Modest in stature and coat, Midgecloud is a plain-faced, long-haired silver-and-white tabby—unimpressive except for the feather plume he caries in his wake. He stands shorter than most of his peers and has foregone his contemporaries’ hard, lean muscles for a generous swaddling of fat. In this way, Midgecloud is not built for headlong springs and breathless hare chases; instead, it entertains a more sedentary living, tending the soi. His eyes further denote his gentle disposition; they are a soft green, rounded as the rest of him is, and set beneath two small ears. Though deeper than one might expect, he has a kindly voice and has a habit of interrupting it in soft clearings of his throat and thoughtful stalls. 

Due to his line of work, Midgecloud’s coat is perpetually riddled with flecks of dirt and scraps of leaves. No amount of grooming or routine has ever spared him their stubborn hold, and as such, they are as much a symbol of his person as the wispy tail he is always hauling behind him.

It was the roundness of her body that forbade her descent. And her sister to deal with the finality of such news.

Barring her path, grim-faced, did one forbid the other, and the other, grasping upon her dignity and pride, leveled a stare that ached with need and longing. “I can’t use the tunnels?” And it was echoed—words already spoken, uttered again to ensure they had been heard.

“Just until after birth,” Brooksong told her, and there was wisdom in the words. She had been laden with her own kits once and had turned her back on those winding passages, too. “A few moons after. Once we’re sure, there are no complications.”

And so the matter was left, begrudgingly, and Riverstripe returned to her nest, impatient for the little lives that kicked and churned inside her to be born so that she may return to those earthen halls again.
There are three kits in total—all small, all pitiful in their own ways and grasping desperately to life. By sundown, one of the three surrenders; by sunhigh, two stubbornly remain. It is the children’s father, Antstep, who gives his two remaining sons names in the wake of his mate’s grief—one he declares Stonekit, after his mate, the other Midgekit in a likeness to himself. And days later, a third name is given to the one buried beneath the earth. Claykit, Riverstripe names that one for the earth that covers her.
After they had names, and after their sister had been buried, there was a lightness about the nursery, which refused to acknowledge their mother’s grief. Visitors come, bustling and yearning to loom over them with their great big eyes and fawning words. It is said they’ll be tunnelers, and all agree. Even Riverstripe, proud beyond words, cannot deny them, and her heart swells for her sons and their futures that will be so much—she hopes—like her own.
As though by magic, Stonekit grew—larger and larger still until Midgekit could not stand as his equal any longer, and their denmates (what of them were an age with the two) stood sullenly in his shadow. There were no more whispers of his becoming a tunneler, though they whispered those things of Midgekit. Midgekit never fails to see how his brother’s growth disappoints their mother, though he hardly knows why. Stonekit is stronger and healthier than he will ever be. And stronger, too.

What more could she want from a son?
“It’s just a cough, it’ll pass.”

That was what they had told his mother when she first awoke in the night to the sound of his spluttering. But it did not pass, and with each day, Midgekit grew weaker, while his brother grew stronger. He succumbed to fits of sickness—the coughing, hacking kind which left him too tired and sore in the throat to do more than whisper, and that hurt his flanks terribly whenever he laughed. But there was always honey to soothe his throat, and no effort could keep him from laughing at his brother’s jokes.

With time, he came to tolerate his ailing body. He learned to stomach the bitter taste of herbs and stay always away—at his elders’ request—from rain and puddles and all things which might chill and plague him further. He never learned to tussle as his brother did, for always after would the coughing start, and his mother whisk him away to stand in stuffy, herb-smelling halls again. He did, however, learn the names of the plants they fed him and how to tend them, and so fussed over those in place of play.
At four moons, the nursery grows smaller. Riverstripe leaves and returns to her duties, and it is only the brothers and the queens left to tend them. Midgekit comes to enjoy being fussed over. He does not mind the tender haunches he’s fed, the soft bedding, and the warm tails he always seems to be buried beneath. It does not occur to him that he receives these things because he is weaker. It is not something he gives a great deal of thought, for why should it? He has his herbs and their names and his brother beside them. What else could he want? What else could he need?
“Aren’t you worried?” He’d been sorting leaf scraps, playing pretend as he so often liked to do, when a kit had asked him that. He could only turn and smile feebly at them.

