Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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The first set of classes that day had ended. For most of the fledglings it was a relief, a blessing in itself. No more learning, no more having to be quiet, no more sitting still. It was recess to pent up school children, it was freedom.
But not for Garnetkit. As other fledglings ran off to play or cause trouble, many meeting up with their own school-yard style cliques and friend groups, Garnetkit was alone and trying to remember in full a more adult prayer to Selene. All the kits knew the simple ones, like the one said to Selene every night. That one was easy, it was mere, "Selene rests above our heads in life so we may follow her with our every step. May her light be a guide for our feet and her night be a cloak of comfort when we are lost. Blessed be her, Maiden of Mysteries, Lady of Puzzles, may her grace be with us forever."
That was all very simple, but there were much larger ones, grandiose ones; the ones her father would say right before he would leave. But they were long, and complicated, and difficult, and most of the time the mothers showed little interest in helping her through the entirety of one. Even the gentlest of them would softly remind them that they were a little young to be memorizing such a complex thing, that she would learn it in time when she was old enough. That when she was made a student and her classes for either being a waxing or waning started, she would be placed appropriately with cats of her same skill and they would make sure that the fact she was plenty advanced already was accounted for.
But that didn't matter. She wanted to know it now and she wanted to absolutely, undeniably be the best at everything. Because she was the luminary's adoptive daughter, because her status meant that she and her siblings had to be the best at everything. Or else they were failures, and she wouldn't accept the latter.
So she continued, trying to put together broken fragments of memories, of times she had heard them from the lower corridors of the estate and through its halls, or from the minister and commissioner in one of the three daily prayers, or from her father, who had, at the very least, helped her with the first verse when he'd last been there. It was difficult, and slow going, and painful. But she was stubborn and persistent, and so she continued.
“Why don’t you go and play?” an idle voice asked from the next column over. Bacchuspaw was sitting a little way away on the square base of one of the marble pillars; he might as well have been leaning against the wall and smoking. The second classes ended, he was just as eager to be out of the stuffy rooms as the kits were — except where they ran into groups, he preferred to contemplate the misery of the last hour in silent solitude. One needed to decompress so one could come alive again for the night, and for that precise reason his body language said do not. Talk to me. If you want. To live. But for whatever reason, now he was the one breaking his unbreakable silence and talking. The question was dry, disinterested, asked in a tone like there was something wrong with the kit; truth be told, he resented most of the fledglings under his care — resented them because they were a compulsory burden of his station; because they were in the way of what he really wanted to do; because they were stupid, and suck-ups, and insufferable. Didn’t matter whether he was the one they were sucking up to — he hated it bitterly. No self-respect.
But because this was Orrerypaw’s kit — because Bacchuspaw went on talking during his classes when the Luminary dropped by to make sure his kits were doing well, the Mother’s eyes the only thing showing he was paying mild attention to the other tom; because he went on folding the kits’ washed blankets on the other side of the room when Orrerypaw visited his kits outside of class, his back to him, pretending not to pay any attention to him as he went on folding in silence — he made some flimsy, unenthusiastic effort now to make sure she wasn’t a reclusive hermit loser. Even if Orrerypaw wouldn’t know he had helped in some way, he still, grudgingly, wanted to ensure the kit he’d adopted for whatever sycophantic, self-serving reason didn’t make a complete fool of him. That she made something of herself. Her adopted father was already terrible enough at socialising; the kit didn’t need to be too.
She already sounded stupid to him — he had no compassion with kits, no tact, no nurturing or patience, seemingly no understanding for the fact they were brand new to life and learning: he expected from them the same things he expected from grown cats, and that meant they inevitably proved themselves incompetent — and that only added to his terrible resentment. He understood why, understood they were kits; but that didn’t stop his expectations from being utterly unreachable. Even the brightest kit was a contemptuous little idiot. To onlookers, it seemed as though he liked to set those expectations so they would inevitably fail — and that wasn’t entirely wrong. He hated his job, and so he needed a reason — and that also led to a certain cruel need to punish the fledglings for being born at all, for saddling him with this role. His insurmountable expectations both validated his resentments (when they got something wrong, he held their gaze for a long moment before slowly turning away, and it was crushing; or he said something dry like ’do you try to be incompetent or is it just something you’re terribly good at?’, and it was crushing) and left the kits unhappy — and that was all he wanted. This kit, though — so far he was being the gentlest he’d ever been with one.
