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for fox with doefreckle, set right after his revival!
The revival of Doestar ㅡ Doefreckle ㅡ was the talk of the town, a conversation topic passed between mates, mothers and their daughters, fathers and their sons, the notorious clan gossips to those less inclined to weed out the clan's secrets if it took anymore effort than no effort at all, and the patrols chattering their way past the meadows and into the deep of SummerClan territory. Bluebelldream wasn't an eavesdropper by nature but out of necessity; she spent so little time in camp that she was practically a loner living on the clan's land, so leaning out the threshold of her hut or stilling herself when she heard the squelch of their paws and murmur of their voices was crucial if she wanted to stay up to date. Most things didn't particularly concern her ㅡ oh, the deputy left to live in NightClan? there was a one-sided war between Poppymask and the other nursery queens? ㅡ, and it had been a number of moons since the last time any of the news had something to do with her in Wisteriasun's defection to DayClan, so she mostly just kept an ear poised to the source of the news and continued on with her tasks.
Today, her ear twitched and her muzzle lifted curiously. Doefreckle? Well, she was sure she remembered Beetuft, spirits rest her soul, mentioning her late father's warrior name once or twice, something that had existed in the fogs of her memory but now was waking up and stretching its limbs after it's hibernation. "Excuse me-" she called out, but the voices had dwindled until all that responded was the croaks of the toads within the brackish pond water. "Well then. Guess I'm going out," she hummed afterward. "Croaky, you're in charge~!" None of the blank-eyed, unblinking stares changed even slightly, not that she'd have noticed anyway because she was already gone.
A soft, musical hum followed her as Bluebelldream pranced along the well-worn routes that would take her to camp, stopping to greet every stranger. She looked bizarre ㅡ mud-matted, unkempt fur, big and bright eyes, and a gleam in her gaze that could be considered crazed by a stranger meeting the swamp sprite for the first time ㅡ but she didn't care, just merrily went on her way after receiving an answer. It wasn't until she was practically bouncing down the last distance to camp that she came upon the man, the myth, the legend himself ㅡ not that Bluebelldream immediately knew that when she shouted an exuberant "Have you seen my father?" and skidded to a halt in front of a bewildered Doefreckle.
(god what was doe like after his revival, lemme get that olivia rodrigo out)
Everything was different. Patches of yellow daisies had given way to the conquests of trailing jasmine. A little garden had been started outside his old beech den by some obnoxious little princess, filled with plants and flowers with smells that clashed so horribly with the honeysuckle of the camp walls and the sap of the tree - something even a stupid amateur ought to have known. The borders themselves had been changed, opening up to a sea that just highlighted the restrictions and smallness of the territory. All he’d wanted in those awful two years had been to come home - now, home didn’t exist anymore. It was just the cobbled together dominion of a jovial, incompetent leader and a deputy who seemed more suited to trailing after his wife than doing anything actually useful or beneficial to the Clan. He couldn’t sleep in camp anymore. He could hardly stand to be in there during the day. It was just flower crowns, kittens, gossip - oh, Doestar, Doestar, Doestar! He didn’t remember SummerClan cats being so frivolous and stupid, but he supposed he’d always been a blind dreamer. Maybe it was time to move on again. Cut the Mountain Clans completely. What did that leave? NightClan - he’d rather die. SunClan - psychotic. MoonClan - they’d never had a personality for as long as he’d known them. DayClan - Eshek was there, and frankly he’d take any of the other three over living with her. WaterClan, EarthClan, BrookClan - dead, dead, dead. Everything was dead.
Doe was limping back to camp after spending the whole morning since before dawn crouched in front of Shadedsun’s grave, and the grief of that had left him even more hostile than he already was since coming back. The sun was too bright. The earth was too dry. The breeze was too loud. He hated everything, everything—
And a little calico she-cat skidded to a stop in front of him. “Have you seen mine?” he snapped back, not stopping for longer than it had taken him to lean back slightly and lift one forepaw off the ground to avoid being crashed into. He stalked past her. “No? Funny that - shows how someone generally needs a physical description to know who the hell you’re talking about.”
