✕ In this life now you kill or you die ▻ " smallpaw "

lichenclaw knew it was for the best. leaving him there, skinless, barely alive, his muscles protruding from his body like unearthed roots of a tree. blue eyes glared at her, his breathing labored as the blood ran down the gully. he wouldn't move, wouldn't stop looking at the forgotten warrior. the tom opened his mouth to mutter a curse, a name, anything to keep his memory alive. alas, as the sun began to melt into the hills, his orbs rolled back into his skull and he gave one last shudder of life before passing onto the next. she tood, nudged his body slightly. satisfied at her kill, lichenclaw turned, kicked dirt on his mangled corpse, and never looked back. 

finally, her father was dead.

the elderly she-cat waited impatiently in front of the apprentice's den. after receiving her assignment from littlestar, she felt less than pleased about their forced interaction. nothing inside lichenclaw wanted to be near the pampered prince, only living son of gorsetalon and shadowclan's current queen of the marsh. bitch. lichenclaw spat on her grave. oh, how she could do so much better at leading these hopeless idiots, the rotting furballs who clung to the carrionplace like the last corpse of a mouse. had they all become so weak they preferred rotting flesh to fresh-kill? leafbare couldn't be that terrible.

"smallpaw!" her angry cry rang loud round the ferns. "get your tail out here. NOW!" leader's son or not, lichenclaw was not treating him as if he were the most important cat on the planet. no. he was to learn discipline, respect, and his place: below her. she'd step on his fat little head, push him down and growl in his face. and if he still refused to listen? a sharp scratch across the cheek to draw blood might be the motivation he needed. whatever lichenclaw needed to do, she would.