And A Yellow Moon Glowed Bright

and a yellow moon glowed bright

Years later, when Ivypool herself is only a memory and before she’s completely lost to time, she’ll look over ThunderClan, wherever they might be, and still look for her daughter in every face.

The stories have it wrong already, and the truth will be dust before long. Bristlefrost isn’t alive in their memories. She’s twice-dead, drowned in black, choking water, a light snuffed out too soon. Bristlefrost was the prodigy — the daughter cats dreamed of, the first to find her voice and her paws, the leader of her siblings, the apprentice who did not graduate even earlier than she did because there was no prey in the forest to be found, not because of any failings on her part.

Cats starved, that long winter. Not Bristlefrost. Never her daughter, her clever, resourceful last-born. And she had once occupied this spot, designated for deputies, even though she’d never had an apprentice of her own. Would never have an apprentice of her own, now, even though she deserved it more than anything. Even though she’d deserved to stay deputy, but had given the role over with a smile, no hint of dark ambition in her gaze.

Ivypool steps into the deputy position under a brand-new leader with a whisper instead of a bang, the pounding of blood in her ears the only reminder that cats had been here before — that cats had died here before, and that Bramblestar’s first deputy becoming leader was a fluke, an odd quirk of fate. It hasn’t been done in living memory, nor long before that. Leaders do not usually step down, and when they do, they rarely stay with their Clan, or even within reach of their territory. First deputies do not often become leaders in turn. Usually this event is a bittersweet one, with a body or bodies laid out in the clearing, their eyes closed swiftly to avoid the rigor of after-death, but this is almost-peaceful, with only the murmurs of those who could not easily accept change as detractors.

Ivypool will die long before Squirrelstar. She’s—surprisingly okay with this, but she thinks she’s been at peace with her death since before Hollyleaf had stepped between her and a deathblow from one of the only friends she’d ever had.

(“You were my friend!” Ivypool screams in her worst nightmares, Hollyleaf’s blood dripping from her pelt.

“I was never anyone’s friend,” Hawkfrost murmurs in return, something aching-sad in his voice, Hollyleaf’s lifeless form pinned under his claws. “I was born to what I am. We’re the same, you and I.” He pushes the black cat away from his paws with disgust — not for the body, but for Ivypool herself. Blood bubbles from the horrible wound at the corpse’s throat. “She should have been the one,” he says sometimes, in the ones that shatter her already pieced-together heart. “She died in your place.”

“I know,” Ivypool says, and she does know — she knows it more than anyone else alive.)

“It should have been Hollyleaf,” she says to Squirrelstar, quietly, at the end of one of their dusk meetings.

Sorrow flashes in Squirrelstar’s gaze, but it’s buried as soon as it comes. “It’s you,” she says. “It has always been you.”

It is not a truth — not in the way Ivypool remembers them from her childhood — but it is not a lie, either. Hollyleaf chose her, in the way dying deputies might choose their successor. She is always an echo of another cat burned by starlight. It is a comfort, sometimes. In others, she begs the spirit who’d saved her life for mercy, for clemency, until she runs out of breath.

(“I’ll find her,” whispers a voice Ivypool had almost forgotten, in dreams she forgets as soon as she wakes. “I’ll walk the skies ceaselessly, I promise you.”

But there is no bringing Bristlefrost back, and a part of Ivypool has died with her.)

When Ivypool wakes, her Clanmates breathe around her, steadying her rabbit-quick heart. Fernsong’s tail wraps snugly around her flank, Thriftear curled only one nest behind, and she does not lose her breath at the way Flipclaw’s dark tabby stripes curl over his spine. She hasn’t in a long time, she knows, but the impulse is there, sharp as ice underneath her ribs.

(She’d once thought his brown tabby pelt a punishment from the stars. She loves her son, would give her life for him, but the feeling that StarClan may have meted some punishment down in the shade of his pelt remains long after he’s received his warrior name.

She’d begged Bramblestar to give him a suffix that was as unassumingly kind and silly as her son always was. Instead he’d given him -claw, as if to remind her of her failings. She is not sorry to see his form slip into the elders’ den, bereft of the nine lives he’d once so jealously hoarded.)

Day one of Comic Con complete!! I had so much fun with this cosplay. Shoutout to the one person who recognized me 🫶

The Sandman Memes Masterpost

Since the memeposting on my blog has gotten out of control, I have decided to collect them all in 2 masterposts, which will hopefully be updated as new stuff comes along. Enjoy!

The Sandman + Text Posts Collection (the OG memes)

Dreamling dynamic & the Geneva Convention

Dream's attitude towards Hob through the years

Neil's reply 1 & 2

They are both immortal

The hallucinogenic sand

Dream & Matthew in Hell

Hob & Death are friends

Doomed by the Narrative But I'm Gay

The Sandman if Morpheus went to therapy

What makes an Alpha male

The M25 was hell

Hob knows what’s up

Meowpheus

Pspspspsps Meowpheus

More Meowpheus

Hob Grumbling

No worries

Galaxy brain Neil

Tender Dom Hob

Small angry dog

Hob's BDE

A whole ass meal

Hob’s Tenure / Among Us

Dream’s Funeral

What part of 👀 did you not understand

Rise and shine

Dream is a danger to humans

Dream alignment chart

Prince consort

Chernobyl / Hob’s different

Smegmatic sausage

Medieval portraits

Can you be a bit romantic

Babygirlification

Hob the narrative foil

Reverse gaslighting

Assume, bitch

Lustful gaze

Brown eyes

Chernobyl / Hob’s different

G-spot

Suffered more than Jesus

Hob’s silence

Bisexuals & long hair

ADHD Hob

Fanbase & that one line

Feral4Feral

Fair Maiden Dream

1337 Speak

Dreamling in a nutshell

Stupid4Stupid

Dream’s evil

Julius Caesar & friends

Fuck it we ball

Problematic ship and I still ship it

Hob hates Shakespeare

Missing signals

Couples therapy

Disaster

Dream and his ravens

Lucifer has Hob

MasterCard

Mercenary Hob

Karaoke Nights

Hob and vampires

Normal amount of thoughts

Unstoppable force and immovable object

◇ my sweet boy ◇

Academic weapon (I type one sentence then pick up my phone.)