From the moment they were born, Cherrykit and her brother Whitekit, were destined to walk a different path than their fellow Clanmates. The union of Snowbird and Thunderfang had been one of settling for second best and desperation; for the libidinous Thunderfang, deciding to be Snowbird's mate had almost been considered a personal mistake on his part, as he wasn't the sort of tom who enjoyed being tied down. Snowbird, however, had a clingy, almost repellant personality, the homebody type that was sure to cramp Thunderfang's style in every sense of the word. The two, however, had known each other for as long as they'd been alive, and perhaps out of personal favor to her or Thunderfang recalling their long and varied past together, the two officially became mates.
Even Thunderfang would admit, for a short while
he was excited for their upcoming offspring, which were sure to be wonderful warriors in the making, as good looking as their father, with their mother's tenacity, surely. What he
got, however, was two small, weak, pink-skinned, white-furred,
red-eyed little demonlings and a dead mother who'd lost too much blood. Disgusted at these cursed offspring, upset over Snowbird's entirely unnecessary death, Thunderfang honestly considered putting LightningClan out of it's potential misery by killing off his two newborn kits, which had currently been taken in by a very kind queen called Frostbreeze. Surely nothing good would come of those red-eyed little darklings, with their fur as white as snow and their eyes as red as blood.
Unable to bring himself to end their lives and cut out his last loose end to Snowbird, Thunderfang simply went on his way, pretending that they didn't exist. Cherrykit and Whitekit, as they were named by Frostbreeze, grew up not knowing their father, and as far as anyone was concerned, Snowbird was a distant memory, Thunderfang out of the picture, and Frostbreeze their only true link to LightningClan thus far.
It was not a promising future.
Right away, there was a distinctive line of separation between little Cherrykit and her brother Whitekit. While Whitekit was charismatic and fun and polite, Cherrykit was shy, awkward and had trouble relating to others. She was a poor reader of her fellow Clanmates, and her self-esteem had been clipped of it's wings even before it knew it could fly, what with how much the other kits and other queens avoided and ostracized her. Frostbreeze was her whole world for a while, Cherrykit jealous of how easily her brother was able to make friends - perhaps because his eyes were not as red as hers? Maybe he was more fun than her? - Cherrykit spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
Frostbreeze seemed to never grow tired of reassuring her precious adoptive daughter that there was nothing
wrong with her, that she was perfect and just needed getting some getting used to, that was all. Had it not been for her surrogate mother, Cherrykit likely wouldn't have made it through her apprenticeship at all.
It was no surprise that there weren't very many cats bursting at the seams to mentor the less sociable, conversationally awkward Cherrypaw, and others were still startled by her simply
looking at them, much to Cherrypaw's misery and anger. The word was such an unfair place in the ruby-red eyes of the she-cat who had been born just a little different than the others, so it was to no one's greater surprise than her own when a tall, ambitious tom stepped forward to become her mentor with no sense of remorse or fear about this decision whatsoever.
His name was Serpent-tongue, and he was, quite possibly, the best and
worst mentor for the young, easily impressionable Cherrypaw. The warrior had perhaps assumed he would become a running candidate for deputyship if he had proven himself to frequently go above and beyond the call of duty by taking on an apprentice no one wanted, and molding her into a fine-tuned weapon LightningClan could use whenever they pleased. Of course in the beginning, he was quite conscious of her personality and sought to make friends with her, something that had never happened to Cherrypaw before. With the popular Serpent-tongue as her mentor, the other apprentices soon grew curious of the little red-eyed thing that the well-respected warrior had seemed so eager to teach. Cherrypaw did not have the genius of her brother Whitepaw, but she was still a quick leaner, and what she lacked in social understanding, she made up for in battle skills and agility. She was the best climber in LightningClan for a while, a skill that was hard to come by in a territory that had about as many trees as they had apprentices at one given time. Cherrypaw always felt better when she was in the trees; she felt safe from the staring, frightened eyes of her Clanmates, she felt free up above the judgmental world below her. She felt
happy up there, as though she could finally allow herself to smile and enjoy life.
Serpent-tongue did not encourage this kind of behavior, not when he wanted nothing more than to turn her into a warrior that would make all the apprentices her own age seemed paltry by comparison; Cherrypaw became everything Serpent-tongue needed her to be. Her hunting abilities were not prize-winning, but Serpent-tongue would have settled for less considering how well she excelled on the battlefield.
Eager to show to the other apprentices that she
was worth their time and attention, Cherrypaw sought out a way to make them change their opinions of her.
She succeeded, though not in the way she had originally planned on doing so.
A group of apprentices - Hazelpaw, Springpaw, Gorsepaw, her brother Whitepaw - had allowed the odd little Cherrypaw to tag along after them, and it was while they were playing along the edge of LightningClan territory that something strange happened. A rogue, half starved and fleabitten, had attacked the young group of would-be-warriors. The timing of this attack put the group at roughly 9 or 10 moons, old enough to handle an attack, but not quite
skilled enough to get rid of him. At least, that's what the rogue had been counting on, and the way he licked his lips and eyed young Gorsepaw in particular, desperation had turned the rogue into nothing short of a cannibal.