He only got a few paces away before the guilt settled in. Doefreckle hesitated a moment before finally letting out a breath and turning back to her. All the fight filtered out of him like cloudy water. “I’m sorry,” he replied, his voice soft and tired and drained - for the first time he truly felt how heavy his body was, how weak his thoughts were. He tried a smile but it was as frail and bone-weary as everything else, more the sigh of a smile than anything tangible. Everything about him was still a ghost, haunted and angry and afraid. He was trying to be conciliatory, to be gentle, but his heart was too aching, too empty, to truly feel it. “Who’s your father?”
Have you seen mine? Bluebelldream giggled, unfazed by Doefreckle's immediate retaliation and ill temper. She had such a loose grasp of what typical interactions consisted of that aggression wasn't too far off the mark of what she was expecting, especially considering her last one - well, one of any importance - had been with the anguished Lilydawn. She just beamed at him instead, inspecting the way his nose wrinkled up like Tulipdance's did, how his eyes narrowed to sharp slits the same manner as Snowdropwhimsy's did when her siblings didn't fold to her mothering, and most of all at the freckles scattering across him like birdseed across pavement, little speckles of color that also ran the length of her nose bridge and her cheekbones. "You're funny, mister," she said, eyes twinkling.
She moved back to Doefreckle's side when he stopped. "Well, I never got to meet 'em, but my Momma used to say my brother and I looked a lot like 'em. She said he had really expressive, warm eyes like yours, and the most dapper pelt she'd ever seen on a tom before - 'he always liked to be groomed, silly thing!' - and," she paused here, her head tilting sideways and her soft smile softening, reaching her paw out and turning it so the pad faced Doefreckle to unveil the pink and brown dappling, "he had paws like mine. His name was Doestar. I always did want to meet 'em. I wanted to ask 'em all about his life. The things he loved and liked and hated, 'cuz I always did wanna know if it's just me that can't stand olives! All my brothers and sisters love 'em but they're real blech if you ask me! He died 'fore I was born, but... Everyone says he's back! Isn't that something, mister?"
Clearly no one had ever had the 'don't talk to strangers' conversation with Bluebelldream, because she was perfectly comfortable to be completely open with this stranger. He had such a kind face; it created a pang in her chest, suddenly homesick for the warmth and security of her mother's side. She hadn't felt that in moons.
The first emotion Doefreckle experienced was dread. He felt a heaviness like grey, cold lead in his gut as she began to speak, a sort of transcendental awareness of the inevitability of where this story would end settling over him and freezing him to the spot. His eyes watched her with a wariness befitting a rabbit eyeing a fox, lulled in by the peace but waiting, waiting, waiting for that moment when it would lunge.
But as she turned over her paw and his eyes drifted down, the certainty that this was going where he thought it was washed over him like the first sudden little wave when you’re standing on the warm, secure sand - you expect it, but at the same time it’s like the first time your body has ever touched water. Like it’s everything new and pure and soul-shaking, that little shock of current. Doe took a small step back, drawing in a silent, shuddery breath that did nothing to fill his lungs and that barely made it past the painful little lump that had appeared in his throat. He didn’t know why his eyes were welling up, couldn’t make sense of it - didn’t know why his heart was thrumming like that either. But he stayed silent as she went on, wrestling with the tightness in his throat and blinking away the tears again and again and again as he looked down at her, not wanting to interrupt her, not wanting to stop this babbling. He didn’t know what he was feeling, didn’t know what he wasn’t feeling - there was everything. Terror, grief, the flustered insecurity of a life-long bachelor faced with a child, love, relief - a dizzying joy as soft and swift and swirling as air. When he realised, still listening to her chatter because he didn’t want to miss a word of it, that the mother she’d been speaking of was Beetuft fresh tears sprang up in his eyes and he found himself smiling tearfully, his soft brows drawn up and together, barely holding back a delighted sob of laughter at the knowledge that his friend was remembered and loved by this she-cat - her daughter, his daughter. She’d always wanted a big family and now here one of them was. Beautiful and mystifying and more full of life than anyone he’d ever met.