“Worried about what?”

“Well, everyone says you’ll get held back.”

A rumor he’s heard before. He looks away, trying still to smile, though there’s a pain in his chest to be reminded of it. “I won’t be. Everyone says I’m getting stronger, and when I’m—”

“Do they?” there’s a hint of a sneer nestled there. Midgekit regards it warily with a turning of his head. “I don’t hear them say that.”

“Well, they do.” It’s all he can manage, but somehow, he knows he must look like he’s going to cry because they peer at him suddenly.

“Maybe they just say that ’cause you’re around, but that’s not what everyone else says. They say—”

“I don’t care what they say,” he snapped, and his anger surprises him for there’s more sadness in it than he’d hoped. “I won’t get held back. I won’t.”

The other kit watches him with something unreadable in their eyes, only to smile and shrug their shoulders. “Sure. If you say so.”
Midgekit never knew when he came to dread speaking with his parents, only that he came to and could not help that he did. Even when they told of the tunnels—a matter which once, before his sickness—had excited him just as much as it had his brother, he could not find it in him to do more than smile faintly, look elsewhere, and say very little.

Even if they do not say it, he knows where he is expected to be, and Stonekit is not there with him in their eyes, though he wants him so desperately to be. And each time his brother says it, Midgekit does not miss it—the subtle exchanging of glances, the way the words stall on their tongues.

It is not so when he is alone with his mother or father.

“You’ve put on weight, son.” And he had. If he could not play, he ate and tended his leaves. “That’s good. You’ll need to get strong if you’re ever to be a tunneler.”

“What if I—”

“And when you’re a little older, I’ll take you to see them. You’ll love them. I just know you will.”

“But what if I—”

“Easy!” And they would chuckle, smile, never listen, only talk, refusing to believe it would be any other way than they imagined. “Don’t work yourself up too much about it. Just rest a bit. And remember to take your herbs. They say that cough of yours is getting better. That’s good. That’s very good.”

“Yes, sir.”
Despite all odds, Stonepaw and Midgepaw were granted their ceremony by the time their sixth moon approached. On the same day, on the same morning, standing giddily side by side, making guesses over who they might be given to and how they might treat them. It had all seemed exciting then until they stood before the Clan, and all of Midgepaw’s courage melted at his feet.

But his mother was there, and his father and their faces were a comfort to him in that sea of faces so that when his mentor was called, he mustered up strength enough to make his vows and stand upon the tips of his paws to brush noses with a she-cat as lithesome as a hare. Willowsong, they called her. A young upstart and, it was whispered, one day slated to be one of PrairieClan’s finest hunters. Midgepaw had thought she might smile at him and offer some kindness. Yet her eyes only lowered to the rotund apprentice set at her feet, and there was no warmth in the look she gave him.

He would come to always associate her with that look—one that only grew further detached and cold with each day they trained, and he labored behind her. And when his cough returned, and he could scarcely manage that, she grew only colder.
“Haven’t you eaten enough?” What had once been three mice was being worked down to one. Midgepaw lingered over it, glancing up into a face inert and watchful—and affixed by a frown that seemed only to grow increasingly more pronounced every moment he stalled for a response.

“Excuse me?” It was all he could manage.

“I said, haven’t you eaten enough?” Willowsong’s words are terse. “You’re hardly the size of a groundhog, yet you eat as though you were a bear. What of your clanmates? Don’t they deserve to eat?”

His eyes shift to the fresh-kill pile. Laden in the warm seasons, there was enough, so none were wanting. And I am growing. I need more than most do. Midgepaw thought to tell her so, but he always forgot his courage when she fixed him with her stare. “There's more.”

“There will not always be more. And you have had enough. Dispose of it.”

“But-“

He got no further before his morsel was snatched from under him and cast negligently aside. “Dispose. Of. It.”

