#<- i changed her name from kestrelwing

[sunningrox]

designs for the leafhawk au…

notes on the designs vv

- overrall i tried to reference their existing merch palettes to make it easier for myself.. i also tried to basically adjust their canon mini designs to be simplified and to my preference

- i wanted the tails to be related to their names. so leafpool for example has a tail that looks like leaves attached to it and hawkfrost has a beak-like looking tail

- jayfeather i immediately decided to have the closest pattern to leafpool cus i feel like it suited him more and made him closer to leafpool. i also changed his name from jayfeather to kestrelwing as it was fitting for the bird portion of his name to be closer to a hawk then a crow. also the ‘wing’ part is actually reference to mothwing ^_^

- i wanted hollyleaf to have some white markings to make reference to scourge and also to have her most similar to squirrelflight. i also made her the oldest because i believe it would be a bigger blow to be the oldest without the blessings…

- i tried to vary the bodytypes. so all the kids inherited the taller and bigger gene from hawkfrost’s side but they vary in body. jayfeather is more slim and sleek. lionblaze is bulky and topheavy. hollyleaf is a nice balance.

- leafpool is easily round and soft to me

- everyone has a vague combo of leafpool and hawkfrost’s bangs, i decided against jayfeather having bangs cus i felt it suited him more for his mane to be pulled back. i also gave jayfeather a lazy eye!

i cant be bothered rn to write up everything abt this au but i just wanted to get the designs down on paper.

[mallowstep]

(free time; sibling bonding; leaffall)

"Mallowstep!" Deerpaw cried. "Mallowstep, come look!"

Mallowstep yawned. "Deerpaw, if this is just another leaf..." he grumbled, stretching out his back and walking across camp.

"This one is cool," Deerpaw said, pointing to it with his paw.

"It's just a maple leaf."

"Yeah, but look -- it's a different colour."

"Right. That's what happens in leaffall. They change and fall off."

Deerpaw wriggled, like he was adjusting for a pounce. "But this one is nice."

"You say that about every leaf!"

Behind him, Mallowstep heard Kestrelsong snicker.

"Come on, it's his first leaffall. Let him have fun." She licked Mallowstep's shoulder. "I remember a certain someone getting soaked on the first snowfall last year."

"That was both of us," Mallowstep said. "Crickettail was so mad at us."

"Right, and this does no harm." Kestrelsong flicked her tail towards Deerpaw, who was currently diving into a pile of leaves that had blown against the wall. "I wish I still had his energy." She leaned her head against Mallowstep. "Mossytail keeps asking me if I want to go for a walk, but honestly, just climbing out of the gorge seems exhausting."

"Well, you're getting close to kitting."

Kestrelsong purred. "Hm. Still."

"Mallowstep! I found another one!"

He groaned. "This is why we can't encourage him. He'll never stop."

Kestrelsong lifted her head, her eyes shining. "Hey, Deerpaw! I want to see your leaf!" She started off across camp, and Mallowstep shook his head. She had put off moving into the nursery until recently, and it was like all the lethargy she had been fighting crashed into her at once.

She still resented it, alternating between pacing around camp and napping outside Mallowstep and Oakfrost's den, and took any challenge head on.

Mallowstep was dreading the day she couldn't quite make it out of the nursery with ease.

Deerpaw clutched a whole mouthfull of leaves, trilling and bunting against Kestrelsong.

"She loves me," he said, laying them out. "She wants to see my leaves."

"You're so dramatic," Mallowstep groaned. "Alright, c'mon. What do we have?"

"Mostly maples," Deerpaw said. "But this one is a birch."

"I like it," Kestrelsong said.

Deerpaw turned his gaze to Mallowstep. He sighed. "I like them too, Deerpaw." He licked his younger brother's head. "But if you wake me up again, I will tell Lichenpelt to make you clean out all the leaves in camp."

Deerpaw's ears flattened.

