GREETINGS!!! I come with some information about Thyme'Stem's training!
He was apprenticed to Striped’Claw, who left the Clan as a loner shortly after Thyme’Paw became Thyme’Stem.
Training with Striped’Claw was, admittedly… Pretty hard. She’d been really close to an older sister of Thyme’Paw’s, Sweet’Heart, who died not long before Thyme’Paw and his littermates were born. He wasn’t a reincarnation of her, but, coming from the same parents, it was natural for the two to look alike. Thyme’Paw was apprenticed to Striped’Claw while the warrior was still grieving her deceased friend’s death, and standing around somebody who looked so much like her didn’t exactly make her mental state better.
Striped’Claw would often go out of her way to avoid scenarios that involved being around Thyme’Paw. She couldn’t stand being around her own apprentice. Not with his sister’s death still present in her mind. It hurt to interact with him. She would often ask to put him in different patrols than her,
end training sessions early,
or straight up walk away in the middle of a training session.
Sometimes, she wouldn’t come to training sessions at all.
Although Thyme’Paw understood that the warrior needed her space, he couldn’t help feeling a little bit resentful towards the warrior’s absent training methods. His siblings had gotten good mentors. How come he hadn’t? He didn’t want to awaken negative emotions in other cats, but it sometimes felt like his mentor was afraid of him, even. Her lack of praise and intermittent training, mixed with how off their interactions felt, made Thyme’Paw promise himself that, when he became a mentor, he would never lose his composure around his apprentice. He would never make his issues feel like theirs, and he would work hard to be the mentor he wished he’d had.
His littermates helped with his training more than his mentor did. Whenever his training sessions with Striped’Claw came to an end, which was earlier than they should’ve, more often than not, he would wait near the camp entrance for his siblings to finish their own training sessions and ask them to share what they’d been taught with him. Now, those were fun training sessions! And they paid off, for the most part! Although he never got a grasp on climbing trees…
