Leafstar’s best moments
BY THE EDITOR
Leafstar has been SkyClan leader ever since it came back into being, longer than any of the other current leaders came to power, longer than any of the Clans have lived beside the lake, longer than most cats around the lake have even been alive. It has been a long life of love and loss, and throughout it all she has shown some truly remarkable strength to keep her young Clan together through its hardest times. Today, to honor her role in the upcoming series Changing Skies, we’re looking at Leafstar’s best moments.
5 – A true purpose
As true of a warrior as Leafstar is, she wasn’t born into a warrior’s life. When Firestar and Sandstorm first came to the gorge to rebuild the lost Clan, Leaf was a loner well accustomed to only looking after herself. Firestar knew it was going to take some serious work to convince the local rogues and kittypets of the benefits of Clan life. Of all of the new SkyClan’s early recruits, it was Leaf who seemed to understand more than any other the true nobility that could be found in a warrior’s life. In her own words: “If the Clan really works how you say it will, then cats will have a purpose. We’ll be more than just rogues, just living to stay alive.” She showed a true warrior’s heart before she ever became one, and in time she helped bring that warrior’s spirit to the rest of her new Clan.
4 – An unnecessary battle
When SkyClan first came to the lake, they planned to make their home in territory that was then inhabited the Sisters. Tensions began mounting between the massive she-cats and the Clans, and soon the Clans began clamoring to drive the Sisters away from their land. While Leafstar chose not to fight in defense of the Sisters, who after all had taken her captive, she also kept her Clan’s honor by refusing to participate in the multiClan patrol sent to intimidate the Sisters. The attempt at intimidation turned into a full-scale battle, causing the deaths of Moonlight and Leafpool. Because of Leafstar’s refusal to join a battle that never needed to be fought, her Clan’s claws alone were kept free of their blood.
3 – Juggling both jobs
If anything is harder than leading a Clan, it’s being a parent. If anything is even harder than that, it’s being both parent and leader at the same time. Add to that the newness and uncertainly stability of SkyClan, the squabbling between the all-day warriors and the daylight warriors, the danger brought on by the flood, arguments with her mate who wanted to take the kits to be kittypets, and a worrisome newcomer who was struggling to find his paws in the Clans, it’s a miracle Leafstar was able to keep her paws under her at all with so much to juggle, even before her kits went missing. But through this hard time having to be both leader and mother to very young kits, Leafstar endured, and both her family and her Clan held strong by the guidance of her steady paw.
2 – Deeper roots
One of Leafstar’s greatest strengths has always been her willingness to adapt. She honors the warrior code, but has never seen the use in ignoring a good idea just because it goes against tradition. Her Clan was brand-new when it came into her care, and she knew it would take some brand-new ideas to keep it together through the challenges to come. She was the one who decided to allow some cats to be daylight warriors, cats who hunted and fought for the Clan during the day and then returned to their house folk at night, because she knew it was the only way to recruit enough new cats to keep the Clan strong. She rose to StarClan’s challenge to forge “deeper roots” for her Clan by making changes to the warrior code to allow outsiders to hunt with and join SkyClan under certain conditions. Even after all the struggles of the journey to the lake and losing most of her family and how those experiences hardened her, she still never quite lost this knack for adapting to new ideas – upon recognizing Tree’s talent for managing conflicts, she created the new Clan role of mediator for him and has allowed him to work to smooth over several inner and interClan conflicts in that role.
1 – Keeping the sky from shattering
The hardest challenge Leafstar has ever faced in all her moons as SkyClan’s leader was being driven from the gorge by Darktail and the long, terrible journey to the lake that followed. Besides all the many other Clanmates lost, her mate Billystorm, daughter Stormheart, and deputy Sharpclaw were all lost to Darktail’s attack on the gorge, and her other daughter Firefern and medicine cat Echosong were lost to illness during the journey. So many beloved friends and family were lost, their home taken, and after moons of aimless wandering with even more losses and near silence from their ancestors, many other leaders would have given up. But Leafstar refused. Even when her Clanmates started to lose heart and abandon the Clan, or even make calls for it to disband, Leafstar never faltered. She buried her own hurt and kept her Clan moving forward, no matter what hardships tried to tear them apart.