When she finally looked up at him on her last question, Doe just had enough time to wipe his broken paw quickly across his face and softly clear his throat before she glimpsed the worst of how overcome he’d been. “No, it’s not just you,” he replied, and his voice was more loving as it had ever been in his life, softened by a sort of bewildered laughter and more warmth than he thought his heart could handle after all this pain and grief and confusion. “I’ve never liked olives, either. Much too bitter.” He realised afresh that she’d said ’all my brothers and sisters love ‘em’ - present-tense, plural, incredibly plural. He had an entire litter, living and breathing and-and loving olives. He felt dizzy, both with joy and with how utterly overwhelming, how utterly terrifying it was. Brothers and sisters. They’d lived. He had children and they were- the dizziness suddenly caught up to Doe and he sank down into the grass, sitting heavily at a slightly lopsided angle. But the expression on his face was like he hadn’t even noticed - his eyes were misty and utterly lost, but his smile, disbelieving and dazed and joyful, was making his cheek dimple. He looked up back up to meet her gaze. “You’re-you’re Beetuft’s kit? I’m Doefreckle— Doestar. You’re my daughter.” He let out a soft little burst of laughter at the words, an explosion of joy. They were so foreign, but looking down at her, this strange little she-cat with the air of magic and otherness and whimsy sparking around her so softly, with his own freckles speckled across her nose and bewildering mud and twigs caked into her fur, there was no one else he’d have been happier to say them to. She was his daughter. “What’s your name?” he asked gently, that same smile on his face like this was all a dream he’d be happy never to wake from. He’d never felt so simultaneously tired and so completed in all his life, a sort of uncharacteristic thankfulness to the universe that he’d been in the right place at the right time filling his chest to bursting and floating its way up to the clouds.
Her father! Of course it was him and now she had no doubt; Doefreckle's eyes were shimmering, so so sad and filled with nostalgic wonder and then suddenly electrifyingly amazed, and she knew instantly that they were both happy criers because now she was overcome with emotion too, emitting a wet laugh from the depths of her soul. "You hate 'em too!" Bluebelldream laughed a little too often and a little too loud. Even now, she was laughing and simultaneously crying, confronted by her father of all cats, who must have been someone great and wondrously powerful or beloved to have defied death, because she'd never ever heard of someone coming back to life like this! "You hate olives and I hate olives," she repeated breathlessly, voice so quakingly soft and shy as if this moment was the most fragile one she would ever experienced and she was worried speaking louder would shatter it, "and you're my dad and I'm your daughter! Isn't that great? Oh, I have so much to tell you, mister! Doestar! Doefreckle!" She was bouncing on her paws at this point, every word gaining traction and spilling faster and faster until she was almost jabbering one entire sentence in small breaths, but a sudden jar silenced her. The hush that followed was contemplative. "Dad," she whispered, final and punctuated and so, so warm with a daughter's love for her dad. It was like no time had past at all for her. Like he'd been there for day one with her, playing catch and telling secrets and wiping tears.
Doefreckle paused for just enough time that Bluebelldream was already in motion, too soon that his last wonder went unheard. "Come on, come on! I gotta show ya, hurry up!" She'd turned, jarringly sudden, and charged away. There was so much he needed to see! To know! Bluebelldream running through the forest, weaving around golden-brown trees and rampaging through the meadows without a care, was like trying to follow an server to a table, shockingly evasive and swift despite her big paws. She had all of Beetuft's daintiness, that was for sure.
Doe grinned, tearful and filled to the brim with wonder. All his earlier fears and reluctances about having children had disappeared - they would reappear, he would be consumed with self-doubt again, but this daughter... No matter what he came to feel for her siblings, he already knew that she would be exempt from all of it, that she'd be his daughter even as he flinched away from the others, that even if someone pointed out 'but Doefreckle, you seem so afraid of being a father' he'd reply 'but not to her.' "Yeah," he laughed, just as breathless as her, like he was gushing with someone he'd loved long ago but hadn't seen for lifetimes. He nodded along in joyful silence when she asked 'isn't that great?', having no idea what to say and knowing in that moment that there was no need for him to speak even if he did. And when she whispered Dad, a fresh flood of grief, if grief could be happier than anything he'd ever known, filled his chest to bursting and forced him to swallow so he didn't cry; instead, he just let out a sob of laughter. His smile shook around the edges.