"He doesn't mean that," Kestrelsong said. "He's still got that feather you gave him in his nest."

Mallowstep's ears flattened.

"Hah! You do love me!"

"Of course I love you, furball," Mallowstep said. "I'm just tired. Between you and Piperheart and Wrenwhisker, I've been up all night and now all day."

"Sorry," Deerpaw muttered. "I forgot that they were hurt."

Mallowstep sighed. "It's alright." He was exhausted, after spending all night fetching blackberry leaves to soothe the stings they got trying to fetch him what they thought was abandoned honeycomb, as well as monitoring their breathing in case they had gotten too many stings, but he couldn't stay mad at Deerpaw.

Kestrelsong started to speak, but Deerpaw's head whipped to the side.

"Aspenface!" Deerpaw called. "Aspenface, come look what I found!" He gathered the leaves up, and Mallowstep sighed in relief.

Kestrelsong nosed his shoulder. "You wanna go nap?" she asked. "I hear there's an available patch of sun."

He purred. "Yeah, but if Deerpaw wakes us up, you're dealing with him."

[mallowstep]

talking about my oc because i want to

so my blood sugar is doing a Thing and while i wait for that to regulate itself, i figured i'd ramble about my boy mallowstep for a while!

mallowstep, i.e. the title of this blog, is my warriors...oc? he's...not quite a self-insert, but he was the oc i made as a child, altho his backstory has been reworked many, many times, including very recently with inclusion of lore from the sisters.

anyway.

i figure if i type out some words i'll be distracted while i wait for the Good Food to sort itself out. (i'm fine btw. i don't talk about Personal Stuff here mostly but rest assured, i'm fine. just a lil shakey until i eat.)

on that note, my spellchecker is off because hands shakey means i do not want to navigate any way but typing.

right. mallowstep. key points:

he's got a white front left leg. i change the side a lot when i draw him but it's supposed to be left, and all of his paws are white.

i don't want to rework him bc i love him but also his whole deal is very much Impossible i was like eight when i thought of all of this

his vision is shit. he's not blind, but uh, somewhere around 20/400 vision. roughly. he can't see shit, is what i'm saying, he can't see shit.

or okay, so he's blind but in the sense of being "legally blind," not what people think of as blind.

this is because cats don't have opthamalogists. eye doctors. he has no glasses.

he's got a younger brother named deerpaw. same mother, different father. their mother is not around, so mallowstep is stepping in somewhat as a parental figure for deerpaw, but not fully.

he's a medicine cat? did i mention that? by choice. he chose this.

he sees the Ghosts. it's a whole thing with his backstory. but he sees the Ghosts.

his best friend is named kestrelwing (altho i'm considering kestrelsong), and her mate is mossytail. they've got three kits: eaglekit, kitekit, and dawnkit. (whose eventual warrior names are eagleclaw, kiteflower, and dawnstorm. i change those a lot rn tho it's just what i'm feeling at the moment.)

they're skyclan cats.

uhh there's a running joke about how mallowstep could have sired kestrelwing's kits and no one would know.

(he did not.)

deerpaw's eventual warrior name is deerleap.

okay, so...uh, idk?

mallow is born to the sisters, probably in a litter but his story Begins when he's left. he's not born with as bad of vision as he ends up with, so he does okay at first. he meets a cat named jag, who he grows close with.

(this is also in my about page, btw.)

jag and mallow are around the same age, and they're...they've got tallstar/jake vibes, is what i'm saying. (i'm not avoiding saying they're gay, here, but that's the vibe. tallstar and jake are gay in a different way to ravenpaw and barley, is what i'm saying.)

right, so anyway. jag is...fuck i forget his backstory, but he ends up meeting a different traveling group of cats. he falls for a she-cat named violet, and when her group gets ready to leave, he follows.

mallow is pissed. mallow basically writes off jag immediately. his vision is getting worse and worse, and he's pretty convinced he's going to end up blind. jag is like, "but i said you could come with us!" and mallow is like "bruh! i can't! for a very clear and obvious reason, i need to stay in an environment i know!"

so they part ways. they never meet again, this is all like, exposition.

mallow is pissed, but he also is kind of convinced jag is going to come back for him. so he stays where he is, because he just...in a way, he needs to believe that jag will be coming back for him.

the ghosts start talkin' to him, being like, "you should move on," and he's like "fuck no," but eventually they persuade him.

in part because it's becoming obvious he can't take care of himself.

