- Dec 1, 2022
- 29
- 3
- 1
Hi hello!! This oneshot deals with a lot. Its gonna skip around through various moments in Lilac's apprenticeship, kinda centering around her relationship with Nightwillow and what her apprenticeship looked like. This thread will deal with Derealization, anxiety, depression/grief, bullying, mild physical abuse as well as verbal abuse, and talks about starvation/giving up food even though you're hungry. if any of these will cause discomfort on any level you cannot handle, please skip out on reading, you don't need to know this to understand Lilac's character. This was moreso for myself to figure out some things to better write her as her mental state worsens.
"Gather,"
She doesn't actually remember much of her apprentice ceremony, or maybe the more accurate take is that she doesn't remember it correctly.
"Starlingkit, Granitekit, Nettlekit, Lilackit, Dustkit, Siltkit, and Ghostkit step forward."
Sometimes, her ceremony takes place on a dreary evening, sunset bleeding behind clanrock as a reminder of all that they had lost, with slumped shoulders and cotton filling her ears. And sometimes it’s the dawn of a new day, bright blue and gold skies above them as the clan is alight with the chatter of kits eager to begin their training. The more she tries to set her mind straight, the more it ends up muddling in her mind. She knows that she was apprenticed the night of the vigil, knows that it wasn't her mother, proud and warm, that apprenticed her, but rather the antsy, deflated form of her brother who had relayed the decisions. Yet…she'd always wish things were different. She'd make them different.
"You are four moons old, and it is time for you to be apprenticed. From this day on, until you receive your warrior names-"
"-you will be known as Starlingpaw, Granitepaw, Nettlepaw, Lilacpaw, Dustpaw, and Ghostpaw."
There's so many names she doesn't recall at all from that day, so many apprentices given mentors and names alongside her that she only sees as shadows in her memory. Giant blank spots joining other details in the void that had become much of the time following her mother's passing. Day after day, night after night, she would reimagine these events and many others. She would make them happier, losing her true connection to those moments all the while.
"Starlingpaw and Granitepaw, Pitchsun will be your mentor-I will pass down all that I know to you."
She used to look forward to her apprenticeship, to her warrior ceremony. She wanted to make her family proud, she still does. 'We were supposed to get there together.' Lilacpaw thinks to herself, eyes glancing around at the world that glitches between the ideal and the real, the smiling form of Amber's description coming in and out of existence in the midst of her older siblings' stable bodies as Briarstar and Pitchstar take eachother's places on clanrock.
"Lilacpaw, your mentor will be Nightwillow, may they pass down everything he knows to you. Nightwillow, you have always been a respected presence in the clan, may you raise Lilacpaw to be a fine Shadowclan warrior."
Lilacpaw remembers Nightwillow having what she thought to be the coldest, wettest nose known to catkind. So much so that she actually flinched during their ceremony from the temperature shock. From there, things truly separate.
When the ceremony was over, Lilacpaw took a corner of the camp for herself for the vigil. She didn't congratulate her siblings, she didn't briefly discuss where they should put their nests the next morning, didn't even gossip with the other apprentices about their mentors the next day. She didn't even speak to Nightwillow in the times following, rarely even acknowledging their instructions. Meanwhile in her dreams she would do just that, eagerly discussing everything with her family, and planting seeds for future friendships with her denmates. Happier, she always strived to be happier in her dreams.
Maybe it all started going wrong when he first took her around for a look at the territory.
"Even though the fire has ravaged our lands, there's still landmarks that will help guide you around…" Nightwillow remembers that day vividly, a little too caught up in their own smugness of being trusted with one of Briarstar's children as their first apprentice. Lilacpaw was relatively good natured too, even leading her siblings around in a way that reminded him of her mother. So it only made sense that she'd be easy to turn into a warrior deserving of her linage, with not one, but two leaders residing in her family tree now. "…Now for some basic navigation, Lilacpaw, which way does the sun rise each morning-"
The black tabby turns, and where he hopes to find at least a semi-eager apprentice with an answer ready on her tongue….he finds nothing but the empty marsh staring back at him. "Lilacpaw?" 'She was just behind me a minute ago-where did she go?' He should've heard her leaving, was she just lagging behind on her first outing? "Lilacpaw!"
