koisplash

[attr="class","arrgenMAINTEXT"]koisplash is a tom with a life full of tragedy. born sick and pained, he's relied on herbs to keep him strong for as long as he could remember. one of two of whitestar's son, he feels pressured by the legacy of his father, as though he's meant to uphold this. after encountering loss after loss after loss in his life, however, he's begun to withdraw himself from all he cares about, including his mate and closest friends, scared that all he will bring them is ill fortune. underneath this wall he's begun to put up, koisplash is a loving, empathetic tom, if not a bit shy. he's intelligent, having proving himself a studious cat as an apprentice, but is reluctant to show this side of himself now after all that he's been through.

[attr="class","arrgenMAINTEXT"]mother: scarletwing
father: whitestar [d]
brother: troutnose
mate: cloudripple [separated]
kits: heatherkit [d], vervainkit [d], breezekit [d]

born from ice.
it is a cold, bitter, unforgiving leaf-bare that you are born to scarletwing, a she-cat that whitestar had been courting for seemingly moons and moons upon his rise to leadership. you are named koikit, for your tortoiseshell pelt, much like your mothers own calico pattern, and your brother named troutkit, for his gray and white tabby fur. the two of you are born sickly, and it's in the medicine cat den that you spend your first two moons of life in, not the nursery. scarletwing is a protective mother, unwilling to let anyone else other than bluefrost and whitestar near the two of you. she's affectionate, doting, and kind, but imbued with the ferocity of a first-time mother unwilling to lose her first and only litter of kits. the two of you came as a surprise, after all, with whitestar already so old and exhausted by his leadership.

you and your brother's fight for life seems to prove your strength as kits determined to live, as after bluefrost's exhausting and daily treatment of you two, and scarletwing's constant nursing, the two of you are finally allowed to move into the nursery. it is then that you introduce yourself to your fellow kits as a tom, and though you are shy and afraid to interact with the others, troutkit - the much more confident of the two of you - eagerly pushes you into every interaction alongside him. while you would much rather prefer to stay nestled against the warmth of your mother's belly, you go along with his leadership, eager to please your first best friend in your brother.

at five moons, however jovially you two have been getting along with the other kits, you and troutkit unfortunately fall ill once more. at night, when she believes the two of you to be asleep, you can hear scarletwing's hushed and hurried whispers to whitestar, worrying over whether or not the two of you would be apprenticed on time. it makes you nestle closer to troutkit, ears pinned against your skull.

flowerpaw and cloudpaw, just three moons older than the two of you and having been welcoming to your first return to the nursery, visit the two of you in the medicine cat den as often as they can. they promise that you'll join them in the apprentice den soon, and eagerly practice their training in front of you both just outside the entrance to the medicine cat den, much to bluefrost's disdain. it brings a feeling of warmth to your belly, and when you see whitestar crossing through camp, you inwardly promise that you will pull through your sickness, and make him proud.

forming fractals.
more determined than ever, you both recover just in time for your apprenticeship ceremony. groomed to perfection and tail tips twitching eagerly, you sit beside troutkit with an eager expression on your face, unable to keep your paws still as you await your name to be called. he names troutkit first, dubs him troutpaw, and assigns him to a senior warrior named creekfeather. he then names you koipaw, and assigns you to brownbear, the deputy. you touch noses with the large tom, a swell of nervousness filling your chest. your father, the leader. your mentor, the deputy. how ever could you live with such pressure on such little shoulders? creekfeather and brownbear take you and your brother out to explore the territory for your first day of training, figuring that after spending half of your lives in the medicine cat's den, leaving the stuffy camp and getting some fresh air would do the two of you some good.

after that first day, your entire body feels tired. your muscles are ache and sore from trekking about the entire territory, and sleep comes so easily to you like it never has before. that night, you are nestled against not scarletwing's side, but troutpaw's, nose buried in his fluffy neck fur. every limb feels heavy, and as brownbear nudges you awake as dawn begins to break, it feels practically impossible to get up. still, though, your paws carry you out to the river, and through bleary eyes and half-trained ears you nod along to brownbear's instruction, struggling not to fall back asleep. at least, it's a struggle until he nudges you into the water, and only then and there does the ice-cold stream jerk you awake, eyes now wide opened. the tom throws his head back and laughs and laughs and laughs, and after your initial shock, maybe you find it within yourself to laugh, too.

