midgepaw

During the leaf-fall journey to the new territories, young RiverClan warriors Asterstrike and Ripplefrost, newfound friends, began to fall in love with each other. By the time they had arrived in their new home the two were closely bonded, and after settling in they decided to become mates even though neither cat had ever really seen themself having kits. That greenleaf, Nightkit and Rapidkit entered the world. Nightkit quickly asserted herself as strong and confident, percieving weakness in nervous and inquisitive Rapidkit. As leaf-fall faded into leaf-bare, the two were made apprentices. Athletic and gregarious, Nightpaw excelled in her training and became quite popular among most other apprentices. But her disdain for her brother and other cats like him deepened, damaging the siblings' relationship and establishing a harsh social order in the apprentice den.

Meanwhile, Asterstrike and Ripplefrost were making the decision to try for another litter....

Midgekit was born into Asterstrike's second litter alongside her siblings Gullkit and Yewkit as newleaf flowers were just beginning to blossom. A few weeks into their lives, the kits' teeth started coming in; Midgekit was particularly distressed by the pain, and subsequently she became known as the nursery nuisance for teething on anything and anyone she could find. Being yowled at didn't deter Midgekit in the slightest: even at that early age she wanted to be the center of attention, regardless of whether the attention was good or bad. She was willing to bite to get it.

Nightpaw and Rapidpaw regularly stopped by the nursery to spend time with their mother and new siblings. It took a while for the kits' consciousnesses to develop enough to remember these frequent visitors. In the budding mind of Midgekit, Rapidpaw gradually took shape as a gentle, goofy giant... and Nightpaw crystallized as a heroine straight out of the legends queens told to overactive kits who refused to go to sleep. The black she-cat was gorgeous: silky fur, tufted ears, brilliant violet eyes. She seemed sure of every movement down to the twitch of her whiskers. She walked with such purpose, head and tail lifted effortlessly skyward. She was full of stories about the new kinds of prey she had learned to catch, the expert-level battle moves she had perfected in training, the details of other Clans' territories she had observed on patrol. She put annoying and useless Clanmates in their place. And all the coolest cats in RiverClan noticed — congregated around her with starry eyes and bubbly laughter; shared with her tongues and fresh-kill and secrets and evening strolls around camp. To Midgekit, Nightpaw was as good as Clan leader, or at least a deputy. And when Nightpaw commented offhandedly to Asterstrike one day about how pretty and smart Midgekit was becoming when the she-kit was pretending to take a nap, she realized that she had a chance to be that lovely too.

But it was much, much harder than Nightpaw made it look. Midgekit tried her big sister's graceful, chin-first walk, but it made her neck hurt. She groomed herself until her fur seemed to glow (she triple-checked) despite the soreness of her tongue, but it didn't make any of the other nursery occupants — much less any of Nightpaw's admirers, let alone Nightpaw herself — pay any more attention to her already impressive looks. She attempted to escape camp a couple times in the hope that she'd find a detail Nightpaw had not yet discovered, but someone always caught her before she made it very far. She crafted mossball after mossball from the extra scraps apprentices tossed her so she could get a head-start on her pouncing, but the plushness against her pawpads meant nothing if Nightpaw was out there somewhere sinking her claws into juicy prey. Then Nightpaw and Rapidpaw became Nightlily and Rapidfog... and her big sister's prowess and popularity seemed even more out of Midgekit's reach. Burning with envy and alarm, she doubled down on all the things she could continue to practice without getting in trouble. After a couple more weeks, Midgekit was getting the hang of it: the poised walk, the lush coat, and even some of the acerbic remarks she heard Nightlily making to weaklings, a category that apparently included Rapidfog. Her parents and littermates frowned at Midgekit's emerging edges towards her big brother, whom she had always been fond of — clearly this was a result of Nightlily's influence. Sensing the possibility of a deep-rooted insecurity within the she-kit, they implored her to be herself, because they loved her that way. Midgekit just stuck her nose up in the air and told them she was being herself, thank you very much. Then she called them all minnow-brains.

In the final few moons of her kithood, Midgekit grew frustrated: despite her obscene beauty and genius comebacks, no one was paying nearly as much attention to her as they were to Nightlily. She didn't have a single friend aside from her littermates, which everyone knows doesn't count. So she thought and thought about what she could do to get them to notice her skills... and then it came to her: pranks! Kits in the nursery pulled tiny, harmless pranks on each other all the time, but maybe kicking it up a notch would get her somewhere. Midgekit spent the next couple days casually meandering around camp, listening in on scraps of conversation, absorbing information about their hopes and fears and preferences and aversions, designing elaborate tricks in her head, bristling at anyone who caught her snooping. Then... she set off. Dirt and then dirt suddenly appeared in the nest of an orderly elder. A warrior skittish around insects reached for a delicious trout and shrieked at the discovery of a giant (but dead) beetle underneath it. Two younger kits with similar appearances, gauded into obedience by certain bribery, somehow swapped nests overnight and went undetected (... for all of fifteen minutes, but still). A couple days later a third kit agreed to sneak out in the middle of the night and sleep on top of the nursery, prompting half the camp to panic until he was discovered.

Midgekit's ideas for new pranks seemed endless. It didn't take long for everyone to pick her out as the orchestrator of all the chaos. But none of the safeguards they implemented to protect themselves were strong enough to suppress her. She spotted Nightlily and her friends smirking with approval at some of her antics and evasions, especially when cats the clique liked to pick on were the target, but mostly they were too busy to notice. She tried hanging with some of her older siblings' wilder peers, new warriors who had made similar trouble as kits and seemed sympathetic to her mischief... but somehow she always ended up trailing behind them. They didn't seem to really want to include a kit — even one as unbelievably arresting as her, and on the verge of apprenticehood to boot — in their world.

As her apprentice ceremony approached and greenleaf began to wither into leaf-fall, Midgekit stopped being able to sleep. She was too busy staring at the ceiling of the nursery, lost in restless thought. Most often she ran everyone's reactions to her latest schemes through her head, finally allowing herself to wince at the fear and anger and sadness she stirred up that day. She knew she was hurting her Clanmates by pulling these pranks, and it weighed on her. But if, in the event that Midgekit ever stopped, no one paid attention to her at all anymore, she would be even lonelier than she had been lately. So that was that. If no one could love her, then everyone would have to hate her.

TO BE DETERMINED....