And then she was off. Doe watched her for a moment, just completely bewildered in the most incredible way possible by his oddball daughter. All he'd ever wanted was someone who could keep him guessing, who could make him wonder one thing and then surprise him with another - he'd always looked for it in a mate, but now he realised that maybe all he'd ever been searching for was this mad little she-cat charging between the trees. Maybe all he'd ever been waiting for was his daughter. He didn't even know her name yet! She was insane; he was smitten. He followed after her obligingly, letting out another dazed little laugh to himself as he looked down at his paws, the half-grin still on his face and his mind whirling like magic and haar with no stop in sight. "You'll have to slow down," he called out to her where she was running faster than a march hare over and around and under fallen trees and puddles and bluebell patches. There was a patience in Doe's voice, a smile, that had never been there before. "I don't walk very well."
If he couldn't chase her, Doefreckle would certainly hear her crashing up ahead. She seemed to have realized he wasn't keeping up because, after a while of ambling leisurely in the direction of her clamor, he'd come upon her splayed out, pancaked into the earth, her pelt an array of snapped twigs and stolen leaves and even a sleepy dormouse extracting itself from its sudden detainment and scurrying off in between the long grasses, and she would be looking up at him from where her head perched on her paws, big green eyes taking him in again as if for the very first time. "You're slower than a tortoise with two broken legs," she teased harmlessly and looked longingly at where one of his paws dangled limply, but she didn't say anything. It wouldn't be amiss to assume she didn't understand it was irreparably broken.
The rest of the walk progressed slowly, painfully slowly. Every so often her eagerness would overtake her and she would leap ahead several feet, wanting to just run and shout and dance, but then she would recall her dad was here and he was tortoise-slow and she had to show him the way, so she would stop and wait hut all the while her paws would be kneading the heather. Eventually, the heather turned to yellow nutsedge and the firm soil became sloppy, sloshing marsh. "Here," she stopped before they entered to rummage through the split of a willow tree, then turned to present him a bundle of moss speckled by dried, crushed lavender leaves, "Mosquitos are pesky buggers. I can't stand 'em." After so long of applying it to her fur, the soft, sweet aroma stuck to her; her own natural repellent.
Satisfied, she set ahead again, now humming in full force in tune with the incessant sound of the buzzing bugs, croaking bullfrogs, and occasional hiss of a creature further beyond. She looked nothing but absolutely at home, but she did giggle at Doefreckle's obvious disdain, turning back to observe him yanking his legs out of the suction of the quagmire. He is a silly thing, Mama! she silently thought to Beetuft, who she knew was listening all around them, embodied by the ripple of the water and rustle of the trees. She was here and she was happy and she was laughing at her friend too. "Come on, mister Doestar-freckle-dad!" She crowed. "Almost there!"
The shadow of her quaint little abode loomed ahead until they finally broke free into the small clearing. If she were an actual witch, there would be an ever present trail of smoke puffing from a chimney, but she didn't have opposable thumbs and didn't know how to construct a proper building, so it was just a slant of branches and moss and other materials she could stick together and lean against a large boulder. A curtain of lavender strung together obscured the entrance. As Doefreckle stepped forward, the toads stopped their conversations and followed Croaky's example by leaping from the logs into the green-black water, the ripples the only evidence that they were. "Come on, come on," his daughter insisted, nosing aside the lavender and inviting him inside her den.
