Equal parts tall and stooped, Grackletongue has a certain gawkishness to him that is hard to overlook. Every inch of him seems to protrude too sharply, and were it not for his fur, one might even be able to count each rib beneath his flesh. Put simply, he’s miserably thin, almost alarmingly so, with legs that seem better equipped to loft a cat far more imposing than the one he’s grown into.

Likewise, there is no broadness to him, no weight. His face is gaunt, and his eyes, a bright yellow in the monotony of his black-and-white furs, are too bright and have the peculiar habit of always seeming stretched too wide and blinking too little. Yet, for all he lacks in size, he has a propensity for scuttling about and is well known for arriving and departing abruptly and from unexpected places. His paws are equally quick and erratic, though exceptionally deft when set to his weavings.

“I won’t help you after this, you understand? This is the last time.” That was what her mother told her when she found out. It hadn’t been much of a secret, not really. After a moon, no cat could have missed how her belly swelled or the hurried trips to and from the Dirt Place. Every cat knew, even if they didn’t say anything. That never stopped their eyes from wandering to her flanks or the unspoken questions lilting off their tongues. Probing, wondering–who’s the lucky tom?

“Do you hear me? I said–”

“It’s the last time. Alright. I get it.” And it had been. There was only one survivor in the end. The rest were born cold and stiff, not strong enough to draw their first breath. Her mother told her it had been a kindness. She hardly knew what to feel–other than relieved that it was over. That the hard part was through. And yet… even as she stared down at that single kit, black and white like his father, wailing so loudly it made her ears hurt, she hardly felt relieved.

In fact, she felt nothing at all for him or herself.

“Leaving so soon?” And then, more quietly, “Don’t you think he's a bit young?”

“He’s weaned.” That was all Hollyfern could manage from where she stood, barred from leaving but trying desperately to. She didn’t look back at him from where he lay among the moss. She hadn’t looked at him all morning. She’d only taken what of her belongings remained and set them aside, never bothering to speak.

Only now did she, and the words were soft and muttered—just the way they always were.

“He’s only a kit.”

“He’s got cats to look after him.”

Silence. “...I know it’s been hard on you, but–”

“So don’t make it harder. Let me through… please.”

Gracklekit never saw her after that. Only glimpses, and never good ones. She never looked at him, never spoke to him. And when he asked after her, no one seemed to know when she would return.

“Where mama goin’?” he’d ask them. And they’d shake their heads, smile those sad smiles, and tell him, “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”
Once he got older, he hardly thought about her. He liked having his own nest, he decided, and he liked going to sleep without having to listen to her cry through the night. He liked waking up and going wherever he wanted and making rough with any kit who’d entertain him. He liked burying stink bugs under nests and wedging thorns in bedding, and most of all, he liked the feeling he got when the older cats, mean-faced and growling, would get up and give chase.

He’d run them to every corner of camp. He knew all the best ways. He knew where the roots could trip him and the lowest branches to scramble up and over. He knew where to hide and who to run to, and when he got away, he’d feel so exulted by it that he’d sit there and look up at the sky and laugh until he couldn’t laugh anymore.

When night came, he’d trek back to his nest. A queen would scoop him up and clean the burrs from him. They’d fuss and feed him, set him back in his nest, and when the morning came–and it always did–he’d wake up and do the same thing again.
When he was six moons, he said goodbye to the best time of his life. He said goodbye to a great many other things, too. His name went–he was Gracklepaw now–and that old lonely nest. He left behind his favorite bulrush and the old queen with the wet, soppy gums and wetter licks. He left her near to tears, babbling something or other about staying outta trouble, and though he didn’t care to admit it and didn’t like to either, he missed her and the nursery. He missed them even more the first dawn he was prodded awake and set to work.

Then he learned to miss other things–his late mornings, meals served and ready from him straight from the forest. He caught his own meals now, and if he wasn’t up at down, someone came to make sure he was. He dragged himself at the rear of patrols, fumbled his pounces, and most nights, he went to sleep with nothing to show for his long days but a grumbling stomach and a bitter temper.

His only respite was his friends.

When Gracklepaw wasn’t training, they were his escape. They’d dig up stink bugs just like they used to when they were kits, they’d lob rocks down from the canopy onto passerbys, and leap down from the tallest branches of the tallest trees. Each day, the dares got more dangerous. The heights more impossible. It was only a matter of time until one of them got hurt.
“Do you have bees for brains? What were you thinking?”

