☆ Brightstar Clan Drabbles ☆

🌠 Hello and welcome! Here you can find and read the random stories of the wolves from Brightstar Clan. At the top of each post you can find a list of the wolves featured within, as well as (sometimes) additional Author's Notes. Most if not all of these will be short, unfinished stories -- more like rough drafts and concepts. Feel free to post any comments or constructive critiques at your leisure~ Thanks for stopping by! ✌

Masterlist
☆ Drabble 1 - Features 🌠 Starfall, 🌿 Sheepsong, and 🦌 Sleetslip
☆ Drabble 2 - Features 🌠 Starfall, Tumblefire, Fawnsmoke, and 🦌 Sleetslip

Other Brightstar Clan Links

☆ Clan Rankings ☆ Clan Art ☆

☆ The Great River Alliance (RP) ☆

     Drip... Drop... Drip... The drops of water falling from the cavern’s ceiling made a neat, crisp rhythm. To Starfall’s flicking ears it was a melody, almost as pretty as the Healer who resided within the cool-blue cave. The slick rock floor was chilly against Starfall’s pawpads, stepping neatly across the stepping stones dotting the clean, shallow moat around the Healer’s den. The birch she-wolf was working away at something, pawing around piles of herbs. The shadows of the ring of stalactites around her cast a shadow on her fair fur.
     “Sheepsong,” Starfall gave her a friendly whine through the plants clasped gently in her maw. “I’ve brought you something!” Starfall’s fluffy tail wafted side to side behind her. With a start Sheepsong turned to face her, and her blue eyes sparkled with delight.
     “Oregano!” she yipped. “That’s just what I needed. My, don’t you have splendid timing!”
     Starfall’s yellow eyes squinted up in delight, and she set the bundle of herbs down at Sheepsong’s paws. The Healer grabbed them up gently, and she paced over to a hollowed-out tortoise shell lying hollow-side-up. She tossed the oregano in to join the other herbs already there, and then pressed her paw firmly into the shell. The sound of her claws scraping against the shell mixed with the dripping drops of water, and Starfall’s ears flicked at the sound of it.
     “Here,” Sheepsong finally murmured. Her fresh concoction had been poured into a separate container. It was a shallow blue basin filled with a rich violet liquid. “Be a dear and stow that away for me, will you?”
     “What is it?” Starfall asked before she took the brew into her jaws, careful not to drink it or, worse yet, spill it.
     “A simple infection balm,” Sheepsong replied matter-of-factly. “But it’s good to have them available. You never know, you know?”
     Starfall pattered over to the neat cracks in the cave wall just beyond Sheepsong’s den. Standing on her hind legs and balancing herself with her forepaws against the wall, Starfall delicately placed the balm in an empty cranny.
     “Perfect,” Sheepsong said in a sweet whine. “Hopefully we...won’t be needing it anytime soon.” Her tone took on a different tune, sounding apprehensive and melancholic. Starfall’s nose twitched at a new, almost bitter scent crowding the space between them.
     “How’s your new position been treating you?” she asked calmly, trying to sound casual. “Are you adjusting well?”
     Now Sheepsong seemed to shrink under her Leader’s gaze, her bright blue eyes shifting off to the side. Then her nostrils flared, and she took in a deep breath and shook out her shaggy birch pelt.
     “I won’t lie,” she said evenly, “it’s hard work. And... I worry that I might not have what it takes...”
     “I see,” Starfall nodded to herself. In a few neat steps she was sitting herself down beside Sheepsong, nuzzling against her fluffy cheek while the tip of her tail wagged.
     “If it puts your worries at ease,” Starfall said, “I think you’re doing a fine job. I’m impressed, really... Sleetslip and the other hunters miss you, but... You’re doing great work here, Sheepsong.”
     “Oh,” she replied, sounding bashful.
     “But what I really want to know,” Starfall continued, “is if this work is making you happy.”
     “Oh!” Sheepsong sat up straight, her tail stiffening and her pelt bristling. Then she relaxed her posture, and a soft smile spread onto her maw.
     “Happy doesn’t begin to explain it,” her pool-blue eyes glimmered in the reflection of the crystal clear waters surrounding them. “I feel as though...this may be my...my true calling.” Her sheepish gaze flicked down to her forepaws, absently scratching at the glistening cavern floor.
     “I miss hunting,” she said. “And I miss Sleetslip and the others, but...” She took in a deep breath, and her smile grew wider. “I feel like this was...destiny!” Her lips parted to show off her pearly white teeth with a great grin.
     “Destiny?” Starfall repeated, her voice filled with wonder.
     “Destiny?” A third voice chimed in, deep and husky and bouncing around the cavern walls like a plump hare. Both she-wolves stood fully on their haunches, their coats fluffing up with concern.
     An ice-gray she-wolf came stepping in past the waterfall at the cave’s entrance. A friendly smile was on her face, and her gray eyes glittered at them both.
     “Sleetslip!” Sheepsong barked, and she went scrabbling excitedly over to greet her. “You smell like...” Her dark nose twitched around Sleetslip’s ears, then her neck. Sleetslip sneezed and licked her lips.
     “Boar!” she exclaimed, sounding proud. “Smelly but tasty. That Hawkflight may not be the most charming wolf in the forest, but he can sure bring down some prey.”

