solid ground, but it *did* mean that they were back to being homeless. So that sucked. Dew didn’t want to leave the burrow. There were pretty flowers growing in bunches all around. There was a shallow little pond not too far away for them to drink from and splash around in. There was a patch of briar nearby where she and Echo liked to pretend to be rabbits. There were funny blue beetles who frequently found their way into the burrow, and she and Echo always had a great time flipping them onto their backs and batting them around. Dew didn’t want to lose all of that and go back to wandering. Too bad for her, though, because no matter how much she whined and stomped her little paws, they didn’t really have a choice. Besides, Jess wasn’t nearly as tolerant of that behavior as she had used to be, and a sharp blow between the ears shut Dew up for the rest of the walk.

They were only on the move for another few days before moving into a hollowed-out log beside a narrow rivulet. It gave them shelter from the weather and a place to drink and since it was right by a water source, there was a decent amount of prey in the area. It may have been cramped, but it was good enough for Jess, and it wasn’t like her kits had high standards anyways. So they made that log their new home. It wasn’t as good as the burrow, at least not in Dew’s opinion, but she sulkily agreed to stop complaining after Jess threatened to dunk her in the river.

It smelled weird in the log and there were a lot of ants, but it was otherwise fine. Jess realized that she and the kits could tear all of the moss off of the outside and use it to make more comfortable nests, so they did that. It was the *only* upside in Dew’s opinion, because more prey in the area meant more hunting lessons, and more hunting lessons meant more failing. Besides, it was the second month of autumn now and sometimes it really did get chilly. That was more or less a new experience for Dew and Echo, and Dew, for one, didn’t like it. Jess was sarcastically like “oh, you’re gonna *love* the snow, then” and Dew was like *“the what.”*

But in any case, things kept on keeping on for the next month. There were regular hunting and fighting lessons each day and the kits both continued to improve at fighting while only Echo continued to improve at hunting. There was an increasing number of little arguments between Dew and Echo, too, but nothing that a fierce look or a sharp word from Jess couldn’t put a stop to. There was one occasion when a hawk began to circle the log and Jess had both kits hide inside of it while she sat on top to glare at the bird, but it ultimately worked and the hawk flew on.

Everything was, for the most part, fine and dandy. Up until the kits turned five moons old, that is. Because one night, when Dew had finally worn herself out from fidgeting and was about to fall asleep, Echo jabbed her in the ribs. Dew swatted at her and rolled over, but Echo was persistent. And when Dew looked at her to ask what she was doing, Echo only silently jerked her head towards the outside. Dew was still groggy and grumpy and a little confused, and she was reluctant to leave the log without Jess’s permission, but something about Echo’s body language bothered her and the look in her eyes was troubling. So Dew got up quietly and followed her out.

Once they were outside, Echo started talking in a way that was clearly agitated. She was pacing and raising her voice, which she hardly ever did, and she seemed almost *nervous.* Now, Echo was not normally one to get nervous, so Dew was a little concerned. Echo launched into a rant about how it was becoming impossible to live with Jess and about how her overprotective nature was warping into something genuinely dangerous, citing how just that morning, Jess had bitten Dew’s tail and forcibly wrenched her back across the den when she had tried to leave the log too early. Dew was bewildered by Echo’s reaction, though. She argued that sure, her tail might still ache a bit, and she had been scared when it happened, but that was the *point.* She’d had it coming for being stupid and not asking for Jess’s permission to leave first, and now she wouldn’t do it again. She then tried to turn around and go back into the log, but Echo sprang in front of her.

Echo insisted that Jess hadn’t always been like this and that things could be better. She accused Mildew of playing right into her paws and not standing up for herself. And then she spilled the *real* reason she had pulled Mildew aside: she was leaving. She was sneaking out to go and live without Jess, and she wanted Dew to come with her. Dew, however, was *mortified.* She demanded to know how Echo could possibly even think of doing that to their mother, especially after the promise they’d made. Echo retorted that they’d been forced to make that promise and claimed that she was trying to *help* Dew, trying to get them both away from Jess before things kept on getting worse. She said that it didn’t even matter that Dew couldn’t hunt, because *she* still could, and from then on *she* would be the one providing for them.

Mildew was disgusted and taken aback, though, and there was no way she was going to let her sister just up and leave like that. Frankly, she was offended that Echo had even bothered asking her to come with. She said this very bluntly and shoved past Echo to walk back into the log, stating that she was going to tell Jess. Echo hurried in after her and cried out for her to stop, but it was too late already— Dew had shaken Jess awake and was telling her everything that Echo had said.