Her small head perked up, at first not immediatly recognizing the voice, or who had asked the question. It was the reason why it took a moment for her fur to slightly spike, for her gaze to widden a bit, for her entire body to go stiff. Because it took her a moment to realize it was Bacchuspaw who was talking to her.
She wasn't ignorant to who the tom was, everyone knew who Bacchuspaw was. He was the mean teacher, the one the bad kids got sent to, and he made the good ones run off to the nicer Mothers with the tears they'd held back just to not receive even more words or looks of contempt. He was the one kits avoided when they could, in absolute terror. Even the worst of fledglings seemed to hold back on their most chaotic edeavors around him, as if even in their boldness they knew there was a line. And Bacchuspaw was that line.
Garnetkit had been lucky to have never had to interact with him much. When he was around, when it was time to pick classes, she clung in desperation to Aurorapaw or Rigidpaw, and if there was no one else, to Conjuringpaw. Anything was better, anything was a mercy, compared to being in a class with Bacchuspaw. She was convinced he was who the bad kits were sent with, because to her small, frail understanding of the world, it didn't make sense that the kits that got stuck with him could possibly be given the kind of punishments he laid out unless they deserved it. And so, mixed with that newfound terror of catching his eye was confusion, what could she have possibly done to grab his attention?
But she was nothing if not obedient, nothing if not gentle and eager to please; at least, to those of authority. And so despite being scared half to death, in spite of the fact she was near shivering with fear and a sort of freezing anticipation, lingering a second longer in a silence more brutal than any word that could be spoken, she responded. "I'm working on a memorizing a prayer." Her voice shook a bit, but she forced it to sound a little more solid than the timidness she felt. If only because it was more polite, if only because they hoped such honest and direct response might save themselves from anything that might come next.
"Memorising a prayer?" Bacchuspaw echoed with dry, disinterested scorn; it was clear he had no desire to continue the insipid ‘conversation’, and yet he forced himself, pushing himself away from the wall to pad over to her with slow, rolling steps. His whole body was a sigh, but for Orrerypaw he continued. "What do you mean, memorising a prayer? Why don't you know it already? What do you do at Vesper — just mumble your way through like an idiot? Memorising a prayer," he muttered again, his lip curled slightly and his cruel gaze averted to the cobblestones of the courtyard in front of them, taking a heavy seat beside her and wrapping his tail around his paws; he kept it between them, like an insurmountable barrier that would protect at least his physical self from being ruined by the kit if he couldn't save his day.
"What prayer?" he continued, his head wobbling slightly with mocking derision as he finally turned it to look down at her. His golden eyes bore into her, unfathomably cold. What he was saying was tell me the prayer and I'll help you; but, being him, he couldn't come out and say that, not without a great amount of sighing. And he wasn't at that point yet, that point of surrender — so, the nastiness remained, in the hope that she would take the initiative and he wouldn't have to stoop to the point of offering. Initiative, that was what they were meant to be teaching the fledglings, wasn't it? To be stupid, obedient little soldiers, but at least to use their heads. "You don't think your father could recite any prayer you asked him?" he continued, drilling into the kit as he looked down at her. "And he's how much older than you? Are you wilfully ignorant or just stupid? Your father didn't have these classes to help him — none of us did. We had to learn all this in a matter of days. And you can't learn it in dedicated classes?" His voice was filled with disbelief, with blame, like she were doing this on purpose. He just kept on — on and on and on. To him, he was being incredibly kind — he was taking time out of his day to help this kit study. To Bacchuspaw, he was being generous and gentle. But it certainly didn't come out that way. It came out as terrifying, all his attention on the tiny fledgling at his side.
In his classes, you either made it or you broke. He didn't believe in babying fledglings — he threw them in the deep end, he kept on at them with such an onslaught of verbal abuse and accusations of stupidity that they could either burst into overwhelmed tears or learn to work under the stress of his cruelty, learn to tune him out and feed off the need to prove him wrong and continue with their task. And, inevitably, the ones that made it through were the top of their class — the top of any class. And only then would they earn a rare smile, because he was proud. Because they had survived; they had proven themselves. And that was all he wanted. His verbal abuse — it had a purpose. It had an excellent purpose. It forged survivors. And the ones who made it out came to appreciate his techniques, his easing off once they had come out the other side, the rumbling, lazy-eyed smiles he gave them when he didn't have to test them anymore. But for the ones in the firing line, the ones who were still being pushed under the raging waters by his impossible-to-please paws, it was a thing of terror.
