GALECLAN Warrior - SHE/HER

Eaglebone was not a violent cat. Gentle, patient Eaglebone—who played with the kits and brought food to the elders—was full of anger with nowhere to put it. She stalked out of camp on powerful shoulders, heedless of anything but the burning, useless frustration that drove her.

It lead her to a cluster of sunflowers that had sprung up earlier that greenleaf. Although there hadn't been any others of their kind in sight, the fuzzy stalks had appeared and grown thicker and taller, putting out new spade-shaped leaves until finally a crown of enormous golden flowers had burst open at the tops.

Now, the stalks had turned straw-brown; the leaves drooped down, fluttering dryly with a noise like locust wings. The great flower heads still topped the stems at weary angles, though they’d lost some of the mane of sunburst petals that gave them their name. A tiny gray bird gripped the disc of one flower, probing at the surface with its beak. When the wind blew, it shifted weightlessly with the swaying of its perch.

It chittered an alarm call at Eaglebone's approach and winged away, but she wasn't here for prey.

At the base of the stand, she reached up, paw over paw; her spine curved like she was sharpening her claws. Instead, she hooked her claws in deep to the hollowed stem and pulled down. The bristles scratched against her pawpads. She relished the discomfort like the prickle of sharing tongues. The thick stalk crackled, strained. At its top, the shorn head of the flower shook gently with a faint rattle.

Eaglebone thought of OrchidClan, of the covetous hunger that had seeped into the space that should have been mourning or at least sympathy for GaleClan's loss. Of their disrespect. As if they were the only ones that mattered, or the only ones who deserved to survive leaf-bare.