#fernsong

[official-darkforest]

found a weird VHS tape the other day does anyone know what this is youtube's not helping

[skrs-cats]

kit sitting

[firestarishomophobic]

rest of the cinderlion kits. i’m a big fan of fernsong

[thewisestdino]

Ivypool, #99

You go and I stay

It's always right person and wrong way

I hate to be right, please, tell me I'm wrong

Please, tell me I'm wrong

[almondrootwc]

Fernsong is more banana than cat + squirrelfight and sandstorm have names now

[kudossi]

and a yellow moon glowed bright

Years later, when Ivypool herself is only a memory and before she’s completely lost to time, she’ll look over ThunderClan, wherever they might be, and still look for her daughter in every face.

The stories have it wrong already, and the truth will be dust before long. Bristlefrost isn’t alive in their memories. She’s twice-dead, drowned in black, choking water, a light snuffed out too soon. Bristlefrost was the prodigy — the daughter cats dreamed of, the first to find her voice and her paws, the leader of her siblings, the apprentice who did not graduate even earlier than she did because there was no prey in the forest to be found, not because of any failings on her part.

Cats starved, that long winter. Not Bristlefrost. Never her daughter, her clever, resourceful last-born. And she had once occupied this spot, designated for deputies, even though she’d never had an apprentice of her own. Would never have an apprentice of her own, now, even though she deserved it more than anything. Even though she’d deserved to stay deputy, but had given the role over with a smile, no hint of dark ambition in her gaze.

Ivypool steps into the deputy position under a brand-new leader with a whisper instead of a bang, the pounding of blood in her ears the only reminder that cats had been here before — that cats had died here before, and that Bramblestar’s first deputy becoming leader was a fluke, an odd quirk of fate. It hasn’t been done in living memory, nor long before that. Leaders do not usually step down, and when they do, they rarely stay with their Clan, or even within reach of their territory. First deputies do not often become leaders in turn. Usually this event is a bittersweet one, with a body or bodies laid out in the clearing, their eyes closed swiftly to avoid the rigor of after-death, but this is almost-peaceful, with only the murmurs of those who could not easily accept change as detractors.

Ivypool will die long before Squirrelstar. She’s—surprisingly okay with this, but she thinks she’s been at peace with her death since before Hollyleaf had stepped between her and a deathblow from one of the only friends she’d ever had.

(“You were my friend!” Ivypool screams in her worst nightmares, Hollyleaf’s blood dripping from her pelt.

“I was never anyone’s friend,” Hawkfrost murmurs in return, something aching-sad in his voice, Hollyleaf’s lifeless form pinned under his claws. “I was born to what I am. We’re the same, you and I.” He pushes the black cat away from his paws with disgust — not for the body, but for Ivypool herself. Blood bubbles from the horrible wound at the corpse’s throat. “She should have been the one,” he says sometimes, in the ones that shatter her already pieced-together heart. “She died in your place.”

“I know,” Ivypool says, and she does know — she knows it more than anyone else alive.)

“It should have been Hollyleaf,” she says to Squirrelstar, quietly, at the end of one of their dusk meetings.

Sorrow flashes in Squirrelstar’s gaze, but it’s buried as soon as it comes. “It’s you,” she says. “It has always been you.”

It is not a truth — not in the way Ivypool remembers them from her childhood — but it is not a lie, either. Hollyleaf chose her, in the way dying deputies might choose their successor. She is always an echo of another cat burned by starlight. It is a comfort, sometimes. In others, she begs the spirit who’d saved her life for mercy, for clemency, until she runs out of breath.

(“I’ll find her,” whispers a voice Ivypool had almost forgotten, in dreams she forgets as soon as she wakes. “I’ll walk the skies ceaselessly, I promise you.”

But there is no bringing Bristlefrost back, and a part of Ivypool has died with her.)

When Ivypool wakes, her Clanmates breathe around her, steadying her rabbit-quick heart. Fernsong’s tail wraps snugly around her flank, Thriftear curled only one nest behind, and she does not lose her breath at the way Flipclaw’s dark tabby stripes curl over his spine. She hasn’t in a long time, she knows, but the impulse is there, sharp as ice underneath her ribs.

(She’d once thought his brown tabby pelt a punishment from the stars. She loves her son, would give her life for him, but the feeling that StarClan may have meted some punishment down in the shade of his pelt remains long after he’s received his warrior name.

She’d begged Bramblestar to give him a suffix that was as unassumingly kind and silly as her son always was. Instead he’d given him -claw, as if to remind her of her failings. She is not sorry to see his form slip into the elders’ den, bereft of the nine lives he’d once so jealously hoarded.)

[oatpaws-silly-kittys]

happy last day of pride month!! here r some gay cats :3

[warriorsdesignsnick]

fernsong

[dragon-spaghetti]

Thinking of uncle jayfeather again,, redraw of this from 2021

(Please click for better quality!!)

[wc-confessions]

Feathertail was only killed off because she was the only cat in all the Clans that realized how shitty Leopardstar was and held a grudge against her.

Bright Stream's death was Gray Wing's fault because who gets distracted in a heat of a battle to watch how strong a cat's muscle's are?

Star Flower would've been better off as a villain.

Lizardstripe isn't ambitious or a terrible mom. She just didn't want kits and she still had some by a cat that is named Mudclaw (who we never literally never see again after) and then was forced to take care of Brokenkit because he was the future leader.

Ferncloud's death is infuriating. Literally was killed off to prove misogynistic that she can still fight and die a warriors death.

Both Appledusk and Mapleshade were in the wrong.

Fernsong isn't transgender because he wants to help Ivypool raise the kits. Would it be better if he just neglected them and not show anything after Bristlefrost's death?

Ashfur's feelings are acceptable. Just not his actions.

StarClan talked a lot of shit about Squirrelflight and Leafpool during their trial when they allowed cat’s like Ashfur in.

Firestar just needs to stay dead.

The she-cats are punished more than the tom's.

.

[harveymooon]

possibly my favorite canon couple in warriors tbh!!

[official-darkforest]

for…..a thing…… hehe

[mozpawz]

low quality fernsong post of the day

[cat-soap-opera]

Fernsong design please and Foxleap too?

[bastart13]

The big one! At least one cat of each generation is the "one who has kits"

Redtail is still a male tortie, only he's trans. Also since Spottedleaf is described with brown and gold, I thought making her a tabby tortie would make sense

Ironically despite this tree being named after Sorreltail... I couldn't make her a tortie. Whitestorm's family doesn't have any ginger and Willowpelt isn't ginger either. So, reddish brown tabby for her

Even more ironically, Cinderheart becomes more like canon Cinderpelt than my version as a result

Cherryfall, Honeyfur, Sorrelstripe, Hollytuft, and Flywhisker become torties. Sorrelstripe is especially funny because Lionblaze and Cinderheart are both dilute longhairs so their children all have to be dilute longhairs. My compromise was a fawn-cream tortie because at least that's brown. Fernsong couldn't be ginger so he's also fawn

[skrs-cats]

the forgor brothers