Maybe Mildew wouldn’t have done it if she’d mulled it over for a minute. Heck, maybe she would’ve even ended up agreeing with Echo. But the time for all of that had passed, because now Jess was staring at her firstborn, and then she was standing up slowly, and then she was advancing on her. And then, in a fit of fury, Jess did something that neither kit had ever expected from her: she gashed Echo across the face. Hard enough to send her tumbling back. Viciously enough to draw blood.

And sure, Jess had smacked them around before, sometimes even hard enough to really, truly *hurt—*but this was the first time she had ever done it with her claws unsheathed. And just by looking at the marks on her sister’s face, Mildew felt in her bones that they would not be going away anytime soon. Jess realized the weight of what she’d done immediately, and she acted horrified, and she apologized profusely, and she helped Echo clean up the scratches, but the damage had already been done. Dew suddenly saw everything that Echo had been seeing all along, and she didn’t think she would be able to regard her mother in the same way ever again.

She *tried* to justify it. She could think up a thousand reasons why in her head, hundreds of excuses and rationalizations and convoluted jumps of logic to explain to herself why exactly Jess had done it. It was Echo’s fault. She’d disobeyed her. It was done to protect her. It was an accident. But every turn she took, every loop she traced, it all led back to an undeniable contradiction. Time and again, Dew had heard her mother swear to end anything that harmed a hair on her daughters’ pelts— be it a cat or a crow or any other creature who was dumb enough to try it. Yet the first claws to ever deal them harm were her own. It went against everything she had ever preached. Everything Mildew had believed that she stood for. It just felt wrong.

It *all* felt wrong.

And so once more, things changed after that. Jess kept her kits even closer, and wouldn’t let them talk at all unless it was loud and clear enough for her to hear. She made them go back to sharing her nest in spite of the limited space in the log, and she would lie down on top of their tails every night to prevent them from sneaking out, leaving them numb and stiff in the mornings. She never hit them again, but she never had the need to. Because the threat was ever-present now and neither Dew nor Echo was willing to test it.

And on top of all that, Echo refused to even look in Dew’s direction anymore. Not that Dew really wanted to look at her much, either, what with the guilt accompanying the scars that now marred her face, but it stung all the same. Dew could feel the genuine anger in Echo’s attacks now whenever they were practicing their fighting moves, and it made her even harder to beat. For a long while afterwards, there was a pit in the bottom of Dew’s belly, weighing her down and constantly reminding her that it was *her* fault Echo hated her, it was *her* fault Echo had been hurt in the first place, and it was *her* fault that both of them were now stuck here with their mom for… how long had Jess said? Forever? That sounded about right.

If there was one upside to it all, though, it was that Jess really seemed to appreciate Mildew for having ratted out Echo to her. She went a little easier on her when it came to hunting and she set the rule that Echo could only eat whatever she could catch each day, whereas Dew got to share anything that Jess came up with. Dew *did* feel bad, and on one day when Echo had been especially unlucky, she sneakily passed her a grouse wing. But Echo only proceeded to loudly reject the offer and got Dew into trouble with Jess. Dew was angry about this and never tried to share her prey again. Good job, you two.

This all continued until and after Mildew and Echo had reached their sixth moon. It was at this time that winter started. There was no snow yet, but it began to get cold. *Very* cold. Especially at night. This was an issue because, in case you’ve forgotten, the trio lived inside of a *log,* which was open on both ends. Dew and Echo may have only barely been small enough to keep squishing up beside Jess with their tails underneath her, but it didn’t matter anyways, because they were worried they might freeze if they didn’t huddle together regardless. The other big problem with it being winter was the fact that the prey was all starting to leave. The rivulet froze over, too, but that was fine. They could always just break the ice and drink fresh, cold water. The lack of prey was what caused them trouble. They had to travel much further from the log each day in order to find anything to hunt. And Dew was still useless at hunting and Jess still wouldn’t let either of her daughters go further than a couple of tail-lengths from her, so their success was limited to whatever could be caught under those conditions. Meaning it was virtually nothing. They spent almost the entirety of each day just walking through the cold in search of anything to go after, and even then, it would get away roughly half the time— even once Jess had taken over all of the hunting again. They were fortunate if they managed to catch as many as two things in a day. It was just as bad as it had been in twolegplace.