it's an uphill climb, getting used to training and developing your body. once frail and weak, barely able to stagger around the nursery without needing your mother to steady you, now going out and training day to day. hunting is where you excel, at first, and you enjoy swimming much more than you do having to sprint through the marsh. it helps when you can feel the current carrying your body and helping you move. battle, on the other paw, you struggle with, especially when you're paired up against flowerpaw or cloudpaw. they're older, larger, stronger, and both apologetic when they feel they've gone too far in training, even though it's just that you're weak. troutpaw, on the other hand, seems to be bulking up appropriately, taking each battle session with stride.

it sparks a feeling of spite, in you. not something towards troutpaw, not towards flowerpaw or cloudpaw, or even brownbear, but towards yourself. you have to be better, you have to grow stronger, you have to train harder. it isn't anyone's fault but your own that you remain so weak, and you're determined to remedy it. on patrol, you watch the warriors hunt, studying their movements much more critically with the knowledge that they had seasons of hunting behind them - what movements came so naturally, what personal tricks did they use? the same went for hunting, watching the older apprentices from afar, eyes narrowed and calculating. at times, flowerpaw and cloudpaw join you, more often than not to tease you rather than to also find an appreciation in studying their movements - but sometimes, when it's you and cloudpaw only, he sits in silence with you, daring to touch his flank to yours as you both watch.

first crack.
soon, cloudpaw and flowerpaw are named warriors, dubbed cloudripple and flowerbreeze. alongside troutpaw, you call their names with pride, and know that in just a few short moons, it'll be you two in front of the clan, receiving your warrior names as well. you continue your practice by yourself, spending long, hot greenleaf days out in the marsh, pelt muddied and dirtied and finding yourself panting for breath as you drag yourself back to camp.

your warrior assessment is drawing close, closer than ever, and it’s with a battle that you feel is your first chance to prove yourself worthy of finally receiving your name. windclan has crossed a fallen tree at the border, foolish and reckless to dare trek over the gorge. here, you fight tooth and nail, your strength having built up since training all these moons under brownbear. but then it happens.

you watch as whitestar falls, practically crumples to the ground, and to all your horror, you see his body convulse with the force of a life being ripped out of him. you cross the battlefield in just a few heartbeats, nudging him and prying at his side, begging for him to wake up. he couldn’t be on his last life, could he? no, you can see his flank rising and falling, barely there, but enough to give you hope. you stay at his body, unwilling to let any other rotten windclan cat come near him-

but brownbear dies. your eyes find him in the field, watching as his throat is cut harshly by a windclan warrior, your fur raising on your hackles and the back of your neck, helpless to watch as your clanmates flood in to help him, but… it’s too late. blood, far too much blood spews from his neck, and soon he falls to the ground, just like your father, only he doesn’t have more lives to live. whitestar stirs beside you, and you bury your face in his neck and wail.

despite riverclan’s win, all you feel is loss.

second break.
a warrior named slatewhisker is assigned to be your mentor, but you hardly get a chance to know him before you fall ill again. while troutpaw seems just fine and healthy, weakness overcomes you once more, as sick as you were when you were born again. every day you feel weak, weaker than the last, and some nights, as you’re passing between consciousness and exhaustive sleep, you can hear scarletwing questioning bluefrost if you’ll make it.

some days it’s hard to even pick up your head. cloudripple visits you often, stroking over your flank with his tail and murmuring encouraging words while you cry from the pain it takes to even breathe. he laps at your cheek and tells you that you have to make it to your warrior ceremony, that you were braver than any cat he knew. when he sleeps beside you some nights, you find that you don’t dream as terribly as you usually do.

on a day that you feel stronger than usual, bluefrost constantly bringing you moss-soaked water and strips of fresh-kill, you hear your father’s voice call from outside the medicine cat den. you drag yourself to the entrance, and to your sickening mixture of pride and horror, you watch as troutpaw, your brother, is named troutnose. he’s passed his assessment, and while you couldn’t be happier for him, you also feel a guilty twist of envy deep inside you. you should be beside him. he tells you as much, when he visits you after the ceremony, but you remain curled up in tightly-coiled ball in your nest.

your strength comes back to you, eventually, and bluefrost, with a new apprentice at her side, regularly delivers you herbs to keep it up. although it makes you feel slighted, you carry on, and at fifteen moons, you are finally named koisplash.

troutnose, bless his heart, sits your vigil with you. for a moment, all feels right in the world, and when you join the warrior’s den the dawn after your vigil is over, cloudripple and flowerbreeze await you with a new nest freshly made, and welcome you with soft purrs and grooming tongues.