Her amber eyes followed him, large and terrified, taking in his every movement. But the rest of her, the rest of her was still. Even as he came to sit next to her, she didn't dare turn her head to meet him, not for a while at least. She sat like a statue, keeping up some vain attempt at keeping her poise, her dignity. The shame flushed red on her cheeks under her grey fur, her throat tightened with humiliation, with shame and a hint of choking fear, but she worked hard to not betray a hint of it. If she felt like she was breaking apart, if she felt every bit of her being torn down to nothing, it wasn't dare something she was allowed to potray to the outside world. Even now she maintained some vague sense of the lady-like grace and posture she knew she was supposed to keep. A perfectly sat porcelain doll, trying even now so desperately to remind herself that words alone couldn't break glass.
And it was good that he said it; she was convinced of that. Because even if it stung like needles pressed into her skin, even if she would have preferred to have been beaten and battered rather than had her insecurities listed to her in a way that made her feel so small she would have rather not existed at all, it was at its root a beneficial thing. IIt hurt because it was true, because she was sure only the truth hurt. How humiliating was it, being the Luminary's daughter and unable to recite prayers, how shameful to not come to the right answer like it was second nature, how absolutely embaressing to have to memorize, and not have the answer the very first time. It was unfitting, unladylike, unsophisticated; a failure all laid painfully bare. But now she wouldn't dare have covered it up again, because in destruction there was hope. She's learned as much, that being ripped apart and widdled to nothing was a beautiful thing. It was change, it was transfomation. Selene faded away to nothing, withered herself to emptiness, and then revived as the full moon once more. The moth started as a pathetic worm inching accross the ground, before wrapped itself up in a sedated, trance-like undeath and unraveled into a grander thing. A eye-catching, respectable, beautiful thing. And so too behind her burning pain, there was hope. A faint, silk-thin kind of hope, that was so softly present even as she felt her pride and self-confidence fall to shreds at her feet.
"What prayer?" It wasn't as if she ignored everything else the tom said. No, of course she didn't. They were already words that would stick in her mind long, long after today. Whether she knew it or not, these were foundational, these were forging, and they'd stay tucked away in her heart even long after the exact phrasing had long faded from her memory. But the question was the only one she knew how to answer. The rest she could only meet with a pathetic "Sorry." and a, "I'll try harder." but those phrases already seemed meaningless to her. What good did words mean, they weren't action. They were thin promises to be tossed to the wind until proven otherwise.
She turned her head to him, her gaze reluctantly meeting his. It scared her, it practically paralyzed her -- but it didn't, if only because the fact that to look down would be rude, if only because to not meet his gaze would be impolite. And though she felt more faint and ashamed than ever, beyond scared of what she would see when she met his eyes, she did so. "One of the evening prayers, the one to her aspect as our Maiden of Mysteries." Her voice wavered faintly, but once again she tried desperately to keep it solid, firm. It wasn't to keep an illusion of confidence, she had none of that, she didn't dare pretend it. It was merely in respect to him, and in attempt to keep a visage of decorum befitting of her family's rank; to be submissive to authority was respectable, to cower was not.
It was a strange thing, these ranks, these noble families — because despite their age difference, despite their vast size difference, this fledgling and this tom were, in every way that mattered, equal. Her father, him, her status as the only Luminary’s daughter — they were all on a level playing field. And that made it all feel so strange, because it was like — it was like having an aunt who was ten years younger than you, or like having a sibling twice your age; you ought to have been the same, and yet age cast an odd divide between you. Or perhaps it was the other way around — you ought to have been different, but status cast the odd divide, the odd sameness. Muddied the waters. Blurred the boundaries. Where did the Mother’s fitting cruelty end and the respectful deference of equal rank begin.
When she didn’t burst into tears, when she didn’t turn tail and run to a kinder Mother or break down into pleads about how she would be better — oh, please, I’ll be better, oh, please — like so many of his fledglings did, he felt his liking for her grow. Really, he thought she might end up tougher than her father — he had a concept in his mind, a little wondering that kept him awake at night, that Orrerypaw might be the type to cry when he was particularly frustrated, when he was inconsolably angry, and it made a strange little knot form in his stomach; he wanted to see it, wanted to see everything about the Luminary laid bare. It was senseless, but the hot ball in his gut didn’t need sense.
