Stagheart

Note: Stagheart is a deceased character. He has no significance in the general storyline of A Better Way, and is only important in the backstories of Wingbreak, Stoatthroat, and Brokenslip.

Name- Stagheart

Gender- Tom

Clan- FallClan (formerly), StarClan

Rank- Warrior (at death)

Family- Wingbreak (mother), Stoatthroat (father), Bramblethorn and Fogpaw (brothers, deceased), Ivory (mate), Brokenslip and Rock (sons, Rock is deceased), Sun (daughter, deceased), Swallowfrost (niece)

Friends- lol what friends

Enemies- nuh

## Appearance & Personality

#### Appearance

Stagheart was a sleek and mottled gray and black tabby tom with sharp yellow eyes. His short fur was patched like his mother’s and his tabby markings encircled his body in loops like his father’s. The stripes above his eyes fanned out in a unique pattern resembling antlers, hence his name. He was tall and more on the slim side. Not very muscly. A noodle boi. He was still strong and fast, though, and excelled at speedfishing and unbalancing his opponents during fights. There was a series of small bite scars on each side of his muzzle from the end of his apprenticeship and another set of thin claw marks stretching between his eyes from when he was a young warrior.

#### Personality

Stagheart was standoffish and somewhat obnoxious when he was younger. He was kind of a jerk to everyone he didn’t like, which- honestly- was most cats. He was kind of defensive and serious most of the time and tolerated no nonsense. Except for when he was with his family. With his family, he thought nonsense was great. He loved his family fiercely. He was a lot more easygoing and friendly with them than with anyone else. Fogpaw’s death only made him more angry and unpleasant to be around, but after Ivory and two of his kits died, he mellowed out quite a bit and was actually a pretty levelheaded and cool guy for his last few moons of life. Good for him!

## Story

Stagkit was born to Wingbreak and Stoatthroat in FallClan alongside his two brothers, Bramblekit and Fogkit. Stagkit had a relatively uneventful kithood. He would run around the camp every day just looking for anybody he could harass. He would whine at the apprentices for battle moves and then practice on them without permission. He would insult the elders whenever he got sent to their den. He would sneak into Mallowstar’s den and mess with her nest. He kicked pebbles at birds and almost drowned on accident like five times. Y’know, kit things.

Stagkit also thought that his dad’s scar was the coolest thing ever and wanted to fight a badger so he could be like him. Well, until Stoatthroat pointed out that he would have to get his neck torn open. Stagkit was less keen on it after that. Stagkit also loved his mom and thought she was the greatest cat ever. He wanted to be just like her when he was a warrior. She was amused by him. He also played around and fought constantly with Bramblekit. Every time they were together, they were wrestling and arguing about something. They could never be still or quiet when they were in the same den. They just fed off of each other’s chaotic energy and the result was a disaster. They did love each other, though. They just thrived off of fighting. Fogkit, on the other hand, was always very reserved and quiet and never really left the nursery. Stagkit found that annoying. Fogkit had a bunch of problems like epilepsy and asthma, but we’re talking about cats so no one really understood what his issues were. Whatever the case, Fogkit always had a lot of attention on him, and Stagkit found that incredibly aggravating because Fogkit was boring and didn’t deserve the attention. *He* wanted the attention. He didn’t like Fogkit.

At six moons old, Stagpaw became an apprentice. His mentor was someone and it doesn’t matter who. He trained well. He was actually pretty terrible at everything at first— not nearly as bad as Fogpaw, but definitely much worse than Bramblepaw— and Bramblepaw took much delight in this and was relentless in mocking him for it. This infuriated Stagpaw and he trained harder than ever, eventually developing his own creative fishing and fighting strategies that worked almost as well as the traditional tactics. Bramblepaw was his biggest rival during his apprenticeship, but in a good way. Bramblepaw was constantly challenging him to be better and it worked.

Then, one day when he was eight moons old, Stagpaw found a young loner named Ivory stuck on one of their islets. She was a pretty little thing, a blue-eyed tabby in ginger and white, much smaller than Stagpaw but much broader as well. When Stagpaw confronted her, she explained in embarrassment that she’d used the stepping stones to get there, but the water had risen and covered them and she was too scared to try and get back across. Stagpaw thought this was the greatest thing he’d ever seen in his life. He laughed at her for a while and she yelled at him until he finally helped her across. He learned that she lived with her family just past the OasisClan outer border and she was trying to catch fish for her sick mother since other prey was not soft enough for her to swallow. Stagpaw didn’t pick up on the hint at first and was just like “lol that sucks” and then wondered why Ivory was glaring at him until she explicitly asked if he could show her how to fish. Stagpaw was surprised by that. He didn’t think he was supposed to be helping loners. He said no and told her to go away. She said no and repeated the question. They then had an awkward standoff for a few minutes until Stagpaw finally caved.

