AN: A challenge to write 900 words about a forgotten character: Webfoot.
I made it about him joining the elders so young: He was an elder in The Sight, but he's slightly younger than Cloudtail.
I don't know why, I just felt older than I was.
I think the journey and fights got to me in the end. I was never really a healthy kit in the first place, my mother thought it would be better when I got older.
It didn't, really. I stayed weak, always second best. Never the best warrior or apprentice, I never got on with other Clans, or stood out in battle as being someone to worry about.
They should just leave each other alone, the Clans, or friendships and romances will form more than they do already. Look at what happened with Crowfeather and Leafpool! Lying to their kits, their Clans, causing heartbreak and sorrow.
It isn't like the Clans needed each other before we moved to the lake. We were fine by ourselves, feuding and fighting, stealing prey, herbs and even kits when times got tough! It wasn't by the warrior code, but it was what we did.
Well, maybe when we were starving, we needed help. But didn't everyone? We could never have shared. We needed every spare piece of prey back then, but we couldn't send out long patrols, because our cats were too weak to hunt much at all, and we couldn't eat rabbits, as they were poisoned.
But when we were safe, we didn't need ThunderClan, we needed a leader. And I thought that the leader for us was Mudclaw.
He had been deputy for a long time after Deadfoot died.
He was my mentor before that, and Crowfeather's, however disloyal and sharp-tongued he is, he has good skills that Mudclaw taught him, not Onewhisker, an inexperienced warrior with a friendship with ThunderClan's leader.
Sure, we owed a favour to the tom, or two, maybe, but making friends with him, and maintaining that friendship would make us look like we depended on ThunderClan a lot more than we did.
And if any Clan has an oversized ego, it's ThunderClan.
Living in a prey-rich forest, trees to cover them and a safe hollow with steep edges, so steep warriors could be killed if they fell, rather than our own alcove in a hill, open to attack.
Fighting any cat who they think crosses their poorly marked borders, making out they want peace, but still fighting anyone.
So, Mudclaw would be better. He had no friendships in other Clans at all, had been deputy for a while, until Tallstar apparently appointed Onewhisker deputy before he died.
I didn't believe him, of course. There were few cats who saw him die. Firestar, Brambleclaw, Barkface and Onewhisker.
A kittypet leader, his friend, the son of Tigerstar and an old medicine cat. Not much to go by when you have a much more powerful warrior who was deputy and rightfully leader, well, in my opinion.
So we fought for the right to have the real deputy as leader, the one who had proved his loyalty to WindClan many times over.
And we lost. Our leader crushed by a falling tree, it must have been a sign from StarClan that he wasn't meant to be leader as I had thought.
I tried to make it up to Onestar, over and over.
But I always seemed to get back on his bad side.
I didn't want to be. I was just a warrior, younger than him, who had a weak immune system and had to leave the service of my Clan, all I could do was sit in the nursery, telling a story about an ancestor I made up to look a bit cooler in the kits' eyes.
But it never worked. They loved my storytelling, but by the time they were made apprentices, they didn't want stories, and boring elders with problems with ticks and fleas, seemingly too old to change their own bedding.
They wanted battles, blood and hunting.
Too much of that for one kit. He went the wrong way, gaining injuries that appeared from nowhere, hurting inside because he never thought he was good enough.
He tried to change to be someone to follow, but he did it the wrong way.
Some cats aren't born for greatness.
Or born to be remembered, good or bad.
When he knew good wasn't working, he tried bad.
But he still wasn't cut out for it.
I wish he'd seen me as I saw him, I wish he'd given me a chance to be a father figure.
He died in his sleep, covered in wounds. I don't recall a vigil.
And he didn't go to StarClan.
WindClan wasn't his Clan, so StarClan couldn't be.
He went to the darkness, and didn't spend long there.
Just shoved aside for ThunderClan.
Mates and kits.
And I'd tell them, nothing comes if you don't try. But if you try and lose, you'll never get it.
I tried to make the right choice about who was the leader. I tried.
But I failed to see it through, win the trust of my leader, and I could never win trust again.
Never win a battle the way I could before.
Never hunt rabbits, chase them across the moorlands.
I made the wrong choice, and I paid for it.
I'll be remembered as an elder, or a traitorous warrior, or a weak apprentice.
Never strong.
Never strong.