They keep calling out as they retrace their steps, making their way back to camp but without their apprentice anywhere in sight. Frantically, they ask for spare warriors to help them search. 'How do you lose your apprentice on the first day!?' He chides himself as they split up throughout Shadowclan's land, and though five warriors scour the territory that day, only one finds the rosetted apprentice.
"Lilacpaw! What were you thinking?! What are you doing here?" She's standing by the thunderpath, tail drooped low to the ground, something oddly stiff about her posture. Yet despite being within hearing range, she does not turn to answer them. "Lilacpaw! ANSWER ME!" He comes around to her front, trying to force her to answer, to look at him, flinching at the sight he also forces himself to behold.
Staring up at him are glassy, dull eyes that look like they belong on the prey pile instead of on a cat's face.
The passing of her first gathering sitting at home standing guard was the only reason she even vaguely knew how long it had been. Nightwillow had held her back because of her 'recklessness' but its not like she wanted to go anyways. She didn't want to do anything anymore, just sit in her nest letting time slip away as she pulled further and further away from reality. It was easier that way, better. She could do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone she wanted.
No one had to die, no one had to leave.
She knows its not okay, she knows she should be doing more, should be helping more but she can't bring herself to care. There is a weariness in her bones that is too heavy for someone her age and she in her ill-prepared youth does not know how else to bear it. She doesn't remember the last time she talked to someone, doesn't remember the last time she was fully conscious enough to see the faces of her real family, instead of the ones that existed in her mind. Lilacpaw knows she's being a coward. 'But…does it really matter? I'm…happier this way.' And in her own messed up way, she is, she is happier than she's ever been, yet its all smoke and mirrors.
Its not real. Its never going to be real. Her happiness does not ex-SMACK!
Her head cracks to the side, cheek stinging and body reeling from the unexpected force. Right, they were trying to do combat training today. Even though she wasn't ready, even though she had made progress nowhere else.
"Lilacpaw! Pay attention! You're never going to catch up with your siblings at this rate, nearly all of the other apprentices already have this down and some have even caught their first prey, yet you sit here staring off into space!" Nightwillow always seemed to be yelling. She didn't know why they bothered anymore, why they still dragged her out of her nest day after day after day for the same old song and dance.
Nightwillow doesn't know either.
They're trying to be patient, they're trying to give Lilacpaw the space she needs to grieve but they cannot sit here and pretend that they're not simmering with shame at the rate the other apprentices are progressing. He cannot even compare Lilacpaw to her previous progress, because she has made none. It infuriates him, to sit with his fellow warriors chatting about their training and force a smile while he lies through his teeth about how 'despite her grief, Lilacpaw is making steady progress'. They cannot even begin to fathom how many Shadowclanners have lost respect for them due to the kit Pitchstar has decided to grace with warrior training out of pure, unrestrained nepotism. His apprentice had not pulled her weight at all this past moon and a half, when as a newly named one all she had to do was learn. If she caught a mouse, if she excelled at sparring, great! Wonderful! But here she was, not even meeting the bare minimum.
"To think, two leaders have been made of your bloodline, with fine warriors being made of your siblings, and yet you cannot even deign training to be on the same level that your siblings and peers do. They listen to their mentors at least! THEY TRY! YOU DO NOT EVEN SPEAK TO ME WHEN I ASK YOU TO!" They still feel disgusted and unnerved by the dull emptiness of her gaze, hollow in its attention, yet its all they can get from the young molly to show she's even present in the conversation. Day after day after day, he drags this soulless child from her nest, tries to get her to do the bare minimum, and gets nothing in response. Its pride that keeps him from trudging into their leader's den and requesting that Lilacpaw either be given to someone else or stripped of her apprenticeship until she shapes up. Pride that will not allow him to become the laughingstock of the clan because he could not train a measly child in the ways of being an adult, of being a warrior. Them! Of all cats!
