camp Sweet child (not mine) | forced babysitting

[Bramblesong]

❝ SOMETHING NEEDED ME ONCE ✿°.✧ ————————————
Leaf-bare means fewer kits in the nursery, but there are still a few. And Bramblesong loves them, she does, more than life itself, but when the other NPC queen needs a break from mothering for a day, she does find that they are a bit of a pawful to deal with alone. She is but one cat: she can only keep an eye on so many kits at a time before they are at risk of getting into dangerous shenanigans behind her back.

Kittens are fragile, and leaf-bare makes her overly cautious. More than one kits let out a high-pitched accusation of her being no fun when she puts a stop to some riskier game — they're not wrong, but that will not stop her from doing it. Better a boring kit than a sick one, or an injured one, or— she licks the little one's fur flat despite their protests and refuses to let the thought go any further. They are safe inside the camp, fed and protected and far from any danger, and Bramblesong plays a part in that. If that makes her a spoilsport, so be it: others can be the 'fun parent'. Besides, they are quick to forget the injustice, happy enough to climb her like an old stump or chase after flurries of snow thrown in the air by their own games. She lets the tiny weights clinging to her sides ground her, and suffers perhaps more fur-pulling than she usually would to make up for being a bit of a sourpuss.

She realizes she needs help when they start to send one of their siblings to distract her while the rest climb something that shouldn’t be climbed — be it a den or a warrior resting between hunting patrols. The little hellions are strategizing. Unfortunately for their devious plans, Bramblesong has a secret plan of her own: asking for help. All but unheard of, in these parts, but quite efficient as long as one makes her request sufficiently difficult to refuse.

”Hi, dear,” she chirps at a nearby clanmate. ”Are you free? Would you mind helping me keep an eye on them for a bit?”

And, saying this, she grabbed one of the NPC kits trying to climb up the nursery wall by the scruff of their neck and plopped them between her clanmate’s paws.

———————————— ✧.°✿ AND I KNOW SOMETHING WILL NEED ME AGAIN ❞ ​

// tagging @SMOGMAW and @LlLACPAW but anyone is welcome to reply before them!​

 

[Starlingheart]

Life was difficult for the young black and she cat, and now that Bonejaw was gone it would only get harder. Desperately does Starlingheart wish to go back to the days when she was just Starlingkit - when the only thing expected of her was to play moss ball and receive badger rides. Although, she reflects, her kithood had not been all sunshine and rainbows either…

She would do better, if a clan mate fell ill she certainly wasn’t going all the way to River Clan to look for help, she knows that for a fact. Still, she worries that she will not be enough, that she will never be enough.

These thoughts in mind she heads to the nursery, intent on checking on the kits. That was something that a medicine cat did right? She had never lived through a leaf-bare before but she had heard that kits born around this time did not have the best of luck and she worried for all the little scraps that lived among them.

What she is not expecting is the sudden call from one of her clanmates as she approaches. "Who- uh uhm m-meeee?" she asks with a surprise squeak. Surely, she could not be talking to her. She freezes, panic gripping her mind. Would it be rude to say no? Would it be shirking her duties to say yes? She blinks, frozen otherwise by her indecision.
​

 

[Magpiepaw]

"STARLING-" His voice is a pitched crow, strained and forcefully emphasized as if the words were bigger than his mouth, but he recognized the black and white she-cat and cheerfully plodded over on his wibble wobble steps; rocking from side to side as he approached and carrying between his teeth a sleek black feather that was almost a blur as his head rocked back and forth in a rapid nodding motion with each fumbling step. Finally the kitten arrived, clambered across Bramblesong's paw and spun the feather around in his teeth with a lolling pink tongue so he could grip it by its unfurred end and chew.
"We're going into SPACE." Magpiekit declared, explaining the other kittens frantic attempts to scale the wall much to the queen's displeasure. He himself had not tried it yet because he had a problem standing upright on his hindlegs without falling over, so right now he was just enjoying watching the scurrying about as the rest had their fun.


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[SHARPSHADOW]

† Kits are funny. Too funny for her liking, really. Or maybe unpredictable was a better word. Working without thought, random in a way that was not fun. Shadowclan had a list of unspoken– well, and spoken rules for the most of them. What not to say, what not to do. But kits were too... little to know the rules. Too little for you to know what will really upset them. You won't know what might make them laugh or what might make them cry. It's too much of a hassle. She doesn't know how Bramblesong does it.

No, she would not be participating. But she can't help but drag to a stop, a slight tremble in her form at Magpiekit's yelling. Maybe not yelling, but... a horrible, horrible way of talking. Wrong and somehow wordy, even if it was only one word. It doesn't make sense as she thinks it either. Neither did it when it left his mouth. Despair-scrunched face, claws unsheathed reach to barely swipe across the flattened backs of her ears. Full-bodied declaration just to say something that doesn't even make sense, in the end. With a pained look, she looks to Starlingpaw, and then to Magpie. "W-what?" warbling question as he frowns at the kit.​