a moment of warmth.
the herbs that bluefrost has you eat every quarter moon seem to keep your strength up, and you enjoy your new freedoms as a riverclan warrior. with your days no longer scheduled to the brim with training, you find yourself spending more time with your mother and father than you had been able to before. whitestar is more affectionate that you would have expected, and after many moons of feeling as though all you could do was disappoint him, you start to feel like maybe, just maybe, you’ve done right by him. as right as you could.

if it’s not time spent with your family, you enjoy the company of flowerbreeze and cloudripple, though the latter more often than not. the two of you have always been close, and with the freedom that comes with being warriors, you have ample time to draw closer. you are scarcely seen in camp without cloudripple by your side, and often end up on patrols together, and whether it be falconfeather's intentional doing or mere coincidence, you're grateful. cloudripple is all the things you wish you could be - soft, tender, gentlehearted. he radiates warmth and brilliance, his form elegant and each step carefully placed as though he'd thought it out long before. it isn't long until you find yourself pouring your heart out to troutnose one long, long night, admitting your love for cloudripple to your brother, coming out of you in waves.

he laughs, and tells you that it's not him you should be telling this all to, but cloudripple.

the next night, you take him out hunting. it's a long, long walk, spent chatting and reminiscing, the air filled with joy and laughter. you haven't felt so carefree... ever, you think. and as the moon creates a white halo that frames his form, makes him look like he descended down from starclan himself, you find it within yourself to tell cloudripple just how you feel. his gaze on you the entire time is warm, so terribly warm, the kind of warmth you're unused to and yet want to press further and further into until it envelops you whole. he grooms your neck fur with a furious affection, and tells you that he's always felt the same, that he's always thought the two of you were destined to be. your face burns under your pelt, tails curling together, and for a long while, the two of you sit like that in silence, content to be pressed against once another's flanks.

changing tides.
although rumors of when the two of you would settle to have kits spread quickly around the camp, you furiously ignore such thoughts and instead divert your attention to something you've long dreamed of since becoming a warrior - having an apprentice. a pair of rowdy young kits, cranekit and reedkit, are to be apprenticed soon, and you've been dropping hints since their birth to whitestar about how you would enjoy having an apprentice of your own. he merely cuffs you over the ear with an affectionate purr every time, but when he calls yours and flowerbreeze's names to touch noses with your new apprentices, you know that he was truly listening to your desires.

cranepaw, as it turns out, is a complete and utter brat of an apprentice. cloudripple is entirely amused to watch you flounder in camp as you try to curb his attitude and send him off to clean the elder's den as punishment, while flowerbreeze, too, has her own woes with keeping reedpaw in line. "you'd asked for this," cloudripple points out to you one night, when your bones are weary from dragging the rowdy tom over the territory and having to keep him from barreling headfirst into thunderclan territory from the sunningrocks.

bluefrost, bless her heart, has seasons worth of advice to give you as you visit her for your weekly herbs to keep your strength up. her apprentice, yellowpaw, she tells you, is nearing the end of his training. she'll be retiring with his full name, she adds, and you press your head to her shoulder, thanking her for her service, and all she's done to keep you going. you promise to keep her days in the elder's den clean and comfortable, for as long as she lives.

you take her advice to heart. it's much easier to train cranepaw, after that, and with a jaw that hangs open, flowerbreeze begs you to echo to her what bluefrost had told you. together, the two of you are an unmatched pair of mentors, taking on your apprentices by storm. cranepaw and reedpaw soon reach their warrior ceremonies, named cranewing and reedflame. sparks of those rowdy kits they once were remain within them, but as they sit their vigil, you tell flowerbreeze that you think the two of you did right by them.

cold spring.
although yellowstrike is more than capable as a medicine cat, you still find yourself confiding in bluefrost in the elder's den, tightness coiling in your stomach.

"have you told cloudripple?" she asks, and you shake your head, trembling so much you're worried your fur might begin to fall out. "you should," she says firmly upon your wordless response. the dark, grim look in her eyes matches your own expression when you'd realized.

when you tell cloudripple, he's ecstatic. overjoyed. emotional, like he's always been. yet you watch it all die like a smothering ember as he reads your own horror, adjusting his expression to be one seeking to comfort you as he presses close to your side.

"my darling," he murmurs, "what troubles you?"

"i'm already so weak," you tell him quietly. "what if i can't carry them?"