So they continue to keep Lilacpaw hidden like a child might a hide a broken toy from their parents. They refuse to take her out on patrols with them, gracefully sidestep her being added to gathering parties, woefully lament that the difference between their apprentices is too great to make a good training session when asked by a fellow mentor. Unintentionally isolating her further into her fantasies, giving her no room to breathe between the waking and the dreaming.
Something seemed to click back into place after Rookpaw saved her from the rogues. Like some sort of fucked up wake up call. She's not sure if she's necessarily gotten…'better', though.
Her mind feels less cotton-y than before, and her body doesn't ache as much when she drags herself out of her nest at Nightwillow's nagging...but she still collapses into her nest as early as possible, stays in it as late as she can, loses track of conversations….all because sitting around in her own head is better than facing reality. Sometimes she gets rather far in her daydreams, feeling slightly more assured with her portrayal and knowledge of her father after asking a few clanmates what he was like and how they saw him and her mother. Some people would call this processing her grief, but when it was just fuel for the fire, it probably couldn't be considered that anymore.
Socializing had become an interesting matter entirely. She found that she no longer knew what was socially appropriate, or perhaps she had never known this at all and her mother's influence had simply protected her from being seen as annoying or uncouth. So, Lilacpaw had begun to observe. She watched the way others interacted, what personalities worked and what ones didn't, who instinctively chose not to interact and who thrived from any interaction at all. She would sit in her dreams and daydreams, practicing what she had learned, simply trying to get the hang of acting as others had, replaying conversations over and over. Though she had never accounted for putting this into practice on beings who were not of her own creation, nor the fact that she hadn't spoken in moons.
Her raspy, gravel on the thunderpath voice would become a point of amusement to her peers, its monotony allowing them to pester her to say certain phrases for laughs. For all its comedy, her voice lost its charm when she got used to using it again, and her monotony became a point of contempt. She would say one thing, and clanmates would interpret it as another. It wasn't long before the shaky foundation on which she built her new life would crumble from the weight of her misconceptions.
Lilacpaw liked to think she's doing better, liked to think she's finally getting somewhere in her life.
"She never says the same thing twice."
Its easier to use her voice now, easier to not be the worthless, wordless child she was before. Learning to put emotion into her sentences was hard, but the more she listened to others, the more she was able to figure out how to make everything flow correctly. She has hope that maybe the more she learns, the more friends she'll make, that maybe she'll grow close with her siblings again and everything will be okay. She missed them.
"What a freak, her voice is so annoying."
"Didn't she basically copy you the whole time you were talking? Its like she doesn't have a brain to think with."
"She didn't know when to leave either, she's such a creep."
She of course, pretends not to hear any of it. She is getting better, she just needs to work harder. It’s a mentality that bleeds into her training, and probably would've made her one of the better apprentices regardless of overwork…..if she wasn't still plagued by her daydreams all the time. Spacing through explanations, perfectly executing moves and tactics…only to have Nightwillow strike her out of her head back into the real world, where she hasn't moved an inch. It wasn't that she wasn't trying, she wanted to be good, she wanted to be worthy, she wanted them to stop looking at her with that face, but distinguishing what was real and what wasn't was the one thing she hadn't been able to overcome.
Her smile felt strained as she walked over to the other apprentices, she still needed to be better.
Leafbare is the worst of it. The lack of prey, severely worsened by the wildfire, leaves Shadowclan grasping at whiskers to keep themselves alive. Nightwillow is constantly going out on patrol after patrol, and finally Lilacpaw is allowed to join them, regardless of her inadequacy, due to their desperation for food.
She never catches anything.
They come home and constantly, time after time, she's pushing her prey towards the ticked tabby, only rarely getting a gruff "I don't want your leftovers." that forces her to choke down every unearned bite. Her body grows steadily thinner under her fur, but Nightwillow's rapidly withers before her eyes. She keeps trying, keeps snatching the biggest piece of prey on the pile once the elders and queens have taken their pick and shoving it into Nightwillow's face. She knows they'd do the same thing she's doing otherwise. Shadowclan can't lose warriors.They can't lose apprentices either. They can't lose good contributors to their clan. Not now. Not when everything's at its worst.
'Its okay, you're doing the right thing, they'll be alright. Leafbare doesn't last forever.'