So Stagpaw demonstrated to Ivory his strange method of “speedfishing”, in which he pretty much just faceplanted directly into the water whenever a fish came by. It actually worked for him since his legs were too long and gangly to really get a grip on a fish with just his paws. He was extremely annoyed when Ivory ended up being better at it than him. He caught two fish on their first lesson and she caught four. He was determined to beat her and demanded that she come back the following day for a rematch. Ivory was amused by this and she agreed to do so. For the whole next moon, they would meet at that islet and fish together every day, always teasing each other and daring each other to do dumb stuff. Even after Ivory’s mother got better, they still kept it up, because they had sort of become friends over time. Neither of them would admit it out loud, though.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, Fogpaw died. When they were nine moons old, he was found on one of the smaller islands one morning, apparently having eaten some water hemlock in what appeared to have been a suicide. That was pretty jarring for Stagpaw, as he’d noticed no warning signs whatsoever. He hadn’t exactly been looking for them, as he’d never really interacted much with Fogpaw anyways, but it still shook him pretty hard. He felt really bad for having only ever bullied and made fun of his smaller brother. He’d never meant it to be malicious— he’d only ever done it in the same way he did it to Bramblepaw— but Fogpaw wasn’t Bramblepaw, and Stagpaw knew that he’d taken it considerably harder. He hoped it hadn’t been his fault. He worried that it was. He drifted apart from his kin and became even less agreeable. He started performing worse in training and was a jerk to everybody who tried to talk to him. It was great (not).

Except for Ivory, that is. He couldn’t bring himself to be a jerk to Ivory. He told her about what happened to Fogpaw and how scared he was that he might’ve contributed, and she was surprisingly nice about it. She talked about how she had lost her sister when they were kits and how she and her brother hadn’t rested until they’d found thee nest of the hawk who had taken her and confirmed that she had died. Stagpaw was struck by this. It gave him hope in the possibility that the death had been an accident. He wasn’t sure why that made it any better, but it did. Working up his courage, he asked Ivory if she would help him investigate the incident and help him determine why Fogpaw had died. She agreed to. So Ivory and Stagpaw went poking around at the scene of the crime, finding where the flowers had been bitten from the stems and trying to make sense of the tracks in the sand. Stagpaw asked around in the medicine den, hoping Nightsplash or Brokendusk would have some information. Maybe Fogpaw had learned about hemlock from the medicine cats or something. Ivory also tried to help however she could, asking her parents about the properties of the plant just to find out how widely known its toxicity was. Ultimately, their investigation led to absolutely nothing. There was no way to know if it was intentional and that was that. It still made Stagpaw feel slightly better, though, knowing that he’d tried.

That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t upset anymore, though. Stagpaw continued training and continued meeting with Ivory for the next three moons. His parents kept trying to reach out to him and he kept pushing them away. Even Bramblepaw had mellowed out and wasn’t nearly as competitive with Stagpaw anymore, which infuriated him. Stagpaw *needed* that competition. He *needed* something he could channel all his anger and fear into. His friendly rivalry with Bramblepaw had been some of the most fun he’d ever had, and now that they both needed that more than anything, Bramblepaw was ending it. Stagpaw couldn’t stand it and when they were ten moons old, it culminated. Bramblepaw approached Stagpaw outside of the apprentices’ den one day and asked if he wanted to go fishing together. No dares, no challenges, no competition, just fishing. Just quality time. And that did it. Stagpaw didn’t feel like he was *supposed* to spend that sort of time with Bramblepaw— they were supposed to always be bantering and making fun of each other, not *getting along.* Rivals didn’t spend quality time with each other. And Stagpaw didn’t understand why Bramblepaw had changed so much when all he wanted was to act like things were the same.

