[RSW] Gelidstorm

    Crowtuft was a noble, disciplined warrior of MarshClan; his entire life was his Clan, through and through. The frivolties of life like romance never really lingered on his mind, despite everyone who said how good of a father he would be. The idea of a mate, and his own kittens... it just wasn't for him! He simply wanted to follow his life as a warrior and the patrol boy.
    However, this all changed when he got to know one of his fellow warriors better. Smoketalon was a warrior who grew up alongside him, but they never made up their minds to speak and didn't really get along in the best way due to Crowtuft's cold nature and Smoketalon's more carefree one. However, after Sandstar assigned the two to the same patrol to check over CloudClan's border, they found they had more in common than they'd thought at first.
    The night after that first patrol, Smoketalon had found herself intrigued by the other tom, and she invited him out to her favorite thinking spot -- a small, secluded, moonlit clearing beyond the tunnels. It was only after Smoketalon admitted that this was where she often came to mull over her thoughts that Crowtuft admitted he did the same, though he had used time spent loitering in camp for his thinking thus far. So, night after night, they'd return to the same clearing to talk and reminisce on their days, growing closer and closer as the moons went on. Eventually, they finally realized they were perfect for eachother, and decided to settle down and start a family of their own.

    Unfortunately, luck was not on the side of the unlikely pair. The war between MarshClan and CloudClan was growing fiercer by the day, and a skirmish on the CloudClan border stole away Crowtuft's life barely a day before her kittens were born. Heartbroken, Smoketalon vowed to venture forwards anyways, and raise her new kittens the best that she could.


    Gelidkit was born to Smoketalon and Crowtuft alongside their sister Blackkit, sibling Hollowkit, and brother Ravenkit. Though Crowtuft was no longer on this mortal earth to welcome the new bundles of joy, Smoketalon was more than prepared to be as best of a mother as she could be for her four children. As a kitten, Gelidstorm spent most of her time playing with her siblings, always the one willing to take a tumble or a wayward strike in her pursuits! She had a lust for life that, even at her age, was already readily apparent, and happily butted into anything she could for the experience. The downtime, though, was something she... kept to herself, most often, when she had to sit with her thoughts instead of romping around outside. She wasn't exactly experienced at reading the room, but even a kitten could tell something consistently lurked in the background. Indeed, Gelidkit was always a bit uncertain about how to treat Crowtuft's death, that elephant in the room -- he was an enigma to her, distant and conceptual more than anything. She took to peppering Smoketalon with questions whenever she could -- about him, about what he was like, about Smoke herself and everything in between with them -- to try and gauge what her own relationship should be like. Perhaps it caused her mother pain, to relive the memories each time she asked... but that was not something she realized until much, much later on.

    As the war raged on outside of the bounds of camp, and she slowly became more aware that life was not all the peace that the nursery made it out to be (it had become hard to miss the bloodied forms returning home, and after the first corpse had been lain in state at the center of camp for her to see, Gelidkit had taken to covering her eyes with her paws whenever MarshClan's troops returned home), her apprentice years dawned fast on the horizon.


    Right on time, at the ripe age of six moons she was apprenticed alongside all of her siblings, ready to take up the mantle as MarshClan's newest set of future warriors. She was assigned to Rimewind, a sure-start bigender warrior with a heavy paw and plenty of drive to keep pace with her own. Like she, her mentor was very goal-oriented, and from day one they seemed to get along swimmingly. They would spend hours training, with Rimewind delighting in showing her all the ropes and treating her to tidbits of more advanced material. She hung around her siblings as best as she could, but her mentor had so many things for her to do, and she wanted to do them all! It was at this time that she started drifting away from the others, in a sense. Though still always down to play and roughhouse, her attention was just... taken up by other things!

    It was also around this time that she started questioning how she felt; how others referred to her. She tested some things out... and decided plenty of things were fine for her. It just felt right, to be called he or she or they or anything in-between -- and who was he to deny their heart? It was from then on that they confidently referred to themselves as genderfluid, being very open about who he was.

    The breakneck pace she was moving alongside her mentor never really let up over the moons. He was a good warrior, sure, but Gelidpaw was his first apprentice, and as time went on it became clear that his inexperience was bouncing off of Gelidpaw's own. They fed on the synergy between them, but that also allowed rifts to form around Gelidpaw and go unnoticed. Not even a training accident (she blamed herself, she did -- she'd seen the ledge on the hill when they were sparring with one of the other apprentices, Rimewind had even pointed it out to her; how did she still manage to fall over it and bang herself up pretty bad?) and downtime she was forced to take gave her a better look at what was happening to her relationships. She was too focused on becoming what everyone wanted her to be, what she wanted herself to be -- an amazing warrior, fully prepared for the war that wasn't quite ended yet, chasing whatever ideal fluttered past her heart at any given moment.
    Too busy leaving their head in the sand of their own world.