This development continues here, final wordcount is 2,495
"Gather,"
She doesn't actually remember much of her apprentice ceremony, or maybe the more accurate take is that she doesn't remember it correctly.
"Starlingkit, Granitekit, Nettlekit, Lilackit, Dustkit, Siltkit, and Ghostkit step forward."
Sometimes, her ceremony takes place on a dreary evening, sunset bleeding behind clanrock as a reminder of all that they had lost, with slumped shoulders and cotton filling her ears. And sometimes it’s the dawn of a new day, bright blue and gold skies above them as the clan is alight with the chatter of kits eager to begin their training. The more she tries to set her mind straight, the more it ends up muddling in her mind. She knows that she was apprenticed the night of the vigil, knows that it wasn't her mother, proud and warm, that apprenticed her, but rather the antsy, deflated form of her brother who had relayed the decisions. Yet…she'd always wish things were different. She'd make them different.
"You are four moons old, and it is time for you to be apprenticed. From this day on, until you receive your warrior names-"
"-you will be known as Starlingpaw, Granitepaw, Nettlepaw, Lilacpaw, Dustpaw, and Ghostpaw."
There's so many names she doesn't recall at all from that day, so many apprentices given mentors and names alongside her that she only sees as shadows in her memory. Giant blank spots joining other details in the void that had become much of the time following her mother's passing. Day after day, night after night, she would reimagine these events and many others. She would make them happier, losing her true connection to those moments all the while.
"Starlingpaw and Granitepaw, Pitchsun will be your mentor-I will pass down all that I know to you."
She used to look forward to her apprenticeship, to her warrior ceremony. She wanted to make her family proud, she still does. 'We were supposed to get there together.' Lilacpaw thinks to herself, eyes glancing around at the world that glitches between the ideal and the real, the smiling form of Amber's description coming in and out of existence in the midst of her older siblings' stable bodies as Briarstar and Pitchstar take eachother's places on clanrock.
"Lilacpaw, your mentor will be Nightwillow, may they pass down everything he knows to you. Nightwillow, you have always been a respected presence in the clan, may you raise Lilacpaw to be a fine Shadowclan warrior."
Lilacpaw remembers Nightwillow having what she thought to be the coldest, wettest nose known to catkind. So much so that she actually flinched during their ceremony from the temperature shock. From there, things truly separate.
When the ceremony was over, Lilacpaw took a corner of the camp for herself for the vigil. She didn't congratulate her siblings, she didn't briefly discuss where they should put their nests the next morning, didn't even gossip with the other apprentices about their mentors the next day. She didn't even speak to Nightwillow in the times following, rarely even acknowledging their instructions. Meanwhile in her dreams she would do just that, eagerly discussing everything with her family, and planting seeds for future friendships with her denmates. Happier, she always strived to be happier in her dreams.
Maybe it all started going wrong when he first took her around for a look at the territory.
"Even though the fire has ravaged our lands, there's still landmarks that will help guide you around…" Nightwillow remembers that day vividly, a little too caught up in their own smugness of being trusted with one of Briarstar's children as their first apprentice. Lilacpaw was relatively good natured too, even leading her siblings around in a way that reminded him of her mother. So it only made sense that she'd be easy to turn into a warrior deserving of her linage, with not one, but two leaders residing in her family tree now. "…Now for some basic navigation, Lilacpaw, which way does the sun rise each morning-"
The black tabby turns, and where he hopes to find at least a semi-eager apprentice with an answer ready on her tongue….he finds nothing but the empty marsh staring back at him. "Lilacpaw?" 'She was just behind me a minute ago-where did she go?' He should've heard her leaving, was she just lagging behind on her first outing? "Lilacpaw!"
They keep calling out as they retrace their steps, making their way back to camp but without their apprentice anywhere in sight. Frantically, they ask for spare warriors to help them search. 'How do you lose your apprentice on the first day!?' He chides himself as they split up throughout Shadowclan's land, and though five warriors scour the territory that day, only one finds the rosetted apprentice.