“Eugh. Would you stop yelling already? I’m trying to sleep here.”

“You’ve been sleeping all day.”

“And? I can sleep some more.”

“Gracklepaw…”

“What?”

Tired. That was how he remembered Brushfire the day after he’d broken his leg. And older–older than Gracklepaw had ever remembered him looking. He had gray hairs in places he couldn’t remember there ever having been any, and his eyes–somehow they seemed sadder, too. “Do you really want this?”

Gracklepaw scrunched his nose. “Want what? A broken leg? ‘Cause–”

“No, I mean this–do you even want to be a warrior?” There was silence after that. Gracklepaw hadn’t been able to look at him, and he hadn’t wanted to, either.

“Sure I do. What sorta question is that?” he muttered.

“It’s just- since you’ve become an apprentice, it’s felt like… maybe you’d rather… do something else. You can barely hunt. You can’t fight. You can’t even remember the code, and…” helplessly, his mentor’s voice faded.

“Look, I’ll learn the code if you want-”

“That’s not it.” Brushfire straightened finally. Still tired, still with that same odd glint in his eyes. “I brought someone to see you.”

Gracklepaw could never have expected that someone to be the Clan’s historian. Gracklepaw hardly said a word as they approached him. They sat by his nest and spoke softly to him. They offered him an opportunity, an escape from the stuffy medicine den, to learn to read and write. Without knowing why he did it, he agreed and began a second apprenticeship.
Under Nightheart’s tutelage for the first time, Gracklepaw felt compelled to try. He had to; otherwise, he would be relieved of his position and returned to his nest in the medicine den. It was the last thing he wanted, so he learned, slowly at first and then quicker with time. His etchings were shoddy, his reading slow and unintelligible, but even Nightheart could not fault him for that, nor could he deny that Gracklepaw worked well into the night to understand them better. And so, with each day, the threat of the medicine den loomed ever farther, and his understanding of the histories grew ever clearer. But another thing happened, too. For the first time, Gracklepaw found out he actually wanted something.

He wanted to become the next Clan Historian, to make more out of his life than pranks and daredevil stunts. He had never wanted anything so terribly. It frightened him just as much as it urged him to work harder, and so with each day, his strokes became more exact, his readings more clear. Before long, he began to surpass some of his peers, but there was always one he could never seem to win against.
“Gracklepaw! That’s my foot!” another Historian apprentice yelped beside him from where they stooped in the shade. Another Historian apprentice had been named; soon, Nightheart would return with them in tow, and they would be the first to greet him.

“No one told you to put it there, pebble-head!” he snapped.

She might have said more if she hadn’t caught wind of Nightheart and someone else–someone smaller, shuffling awkwardly at his side. “Seriously? Him? But he’s so tiny.”

Gracklepaw shoved the she-cat aside, frowning. “Who? Let me see.” He was tiny. And thin. And younger than them both. Even as Nightheart walked alongside him, the apprentice never uttered a word. But he motioned the same way Nightheart did. And as they walked, they would pause, gesture, smile, and nod. Once the two pause, the new apprentice turns his head, and Gracklepaw meets his eye. Somehow, just looking at him irritates him. “What a weirdo…”
“I’d like you to do a record of the season report with Hawthornpaw.” Nightheart’s expression was unreadable when he brought the news to Gracklepaw. Still, Gracklepaw knew the reason he asked. Nightheart had ears. Eyes. He knew about the stink bugs Gracklepaw had been planting in his peers nest–the thorns, the erratic gestures he made in jest when he thought the other was not looking. It was only a matter of time until he caught wind of everything.

Gracklepaw anticipated being scolded of losing his right to study. He had not expected to be entrusted with one of the historian’s most cherished tasks. Not on soft ground or scrap stone, but a permanent mark, to be returned to and read seasons from now. Few were granted such privileges.

Still… “Him? Can’t I work with someone else instead? You know, someone who can actually talk.”

“I’m afraid not. I think the two of you should work together. Look, Gracklepaw, it isn’t right to avoid people just because they’re different. Maybe if you tried talking to him, you’d-”

“Fine- fine. I’ll do it. But I’m not learning any of that stupid sign crap. If he wants to ask me something, he’s going to have to ask me himself. I don’t do all that gesture fox-dung.”

