foresight is twenty-twenty (c)

Paledove hovered over the fresh-kill pile, tossing an anxious glance over her shoulder. Her kits were slumbering peacefully in the makeshift nursery (which wasn’t enough to protect them stars they were so small)- shoving aside her thoughts, Paledove took a deep breath. She had a mission, after all.

Selecting a nice, relatively plump quail from the pile, Paledove approached the deputy, smiling as best she could around the feathers. “Good evening, Wolfblossom. If you’re not too terribly busy, would you mind sharing a meal with me?”

Nice and easy, take it nice and easy. She wasn’t fishing for information, not exactly, but as a proud mother, she ought to know what her kits’ mentors would be. That was only reasonable, after all. Soon enough, they would be taking their next steps toward becoming proud warriors of SkyClan, and Paledove- well. Paledove couldn’t always be there beside them, despite how she might want to. The next best thing was learning as much as she could, so she could prepare her kits, and maybe try to convince Wolfblossom of a few things, if she had her mind set on… less than suitable mentors.

One of the queens approaching her was a surprise, Wolfblossom had to admit, but she was glad to see it. Skyclan had found themselves with an abundance of kits recently, and Wolfblossom had not spent nearly as much time around the nursery as she would have liked, either personally or as a deputy scouting out future apprentices and mentors.

"Of course, Paledove." The deputy inclined her head to the older queen. "What's on your mind? Are the kits well?"

Paledove sat the quail down with a polite smile perched on her muzzle, ears pricked slightly forwards. A pang of protectiveness followed the deputy’s words (of course her kits were well who are you to ask) but she shoved it away, tail-tip twitching as she thought. “Oh, yes. Thank you for asking. Are you well?”

A typical preliminary answer, something polite and necessary. “I have to thank you for speaking to Cricketkit the other day; she was so excited that the deputy had talked to her that she completely forgot what you two even spoke about!”

Paledove laughed quietly, trilling, subtly watching Wolfblossom like a hawk. What would she say? She didn’t want to have to prod for information, that was too obvious, but she absolutely needed to know who her kits’ mentors would be. Absolutely vital.

"Well enough." Wolfblossom shrugged, "I'll be happier when the medicine cats put this illness behind us." And she'd be happier without the rising tensions across their shattered alliance. She'd be happier if they were home, on familiar ground. But that wasn't something that needed to be repeated, surely.

It didn't take the queen long to mention Cricketkit. She had probably been mentioned to the queen herself, or she'd watched from the shadows of the nursery as Wolfblossom had spent time with the little she-kit. "She's a spirited kit. Managed to sneak up on me, actually." Wolfblossom mewed, a small smile crossing her muzzle, "I think she'll make a fine hunter in time." She had a feeling she knew where the queen was going with this line of questioning. Paledove watched her like a hawk, ever the protective mother. And here Wolfblossom sat, the one to pull kits from the nursery and throw them into a new world of hunting and fighting.

“Indisputably,” Paledove mewed in agreement. While she and her kits had escaped the sickness, the amount of prey their few warriors brought back had been impacted as well. She purred softly at the deputy’s words, proud. “Of course she will.”

Right. Onwards. Part of Paledove wanted to make her intentions clear, that she did not expect her kits to be mollycoddled, but rather turned into splendid warriors who could take care of themselves. That was too forward. Easy, easy. “She’s rather timid, though… sometimes I worry. She’ll need a good mentor, hmm? Have you happened to think of any yet, or is it too early?”

Perhaps a little too blunt and to the point, but Paledove needed to know, through any means necessary. Some cats in this Clan… if she saw her darlings apprenticed to that weird Falconmoon, who had practically been nocturnal for ages, or lazy fat Stormwatcher… she’d have words with Birdstar herself, if she needed to.

"They are Skyclan, they're better than anyone else by default." The deputy snorted, whiskers twitching.

Timid? Cricketkit? That was not the impression that Wolfblossom had gotten at all, but she kept it to herself. Then, Paledove finally asked the inevitable, and a sigh escaped Wolfblossom. "Mentors are a tough find these days. Cats are starting to recover, that opens up options." She began, "Someone with a steady paw will do her well I think." Paledove probably wanted to hear specific names... But Wolfblossom was having a hard time coming up with names that weren't horribly ill.

Paledove offered Wolfblossom a smile at the deputy’s words. Good. She agreed. Her kits were SkyClan, and so they deserved true SkyClan mentors, not some… wishy-washy scoundrel. “Mhm. I would like to request that, if possible, none of my kits end up with mentors only made warriors away from the forest. They’re awfully young, and I would rest easier knowing that my dears are in more experienced paws.”

There were a thousand other stipulations that bubbled up within her chest, but for the moment Paledove bit them back. She would wait to see how the deputy responded, and then, perhaps, offer a few other… suggestions. She did not want to see her kits apprenticed to rogue blood (Rainfrost, though always polite, would never be SkyClan enough for her), timid cats (Mistflower, who she could’ve sworn she saw spook at a butterfly once), or generally unsatisfactory Clan members (Falconmoon, whose frequent night terrors, albeit now abated, still lingered in the back of her mind, or Stormwatcher, because no matter how much he improved she would only see him as a lazy, irresponsible oaf). Stoneheart would be a good mentor, she rather thought, or of course the ever-determined Sunfire.

The queen was picky, and Wolfblossom could relate. She had agonized over who to have mentor her own kits - in the end settling on cats she trusted, Birdstar, Smokepetal who had not yet become a medicine cat, Bloodstrike, who had been a test just as much as for him as for her son. Graywind's first mentor had been a mistake, but one corrected. The difference between her and Paledove, however, was that Wolfblossom had the power to choose. Paledove had to settle for... this conversation.

She understood not wanting young and inexperienced mentors, to a point. She hadn't either, which is why the youngest warriors who had taken on her kits had been cats Wolfblossom trained herself. Still... If the young and inexperienced didn't learn through doing, how would they learn at all?

"Young does not mean incapable. And the only way we gain good mentors is through... mentoring." Wolfblossom countered gently, "There are few enough options with this illness going around. Though I might only have our forest-born warriors to choose from as it is." She conceded with a frown. Honeypaw and her brothers were doing well, but not warriors yet. Bubblepaw and Sorrelpaw were the older apprentices, and Ploverpaw, who still had not been found which made her chest feel tight.

"Rest assured I'll try and match them with someone suitable, Paledove. As much as I can with everything going on currently." She might wind up mentoring one of the kits herself, though Wolfblossom felt it potentially unfair when her attention was currently pulled in so many directions. The new territory, the illness, their alliances, finding Ploverpaw seemed like a lost cause, though she refused to give up hope. Sunfire had found Rosepaw in these strange lands, after all. Wolfblossom wouldn't give up hope, for her or the sake of her siblings and Sunfire.