She did not linger to see that it was done, and when she had left, and the eyes that had turned curiously over had turned away, Midgepaw stood up stiffly and took the mouse toward himself. He suddenly found, despite his appetite before, that he was no longer as hungry as he had been.
“Boy.” He’d been fussing over leaves again, as he was his wont when there was nothing else to do—which there often wasn’t—when a tom, old and husky-breathed, had approached him.

Willowsong did not need him very often and called on him even less. Soon, their ventures into the glade waned until it was only Antpelt and Riverstripe—and Stonepaw when he was not too busy, though of late he had come to be increasingly. So he had turned to plants again, though in the moons of his training, their names were not as dear to him as they had been, and he forgot them more often than he would have liked.

He covered them hurriedly with his tail before he turned. “Yes, sir?”

“What you got there?”

“Leaves, sir.” And he felt a chill wash over him. “I can move them if they’re in the way.”

The tom only watched him. His eyes were milky instead of bright, worn out with age. “You like ‘em?”

“The leaves? Yes, sir, I do.”

“Know their names?”

“Some, sir.”

“Where’s your mentor at?”

“On patrol, sir.”

“Didn’t think to take ya?”

“No, sir.”

“Come with me, then. I could use the eyes. And kid?”

“Sir?”

“Quit calling me ‘sir’.”

“Yes, sir.”

That was the first time he had gone to work with Mudfoot, and it would not be his last.
It had not taken Willowsong long to learn of where his time was spent in her absence.

“Mudfoot. A word, please.”

They’d been hunching together when she found them, prodding and muttering over a case of root rot. “Another time. We’re busy.”

“And who is we? Is he with you?”

“Seems like it,” he chuffed gruffly. Even though his eyes were milky and half-blind, they twinkled with a hint of amusement that even Midgepaw could not help but smile at.

“Well, tell him he’s needed elsewhere. We’ve got training to do. Underground.”

Mudfoot glanced over his shoulder. Old, greying shoulders, though. Weighed with more moons than either Midgepaw or Willowsong could count. “Tell him yourself.”

“Midgepaw. Come. I’ve let you waste enough time. Your assessment will be soon, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so—”

“Can’t I stay just a moment longer?” He attempted to sound hopeful. Midgepaw liked Mudfoot. The elder was rough and sharp-tongued, but he knew plants, and he thought Midgepaw knew them, too. He never demeaned him the way Willowsong did. He was kind, even if he were stern, and he thought he had a real talent for it—and a future, maybe, if he kept at it long enough and grew his first patch.

“For what? To prod at some roots?”

“They’re daisy—”

“Enough. You’re a warrior, not an herbalist. Now, put those herbs away. And Mudfoot—” the old tom turned his head, frowning. “—you stay away from my apprentice. You’ve caused enough trouble already.”
Midgepaw never learned who told Willowsong of his training alongside Mudfoot, but he soon learned he did not savor the work his body was put to. He had no skills at digging the way he did at plant-tending, and the cramped spaces and twisting runs were a poor substitute for the sky he loved so much. Yet Willowsong kept him hard at her work, more fiercely than she ever had before, and he, without the will to defy her, complied.

Only when his mother approached him did he learn more about what had happened.

“I hear you’ve taken to the tunnels.” There was something pleased in the way she said it, a hopeful glimmer in her eyes he had grown all too used to. It was the look she gave him when, no matter what he said, her mind would remain as made as it had been.

“Yeah… I guess so.”

“Oh, don’t look so glum! There’s honest work for you down there. Don’t you think?”

“I guess,” he murmured softly. “I was just- I’d been hoping to plant a few seeds, and- and show them to Juniperfur, but—”

“Oh, honey. What good is there in that? Any cat can plant a seed, but shoring a wall? Fortifying a roof? Well, that’s the hard stuff. You ought to take pride in it. Forget about the plants. The tunnels are where you belong.”

He lacked the heart to refuse her, and once she had left, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she had known all along about his plans and about Mudfoot. It was a disconcerting feeling, one he chose to ignore.
When, at last, their names are called, Midgecloud struggles to feel relieved. He’s left his studies behind him; the thought of plants is one he fixes stubbornly behind him. He’ll be a tunneler instead. That much was decided for him, and he’s since learned there’s no point in arguing.
“Your brother’s a real hero.”