So Stagpaw blew up at Bramblepaw. They got into a massive fight and Stagpaw ended up attacking him. They rolled across the camp screeching for a while and Stagpaw managed to cut some scars into Bramblepaw’s face before they were pulled apart by their parents and the mediator. Things kind of went south after that. Bramblepaw avoided Stagpaw and refused to even look in his direction, and Stagpaw felt pierced by guilt whenever he saw the scars on his face. His parents were furious with him, particularly Stoatthroat, who snapped at Stagpaw that he wouldn’t let him be made into a warrior until he pulled himself together, no matter how well he did on his assessment. Tough love, I guess. Wingbreak was a little more understanding, though. She pulled Stagpaw aside and tried to have a poignant talk with him about how she understood how much Fogpaw’s death had affected him, but he had no right to take it out on his kin, because they were all grieving, too. Stagpaw only yelled at her and stomped off. Anything anyone said to him only made him feel worse, and he didn’t want to deal with it.

He still found comfort in Ivory, though. She was the only cat Stagpaw would really listen to, even though she was more or less just saying the same things as Wingbreak. He vented to her and she told him that as much as he might want things to be the same, they were different now with Fogpaw gone. She said that Bramblepaw just handled his grief differently and that Stagpaw would have to accept that sooner or later. She pointed out that Bramblepaw had been trying to be friendly towards Stagpaw, and she knew Stagpaw would rather have that than have Bramblepaw hate him. She encouraged him to apologize and try to make amends with his family. Stagpaw protested that it wasn’t that easy, but she cut across him and stated that, no, it really was, because his family loved him and wanted to be on good terms with him. He just had to actually go along with it. Stagpaw grumbled, but admitted she was making good points and thanked her for her advice.

Taking Ivory’s words to heart, Stagpaw fixed his relationship with his parents and started putting effort back into his training. He still couldn’t really bring himself to apologize to Bramblepaw, though. Not because he didn’t want to, but more out of guilt and worry that Bramblepaw would turn him away. When they were eleven moons old, though, an opportunity presented itself. Stagpaw, Bramblepaw, their mentors, and Wingbreak had been put on a patrol near the outer border. This was awkward enough already. Stagpaw determinedly did not make eye contact with his brother even when he could feel him looking at him. Unfortunately for him, though, Wingbreak was in charge of the patrol and she happened to make the suggestion that Stagpaw and Bramblepaw go check out one of the farther islands by themselves. Because of course she did. Great. Neither of them were pleased about it, but they couldn’t really say no, so they begrudgingly headed off together to get it over with as soon as possible. Stagpaw just swam to the island because Bramblepaw was using the stepping stones and Stagpaw refused to walk behind him. Excellent start, boys.

In any case, once they reached the sand, they continued ignoring each other. The plan was to just circle the perimeter in silence while going opposite directions and as soon as they determined everything was fine they would leave and pretend nothing ever happened. At least, Stagpaw assumed that was Bramblepaw’s plan. He was starting to hear Ivory’s words ringing in his ears, though. He knew this was the perfect opportunity to speak his mind, but whenever he opened his mouth, nothing came out. Luckily for him, though, he didn’t have to talk, because about one minute into their patrol around the rim, a small island fox came hurtling out of some ferns and locked its teeth around Bramblepaw’s neck. Stagpaw came skidding around the bend as soon as he heard the choked yowling, and for a heartbeat he just froze in horror. The fox was on top of Bramblepaw and he was battering at it with his hind paws, but he was blinded by its fur. It was squeezing him hard. In that half-second, Stagpaw felt the worst sense of terror he had ever experienced in his life. Then he threw himself at the fox, snarling at it to leave Bramblepaw alone.

He tackled the fox and knocked it to the ground, where he lunged straight for the throat. It twisted away, however, and latched into his face, sinking thorn-sharp fangs into his muzzle and preventing him from lashing back. It was tossed away a moment later by Bramblepaw, though, and Stagpaw sprang to his side as they both fought the fox. They actually worked very well together. Bramblepaw was brawny and covered the brute force while Stagpaw was agile and could block it off from escaping. Together, they managed to kill the small fox, and then they both stood there staring down at it for a while, panting and bleeding. Then they looked up at each other. And of all the things they could’ve done, they just… unexpectedly started laughing. They sat there bloodstained in the sand just giggling at each other. There wasn’t really anything that could be said. But they had both realized just how close they’d come to losing each other, and continuing their stupid conflict after something like that just seemed absurd.