(i’m finishing my essay tomorrow dont hit me) (my shins i mean, shortass)
Doe limped steadily behind her, and every time he caught up to find her splayed out on the earth with a leg in every direction and half the forest in her fur, or lagged behind too much and sent her dancing and singing ahead like a swamp sprite, he’d just look down at her or watch her with the most genuine grin that had ever softened Doefreckle’s face. She was a wonder, a strange mess of life, utterly accepting of who she was like there had never been any other option at all - it was an odd feeling, to admire his daughter when he knew she should have admired him, but truthfully, she was everything he’d always been too afraid to be. When next he found her, she was gentle enough for a mouse to make itself at home in her pelt; he let out a soft little scoff and watched as it skittered away from the arrival of a second predator even if his daughter should have registered as the first. He grinned down at her tenderly, exhaling a laugh through his nose. “Just the one,” he replied in a purring voice. “And I am a tortoise - that’s why I’m a tortoiseshell.” He was very proud of his own stupid joke.
As they approached the wet marsh, Doe tried not to let the dandy-ish horror at mess make his nose wrinkle in disdainful fear. This was his daughter’s home; he’d be polite about it. He ducked under a swath of dangling Spanish moss, eyeing it nervously and shivering like what he really wanted to do was jump around and get it off when a damp bit trailed over his back. ‘Ducked’, really, was generous - he practically arched his back down to the ground and crawled to avoid being touched by anything wet and gross. But his daughter was showing him around! He had to not be horrified! Maybe it would grow on him, become beautiful and less… disgusting. He stopped when she ducked into the split willow trunk, balancing precariously on his twisted paw to shake swamp gunk from his other one. It didn’t come off; he shook more insistently - and the second that slumped off with a wet thwack to make ripples in the gluggy earth beneath him, two or three mosquitoes started buzzing curiously around that same paw. “Uh-“ He started, trying not to sound alarmed and like he wasn’t loving this - when she returned with the lavender. “Thank you, my love,” he told her softly, forgetting the unhygienic grossness of their surroundings for a second as he looked up into his daughter’s green eyes with a little smile and remembered how happy he was just to be with her in that moment. He brushed the dried flowers over him, bits of purple sticking to bits of his fur he couldn’t see - he’d given up being clean - and then followed her, swallowing a reluctant groan and instead letting out a quiet breath through his nose as he waded into the thick water after her.
But as appalled as he was by the bugs hovering over the swamp and the moss dripping sludge into the opaque, steaming water and the strange greyness of the sky and the trees, and as frankly afraid as he was of what could be lurking around his paws in said water, his discomfort kept getting distracted by his daughter’s humming, by her random bursts of twinkling laughter, by her crassness and her strange brutality, like a child raised by wolves, and her wild sweetness. And eventually, the distractions became all he saw and the swamp drifted away as a part of her he’d grow to love as well - or at least call a truce with. He just watched her as he followed, the small smile never leaving his face. Mister Doestar-freckle-dad! He purred without meaning to, with amusement or with fondness or with all the feelings held within this wild swamp; everything she made him feel was just so instinctive, so happy, so free.
And then what he assumed was his daughter’s home came into sight through the bald cypresses and the haze of gnats and the humid steam. He had to admit - either he was less fussy than he thought, or this swamp was getting to him and breaking down all his polite-society barriers - it was homely. Cute, even. He stood outside it for a few moments, just looking at it, admiring it and her ingenuity and craftsmanship, before she was suddenly nosing him in through the lavender screen. “Oh- yes, sorry.” He slipped inside and looked around with wide, only half-sitting out of that built-in need to ask for permission before making himself at home. “You built this?” he asked in quiet amazement, genuine awe in his voice as he looked up at the slanting ceiling and the dried herbs and flowers hanging from it. “It’s wonderful.” He didn’t question why she didn’t live in the SummerClan camp - he had a feeling he’d have to get used to not questioning things his daughter did; that, or he’d have to loosen up and meet her halfway, maybe even be lured a little closer to her side. Maybe he’d enjoy that, someone forcing him to live less like him and more like her. Maybe one day SummerClan would be treated to the sight of prissy, perfumed Doefreckle at home in a swamp with his feral, Mowgli-syndrome daughter, making mud cakes or hanging herbs for her around her hut.
"You're a..." The joke had evaded her at first, the calico echoing the words when she laughed again, "You're a tortoise! Where's your shell, Mister Dad?" She repeated the question in a flurry of enthusiastic giggles and bounced all around him as she did so, no more than a child gleefully latching onto this source of pure amusement, but then she was off again, reminded of their mission.
