YOU CAN MAKE IT TO THE SUNRISE [✦] dream

[Starlingheart]

Starlingheart spends her days stressed beyond belief. How was she supposed to look her clan in the eyes and tell them that the only lungwort they could get was from other clans, that she had scoured the territory and come up empty? She could give them all the chickweed in the forest and it wouldn't make a difference. She does not get a lot of rest these days. Between caring for her kits and her clan she is stretched incredibly thin. It is next to impossible to juggle it all, and without the help from other queens she would be left to drown under the weight of her responsibilities.

It is late by the time she is finally coming to sleep. Her mate and her kits doze nearby and as the moonlight filters in through her dens opening she takes a moment to study them. She loves the life she has built for herself, loves Granitepelt and all of their children, but she feels so incredibly tired in a way that makes her bones ache when she finally gets into her nest. It makes it hard to sleep, especially the past couple of nights. As exhausted as she is she finds that when she lays down her mind will not stop racing, will not stop thinking of all the things she had to do.

With a heavy sigh she climbs into her nest and curls herself around the three small, slumbering bodies, her snow capped tail sweeping over them protectively and then she lays her head on the moss. It will be to her surprise later how quickly sleep comes to her but for now, she drifts off into a deep slumber that she does not remember falling into but that is more than needed and more than welcome.
​

 

[STARCLAN]

When the ebony medicine cat does open her eyes, she will find herself in an unfamiliar place. Unlike the tree-dotted marshes of ShadowClan, she will awake in a forest thick with undergrowth, green and lush and loud as birds sing above. Squirrels scamper along branches, rabbits dart through ferns…it is paradise. She will feel a deep sense of peace settle within her. That is, until the ground near her forepaw begins to shift.

When she looks down to investigate, the first thing she will see is a green sprout worming its way out of the ground. It grows quickly, revealing itself to be a long vine. Tendrils break away from the main vine and climb their way up the nearest tree, adhering itself easily to the trunk. Leaves sprout from the central leafstalk, groups of five. The creeper vine. Starlingheart would not know this, as she had not stood within Fourtrees as starry phantoms delivered their prophecy of the five-leaved woodbine - that is, unless she has heard stories. It had been a famous experience, after all.

The longer she looks at them, the more the vine grows. It slips through branches and across trees, before it cloaks the entirety of the forest Starlingheart stands in. The clusters of five leaves shiver as a crimson red covers them. It is not blood, as it first appears, but simply the color changes brought about by leaf-fall. Still, the leaves do not shrivel and fall; even as time goes on, they cling with might to the creeper vine, unwilling to relent their hold.

The songbirds grow silent as the medicine cat is sent back to the waking world, the image of the famous plant burned in her mind. ​