What was quickly turning into a nightmare was abruptly put to a stop by the actions of Cherrypaw, who had managed to get into a nearby tree and jump down onto the back of the scrawny, murderous rogue. What happened next, no one had really been prepared for.
With a well-aimed bite to the back of the neck, Cherrypaw killed the rogue.
Rather than earn the praise and the thanks of the apprentices she had saved, they instead looked at her with horrified and frightened eyes; Serpent-tongue had succeeded alright. He had turned her into the perfect little machine - a cat who could kill without remorse, and had the emotional stability and ability to go through with it. In the eyes of her Clanmates, he had made her a monster, who could turn on them at any second.
Cherrypaw was devastated.
She didn't try to impress them again.
~*~
Her warrior ceremony was uneventful, and full of half-hearted cheering, the loudest of which was more or less her brother, Whiteshade, who had been made a warrior a full moon before her thanks to his heroics at the battle of Sun Stones. Newly dubbed Cherrypool, the quiet she-cat had turned cynical after the issue with the rogue, and for a while her only friend was Serpent-tongue, who was overall quite pleased with how she'd turned out, completely ignoring the fact that she had about as many friends as a coyote did. Her life was uneventful for the first few moons. Uneventful, and lonely.
Around the 30-moon mark, Cherrypool was still nowhere near as popular as her brother, and she had a few cats who were brave enough to speak to her or could ignore her odd looks long enough to hold a conversation. It was right around this time that Cherrypool met Wildclaw, a StoneClan warrior that would do nothing short of change her life. For whatever reason, Wildclaw had not been afraid of Cherrypool, but rather he found her quite pretty, with her pure white fur and her ruby eyes, he didn't look at her with the same misunderstood discomfort that everyone else did.
Cherrypool, who had never known this sort of affection and had never guessed it would happen to her, drank up everything he ever said. Even though it was against the warrior code, Cherrypool kept seeing him. Wildclaw was likeable and friendly and respected her; he was everything she hadn't known she'd wanted. It wasn't until after they had secretly declared themselves mates that Wildclaw started asking all of the wrong questions.
He was not as perfect as he seemed. Figuring he could use Cherrypool to spy on her own Clan - after all, what had they done for
her lately? - Wildclaw encouraged her to tell him as much about LightningClan as she could, even going so far as to ask how many lives her leader had left.
Horrified and disgusted with being taken for a fool, in a fight of rage the she-cat slayed her mate. He hadn't even seen it coming, and it was with a gurgled, horrified cry that he whispered the words she would have given anything to never hear;
"You're a monster."Yes, yes she was. Had Serpent-tongue made her a monster? Had she just been
born a monster? What was it?
There was time to debate just what she
was later, at that moment she had a body on her paws and no possible solution in sight. Remembering how the apprentices had freaked out when she'd killed that rogue, Cherrypool knew better than to bring the body back with her. Instead, she enlisted the help of a serious if not ominous medicine cat by the name of Rookfrost. Just as she'd predicted, he agreed to bury the body in the mountains and helped Cherrypool cover up the murder. In exchange, Rookfrost asked for nothing. That alone was a frightening concept, the idea that he was so ready and willing to help a Clanmate cover up a murder - there had been no mention of StarClan whatsoever, and if Cherrypool had had to wager a guess right then, she'd say he didn't even
believe in StarClan. After wiping the mud off his paws, Rookfrost coldly informed the albino she-cat that if he had need of her services in the future, he would let her know.
Cherrypool could do nothing about that, so she agreed, and they parted ways as accomplices and went back to pretending as if they didn't know one another very well.
Cherrypool eventually confessed to the murder of Wildclaw to her brother Whiteshade, who had known about their secret meetings a few weeks after they had begun, and much to Cherrypool's relief, he didn't judge her for it, and promised to keep this secret. Feeling closer than ever to the brother she'd secretly admired and been jealous of for as long as she could remember, Cherrypool has become ferociously protective of her brother - not that he needs protecting - and has made it clear to all that to take on one sibling, is to more or less take on
both.
Still with very few friends, a failed romantic relationship, and a body-count that is fortunately still in the single digits, Cherrypool has not made herself the most popular warrior in the Clan. But she has convinced herself she doesn't care, there's no one in the Clan really worth knowing anyway, no one in the whole
forest, for that matter. Taking on a sharp tongue and a 'whatever' attitude, Cherrypool does what she's expected of her, and in times of battle, she allows herself the freedom to go as crazy as she wants to, so long as she doesn't kill anyone again. She will never admit this to anyone but Whiteshade, but the ease with which she had dispatched the rogue and her former mate have frightened her to the core. The others many have already written her off as a monster, a demon from the deep, but Cherrypool is still holding on to the edge of reason, that she
isn't a monster, just a bit...misunderstood, that her soul has not already been damned by her actions.
That there's still enough time to change.
