My final attack was a revenge on @heylinfanclub following his group attack on me! All the character interactions this year made me smile, and so I really wanted to respond in kind for this last attack. I'm glad I managed to finish in time, thanks to the extension!
Diamond has come to release the clan from holding in one of the Spire's gate rooms -- and is now 1) trying to appear as non-threatening as a 6-foot-and-change-tall human can, 2) taking a moment to process Smoke's survival, and 3) lamenting the Spire's fresh capture of several new people.
The cats have mixed feelings about all of this, hah. They were trying to get home, but instead have found themselves in freshly strange surroundings.
Meadowfleck delights me, I love her design and concept so much.
I feel like Meadowfleck would be Quite curious on first meeting any of the Spire cats, but for this piece I kind of skipped further forward from that to ponder which of the Spire cats she might have a longer more meaningful impact on.
And I settled on Smoke! A small AU where instead of being stranded largely alone after their injury, they have some actual help and companionship.
Here we have Smoke fretting over how to get home -- whether that means their own return to the Spire, or trying to help Distantclan in their own journey, or both -- and Meadowfleck pointing out that they might make more progress if they started by focusing on what they definitively have or can get. (If this were in the menagerie, I kind of imagined her essentially saying, well, hey, maybe none of these plants are quite recognizable, but at least there's plenty of spiderweb... xD)
Growing up around their peers and involved in Brownie's shenanigans, Smoke honestly never had much exposure to pragmatism, and rarely had actual meaningful relationships with many adults. So I think they would really latch on to Meadowfleck, given the chance; they'd appreciate her frank wisdom, and her eccentricities would honestly make them feel right at home.