"Lilacpaw! What were you thinking?! What are you doing here?" She's standing by the thunderpath, tail drooped low to the ground, something oddly stiff about her posture. Yet despite being within hearing range, she does not turn to answer them. "Lilacpaw! ANSWER ME!" He comes around to her front, trying to force her to answer, to look at him, flinching at the sight he also forces himself to behold.
Staring up at him are glassy, dull eyes that look like they belong on the prey pile instead of on a cat's face.
The passing of her first gathering sitting at home standing guard was the only reason she even vaguely knew how long it had been. Nightwillow had held her back because of her 'recklessness' but its not like she wanted to go anyways. She didn't want to do anything anymore, just sit in her nest letting time slip away as she pulled further and further away from reality. It was easier that way, better. She could do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone she wanted.
No one had to die, no one had to leave.
She knows its not okay, she knows she should be doing more, should be helping more but she can't bring herself to care. There is a weariness in her bones that is too heavy for someone her age and she in her ill-prepared youth does not know how else to bear it. She doesn't remember the last time she talked to someone, doesn't remember the last time she was fully conscious enough to see the faces of her real family, instead of the ones that existed in her mind. Lilacpaw knows she's being a coward. 'But…does it really matter? I'm…happier this way.' And in her own messed up way, she is, she is happier than she's ever been, yet its all smoke and mirrors.
Its not real. Its never going to be real. Her happiness does not ex-SMACK!
Her head cracks to the side, cheek stinging and body reeling from the unexpected force. Right, they were trying to do combat training today. Even though she wasn't ready, even though she had made progress nowhere else.
"Lilacpaw! Pay attention! You're never going to catch up with your siblings at this rate, nearly all of the other apprentices already have this down and some have even caught their first prey, yet you sit here staring off into space!" Nightwillow always seemed to be yelling. She didn't know why they bothered anymore, why they still dragged her out of her nest day after day after day for the same old song and dance.
Nightwillow doesn't know either.
They're trying to be patient, they're trying to give Lilacpaw the space she needs to grieve but they cannot sit here and pretend that they're not simmering with shame at the rate the other apprentices are progressing. He cannot even compare Lilacpaw to her previous progress, because she has made none. It infuriates him, to sit with his fellow warriors chatting about their training and force a smile while he lies through his teeth about how 'despite her grief, Lilacpaw is making steady progress'. They cannot even begin to fathom how many Shadowclanners have lost respect for them due to the kit Pitchstar has decided to grace with warrior training out of pure, unrestrained nepotism. His apprentice had not pulled her weight at all this past moon and a half, when as a newly named one all she had to do was learn. If she caught a mouse, if she excelled at sparring, great! Wonderful! But here she was, not even meeting the bare minimum.
"To think, two leaders have been made of your bloodline, with fine warriors being made of your siblings, and yet you cannot even deign training to be on the same level that your siblings and peers do. They listen to their mentors at least! THEY TRY! YOU DO NOT EVEN SPEAK TO ME WHEN I ASK YOU TO!" They still feel disgusted and unnerved by the dull emptiness of her gaze, hollow in its attention, yet its all they can get from the young molly to show she's even present in the conversation. Day after day after day, he drags this soulless child from her nest, tries to get her to do the bare minimum, and gets nothing in response. Its pride that keeps him from trudging into their leader's den and requesting that Lilacpaw either be given to someone else or stripped of her apprenticeship until she shapes up. Pride that will not allow him to become the laughingstock of the clan because he could not train a measly child in the ways of being an adult, of being a warrior. Them! Of all cats!
So they continue to keep Lilacpaw hidden like a child might a hide a broken toy from their parents. They refuse to take her out on patrols with them, gracefully sidestep her being added to gathering parties, woefully lament that the difference between their apprentices is too great to make a good training session when asked by a fellow mentor. Unintentionally isolating her further into her fantasies, giving her no room to breathe between the waking and the dreaming.
Something seemed to click back into place after Rookpaw saved her from the rogues. Like some sort of fucked up wake up call. She's not sure if she's necessarily gotten…'better', though.
