Cheetahspark explores the idea behind a possible reincarnation for Briarlight.
*THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR POWER OF THREE AND OMEN OF THE STARS*
So, most of us probably know that Cinderpelt was reincarnated into Cinderheart. Cinderpelt was reincarnated because:
Cinderpelt never was able to realize her dream of becoming a warrior
Cinderpelt was never meant to be a medicine cat
Briarlight was sadly paralyzed and now can never be a warrior. Briarlight still earned her warrior name, but she now lives in the medicine cat den and doesn’t really fo anything besides her exercises. This is very sad and horrible for Briarlight.
As you probably all know, Cinderpelt was never able to become a warrior because of a tragic car accident. Cinderpelt, instead, became a medicine cat. Even though Cinderpelt didn’t necessarily want to be a medicine cat, it’s definetly better than sitting around doing nothing like Briarlight.
Now, for some reason, Briarlight is not a medicine cat. I don’t understand why, considering ThunderClan obviously doesn’t care if they have too many medicine cats and Briarlight already has a pretty good knowledge of herbs.
Moving on. If you read the title of this article, then you know I’ll be talking about why or why not Briarlight should be reincarnated. If you look at the small list above, we already have number one filled out: Briarlight and Cinderpelt both never were able to become warriors because of their injuries. For me, this is already proof enough that Briarlight should be given a second chance.
But there are a few obstacles. Cinderheart, after she realized that she used to be Cinderpelt, struggled a great deal with whether or not she should be a medicine cat. When Cinderheart eventually decided that she wanted to follow her heart and be a warrior and/or queen, Cinderpelt’s spirit ascended into StarClan by herself.
Let’s call Briarlight’s so-called reincarnation Briarheart. Even if Briarheart discovers that she used to be Briarlight, she wouldn’t really face any struggle about what she was meant to be like Cinderheart did since Briarlight was never a medicine cat. This is definetly good for Briarheart. But not really for Briarlight.
If Briarheart never really finds a way to separate herself from Briarlight’s spirit (like Cinderheart did with Cinderpelt), then would Briarlight’s spirit be eternally trapped in Briarheart’s body? When they go to StarClan, will they separate or be trapped within each other?
I don’t really have the answers to these questions. I don’t think StarClan would either. As it shows many times throughout the books, StarClan really isn’t that all-knowing. So if StarClan don’t know the answers to these questions, they probably wouldn’t take the risk of reincarnating Briarlight and having her being trapped within another cat for eternity instead of just letting Briarlight be healed in StarClan without being reincarnated.
And saying more about the StarClan-not-being-that-powerful situation, do they even have the power to reincarnate a lame cat within the same time period more than once? I don’t really know the extent of their power. But I feel like if they did have enough power to reincarnate any cat they wanted, why not Badgerfang? Why not Swiftpaw? Shrewpaw? Mosskit? The list is endless.
With all that being said, I feel that if any cat does deserve to be reincarnated, it’s definetly Briarlight.
That’s it! Thanks for reading! I really hope that wasn’t confusing. My thoughts are especially deep today 🙂
Briarlight deserves another chance. She was my favorite character and her death was just uncalled for. If you lose the use of one leg, why can’t a cat that couldn’t even walk get another chance?
ur so right!