I know that. “He saved someone, you know. And everyone thought he couldn’t be a tunneler. Well, look at him now.” Midgecloud tries not to listen too closely. He already knows, of course—how couldn’t he know something about his brother? We know everything about each other, don’t we? And yet he hardly believes it, only tells himself it’s true. He’s hardly made any friends outside of Stonefur. He’s hardly spoken to anyone since Mudfoot. All he knows is what others say within his hearing.

He’s not sure when he became content with so little.

But now, with a cat talking to him—actually talking to him, not at or near him—he feels an odd sort of plugging up in his throat and blinks. “Yeah. He’s really something, huh?”

“I bet you’re proud, too. I know I’d be if someone I knew did a thing like that.”

Am I proud? Whenever he looked to Stonefur, he felt something different. There was love there still, but something else—something he didn’t like. “Of course I am. How couldn’t I be proud of him? He’s worked so hard.” And I’ve worked so little.
The summons were sudden when the first attack was launched. RidgeClan had attacked MistClan and they were to come to MistClan’s aid.

The preparations are swift, and the patrols numbered in haste. Midgecloud is glad for it when his name is placed on the latter patrols. He hunches in silence beside the cats with whom he’s to descend with. His eyes anxiously seek Mudfoot, but the elder is sick, and his face does not rear to see his departure.

When they leave, his heart clenches in his chest. A fit of panic leaves him unresponsive in the tunnels, and he’s left behind, watching quietly and miserably as the patrol led by his brother departs without him. As he returns to the medicine den, he’s served herbs to calm his nerves, though there is little to do for the anxiety rising in his chest as the wounded return and are laid all around him. Feeling undeserving of his nest, he spares his to a wounded apprentice and seeks solace in the night, having no one to confide in and the thought that even if he did, he would not have deserved to have done so.
As PrairieClan continues to count their dead and the wounded recover from the battle in MistClan territory, a rift forms between the warriors and the tunnelers. Midgecloud is only partially aware of it, but he overhears whispers over the safety of the tunnels. Despite his titles and newfound skills in maintaining them, Midgecloud guiltily agrees.
As the temperatures plunge and the snows continue to weigh the earth, burrowing is replaced with ventures of repair. Midgecloud bleeds his paws with the work and bides his time, distracting his mind from other, more unpleasant matters.

A faction has been reared—a break-off formed by a run-away from RidgeClan. The thought of a sanctuary among the mountains offers a silent appeal to Midgecloud, though it shames him to consider an escape from his family during such harsh times.

Even so, the sentiment grows when Littlestar is found dead.
Cinderstar’s ascension comes with the enforcement of new rules. Restrictions are placed on the tunnelers, forbidding their entry into certain tunnels throughout the territory. Midgecloud listens solemnly to the news, though he can't muster the energy to be as angry with his leader’s choice as his fellow tunnelers, however much he tries.

Pre-Plotting: Midgecloud is the brother of Stonefur. He aligns most strongly with the peony.

Family: Midgecloud is not as close with his family as he was when he was younger, yet he loves them all terribly and works desperately to satisfy their expectations of him, even at his own detriment. His relationship with mother and father is strained due to their disregard for his previous ambitions to become an herbalist. His relationship with his brother, however, is less so. Midgecloud has grown comfortable living in the shadow of his brother's achievements. He still looks up to him as he did before, but finds himself struggling with feelings of jealousy toward Stonefur's ability to make the most of his life where he has grown too submissive and compliant to do the same with his own. He wishes to step out of his brother's shadow one day; maybe by proving to him that he is no longer the one in need of protecting.

Friends: Midgecloud has very few friends outside of the elders den but has no shortage of acquaintances. Getting along well with most cats, in work, he is agreeable and adjusts to suit his company. This has allowed him to avoid conflict, but has done him no favor in securing friends for himself, as he very rarely portrays himself the way he feels, and it is not difficult to tell.

Romance: Midgecloud has thought as little about romance as he has friends, though there is a part of him that longs for the more intimate side of one. 

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