Her mind feels less cotton-y than before, and her body doesn't ache as much when she drags herself out of her nest at Nightwillow's nagging...but she still collapses into her nest as early as possible, stays in it as late as she can, loses track of conversations….all because sitting around in her own head is better than facing reality. Sometimes she gets rather far in her daydreams, feeling slightly more assured with her portrayal and knowledge of her father after asking a few clanmates what he was like and how they saw him and her mother. Some people would call this processing her grief, but when it was just fuel for the fire, it probably couldn't be considered that anymore.
Socializing had become an interesting matter entirely. She found that she no longer knew what was socially appropriate, or perhaps she had never known this at all and her mother's influence had simply protected her from being seen as annoying or uncouth. So, Lilacpaw had begun to observe. She watched the way others interacted, what personalities worked and what ones didn't, who instinctively chose not to interact and who thrived from any interaction at all. She would sit in her dreams and daydreams, practicing what she had learned, simply trying to get the hang of acting as others had, replaying conversations over and over. Though she had never accounted for putting this into practice on beings who were not of her own creation, nor the fact that she hadn't spoken in moons.
Her raspy, gravel on the thunderpath voice would become a point of amusement to her peers, its monotony allowing them to pester her to say certain phrases for laughs. For all its comedy, her voice lost its charm when she got used to using it again, and her monotony became a point of contempt. She would say one thing, and clanmates would interpret it as another. It wasn't long before the shaky foundation on which she built her new life would crumble from the weight of her misconceptions.
Lilacpaw liked to think she's doing better, liked to think she's finally getting somewhere in her life.
"She never says the same thing twice."
Its easier to use her voice now, easier to not be the worthless, wordless child she was before. Learning to put emotion into her sentences was hard, but the more she listened to others, the more she was able to figure out how to make everything flow correctly. She has hope that maybe the more she learns, the more friends she'll make, that maybe she'll grow close with her siblings again and everything will be okay. She missed them.
"What a freak, her voice is so annoying."
"Didn't she basically copy you the whole time you were talking? Its like she doesn't have a brain to think with."
"She didn't know when to leave either, she's such a creep."
She of course, pretends not to hear any of it. She is getting better, she just needs to work harder. It’s a mentality that bleeds into her training, and probably would've made her one of the better apprentices regardless of overwork…..if she wasn't still plagued by her daydreams all the time. Spacing through explanations, perfectly executing moves and tactics…only to have Nightwillow strike her out of her head back into the real world, where she hasn't moved an inch. It wasn't that she wasn't trying, she wanted to be good, she wanted to be worthy, she wanted them to stop looking at her with that face, but distinguishing what was real and what wasn't was the one thing she hadn't been able to overcome.
Her smile felt strained as she walked over to the other apprentices, she still needed to be better.
Leafbare is the worst of it. The lack of prey, severely worsened by the wildfire, leaves Shadowclan grasping at whiskers to keep themselves alive. Nightwillow is constantly going out on patrol after patrol, and finally Lilacpaw is allowed to join them, regardless of her inadequacy, due to their desperation for food.
She never catches anything.
They come home and constantly, time after time, she's pushing her prey towards the ticked tabby, only rarely getting a gruff "I don't want your leftovers." that forces her to choke down every unearned bite. Her body grows steadily thinner under her fur, but Nightwillow's rapidly withers before her eyes. She keeps trying, keeps snatching the biggest piece of prey on the pile once the elders and queens have taken their pick and shoving it into Nightwillow's face. She knows they'd do the same thing she's doing otherwise. Shadowclan can't lose warriors.
'Its okay, you're doing the right thing, they'll be alright. Leafbare doesn't last forever.'
This development continues here, final wordcount is 2,495
- - owowowowow
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[Please ping @/Chérie if this character is needed, instead of this account]
Lilackit- LILACPAW
9 moons, closeted demigirl [currently uses she/her]
A willowy, longhaired chocolate marble tabby with a distinct ruffle of neck and chest fur that trails down her back and white markings, has pale/dull green eyes
Lilacpaw is currently a mirror to those around her, she should be considered a spineless, two-faced cat among her peers, and a rather useless cat to the clan by most adults. She tends to strive for positive attention from everyone, only to have it blow up in her face and spawn negative attention instead.
Has recently lost her mentor Nightwillow to starvation, is becoming increasingly unstable.
Speaks in #AD8AE1
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