Nightheart could only smile as he always did in the wake of Grackletongue’s stubbornness. But the matter was settled. The next day, the two were assigned and began to work on the season’s report. They recorded the budding tensions, new births, the changes in prey, and the ceremonies that passed. They recorded a great many things together, and the longer they worked, refining their etchings and scouring the stone, the closer they became.

Gracklepaw hardly knew what compelled him to learn sign, but he did, and though his gestures were sloppy and the meaning within them sometimes too difficult to discern, they grew even closer for it.

Soon, the report was finished. They were praised for their work and turned to one another, smiling. Gracklepaw remembered how Hawthornpaw had signed good job at him; he remembered the way he’d flushed to recall it, how happy he’d been.

It was hard to imagine only a moon ago, he had ever thought him weird.
After his leg was fully healed, Grackletongue returned to duties as a warrior. Like with his etchings and reading, he became a mediocre warrior, and when his ceremony came around, he was granted a name that spoke not of his talents but of his inability to ever stay quiet. Grackletongue, they called him, a name he donned with a swell of pride.

Away from Brushfire’s tutelage, Grackletongue fell again into his old habits. When he wasn’t working with the other historian apprentices, he was busying himself with learning a new skill: weaving. Rather than using the talent to reinforce the trees, Grackletongue harnessed his new skill to create traps in the undergrowth and canopies to catch the limbs of unsuspecting warriors. Though some found his antics amusing, others frowned upon his return to form, and he found with each successful prank, fewer and fewer cats desired to be seen in his company.

Though he made good enough acquaintances with some warriors, old friends who had once braved and sprang from the canopies alongside him no longer had the time to engage in his antics.

Soon, Grackletongue began to realize for the first time that he was lonely.

That was when RidgeClan attacked.

During the commotion of the fighting, Grackletongue fled from the fighting into the canopy. Leading a warrior into a trap wedged in the roots of a branch, he could snare his first opponent and escape further harm until the fighting concluded.

When word spread of his snare, he was brought before the other weavers and aided them in learning about new, offensive weaving methods. For the first time, Grackletongue became the expert of something. Cats came to him to learn, not the other way around. Though his hopes held for the Historian position, he found a new calling in weaving.
Whispers of Nightheart’s retirement pass among the other Historian apprentices. Grackletongue listens to them with only passing investment. His time painfully split between his warrior duties, weavings, and historian training, he had had very little time to maintain his craft and has become painfully aware of Hawthorntail’s increasing deftness in his interpretation of the etchings as well. Though the energy between them remains mostly positive, Grackletongue begins to feel further estranged from his companion as their skills far exceed his own.

When Nightheart passes in Leaf Bare, it is not Grackleheart’s name he calls as he breathes his last breaths, but Hawthorntail. As the tom is lifted into Nightheart’s place, Grackle watches solemnly from the crowd. The distance between them seems insurmountable.
With Grackletongue’s hopes of ever becoming a Historian extinguished, he commits himself to learning new ways to expand his weaving for the Clan’s benefit. He begins to specialize not in defensive crafts but in those which can snag and snare prey and enemies alike on the run.

During this time, Grackletongue falls in with a new company–a defector from RidgeClan by the name of Dawnclaw becomes his newfound companion, and he spends less and less time thinking about his old Historian friends. When he does recall them, he reverts to scorning the practice, though a part of him secretly longs for the quiet nights beneath the stars again, practicing etchings in soft mud or reading old passages in the stone. A fact he never admits aloud. That life is behind him now. For good, this time.

Pre-Plotting: Grackletongue is the former apprentice to Brushfire. After sustaining an injury that left him in recovery for moons, he was granted the opportunity to train under Nightheart and learn the etchings and histories, which are the historian’s domain. During this pseudo-apprenticeship, he would meet an apprentice named Hawthronpaw. Despite a rocky start, the two would grow close with time; however, after Hawthorntail was ultimately chosen as Nightheart’s successor, the two have become irreparably estranged.

In terms of alignment, Grackletongue aligns with the cats of the Bark. Though he’s inefficient as a fighter, his ability to repurpose his weaving for offensive purposes, paired with an inherent dislike for outsiders, has made him an asset in protecting MistClan’s borders.

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