When they first returned to the rest of the patrol all filthy and bloodied, Wingbreak panicked a little at first, thinking they’d just fought each other again. But then she saw that they were both smiling and seemed perfectly content to walk beside each other, and when they explained what had happened, she was overwhelmingly proud of them. Once they had returned to camp and the medicine cats had cleaned them up a little, she went right to Mallowstar and requested that they be made warriors a moon early in honor of the progress they had made that day, and also out of respect for killing a fox. Mallowstar agreed, and at eleven moons old, Stagpaw and Bramblepaw were named Stagheart and Bramblethorn. They were happy. Also, they had matching facial scars now!

Everything was great for a little while after that. Stagheart still got along great with his parents, he and Bramblethorn were back to being bffs that also bullied each other constantly, and he was still seeing Ivory almost every day. But very soon after he became a warrior— like, a little under a moon, actually— Stagheart received his first apprentice, a young tom named Reedpaw. Wingbreak, Stoatthroat, and Bramblethorn had found Reedpaw, then a loner named Reed, being attacked by another fox elsewhere on the outer border and had chosen to intervene. Stagheart wasn’t exactly sure why he had been given an apprentice so young, but he assumed that it was probably because Wingbreak had asked for it. His mother probably thought it would help him mature more or something. He didn’t know. But in any case, Stagheart… did not like Reedpaw. Reedpaw was carefree and silly and liked messing with the warriors, especially Stagheart. Stagheart had to yell at him a lot and had trouble disciplining him. Bramblethorn made fun of him for this. Stagheart ignored Bramblethorn. Ivory also made fun of him for this. Stagheart was going to ignore her, too, but then he realized that she was actually kinda cute.

Anyways, one moon later, Stagheart and Reedpaw participated in a patrol with Bramblethorn, Wingbreak, Stoatthroat, and probably some other warriors to drive out the remaining three foxes near the outer border— because it turned out there had been a den there with a whole family in it, hence why they kept popping up nearby. Reedpaw almost got nae-nae’d but Stagheart was able to get there in time and distract the fox. The patrol was successful and the foxes were kicked out. Good job, everyone.

Then another apprentice named Stormpaw joined FallClan. Reedpaw decided that they were best friends and became even more insufferable. Then two more apprentices, Sorrelpaw and Rosepaw, joined the den and contributed to the chaos. All four of them were troublemakers and together they were an unstoppable force and they all liked to bully Stagheart. Sorrelpaw and Rosepaw were mentored by Wingbreak and Stoatthroat, which helped a little bit, but Stagheart still hated all of them. He complained about this to Ivory. Ivory was incredibly amused. She was also incredibly beautiful. Stagheart wondered how he hadn’t noticed that before.

Reedstalk became a warrior soon enough and Stagheart was massively relieved to be free of him. He was also massively relieved when he asked Ivory to be his mate that same night and she said yes. She then made fun of him for even having to ask, because she’d had a crush on him since the day they met. He splashed her with water in retaliation. Then they got into a splash fight and ended up snuggling into a sand burrow for the night while all drenched and disgusting. But it was still cute. They were cute. Then Stagheart asked her about joining FallClan the next morning and she got very confused, vehemently insisting that she had no intention of doing that. Stagheart was also confused and asked how being mates was going to work, then. Ivory said that they’d just keep doing what they’d been doing: meeting at the island every day. Stagheart was… a little annoyed by that. He pointed out that it wasn’t actually as easy as she seemed to think, because he often had to shirk patrols and such in order to get there at the right time, and insisted that it would be much easier if Ivory just joined FallClan with him. She repeated that she did not want to and she refused to leave her family. So that posed a problem. They still tried to make it work, though, and Stagheart continued meeting her daily to the best of his ability.

This was fine for about another moon until Ivory told him that she was expecting his kits. Stagheart was overjoyed at first and pranced around the island rambling about how wonderful it was that he was going to be a father and suggesting kit names. Then he realized that Ivory might not want the kits to grow up in FallClan. He once again begged her to join the Clan, promising that she’d be well taken care of as a queen and she would get to watch their kits grow up to be big and strong, but she again refused. She did, however, offer to give him the kits once they were born to be raised in FallClan, and then once they were old enough he could just bring them with him to visit her. Stagheart asked if she was sure, and she said she was. So he decided it was fine as long as she was okay with it. He was just excited to be a dad.

