Saffronsplash

Appearance
Saffronsplash is a fluffy ginger she-cat. She has wide swirls of brown and black, making her a tortoiseshell. Her eyes are a light turquoise green.

Personality
Saffronsplash is a bouncy cat. She’s not always positive, but she is rather insightful and likes puzzles. Her eyes light up at the prospect of breaking the rules and she’s not always the most reliable cat. She is a bit of a firecracker and very spirited.

Kithood
Saffronkit and her brother Flamekit were born in OrchidClan to Eaglemoon and Shortcloud. Saffronkit and Flamekit were actually mistakes- Eaglemoon and Shortcloud hadn't actually wanted kits. They made sure the kits never learned this though and were very kind, loving parents. They may not have wanted kits, but they were really, really good parents.

There were three other kits in the nursery around the same time as Saffronkit. Their names were Mosskit, Silverkit, and Adderkit. Saffronkit and Flamekit absorbed them into a friend group and the five of them had a lot of fun together. Eaglemoon was rather relieved to have the kits entertain themselves for awhile.

The kits got into all kinds of mischief and Saffronkit was almost always at the heart of their schemes. Eaglemoon did not think this was fun. Eaglemoon thought this was irresponsible and reflected poorly on her parenting. As such, Saffronkit was often separated from her friends to have lessons with her mom where she could learn to be a proper young lady. Needless to say, she hated it.

By the time she was four moons old, Saffronkit had grown a bit more tricksy. In public, she was a model daughter. Perfect poise, fairly good speech, everything you could ask for. Her heart really wasn't in it, though, and her slipping off with her friends grew more sneaky and harder to catch. Eaglemoon seemed to have a sensor for those things, but Saffronkit managed to actually get up to some mischief again. Some.

Finally, Shortcloud suggested that Saffronkit and Flamekit get apprenticed early, and at five moons old, they did just that.

Apprenticeship
Saffronpaw was given to Pipitfrost, Eaglemoon's older sister and a well-respected warrior with a couple apprentices already under her belt. Saffronpaw liked her well enough, but quickly got bored when she realized that these were her mother's lessons in a stuffier context. She wasn't allowed to leave camp until she was six moons old and the one moon between her apprenticeship and her legal apprenticeship was torture for poor Saffronpaw.

Finally, at six moons old, Saffronpaw was finally allowed out of camp and she was stoked. She flung herself into her training and became a very skilled young cat very quickly. She mastered hunting by nine moons old and eventually had to start working on battle training just to keep her from getting too bored, because a bored Saffronpaw was a (usually accidentally) destructive Saffronpaw.

At eight moons old, Eaglemoon and Shortcloud pulled Saffronpaw and Flamepaw aside and told them that they were expecting kits. Saffronpaw was very excited about this. And don't worry, these kits were intentional. Saffronpaw spent her extra time collecting moss, flowers, and feathers for her mom.

In fact, Saffronpaw became so preoccupied with her training that Mosspaw had to go talk to her like, "Hey, Saffronpaw, do you think you could remember that you have friends? You haven't talked to us in moons." Saffronpaw was a little shocked that she'd forgotten her friends and apologized to Mosspaw, promising her that she'd be a better friend from here on out.

Saffronpaw actually followed through with that promise. She hung out with Mosspaw and her brothers and Flamepaw as often as she could, showing them some of the battle moves Pipitfrost had showed her and generally chilling out so that no one was quite as worried about her getting bored anymore. She organized races between her denmates, challenged her friends to competitions, and basically got a lot of stuff done.

When she was ten, her little siblings were finally born. There were three of them, two toms and a she-cat. The toms were named Smokekit and Swoopkit while the she-cat was named Sparkkit. Saffronpaw loved them and tried to teach them all she knew. She got along particularly well with her sister, Sparkkit. Both were feisty tortoiseshells with plenty of ambition and Saffronpaw was happy to help her sister learn all about how to nurture those ambitions.

Since she had become an apprentice early, Saffronpaw was given the chance to become a warrior early too. She gladly accepted this opportunity and took her warrior assessment at eleven moons old.

Warrior Life
Saffronpaw became a warrior at eleven moons old and was given the name Saffronsplash. She loved it. Since her brother and their friends had become apprentices at the same time as her, they got new names too. Except for Adderpaw, who failed his first warrior assessment. Anyway, Flamepaw earned the name Flamenose and was forever jealous of his sister's much better name. Mosspaw became Mosseye while her brother Silverpaw became Silverleap. Her other brother, the aforementioned Adderpaw, earned his name a moon later and became Adderchaser.

Things carried on peacefully. Saffronsplash took her little siblings out of camp a few times like the responsible warrior she was. She taught them the basics of hunting and fighting before they were even out of the nursery. Finally, when she was sixteen, the kits became apprentices and Saffronsplash got Sparkpaw as an apprentice. She was overjoyed and taught Sparkpaw everything she knew. Her good friend Mosseye got Smokepaw as an apprentice while Mosseye's brother Silverleap got Swooppaw. Since her two friends got her siblings, Saffronsplash held joint training sessions quite often.