(before you @ me, the most self-insert-y part of this is mallow's disabilities, and i'm not really listing what's wrong with him, because part of his story is figuring out his own limitations.)

anyway, he's a trash hunter, and he's got problems, and the ghosts are like! you know! there's some other cats you can live with. go live with them.

and because this takes place in a weird combination of canon and noncanon lore (the ghosts thing always was a part of his backstory, but when i discovered the sisters, i reframed it as that, and so on. basically, his backstory has been tweaked many, many times, so parts of it don't line up with canon and parts do. just keep that in mind.)

right because this takes place in a weird combo of canon and noncanon lore, mallow ends up w/ skyclan but a completely different set of skyclan cats than canon. i think the leader is dovestar? or rosestar? i don't remember, they're not super important.

so mallow shows up, like, hi! i can see ghosts, and passes out. the medicine cat, oakfrost, takes care of him, he meets kestrelpaw, mossypaw, aspenpaw, and birchpaw (i liked tree names okay?), and they're all good friends.

(aspenpaw and kestrelpaw are littermates, mossypaw and birchpaw are adoptive littermates. aspenpaw and birchpaw don't have much relevance in the story, because they don't.)

okay, mallow agrees to train as a medicine cat, he resolves some ghost issues, he's about a year and a half old, and deer shows up and oh i forgot to explain something, mallow leaves trail markers in case jag follows him back. it's four white stones bc mallow can see white p well and he has four white paws.

right, so deer doesn't know this, but he does know where mallow was left, and he actually is young, he runs away from the sisters because they're moving on, and he wants to find his brother. he's like four moons old. in an mostly unexplained manner, deer figures out the trail, and yeah.

this happens maybe like, two weeks after mallow becomes mallowstep. and the clan is kind of like...another one? but they take him in because well they don't really approve of the sisters and at least deer (now deerkit) is not blind.

(they don't say that part but it's on their mind.)

deer btw is adorable he looks kind of like a fawn. he's a dilute chocolate (which is called fawn but i didn't know that when i named him) ticked tabby, and he's got a white underside, and a white tail tip. they both have that, actually, but mallow doesn't care about his.

(mallow is a silver tabby? did i ever say that part. you can get an idea by looking at my icon, but he also has a lot of browm markings that aren't really shown.

woof okay sorry, you guys can't tell but i can i had to remind someone that no, i very much Need to Eat and you cannot unexpectly change dinner times on me.

right. but i am running out of time, so i'll wrap this up.

deer comes, and becomes deerpaw, we have a bit of a timeskip, kestrelwing is in the nursery, etc...

skyclan needs to leave. the villain was never specified, it can be darktail. the important thing is! they send a scouting party. the plan is, crew one will go, and the rest will leave in three moons. that gives crew one enough time to turn around. they leave a trail behind them a la mallowstep (who doesn't go with them, because, blind. oakfrost goes, she dies before the groups reunite, mallowstep is very sad.)

right, deerpaw goes! he leaves, it's all very symbolic, bc this time mallowstep does follow the trail and he does come back to the one he loves. with also a cute scene in between when skyclan is on its way and mossytail, mallowstep, and kestrelwing are each carrying a kit.

alright, and that's pretty much that. lots of me rambling for no reason. there's a lot of other stuff that happens, kestrelwing is a fun character, etc., but that's the main body of it.

<3