That isn’t to say that it was *all* terrible, though. Dew found that she quite liked to take deep breaths and then exhale in order to see the puffs of air misting out in front of her. She frequently blew smoke at Echo and Jess this way, giggling at their reactions and dancing out retaliation range. She also liked to take running starts and go skidding across the ice on the rivulet whenever Jess had her back turned. She stopped after one instance where the ice broke in front of her, though. She didn’t fall in, but it was close enough and she still got a hard whack on the head from Jess for it. Dew was really just relieved not to have gotten the claws instead, and she decided then that it would be safer if she just stopped trying to risk having fun altogether— at least when Jess was looking. She still tried to make Echo laugh a few times. She stopped once Echo started getting back at her by tattling, though.

The final straw came to pass when Dew and Echo were just barely into their seventh moon, almost midway through their first winter. It started off as a night like any other— after splitting a single skinny chipmunk that Jess had caught and a couple of snowdrop roots that Echo had been lucky enough to find, the three of them all squeezed together as tightly as they could in their nest, Dew and her sister pinned beneath their mother by their tails as per usual. The air was freezing and there was a bit of icy wind blowing straight into the log, but it was nothing they hadn’t had to tolerate already. It could be worse.

It *did* get worse.

Midway through the night, Dew was awoken by a screech. The pressure left her tail and the warmth left her side as Jess jumped up and started moving. Dew was a little too cold and half-asleep to process what exactly was happening just yet, but by the time her eyes had adjusted and the shrieking had stopped ringing in her ears, it had already transpired. Echo was bloodied again.

Apparently, sometime in the last few hours, Jess had shifted her weight off of Echo’s tail, and Echo had taken the opportunity to make a break for it. She made no effort to bring Dew with her this time. She simply got up and slunk off— but not quietly enough, it would seem. Jess had lashed her across the face a second time, fully intentional now, a jagged mess of lines gouged across what had already been inflicted— healing wounds reopened, an old message restated. But this time, Echo didn’t just take it. Unexpectedly, and to Dew’s absolute horror, she fought back.

It was a rather one-sided fight. As weak and unskilled as Jess was, she was still twice the size of Echo with twice the experience, and Echo’s vision was hindered by blood anyways. She attacked Jess, lunging for her face, only to be thrown to the ground and pummeled. In the midst of the beatdown, her eyes found Dew’s, and she yowled something. Dew couldn’t hear her over the pounding of her own heart, but she didn’t need to. It was clearly a cry for aid. Her sister wanted backup. She wanted help defending them from their monster of a mother. This was a chance for redemption.

Dew didn’t take it. She didn’t have the guts. She only stared. She watched silently and dared not move a muscle until Echo had ceased struggling and curled instead into a shaking, bloody ball, which Jess then nudged roughly back into the log. Not another word was exchanged for the rest of that night. Jess just laid back down on top of them and turned her head away, leaving her daughters in petrified shock, still trapped beneath her. The following morning, Echo cleaned up her wounds and Jess brought her some herbs to keep away infection. None of them spoke of it. They all acted as if it had never happened. The lesson was clearly understood.

(i promise i’ll finish this eventually, prolly after i’m done with finals </3)

7 moons (cont)- mildew is freaked out and decides that she can’t take it. when she happens to be the first one awake one morning, she seizes the opportunity and runs away. coward. oh, and it finally snows. this sucks for mildew, but it also makes it so that jess & echo can’t follow her trail. good accidental geniusing, mildew.

8 moons- mildew almost dies like 76 times because she sucks at living. she’s stalking a mouse one time and it gets scared away by bluepaw. taking after her mother, dew gets angry and attacks her. jaggedwatcher pulls her off. mildew learns that the clans exist and she decides it’d be pretty great to join one in order to not die. when minkstar asks what her name is, mildew just tells her to pick anything. she’d never really liked her name anyways.

### Apprenticeship

8 moons, continued- She gets renamed Chivepaw and apprenticed to Falconleap. The other apprentices are: \*clears throat\* Cardinalpaw, Firpaw, & Rillpaw (2 moons older), Viceroypaw (1 moon older), & Bluepaw (1 moon younger). Chivepaw tries at first to be friendly and successful, but she still sucks at everything and her insecurities get the best of her. She’s seen/experienced power being abused firsthand and she struggles to respect rules and authority because of it, making her relationship with Falconleap very rocky. She decides that if the best way to be liked is to force it, then she can do that. Bluepaw becomes her new favorite punching bag and she makes an enemy of Rillpaw that way. Chivepaw doesn’t like Cardinalpaw either bc she reminds her of Echo, and she decides to cope with this by bullying Firpaw, too. This did not do much to boost her popularity, but she liked to pretend that it did. She felt like she needed some kind of backup so she just took the one other apprentice in the den, Viceroypaw, and declared herself his friend and started roping him into her messes. He did not appreciate this. Chivepaw did not care.