About halfway through the training of her younger siblings, a genetic disorder was discovered in Shortcloud that Flamenose and Smokepaw shared. It had been suspected for quite awhile, but Shortcloud finally died and Flamenose was starting to have troubles with it as well. Smokepaw, who had several of the symptoms, was put in the medicine den and kept out of training for awhile.

When Saffronsplash was nineteen, Flamenose also succumbed to the disease and Smokepaw took a turn for the worse. Mosseye was very upset that her apprentice was probably going to die. She also was upset Flamenose had died, since he had been her friend for so long and, additionally, they had recently become mates unbeknownst to anyone else. She told Saffronsplash, her brothers, and Eaglemoon about her relationship with Flamenose and everyone seemed pretty supportive.

Saffronsplash and Silverleap continued training Sparkpaw and Swooppaw together. Mosseye joined them occasionally, but there was something off about Saff's gray and white friend, so they mostly left Mosseye to her own devices.

Smokepaw died just one moon after his older brother and everyone in our little group was plunged into grief once more. Shortly after Smokepaw's death, Mosseye quietly informed everyone that she was expecting Flamenose's kits. Much like Flamenose himself, this kits were a mistake, but they were on their way, whether or not their grieving mother wanted them.

The announcement of kits seemed to change things. Saffronsplash, Silverleap, and Adderchaser were very excited about their upcoming nieces and nephews, Mosseye was glad that she would still have a piece of the mate she got so little time with, and Eaglemoon dropped everything to help Mosseye. The excitement about kits made Silverleap act a little weird, but Saffronsplash mostly ignored that.

When Saffronsplash was twenty-one, Mosseye had her kits. It was a very hard delivery and Mosseye was left very weak, but she named the kits Smokykit, Smallkit, and Firekit, after their dead uncle, grandfather, and father respectively. She then died, which was very hard on everyone. Her three kits were given to another queen to raise, though the kits' family was never too far away.

In fact, Saffronsplash was nearly closer than she wanted to be. It turns out, Silverleap had had his eye on her for quite awhile. I mean, what's not to like about her? She's pretty, spunky, independent, and free with her words and actions. Saffronsplash was as close to a rebel as you could get without actually breaking rules. Turns out, that's the sort of thing Silverleap was into and after the death of his sister, he asked Saffronsplash to be his mate. Saff politely said no, but got far less polite as Silverleap got more forceful. It escalated into a claws-out fight between the two, because Silverleap just would not take no for an answer. Saffronsplash was not interested in romance. After witnessing what had happened to Smokepaw and Mosseye, she had no interest in having kits. Knowing that her kits might just get the disease her father and brothers had died from was more than enough to deter her. She hadn't even known Silverleap was into her. Silverleap left the Clans, too heartbroken and beat up to try to stay.

Swooppaw was transferred to Adderchaser for his last moon of apprenticeship and Saffronsplash was glad to hang out with her last and most levelheaded friend. Adderchaser had never been her closest friend, but she appreciated his quiet nature.

Sparkpaw and Swooppaw were made warriors right on time, Sparkcloud and Swooptalon, and Saffronsplash dedicated more time to taking care of her nephews. She loved getting hang out with them, seeing so much of her brother and her best friend in them. They were also being raised alongside one Petalkit, a loner kit who had recently joined OrchidClan. She made sure that her nephews were nice to Petalkit.

Adderchaser pulled Saffronsplash aside one moon later, when she was twenty-two, and said that he liked her a lot, but he recognized that she had no interest in such things. He was moving to OasisClan, where his father still lived, and he wanted to let her know how much his friendship had meant to him over the moons before he left. He also said that he was going to take his sister's kits with him, since there were more queens in OasisClan and it was a far more secure camp that OrchidClan's- the number of times they had snuck out as kits proved that. Saffronsplash was surprised by his confession, but didn't beat him up in the middle of camp, so at least that's an improvement. Sparkcloud and Swooptalon decided that traveling between Clans might be fun and offered to help Adderchaser move the kits to get started.

Now that her siblings, brother-in-law, and nephews had left, Saffronsplash was horribly alone. She didn't do much for the next six moons or so. She got news occasionally, hearing from Sparkcloud and Swooptalon every so often. They brought news that Smokykit, Firekit, and Smallkit were doing well in their new home and that they were expressing interest in a HorizonClan apprenticeship in a few moons. One time, Sparkcloud even brought news that Adderchaser had met a nice OasisClan she-cat named Echorose and the two of them had settled down together, with news of Echorose expecting kits coming only a little bit later. Overall, nothing much happened to Saffronsplash after her family left. At the age of thirty, she got an apprentice, a blind she-cat named Lilypaw, and did her best to train her.

When she was thirty-four, her nephew Firecloud paid her a visit. He visited again a few moons later and Saffronsplash tried to tell him about his parents, but it made him uncomfortable so she dropped the topic.

When she was thirty-eight, she got an apprentice of her own, Jadepaw.

Trivia

 * This is one of the longest backstories I've ever written.
 * I meant from the beginning for there to be a Flame-Moss relationship and then for there to be a Saff-Silver-Adder love triangle, but then I killed Flamenose. Things quickly went downhill.