Her mirth was renewed by the way her dad looked around as if in awe of her - of her! - grinning from ear to ear. "I stayed with SummerClan until..." She felt compelled to explain her lifestyle, whether because some part of her knew it was unconventional or she simply wanted to fill Doefreckle in on all that he missed, and that's just what she did, diving into it with no preamble while she moved around her den and smashed some things together and busied herself tidying up, straightening out a distinctive wreath made of multicolored flowers and feathers. "Well, Mama loves to play and then she stopped playing with us one day. Everyone was sad. I think the trees were too; they didn't move that day." Thick sadness tightened in her voice, a daughter's longing for her mother evident within it, but she shook it off just ad quickly as it'd come, some deranged delight in her eyes. "The flowers love her. She's a lot of fun, isn't she!"
Doefreckle stayed sitting in the middle of the little hut as his daughter flitted about him in a flurry of herbs and cobwebs and dust and feathers. He didn't know what to do with himself - he wanted to offer to help, like he was a guest at dinner offering to help clean the dishes, but her method of tidying up was so strange that he hadn't the faintest clue how to start. Finally, though, he gathered up the courage to do more than just sit, nervous and out of place, and brushed past her to sit at her side and mimic the way she was tucking stray flowers back into the woven wall. She spoke in poetry, and it took him a little bit to learn how to translate what she said into its bleaker meaning, but he got the hang of it. And when he did, it made his heart break. She's a lot of fun, isn't she! He smiled sorrowfully at his daughter; even as his paws worked, he'd hardly taken his eyes off her. "Beetuft has always been the most beautiful friend to me," he agreed softly, imitating the way she used the present tense. He had far worse coping mechanisms; who was he to tell his daughter she couldn't have this one, when it seemed to make her happy and free? "When we chose all your names, we lay together in a flower meadow and she wove crowns for us. She always did- always has loved flowers as much as they love her." He smiled again, eyes sad and loving.
Sitting back and leaving the flowers hanging loosely in the den wall, he frowned at her. "You don't get lonely, out here?" he asked softly. "Now that I'm here, you can come back if you want to. I'm sure the Clan would love to have you. I would. Or I can..." He trailed off, looking around and trying to swallow down the apprehension. He hoped she couldn't see the faint queasiness on his face at the thought of living in a swamp, but if it was for his daughter - if it was what it took to get to know her, understanding this way of life - then of course he would do it. "I can come stay out here with you sometimes. I imagine you get wonderful fireflies out here at night." He lowered his head from where he'd been looking up at the roof to smile at her. "Maybe I can stay late enough tonight to see them."
Doefreckle and Bluebelldream worked together in gentle, familiar harmony. His actions were almost timid, in a cute way, and she would often find herself pausing to stare lovingly at him, in awe of how he fidgeted and fretted but would straighten himself if he caught her staring, and then she would smile a wide mouth of cracked teeth at him. Eventually, her paws slowed down, stilled, and she was fully engaged in his reverie, leaning forward and listening to his description of her mother. That painful glee blossomed in her chest again with reinforced potency, glistening tears in the corners of her eyes.
"Mama loves our names," she breathed. "She says we're like a meadow, all of us, when we're together. We haven't been since Mama stopped playing." Beetuft held her children together, like sticky honey tying them to one another, but they hadn't been strong enough to stick together after she'd gone. "Do I look like one of your meadow names?" She raised her eyes to Doefreckle, wondering.
You don't get lonely, out here? "No. Mama's here, and I have a nice friend that lives nearby too. Sometimes others come by, but they never stay long, not even Big Sissy." Bluebelldream was utterly content in her little corner of paradise, this special place where she'd last seen her sister. A sneaky breeze slithered in and pulled at the wreath, drawing her gaze to it, and she felt that now familiar, terrible longing in her chest again. Lilydawn's leaving had been far more difficult to accept and understand than Beetuft's death; her mother hadn't chosen to leave her, after all.