9 moons- Skylarkpaw, Widowpaw, Reclusepaw, and Tarantulapaw all get apprenticed. If it wasn’t chaos already, then it definitely is now. Chivepaw ‘befriends’ Widowpaw. Some shenanigans also take place involving a less than pleasant encounter with Viceroypaw’s mom. Also, Crowfang almost dies because he was trying to protect Chivepaw from getting herself mauled. It was very considerate of him, bc she kinda had it coming. And no, she did not learn anything from this, in case you’re wondering. In other news, Rillpaw’s mentor Mintfang dies of some weird illness. Chivepaw makes fun of Rillpaw for this. She probably gets beaten up for it. I dunno what she was expecting. But besides that, Chivepaw continues shirking her training and pretending she’s hunting by just finding dead things and bringing them back as if she caught them. One time she thinks it’ll be funny to pretend that she’s apologizing to Bluepaw by giving her prey as a gift when it’s actually all rotted on the inside. Bluepaw totally falls for it and ends up in the medicine den and Chivepaw thinks it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen. That is, until Whitebird pulls her aside and yells at her that eating bad prey has actually been known to kill cats and it’s a serious thing. Chivepaw’s like “oh” and decides that she’d better stop doing that, then. She still thinks it was a little bit funny, though.

10 moons- Rillwing, Cardinalflight, and Firsong become warriors. Chivethistle is delighted about this because now she doesn’t have to deal with them nearly as much anymore. Everything first starts to go south though after she decides that without Firsong, she needs someone new to bully and lands on Skylarkpaw. Widowpaw takes notice of what she’s doing and isn’t too happy about it. They end up getting into a big dramatic fight and Widowpaw stops being her friend. Chivepaw actually genuinely is hurt by this, but she’s in too deep now to admit that she’s in the wrong, so she just sulks about it to Viceroypaw, who honestly was probably on Widowpaw’s side, but was nice enough to not say anything. Chivepaw also manages to accidentally get Falconleap’s face clawed up by a hawk while out on a hunting mission, so that’s less than ideal. Later that moon, Minkstar dies while kitting of a combination of birth strain and that same sickness that had killed Mintfang. Now, that’s unfortunate at all, but things really get weird when her deputy turns up dead later that same night and Clearstar ends up taking over. Chivepaw is fairly disconcerted about how that arrangement came to be, but she’s more just irritated that an annoying and grumpy warrior whom she’d never really liked is now in charge of everything.

11 moons- Viceroytuft becomes a warrior, the first cat named by Clearstar! Chivepaw thinks that’s cool and is very happy for him… until he also develops the odd illness. “The plague”, as the medicine cats are nicknaming it. A whole bunch of cats fall sick, actually- in other Clans, too. The borders close down and gatherings are suddenly called off indefinitely and it’s a little bit frightening. And, along with a ton of other cats, Viceroytuft… dies. It’s the first real wake-up call that Chivepaw has had in a while and it serves to mellow her out quite a bit. When Bluepaw’s mentor and the parents of Widowpaw, Reclusepaw, and Tarantulapaw also die, Chivepaw finds herself able to sympathize. Not that she actually does anything about it, of course. But, well… she feels bad. And that’s kind of a new thing for her. Right before her assessment, she puts a big burst of effort into fixing up her hunting skills, because she actually *has* to succeed now. She at least owes Viceroytuft that much, right?

### Warrior Life

12 moons- hey, woo, she passed her assessment! She is now the second cat to be named a warrior by Clearstar, and she is determined to be the first one not to *die.* Nothing much really happens this moon aside from more cats kicking the bucket. Word spreads that Milkweedstar of FC had also lost all nine of his lives, so that’s somewhat concerning.

13 moons- Bluecloud becomes a warrior. Cool. Not much else is really going on in the Chivethistle department.

14 moons- uhhhh i dont think anything happens here either. i’ll think of something. i’ll give her some action. Update: Falconleap dies of plague! That counts as action. Chivethistle probably visits her beforehand and apologizes for sucking bc she feels rlly bad for never getting closure with Viceroytuft. The least she can do is tie off loose ends with her mentor.