He couldn’t really keep quiet about it, though, and ended up spilling the beans to Bramblethorn and his parents. Predictably, they wanted to meet the mother of his kits, and so he brought them along with him to meet Ivory the next day. It was slightly awkward since she had heard so much about all of them but they had never met her, but everyone was polite enough even if Stoatthroat gave her a bit of a hard time. Wingbreak was very fond of Ivory and told Stagheart that she approved and was proud of him. Bramblethorn just teased him for managing to get such a pretty mate. Stagheart was somewhat embarrassed by them, but he was glad that they liked Ivory.

At around that time, Ivory’s family began noticing that she was pregnant, too, and she had to admit to them that she *hadn’t* just been going out to fish for the past year or so, she’d *actually* been sneaking off to go visit her secret boyfriend. So they wanted to meet Stagheart, too. And a few days after Ivory met Stagheart’s family, Stagheart got to meet Ivory’s. Her brother was kind of a jerk to him, but her parents were nice enough. They brought him back to their den, an old, expanded rabbit burrow just a little beyond OasisClan’s outer border, close to the corner with FallClan. It was homely in there. Stagheart liked it. But he was mostly just dying of anticipation for his kits to be born.

For the last two moons of Ivory’s pregnancy, Stagheart started going into frantic father mode. He fussed over her and admired her belly every time they met up, and she made fun of him for that. He couldn’t stop telling his family how eager and proud and anxious he was. He started poking into the nursery to see who would be watching over his kits. The queen Wreathwillow had just recently had her own litter, and Sweetstorm was due to have hers not long after Ivory was, so Stagheart decided they were good enough. He would trust them with his kits.

Unfortunately, though… fate did not draw good cards for Stagheart. During the moon Ivory’s kits were due, he tried to convince her to just stay back at home with her family so that they could help her in case the kits came. She was determined to continue meeting him, though, and teasingly said that she trusted him to get her help if it happened while they were together. So just in case, Stagheart was extremely careful to arrive early at their island every day that moon to avoid missing her. But one day he couldn’t. He got placed on an important patrol to drive out some rogues at the MarshClan border, a long distance away from his island with Ivory. And he couldn’t break away from it. He tried to slip off during the battle but his Clanmate Stonesnap noticed him, accusing him of cowardice and demanding that he stayed until the fight was over. In the midst of all the fighting, Stagheart didn’t get a chance to explain that he needed to go. He tried not to worry too much. He would make it there eventually. And besides, what were the odds of Ivory’s kits coming on *that day* of all days?

Well, pretty high, apparently. Because once the threat was dealt with and Stagheart was finally able to make it to the island, he was met with a gruesome sight. Ivory was dead in the sand with three newborn kits at her belly, and only one of them was moving— the only one she’d had time to free from its sac before the strain and blood loss had killed her. Evidently, something had gone terribly wrong during the kitting and she had died waiting for Stagheart. He was horrified, freeing the other two kits straight away and trying to lick them back to life, but it was no use. Both of them— one tom, gray tabby like him, and one she-kit, white and ginger like her mother— were long dead. Stagheart wondered with misery how long they had been there for. But there was nothing he could do except focus on his remaining kit. A son. Ginger-furred. Alive. He picked up the kit and took him back to FallClan in a haze. He couldn’t believe what was happening. It wasn’t supposed to play out like this.

He gave the kit to the medicine cat, Brokendusk, who got to work warming him up and clearing his lungs and all that, then gave him to the queens for nursing. Stagheart told Bramblethorn, Wingbreak, and Stoatthroat what had happened and they all returned to the island together, burying the other two kits right where they lay. In his head, Stagheart called them Rock and Sun. Rockkit and Sunkit had been two of the only names he and Ivory had agreed on, but they had never gotten the chance to be Clan cats, and so he omitted the “-kit” from their names. He then brought Ivory’s body back to her family’s burrow by himself. Her family was… not happy with him, especially when he confessed that it was his fault for being unable to get away from his patrol. Ivory’s brother was the angriest of the bunch and raked him hard across the face in a blow that would leave scars. Stagheart didn’t care. He knew he deserved it. He insisted on staying long enough to help them bury Ivory, and then he left.