Garnetkit, though — she didn’t cry. She could be tough as diamonds; he just hoped MoonClan didn’t dampen her into something same-same and unspectacular, another obedient little darling. He hoped she kept some of that resilience. He had enough weak fledglings to sap his will to live. The irritation faded to a low boil, but the hardness didn’t. His expression didn’t change, as bad-tempered and unimpressed as ever. “Oh?” he replied, his voice dry and low and uninflected, like she were drawing blood from stone by continuing this conversation. He had turned his head back to the courtyard, and now he was looking down at her out of the corner of his eye, his brows perfectly, arrogantly arched. “And what do you have so far? And which—“ He waved his paw at her, brows pressing down. “Which of the children are you again? Garnetkit, isn’t it? Your father was a touch on the nose with his naming — sapphire,” there was clear distaste, his nose wrinkling slightly at the garishness of it, “treasure…” Anyone would think Orrerypaw had been born on the streets, the way he paraded the wealth of the kits like it was newfound. The fact Bacchuspaw was faintly uncertain about which one Garnetkit was wasn’t far from the truth — even in his own classes, with kits he saw every day, he didn’t bother to learn their names until they’d done something to strike his fancy and make it worthwhile. Until then, in his head, they were just grey kit, tabby kit; obnoxious kit, insolent kit. When they survived one of his onslaughts, when they came out the other side shaken but still standing — then they got a name. He knew Orrerypaw’s brood by sight, knew they were his first, before he’d come to have his faint, inexplicable fixation on the Luminary, because he’d thought it strange and judgementally, cruelly ridiculous from the disinterested, passing-look sidelines that such a young tom already had adopted kits, second, afterwards, because he’d paid enough attention. But even with them, he didn’t bother with names.
"Garnekit." She confirmed, trying not to betray some relief that she was finally asked a question she could easily answer that she figured would not, could not possibly, come with outright judgement or contempt. She didn't bother to waste time questioning what the tom meant when he mentioned their names being garish, or why he wrinkled his nose at them and talked like they were such a disgusting thing; she wouldn't dare test her luck. Though, truth be told, Granetkit had no clue what a garnet was, or a sapphire, emerald, or ruby was for that matter. She knew what treasure was though, and knew enough to know that all their names were based on very pretty, very valuable things, and she couldn't see anything not worth liking in it; she felt there were much worse things to be name after. After all, there was a kit named Ghostkit, and that name didn't seem very becoming at all, and some of his siblings had been named Skeletonkit and Brotherkit of all things, which as far as naming went, seemed rathe cruel to her. She knew at the very least that she was much happier to be named after a jewel than after something associated with death or being called by her mere relation to her siblings. But again, she didn't dare mention that; talking back, speaking out of line, it would have been a very un-ladlylike thing to do. Besides, if she was going to squander all her efforts in keeping up perfect decorum, she would have wasted it on asking what in the world a Bacchus was anyways, or what an Orrery even was for that matter.
But then she turned her attention back to the original question, and she felt herself grow uneasy again. Because answering this, she knew, would come with judgment, would come with either condemnation or praise -- and she much expected the former to the latter. She had already accepted it even before she spoke; not because she accepted failure, but she accepted that she would be a failure to him. Though she was too young to put the feeling of the walls building around her frail ego it into words, she knew now that she could not, would not live up to whatever standards he set;that even if she did now, she was just as likely to fail with her following words if she were to succeed with her first.It was only a subtle awareness of it, and she picked it out not because she was insightful or could read him so very well, but because she feared disaproval so much that it was in some, pitiful way it was a matter of survival that she realized it so early. Because if she didn't she truly would have broken, because the pain of failing someone who she would have avoid failing would have shattered her. It was different than with her father, she'd already learned she could appease him, that his disaproval came from genuine failure on her part; or at least, something that she felt she she failed on that it was possible for her to fully succeed at. But with Bacchuspaw, the feeling was different; it was disaproving from the beginning, and perhaps in some ways that was why failing him meant so little. Perhaps in some ways there was no failing him, bar from proving herself to be absolutely worthless and never even trying, bar from scampering away pathetic and defeared. There was only earning approval; she had started with rock-bottom contempt, and there was only proving she was worth a tiny bit more than his distaste.
She gave a small dip of her head, as if as a way tacitly, gracefully changing the topic back to the original, before she spoke up up again. "I have the first verse, and pieces of the second." She said, but it felt more like a confession; like only knowing the first verse was some sort of humiliating sin that she was being forced to confess. In some ways it was, because all Garnetkit could do was wait like a sinner for Bacchuspaw to make his judgement, and there was no escaping it now.