15 moons- Skylarkspring, Widowflame, Reclusecrest, and Tarantuladusk become warriors. Nothing else.

16 moons- again, nothing much really happens, but Chivethistle is greatly taken aback when Rillwing and Bluecloud of all cats are chosen to mentor two of Minkstar’s kits. It isn’t because she’d wanted to herself or anything, it’s just because they were really *not* a pair of cats who she would’ve pegged as good mentors. She decides that Clearstar must be insane.

17 moons- Cardinalflight mysteriously vanishes one day and Rillwing has some brand new leg scars. Chivethistle probably makes rude comments about the implications. Then Rillwing and Firsong leave to go find Cardinalflight. Chivethistle thinks this is awesome. But then she notices Bluecloud having difficulty training two apprentices at once, and she decides to take the opportunity to try and tie up loose ends. She offers to take over training for Rillwing’s apprentice, Lapwingpaw. She does this. To her surprise, she and Lapwingpaw actually get along very well. Lapwingpaw has trouble getting along with the cats her age, too, and she is very curious about plants and herbs. This is something that Chivethistle can help her out with, so she indulges that interest and they spend most of their time just poking around looking at plants with Chivethistle telling Lapwingpaw everything she knows about them instead of actually, y’know, training. It’s fun, though. Then Lapwingpaw’s dad dies. That’s, uh, less fun. Chivethistle feels pretty bad, actually. She’s never been good at the whole grief thing, especially not when it comes to other cats, but she does her best to be as helpful as she can about it.

18 moons- the plague ends! That’s exciting. Oh, and Rillwing, Cardinalflight, and Firsong also come back. That’s a lot less exciting. Chivethistle is reluctant to stop ‘training’ Lapwingpaw, but alas, she kinda has to. She makes a lot of snarky comments to Rillwing about it and she still brings Lapwingpaw out to look at herbs and such whenever they’re both free. She perfectly understands Lapwing’s resentment towards Whitebird and Barrenpaw and she doesnt do anything unhelpful like suggest she just gather herbs for them instead. unlike some people.

19 moons- the borders opened up again and gatherings resumed. there’s also some clanwide event in HorizonClan. Something about a hike? Chivethistle has no idea, but she decides it’d be fun to go along with it. Since everyone hates her and she has no friends, she opts to get randomly assigned to a group. She gets slapped with an OaC cat named Honeyswirl and a HC cat named Dovefrost. She actually knows Dovefrost, bc she’s Clearstar’s daughter and had just left MC the moon before. Dovefrost doesn’t seem too pleased to see her, though, so Chivethistle is more than happy to return that sentiment in spite of Honeyswirl’s attempts to keep things friendly. It only gets worse when a fourth cat gets assigned to their group and it is none other than Cardinalflight. Chivethistle would honestly be lying if she said she wasn’t absolutely living for the drama that was about to ensue. The hike probably went terribly. They definitely didn’t win, that’s for sure.

20 moons- Bluecloud starts making efforts to try and have Chivethistle and Rillwing get along. Chivethistle finds this very laughable. But hey, at least there‘s been an attempt. Oh, and there’s an announcement about an upcoming rogue war. That’s definitely something. The thought of ditching the Clans to go somewhere safer briefly crosses Chivethistle’s mind, but she shoves it back down a lil guiltily. She hasn’t stuck around this long only to leave now, and besides, she’s not *entirely* alone anymore. She has Lapwingpaw. That counts for something, right?

## Other

### Trivia

- Chivethistle’s headcanon voice is Catra from She-Ra, but with a Southern accent. The accent is from Jess, and Echo has one, too. They have to sound like they’re from Texas or something. It only makes sense.

- She is apparently a Ravenclaw. I am just as surprised as you are. I guess I can kind of see it once you dig past her persona though.

- After joining MarshClan, she worked very hard to suppress her accent, at least for the first couple of moons. She wanted to sound like she fit in at first. She dropped the ruse shortly before becoming a warrior, though. It isn’t as strong as it used to be and is for the most part intermixed with the generic MarshClan accent. Her Southern accent *does* get a lot thicker whenever she’s in emotional distress, though. If she’s scared or genuinely angry for any reason, you can expect pure Southernism to start spouting from her.