    And yet... hey, since when did their siblings look so worn compared to all the other apprentices they compared themselves to? Hollowpaw especially. He seemed run even more ragged than she was... and was that a frown on his face? They'd thought everyone had been enjoying their training as much as she was...

    But was there anything he could do? It seemed by some unfortunate twist of fate that her goal-chaser attitude was getting the worst of her, now; they were too caught up in commitments to have a moment to reach out, too busy striving to be the star they wanted to be. The one time they tried to ask what was up it came out wrong; too brash, not thought out enough, and their attempt dropped off into a stutter and "nevermind"s much too quickly. All there was to do was... keep an eye out, in between the dream rays. Keep trying, even though they kept messing up. Be better. Do the best he could.

    Despite it all... they never really had any animosity for their mentor; they couldn't find it in their heart to dislike Rimewind. So, they kept up with their training as normal until twelve moons, when they could graduate on time -- finally!


    Gelidpaw was given the name Gelidstorm -- a name he enjoyed very much and was proud to bear; flashy, just like he wanted! If there was any lingering doubt from their apprentice days, they did what they always did: shook it off and carried on. There was more important things to attend to according to everyone else, like their new warrior duties! And boy, as the days got colder and colder with leafbare approaching, they sure had a lot to do... it was almost like they didn't know how to stop. Unfortunately, not everything was going to stay quite so idyllic.

    They were out on the dusk patrol when they got the news. Come home; your mother is dying.
    They were shocked -- Smoketalon had been declining, sure, but... wasn't it not that bad, couldn't Tansyskip heal her right up back to normal...? What was going on? He barely made it home in time to hear his mother's last words.
    It was something they would regret for the rest of their life.

    The weight of their stupid, stupid sun-chasing was apparent in the weight on their shoulders, now, and they decided right then and there they needed to change their ways. Like, actually change them. No more burying their head in the sand. No more following only what was familiar. No, they would be brave, and take steps they had neglected to before for so many moons. It was their new attempt at bravery that led them to Hollowsight's side the day after -- stumbling upon the gruesome scene of the badger attack just in time, they managed to drag their sibling to safety at the last moment, though Hollowsight's mentor was not so lucky. She was by Hollowsight's side when he woke up, asking what happened despite her own near brush with serious injury from the attack (it was a miracle she'd escaped with minor cuts and bruises). Though Hollowsight provided no information... for once in their life, they extended a paw to him anyways. Finally, finally ready to stand by his side as they had always wanted.

    And now? He just needed to be stronger. Better. More like everyone wanted -- but most importantly, what their family needed from them right now -- what everyone needed from them right now, with MarshClan in such turmoil. They have a lot of growing left to do!


    With everything going on, though, it's just... easier to lie low. They don't want to cause any trouble -- and with Sandstar mandating the borders be closed, and Hootsong speaking out only to be exiled, and then their Clanmates starting to be murdered, not to mention the chaos in the other Clans, well -- there's a lot of things that could be considered trouble. They don't care to go to gatherings, they don't care to talk to other Clan cats; all they care about is keeping watch over their family members and making sure nobody else gets killed. Thankfully, that all comes to pass, and Gelidstorm can relax a bit.

    After summer comes to a close, thankfully things quiet down a bit. HailClan re-establishes itself, the spies are all revealed (not that she heard first-hand, but the whispers make their way to him eventually), and things... settle. Until late leaf-fall. Then the Crystal Falls get shattered (how could anyone even dare? What even happened there? Gelidstorm is quite frankly terrified, considering she holds a strong belief of StarClan) and stuff starts falling apart again. Literally, even! Because the tunnels collapse and trap both MarshClanners and CloudClanners, and then there's a bobcat that terrorizes them for about a moon until they manage to chase it out, though not before it takes Sandstar's last life with it. Now with Seastar and Roachheart at MarshClan's helm, they have to face a harsh winter. At least(?), though, Gelidstorm gets something to keep her occupied -- Hackberrypaw is assigned to her as her first apprentice.