"nonsense," cloudripple hushes you, nudging your cheek. "look at yourself. you've come so far, koisplash. you'll make a wonderful father."



birth isn't easy. your mother stays at your side the whole time, grooming your head with gentle licks as your entire body convulses and throbs with pain. blood, so much blood coats the nursery floor, and cloudripple comes in with another stick just as your jaw clenches down hard enough to snap the one already between your teeth. it's a long, laborious process, and you get all but one short look at your kits at your side before consciousness fades, and sleep- no, exhaustion overcomes you.

when you wake, it's to two kits at your belly, when you could have sworn it had been three. silence sits over the nursery, an empty look on scarletwing's face, while heaviness sits on cloudripple's shoulders. it doesn't need to be said - as he approaches you, you bury your face in your flank and sob, whimpering for starclan's mercy to fall upon your remaining two kits.



they are named breezekit and heatherkit, their fallen brother named vervainkit, and like how you and troutnose had been as kits, they are born small and weak and struggling for their lives. you wonder if yellowstrike feels now the pressure bluefrost had felt when you were a kit.

your second failure as a father is that you can't produce enough milk for even one of your kits. they spend their time nursing at another queen's side more than they are at your own, and it riddles all the more guilt through you. you stay awake each night, looking to the stars for where vervainkit has made his place, and hope that soon, you will have enough to supply your remaining kits the world and more, all that they deserve and more.

if their struggle isn't enough, you're still fighting day by day to get your own life back from the toll labor had taken on you. cloudripple brings you food but you can barely stomach it most days, and it doesn't help that you can hardly sleep. the moments you spend with your kits are precious.

one night, though, as you spend your time dragging your tongue over their bodies, grooming them to keep warm, you notice that heatherkit's body has become cold. your wail pierces the skies, all the way to starclan and back, and as your parents help to dig yet another grave for one of your kits, you don't press into cloudripple's side for comfort, leaning away from his tongue and curling up in your nest.

it doesn't surprise you when breezekit passes, too. only a moon old, and yet she succumbs to all the cruelness in the world dragging her down. once again, you refuse to press into cloudripple's side, your heart torn asunder. he deserves a better mate, you think, a better cat to carry his kits. you've failed him, your family, and yourself.

it brings you more harm than good to stay in the nursery while your body still recovers, so you spend your days in the elder's den, where bluefrost knows better than to try and drag a word out of you, but still rests her chin on your spine. she's like a second mother, to you, and you begin to think that you've failed her as well. it's troutnose instead of cloudripple who begins to bring you your meals, and sits beside you until you've eaten every last bite that you could manage. these days, you're able to stomach more and more, the herbs being delivered to you helping in your journey back to your strength.

fragility.
you return to the warrior's den reluctantly. for some time, you had felt like a kit again, and often wriggled between scarletwing and whitestar's warm bodies in your father's den, pressing yourself between the two of them and imagining that all was well in the world, that you could have had a second shot at rearing yourself a family of your own.

cloudripple is hesitant in his approach, but you can't keep denying him forever. your reunion is wordless - he touches his nose to your side, and you all but collapse against him, relief sagging through your body to have his touch once more.

you hate to know that in punishing yourself, in denying yourself his presence, you were punishing him, too.

although you wish that you could call yourself his mate, still, you can't. he protests, he tells you he loves you, that he would never blame you for the death of your kits, and yet... you can't stand to hear it. he deserves better.


final shattering.
although you've returned to your duties, you're still weak. you can't quite last a full patrol, and can only find yourself hunting at the side of the river, rather than able to chase a squirrel down. tension within windclan has been rising, so you've heard, especially with half-blood kits within the clan and emberstar demanding them to be handed over. it's with weariness that you watch whitestar announce riverclan to aid windclan in battle in tearing down emberstar's legacy - you tell your father that you want to fight, and yet he and troutnose both urge you down, telling you that you were in no shape to fight, that doing so would be a death wish.

so be it, you told them, and whitestar scolded you. you would have to remain in camp.

they return with his body.

it's here that you know that you must be an omen of bad luck, a charm of failure for any cat that dares grow close to you. your brother, sick alongside you, able only to grow when you had fallen ill once more during training and he could succeed without you at his side. brownbear, your mentor, fallen in battle with windclan because you had told yourself to guard whitestar's body while he recovered from losing lives. vervainkit, heatherkit, breezekit - your beautiful, wonderful, delightful children that you weren't strong enough to raise. cloudripple, your mate, your love, your one and only, who you've failed time after time again. and now whitestar, your father, gone in battle because you weren't strong enough to be there to protect him.

you sit vigil the longest, whether because you don't have the strength to get up and away from him, or because your love for your father truly runs that deep, you do not know.

what you do know is that no cat deserves to suffer because of you ever again.