patch job [open]

[attr="class","brindlepost"]
The day that Brindleclaw couldn't so much as be enough of a help to patch a hole in her own den was the day she wanted one of her kits to slit her throat and bury her with the rest of the rotting sacks of meat and bones who had been more of a burden than an asset to the Clan in the last moons of their lives. Yes, her joints ached in the cold and in the early mornings, and her sight wasn't quite what it had once been, but she could still tell her kits apart from each other and from the rest of ShadowClan at a hundred paces, and had no trouble crossing the distance to cuff them around the ears or tear into them for their latest stupidity.

She could still manage to play with her grandkits without grunting and moving as slow as a snail, which was good. Young cats had so much energy, bounced around so thoroughly that it wore even the stubborn elders like Brindleclaw out. But no force of nature or act of StarClan was going to keep the calico she-cat from having time with her family. The old cat was fiercely protective of them, something born within her from dealing with her long-since-dead farce of a mate, the ever-despicable Wrenfang. That horny bastard had had the gall to try and manipulate her kits into fulfilling his ambition vicariously, had tried to mold her babies into something they weren't.

From the sheer fact that she hadn't tried to slit his throat then and there, Brindleclaw felt she should have ascended into legend for the restraint alone. Had she not had the warrior code binding her and over a dozen witnesses to the front end of their confrontation, Brindleclaw would have just gutted him and been done with it. She liked to claim and think that she wasn't a very maternal figure, that motherhood suited her ill, but the calico was as viciously maternal as an enraged mother bear, hovering over her young ready to rain fire on the first idiot to breathe at them in the wrong manner. Even just remembering him made her paws itch with the need to slash at him, rake her claws through his skin and hear his blood burble to the surface.

Green eyes flashing, Brindleclaw snarled around the twig in her mouth. It garnered her an odd look from the other elders, who were watching her bemusedly, curled up in their nests and gossiping. Useless flesh bags. She sneered at them and carefully threaded the twig into place over a gap in the wall of the elders' den, then shifted slightly so she could pick up another twig. Not her preferred sort of work, but there was a lot of restriction involved in being retired, and Brindleclaw would take tedious work over being bored and a general burden to the Clan. Like her fellows over there. Sparing them a disdainful sneer, Brindleclaw worked with quick, competent motions to patch the hole, only pausing once she'd realized that she'd run out of twigs before she'd finished patching the hole. Inconvenient.

Limb by limb, Brindleclaw stretched and relished the way her muscles flexed and burned just a bit, like she'd finally done enough physical labor to contribute to the Clan. Above, the sky was finally cloud-free again, letting the exquisite clear blue of a greenleaf day into sight, with only the occasional, tiny cloud to mar the sky. And the sun was warm on her fur, soaking into the long strands and going quite a ways in soothing the ache of her joints. Bluerain had assured her that it was simply an effect of her age, and that taking the herbs given to her would be the only other respite from the ache she would find. Brindleclaw had harrumphed loud and long about it, but obediently took the herbs. If the medicine cat had decided it should be so, the calico had no room and no expertise to argue against it.

Once she'd sufficiently stretched the stiffness out of her limbs and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun for a moment, Brindleclaw rolled her shoulders and fetched more twigs to patch the holes in the various dens. Well. More accurately, she tried to leave camp to fetch more twigs, got shut down rather politely and insistently by the cats on sentry duty, and bullied one of the pair into bringing her more sticks. The idiot had tried to resist her, but the precision application of some unpleasant truths had the moron slinking away from their post to fetch the sticks she'd told 'em to get her in the first place. Idiot would have had more time actually acting as a sentry if they'd just have gotten her the sticks when she'd asked for them. The better result happened when Brindleclaw was obeyed, and cats who were too stupid to realize that needed to be given menial jobs hunting and acting as brawn against invasions.

No matter how much of a production the acquiring of them had been, Brindleclaw now had the twigs she needed to finish patching the hole in the elders' den. Then, perhaps, she'd move on to fixing the hole some of the kits had created in the nursery in their play. Or in an escape attempt. She winced internally with the remembrance of her firstborn son's enthusiastic and many bids for nascent freedom. Back then, he had still been small enough to pin in place with a paw and a stern word. Now he was old enough to retire himself if he so chose. And didn't that make her feel old. Her hundredth moon was closing in faster and faster every day, it seemed, and she wouldn't be surprised if she were the oldest cat in the forest.

Most cats didn't have the sense StarClan gave a stale turd. Given that fact, their preservation instincts were probably just as shoddy, and they probably flung themselves into their work and ignored the signs of an impending need to retire as fervently as Brindleclaw herself had, the older cats of other Clans likely had a younger mortality rate. And good riddance, all for the better, et cetera, et cetera. The Clans didn't need idiots bogging them down, but if the other three wanted to keep their idiots alive and propagating their moronic genes. How horrifying. At least her own line was bolstering ShadowClan with good old-fashioned stubbornness and practicality, something too many cats lacked. Spineless sods who couldn't make a decision for themselves if their lives depended upon it.

They made her sick. Brindleclaw snarled quietly, shoving the last twig of the patch on the elders' den into place. Two swift, harsh blows of her paw had the remaining twigs gathered together in a pile, and she left the paw there, sitting as she thought. Her tail sprawled out behind her, feathered fur gathering dust and shining copper in the sunlight. Green eyes rested contemplatively on the visible gap in the wall of the nursery, narrowed slightly in contemplation.