    Now, Gelidstorm was... definitely not expecting to get an apprentice. Nor was she expecting to be the first of her siblings to do so. What's she supposed to do with a child under her care, when she was already so self-absorbed that she couldn't even look after her siblings? It turns out they're very similar, Hackberrypaw and him -- the same energy, and the same forward thinking. And while the training was fun and Gelidstorm was having a blast showing him all around the territory, and teaching him the hunting crouch, and some basic battle moves... this time, they needed to do better by their protégé than their mentor had done for them. Where Hackberrypaw was naive, Gelidstorm had lived some lessons already in losing their mother and almost losing their sibling, and now it was time to do the job of all mentors: teach those who are under your care, so they don't repeat your same mistakes.
    And he tried, he really tried! He did his best to impress upon Hackberrypaw that the young apprentice didn't need to pull away from his family to grow, and in fact keeping in contact would give him a much-needed support system in addition to any new friends he might make. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried to get all of that across, Hackberrypaw didn't listen until it was too late. He lost his sister Cloverpaw in a snowstorm, and suddenly the lessons Gelidstorm had been trying to teach him were all too real.
    She could only watch, somewhat helplessly, as her apprentice pulled away from her while he was trying to learn to grieve and handle his loss. He avoided them for a while, though they tried their best to show him that they were someone he could lean on if he needed, and went out on quite a few of the search parties as well. Eventually though, Hackberrypaw approached her once more and asked her to 'just get it over with already, I know you told me so', and Gelid's heart broke. Why would she ever scold him for something like this? They consoled him and told him that they were very sad for his loss, but glad that he had learned much sooner than she had, even if it was such a hard lesson to learn. He could still make amends with those he cared about, and in the meantime, learn to cope with the loss of Cloverpaw and keep moving forwards. And, above all, Gelidstorm didn't blame Hackberrypaw, and she made sure he knew it. (In truth, she blamed herself a bit for failing to get the lesson across to him, before it was too late and he had to learn it by force.)
    As Hackberrypaw learned to cope and move on, Gelidstorm did their best to be by his side as a good mentor figure to look up to. She started hosting joint training sessions with some of the other apprentices, and his extended family members, in an effort to help him make more friends! Things were going well, once again.

    Seastar's death was unexpected for the whole Clan; her drowning was more and more proof of the harsh leafbare ahead of them all. Like everyone else in MarshClan, Gelidstorm mourned a bit for their lost leader, but their Clan needed them to stay strong and keep on working as normal, or they all wouldn't survive this leafbare. Gelidstorm did her best to contribute to hunting patrols wherever possible, but prey was dwindling very, very thin. She occasionally skipped meals herself, so that her siblings and all the apprentices could eat. Unfortunately, though, the worst was yet to hit her yet, as February would prove to be the hardest moon of that whole leafbare.

    Gelidstorm had thought they were learning and doing better with paying attention to their family, but it all happened so suddenly- Raventuft slipped away from life, due to starvation that nobody had been able to keep up with. Gelid was devastated, absolutely devastated; she didn't eat anything for the entire day and a half after his passing, because she just couldn't stomach it, and cried the whole way through his funeral. Raventuft and her had never been too close, but the fact of the matter was that this was yet another family member she had failed to notice was suffering before they died. She never even got to say goodbye, this time.

    He sank into a deep bout of grief as a result of Raventuft's death, and struggled to keep up with training Hackberrypaw, occasionally having to lend him to another mentor when she just couldn't get out of her nest no matter how hard she tried. It hurt so badly, and they even skipped the Festival of Snow where they were named Snow Knight in front of all four Clans -- they didn't find out until Fogheart congratulated them about it. Them, a Snow Knight?? They didn't even have enough thought-power to dedicate to processing such a thing. It felt kind of like a cruel consolation prize, in a way. And when Waspcatcher was promoted as Roachstar's new deputy, they could only smile and drum their paws a bit as the rest of the Clan cheered.
    Everyone in MarshClan was dealing with their own losses, though, and so while the going was rough, Gelidstorm did eventually find that they had Clanmates they could lean on and share their grief with. They were all suffering -- but at least they had eachother, still.

    With newleaf finally right around the corner, though, Gelidstorm was able to cheer right along with everyone else, this time, when Hackberrypaw graduated into a full warrior of MarshClan and gained the name Hackberrytoe. She was so proud of her apprentice! He had come such a long way from the kid he was when first put into her care, and though she still felt sad for how his naivety had come to be dashed, she was overjoyed to see how -- this time -- he kept in touch with his family and apprentice friends, and even her. And in turn, she made sure to keep up a connection with him as well as the rest of her own family.