After returning to FallClan, he figured that he should probably name his son. So went into the nursery and looked at him long and hard and named him Brokenkit. Formally, he claimed, it was out of respect for Brokendusk, who had kept him alive. But really, it was because of his broken heart and how he felt like his soul was in pieces. Stagheart was edgy like that. He was also depressed now. All of his dreams had been shattered and the cat he’d loved most in the world was dead. Bramblethorn and Stoatthroat tried to cheer him up with distractions to no avail. Wingbreak was a lot more empathetic, though, and didn’t make any effort to undermine the grief. She noticed him avoiding the nursery after a couple of days and talked to him about it, encouraging him to actually bond with Brokenkit. Stagheart snapped at her at first, but she persisted, and the more she talked the worse he felt until he pretty much just ended up crying into his mom’s fur for a while. It was sad. But he knew she was right and he made a much bigger effort to be a part of Brokenkit’s life after that.

About a moon after Ivory’s death, Stagheart decided that he was going to return to the burrow where her family lived and visit his mate’s grave. He brought with him some flowers and a trout, which had been her favorite type of fish. He wanted to tell her all about how Brokenkit was doing, and probably tell her kin, too— but when he got there, the burrow was abandoned. Her family had left and moved on somewhere else. Stagheart was angry about this. He didn’t understand how they could do something like that before the wound had time to heal. He left his respects at Ivory’s grave and from then on he would travel to the site once every few days, just making sure it looked nice and pretty and no scavengers had gotten into it. He was a sad man and he missed his wife.

Stagheart still loved his son very much, though. As Brokenkit aged, Stagheart would spend as much time with him as he could, telling him stories about his mother and demonstrating to him the basics of how to fish and fight. He also went on frequent little trips out of camp with Brokenkit, just showing him around the territory and bringing him to the island where he was born and his littermates were buried, talking about all of the fun times he’d had there with Ivory and promising to bring Brokenkit past the border to see his mother’s grave once he was an apprentice. Brokenkit was a good little kit and the light of Stagheart’s life. Wingbreak and Stoatthroat were also very involved with his upbringing and Stagheart was grateful to his parents for that.

For a while, Stagheart just… kinda chilled. His personality underwent another big change after the deaths of Ivory and the two kits, and he was much calmer and quieter now. He stayed in high spirits around his family, but at heart he had been irreparably damaged. It pained him to see Bramblethorn flirting with their old denmate Doecreek all the time. It made him think too much about what so easily could have been. But his parents were always there for him and Brokenkit was always around if he needed to take his mind off of his grief for a bit. In spite of that, a greencough epidemic swept through FallClan that winter, and Stagheart hadn’t really been taking enough precautions to avoid getting sick. He began to fall slightly ill when Brokenkit was still five moons old, but he hid it to the best of his ability. He didn’t want his family to worry about him. He didn’t feel like he deserved that.

When Brokenpaw was apprenticed to Ducksun, Stagheart was very annoyed. Ducksun was an idiot. He did not want his son to be trained by an idiot. For the next moon or two, Stagheart would regularly help Brokenpaw train the proper way along with Wingbreak and Stoatthroat. Stagheart also remembered his promise to show Brokenpaw where his mother was buried, and a few weeks after his son was apprenticed, Stagheart stuck to his word and brought him there, bringing some more flowers and other nice things. It was nice and sweet.

Unfortunately, though, Stagheart’s sickness got a lot worse very rapidly after that. If he had just gone to the medicine den earlier when he’d first realized he was sick, it probably would have been curable. But he hadn’t. And it was serious enough that Brokendusk couldn’t do anything for him. He died in the medicine den surrounded by his family when Brokenpaw was seven moons old. He himself was only twenty-seven moons old. F. But hey, at least he got to reunite with Fogpaw, Ivory, Rock, and Sun!

## Other

#### Trivia

- I literally keep alternating back and forth on whether Bramblethorn or Stagheart died first. All of the pages contradict each other. Why can’t I do this. Help.

- Update: Stagheart died first. But I’m leaving that point up there because it ties really funnily into the one quote I have for him.

- Reedstalk also died only two moons after he did. RIP.

- On an unrelated note, Ivory went from little and tiny to an absolute unit of a woman by the time she and Stagheart were adults. She towered over him by the time they were fifteen moons old and he looked like a shrimp next to her. She teased him for it every time they saw each other afterwards. This is notable because Stagheart wasn’t short, either- he was definitely more on the tall side himself. Ivory just happened to have some Norwegian Forest Cat blood on her dad’s side that kicked in late, and Stagheart couldn’t compete with that.

- Why did I just write a really long and detailed backstory for a dead background character who has almost no relevance to anyone? I don’t know. But did I enjoy it? Yes. It will probably happen again.

#### Quotes

**Bramblekit:** *“He started it!”*

**Stagkit:** *“Did not!”*