- Going off of that, she still uses the same Southern slang that her mom would always use. Most notably, whenever she’s being patronizing, she’ll refer to someone as “darlin’”. Jess had never said it condescendingly, but Chivethistle more or less associates everything related to her mother with negative connotations now, and so she’ll use “darlin’” as if it’s an insult. She also just thinks it’s funny to harass someone and then confuse them by making it seem like she’s flirting.

- Chivethistle doesn’t remember most of her life from before she was three moons old. She has a few clear memories from when she was two— namely the incident in which her mother was injured and when she and Echo were attacked by the crow— but otherwise she’s forgotten most of what twolegplace was like. She retains all of the herbal knowledge that Jess passed on to her, and she knows other details of the trip from Jess reminding her of them later, but she actively recalls very little else.

- Speaking of which, she is still scared of crows. She has been ever since the incident in her kithood, and the scar on her paw ensures that she never forgets it. She would rather die than admit to the fear, though.

- When Chivethistle was very little, she used to love the stars. She’d gone the first two moons of her life without ever seeing them, and she thought they were so amazing and pretty. Now, though, she can’t bring herself to look at them. They only remind her of the night she ratted out Echo and of the nights spent alone after she left her behind. They feel like thousands of eyes all watching her, almost accusingly, as if they know and remember what she did. She really wishes that they’d all just blink out. She doesn’t go outside at night when she can help it, and she dislikes going to gatherings in part for this reason.

- Similar to Shiftshoulder, she is not grossed out by crowfood at all. She has no qualms eating something that’s already been dead for a while. She knows how to tell if it’s diseased or not and knows which dead things are dangerous. She definitely prefers fresh prey, but she’s never been opposed to scavenging since she lived largely off of roadkill for the first three moons of her life.

- Chivethistle thinks that StarClan is a “cute idea”, but she doesn’t really believe in it. It just sounds so silly to her. She doesn’t really believe that leaders have nine lives, either. It was a little bit suspicious how quickly Minkstar and Milkweedstar had allegedly lost all of theirs, after all. She just hopes that wherever they are, Viceroytuft and Falconleap are comfortable.

- She also knows that Jess had a brother named Joel who was an orange tabby. She doesn’t know anything about what happened to him after his and Jess’s separation, though. She has no idea she has cousins. Or half-siblings, either, for that matter, because Jess never mentioned Rat’s other mate or kits to her. She doesn’t know that she has any kin besides Jess and Echo. Not yet, anyways.

- Her favorite color is pale, desaturated green. It makes her think of the early days she spent on the moor as a kit, playing with beetles in the briar. If anyone asks her, though, she’ll say that it’s bright orange. Solely because in her opinion, bright orange is the most annoying color she can think of and she lives for nothing if not to be an annoyance.

- Her favorite flowers are lanceleaf tickseed. She learned from Whitebird that those were the kind that grew around the old rabbit burrow she used to live in. She’s always been fond of them. She wouldn’t tell anyone, though, except for possibly Lapwingpaw. She doesn’t want to seem soft by admitting that she likes flowers.

- Her favorite prey isn’t actually rabbit. It’s striped field mouse. Not that there’s anything wrong with regular field mice. Chivethistle just likes to feel special by eating only the striped ones instead.

- She also just loves thunderstorms and has since she was a kit. She hates being *in* them, mind you, because her fur is *awful* when it’s wet, but the sounds of the rain and thunder and the sight of lightning give her “excitement tingles”. She gets inexplicably very happy whenever she can hear a storm raging outside.

- She can swim okay. She’s very mediocre at it. She hates actually doing it, and will be incredibly dramatic and complain the whole time, but she is capable of doing so if she really needs to. She’s slightly better at climbing trees. She’s not particularly good at that, either, but she’s remarkably average. She can be found lounging up in the trees around MarshClan’s borders sometimes, snacking on her catches where no one will disturb her.

- Her love language is giving gifts.

- She has no idea that she’s pan and she doesn’t care. She’ll date whoever she wants and the world will just have to deal with that. And as of now, she has absolutely no desire for kits at all at any point in time and is in fact rather repulsed by the idea. She doesn’t want to be tethered down like that and she highly doubts her own ability to be a proper parent.

- She’s from Virginia. She’s immune to horses. This is a joke.

### Quotes

*“Oh. That sucks.”* - (to Viceroypaw after he traumadumps about how his mom was horrible and forced him and his littermates to fight each other every day until it broke his personality and then kicked them all out at 5 moons old)

*“I smell idiocy in the air.”*