a thorn in my side [open]

Just outside ShadowClan's medicine den, their sole medicine cat was glaring daggers at a bush. It was rare for Mothglow to get truly angry, but the bush had evidently done something to raise her ire. Upon closer inspection, bunches of her fur could be seen gathered in various places, and a few thorns she'd plucked from her pelt were piled nearby. If there was one thing Mothglow was, a single word that encompassed her loving and overal emotional nature, it would be passionate. She felt strongly about most things, be those thoughts positive or negative - and today was a rare instance of them being profoundly negative.

Her tail lashed once, sweeping across the thorns, and she hissed as some of them caught on her fur yet again. She couldn't even glare menacingly at the bush in peace?

Truth be told, her war on Stabbythorn - the admittedly uncreative name she had, as a new medicine cat apprentice, bestowed upon her nemesis - had been going on for a very long time. But she never seemed to get very far, considering that it was a large and well-established bush, and while she was trained as a warrior and made attempts to brush up on her skills rather often, she was still just one cat. Larger than most, but that was far from an advantage - her large, fluffy fur got caught more often than a smaller cat's would.

Resigned for the moment, she returned to plucking thorns from her tail, starting a new pile further away from the old one.

((Stabbythorn...I love this. I MUST JOIN.))

Ebonysong padded over to the medicine cat den, before hearing Mothglow hiss. Startled, she immediately burst inside, stopping to see nothing that has threatened her. She tilted her head in confusion and decided to leave...before she saw the bush. It was definitely spiky, with her fur caught into its thorns. Stifling a laugh, Ebonysong padded closer to watch this. “Since when did the medicine cat den have a thorn bush and how have I not seen this before?” It must hurt every day to wake up and get stabbed by an annoying, overgrown, spiky bush. 

Flintstar padded into the camp, two frogs hanging from his jaw as he shook of the traces of mud and marsh that had clung to his pelt from his hunting trip. He had been trying to make it a goal to get out of the camp a tad more and do more than just patrol the border. Hunting had never been his strong suit but it was at least something worth still trying to get better at. Any caught prey was a good thing. He crossed the camp, heading toward the fresh-kill pile to depose of his two catches when something caught his eye - Mothglow and Ebonysong were gathered outside of the medicine cat den. For a second, he thought about leaving them to it - if the matter was something of his concern, he would be fetched but... He had been telling himself to be more...Active with interacting with his Clanmates but had kept putting it off.

...Eh. He dropped the frogs off before he headed towards the two she-cats, glancing between the two as he caught the tail end of Ebonysong's statement. "...What about the thorn bush?" he questioned, coming to a stop as he turned his attention onto the thorn bush in question. He had been aware of it for quite a while but was unsure on why it was getting attention today. His fur happened to be think enough that when he had shouldered the bush a pawful of times when stopping to speak with Mothglow, it hadn't been a problem for him as the thorns had barely managed to get at his skin. He took a moment to glance around before he finally noticed the small pile of thorns that Mothglow was adding to.

"Oh."

Echokit padded quietly through camp, feeling glum. Leopardkit had been particularly mean to him this morning, and he'd been trying to stay out of his brother's way since then. But that made it pretty hard to find things to do. Playing with the other kits was risky because Leopardkit would often join, and it was hard to convince the older cats to let a kit hang around with them.

Echokit noticed a cluster of cats by the medicine cat den and his ears pricked up. When he noticed Flintstar, he became even more interested. He wanted to know what the older cats were talking about, but he didn't want to interrupt. He tried to use the bushes along the edge of camp to creep close enough to listen in. It sounded like Mothglow had some thorns stuck in her tail.

Unfortunately for Echokit, he was straining so hard to hear that he didn't notice a very large rock in front of his paws. He tripped on it and rolled right into the group of cats. What do I do? I don't want them to realize I was spying on them.

Suddenly, Echokit had a great idea. He loved to help other cats, but Leopardkit would never want to. This was the perfect excuse to avoid his brother, and it would give him something enjoyable to do.

"I heard you have some thorns stuck in your tail!" Echokit meowed, trying not to sound sheepish. "Can I help you get them out?"

Mothglow was, admittedly, perfectly capable of pulling the thorns from her own tail. It was just time-consuming and annoying, because she kept hitting the pile with it yet again as soon as she was done. But Echokit seemed eager to assist, so she didn't see the harm in it. "If you want to, Echokit, it might help," she said agreeably. Her attention turned to back to Ebonysong for a moment. "It's been there since I was an apprentice. A regular apprentice, not a medicine cat apprentice. Probably before that, too, but before I became a medicine cat there wasn't much reason to concern myself with it. Now, though... Well, it's been a real thorn in my side ever since," she admitted, laughing a little at her own joke.

Admittedly there hadn't been much reason to worry about the medicine den at all when no cat resided there, but she brushed that thought off. Those worries and those days were long since behind her, and it was either a distant memory or too long ago to remember for those around her.

Flintstar listened to Mothglow explain her past with the thorn bush, studying it. He honestly hadn't realized how much it had been an...Annoyance to the medicine cat - he had barely registered it was there minus the few times he had to pull a thorn or two from his shoulder fluff or his mane. "...Ah, perhaps we could...Find a way to remove it then?" he asked, although he wasn't sure how much that was possible. He had never tried something like that - he barely knew how to pull a herb from the ground - and the thorns would only prove a problem. "If its truly that much of a pain, there must be something we can do about it."