“Mm.” Bacchuspaw’s voice, just a low, quiet rumble was unexpectedly accepting — appeased. Still dissatisfied with life, but passingly satisfied with her efforts. Whether it was because he had a hidden soft spot somewhere, a certain nepotistic leniency for kits he took a liking to; or because he knew better than to criticise Orrerypaw’s daughter too harshly; or because he was simply in a drained mood — it was impossible to say. As he went on, his tone was strangely like he was speaking to someone his own age; he didn’t have a specific baby voice, no cooing gentleness — if he tolerated a kit, it was with the same weary, coxcomb monotone he spoke to everyone with. “Well, it’s more than some of my older fledglings — and I don’t see them out here practicing at play time.” His eyes roved menacingly around the courtyard and landed with half a sneer on a small group of kits playing around a broken column, saying ‘play time’ like it were some indulgence he didn’t understand why the kits were allowed to have. Probably the Commissioner’s doing — it would have been better if they had silent time to ponder their lessons. Only someone who didn’t have to raise kits would ever think working them all up into screaming excitement was a good thing; Windsweptashes could feel he was being very fair and gentle because he didn’t have to deal with the aftermath. Another rumble formed in his throat. “The first verse is good enough. Once you have that, you’ll get the rest quicker. Building blocks, that’s how you have to think of it. You have the foundation.” He looked down at her, gaze still dreary and expressionless. “Unless you really are stupid. And then Orrerypaw might think he’s made a mistake and get rid of you.” It was a joke, but he didn’t really have a joking voice either, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you said to a perfectionist kit.
“So…” He shifted around to face her. And now this really wasn’t the sort of thing you asked a kit; total nursery school teacher probing about the hot dad vibes. “Your father, he’s not— there’s not a—“ How did you ask someone’s child this without making it incredibly obvious why you were asking — not that he even fully knew why. He licked his lips, looking as close to nervous as Bacchuspaw could get — which really just made him look more foul-tempered and impatient. “There’s not a— mother in the picture, is there? I don’t mean like a Mother — a female cat. A she-cat. There’s not someone— there’s no one but your father, is there? That… looks after you, I mean.” Orrerypaw looked after his kits far less than Bacchuspaw did, but there was really no other way to phrase what the Luminary did. Come in and look at their fur and go ‘ah, good!’ in that way he did and then leave. His stomach did treacherous little flips at the thought. He couldn’t say he’s single, isn’t he? because that wasn’t what he wanted to know — he was asking for purely… Well, for other reasons. There were other reasons, he was sure. And once he knew them, this would be valuable information. Whatever those reasons were. They would come to him soon. Later that night, probably. His heart hurt. Heartburn. He was a bit young for it, but then being a Mother was stressful. There was no other sensible reason he could think of for the unnatural feeling.
"You're just like the rest." She wouldn't dare say it, but the thought flickered through her mind in a brewing bitter distaste as she sat there, as she listened to him continue on. She didn't know why she had hoped, or why she had, for some small moment, truly believed that he would be any different than the rest of the mothers. Perhaps it was the thought that cold strictness and cruelty had to lead up to something, had to at least mean he cared about one thing; about the kits under his care's perfection, about their success. It was a formational cruelty, it was needed, because in the end, it had to be done. It was such an easy way to rationalize the sorts of things that all of the mother's did, because to some extent almost all of the Mothers were some level of cruel. And Bacchuspaw — Bacchuspaw was the cruelest, and for that reason it seemed to her it ought to have meant that there was something redeeming in that; that perhaps he actually cared about the success of the kits under him, even if that success came at the cost of kindness, of the price of a constant air of contempt and jabs and insults and lingering disappointment.
But he was just like the rest. “The first verse is good enough." He'd said what every other mother there had already told her a thousand times, and if she had been a different kit her air of decorum would of broke, the frustration and annoyance and her own disappointment bubbling beneath the surface might have shown through. But it didn't, she just sat there, taking his next confusing series of questions with a quiet reserve that didn't falter through the entire spiel. Or if it did, if any emotion flickered in her eyes, it was so quick that it was gone a moment later, as if it had never existed at all. The only thing that did eventually break her unchanging façade was the slight raise of a brow, the slightest twitch of a frown on her maw in some bit-back mixture of curiosity and pure confusion at the question, and it took her a couple seconds to answer as she swallowed back any of the more incredulous feelings in hopes they wouldn't show through in her voice. "No. None that I've seen." Garnetkit answered, trying her best not to sound as incredibly prying as she wished she could be.
excuse the poor quality of writing i am trying to get back into actually writing okay content