     Tumble sat trembling next to her sister. Her bright brown puppy eyes blinked pathetically up at their mother.
     “So,” Starfall began gently but sternly, “which one of you did it?”
     Tumble’s eyes darted to the side, and her quivering tail wrapped around her.
     “It wasn’t me,” her sister said calmly. Honestly.
     “Well it was one of you,” Starfall said, cutting her bright yellow gaze down at Tumble, still shivering and shaking. “The sooner you fess up the better, young one,” Starfall told her.
     “I... W-Well... Fawn told me to!”
     “Did not!” Fawn briskly retorted.
     “Enough,” Starfall cut in, a bit more firmly this time. She stood to her four paws and plodded over to grip Tumble’s scruff between her teeth.
     “But Mother!” Tumble wailed, “I just wanted a little taste is all!”
     Starfall stayed quiet, padding out of Mossy Den and making her way down the slope on the cliff face. Tumble squirmed around, crying and whelping and whining the whole way into Hunter’s Outlook.
     Finally Starfall released Tumble, setting her gently onto the cave floor. Sets of mixed gazes met them, an array of curious and disappointed and amused. Starfall was the first to address the lot of them.
     “Tumble would like to apologize to you all,” she said calmly, taking a seat and setting her fluffy tail over her paws. She looked expectantly down at the pup who was starting to shake again.
     “She would like to apologize,” Starfall said, “for stealing and eating one of your well-caught pheasants.”
     Tumble’s eyes shone up at Starfall, then back out to the gleaming gazes still staring at her.
     “I... I’m sorry!” she finally wailed, throwing her head back with a sorrowful and high-pitched yowl. There was some chuffed laughing somewhere in the back of the cave, but one of the Lead Hunters spoke up from somewhere close.
     “Your apology is accepted, youngster,” came Sleetslip’s deep but tender voice. “I’m sure your mother will be giving you a talking to, but... You must understand that you can’t just take what you want without first asking.”
     “But... But I’m the Leader’s pup!” Tumble protested boldly.
     Sleetslip’s maw cracked into a smirk. “That you are,” she said. “And your appetite makes it so very apparent.” She cut a mischievous side-eye to Starfall, who tried and failed to stifle a scoff.
     “Still,” Sleetslip said, “you should reflect on what you’ve done...and seek to change.” She gave Tumble a brisk lick on her head, setting her fluffy puppy fur in a small spike. With an aggravated groan Tumble swiped her paw over the stubborn tuft, flattening it back down. When she pouted up at Starfall, she was struck by the look on her face.
     Her eyebrows were just barely upturned, and her smile had faded and been replaced with a barely-there frown.
     “Come along,” Starfall said to her. She bowed her head to Sleetslip and the other hunters to bid them farewell, then she led Tumble back up the slope and into the heart of camp. They walked on past Mossy Den, past Denmother’s Hollow, even beyond Healer’s Grotto.
     The pair finally came to a stop in a clearing in the forest, and Starfall sat right in the middle of it, basking in a thick afternoon sunray. Tumble stared at her for a moment, stalling, awkwardly pawing at some of the crunchy leaves under her feet.
     “It’s true that you are my pup,” Starfall spoke softly, looking out at the forest before her. “But that does not make you an exception to the Clan’s rules and restrictions.”
     She turned to look at Tumble, and she studied her before she spoke again.
     “Do you know what the meat in Hunter’s Outlook is for?” she asked calmly.
     Tumble looked down at her forepaws, rolling the question around in her little puppy mind for a moment or two.
     “Eating?” Tumble answered, sounding reserved.
     Starfall let out a breathy laugh through her flared nostrils, and she shook her head.
     “That meat,” Starfall said, “is meant for the Trading Center.”
     “The what?” Tumble’s ears pricked up and her eyes grew wide.
     “It’s a place not too far from here. And it is where the hunters go to trade that meat for things that our Clan needs.”
     “Oh...” Tumble looked as though she were still trying to piece everything together in her head.
     “That means,” Starfall said, drawing her back to reality, “that now not only will we not have what we need, but other wolves from other packs will go hungry tonight.”
     “...Oh,” Tumble said, downtrodden.
     “And, I have decided, so will you.”
     “What?” Tumble lamented loudly. Starfall snapped her a stern glance, and Tumble shrank away from her.
     “Tonight you will have no meal, so that you know how the wolves who should have gotten it will feel. Hopefully then you will truly understand the consequences of your actions.”
     “But... But that’s not fair!”
     “You’re right,” Starfall nodded. “It isn’t fair what you did. But you can learn from this, and become a better you. My dearest Tumble... Become a wolf who contributes, not one who steals.”
     Tumble frowned down at her paws, flexing her claws and digging them into the loose dirt. A tiny growl tumbled from her throat, and all at once she snapped up to her feet, her tail straight up in the air, and she let out a flurry of yips at Starfall.
     “You can’t tell me not to eat!” she yowled. “You can’t let your pup go hungry!”
     “You won’t starve from missing one meal,” Starfall told her plainly.
     “Yes I will!” Tumble growled.
     Now Starfall returned the growl, and her top lip curled into a neat snarl.
     “Do not make your punishment worse,” she snapped. “No food tonight. And that is final.”
     Tumble glowered up at her, defiant and angry. But Starfall did not falter, did not budge. She only stood and silently began to step back towards camp. With a simple flick of her tail she signaled for Tumble to follow.