Briarlight: The cat who truly had 9 lives by Windsong

Windsong takes a look at Briarlight’s life and all the death-defying events in it. Spoilers for AVOS!

Briarlight is one of the kits of Greystripe and Millie, along with Blossomfall and Bumblestripe. In her life (that ran up until River of Fire, where sickness finally got to her) she went through a lot of encounters where she could’ve died. Here are a few.

The first moment was when she was a kit. She was playing with her siblings against the hollow wall. Little did she know, a snake was about to pounce on her. Two cats, Lionblaze and Honeyfern, spotted the snake. But Honeyfern jumped in front of the snake first, so it bit her. As a result, Honeyfern died, and Briarkit’s life was spared.
This is one of the saddest deaths in Warriors, in my opinion. I was reading it at school, and I almost burst into tears in front of all my friends.

The second incident was when she was an apprentice. It was her warrior assessment. Longtail rushed back towards the camp, hoping to retrieve a mouse that Mousefur didn’t want to waste. Briarpaw followed him, calling for him to come back. A tree falls on them both, killing Longtail and seriously injuring Briarpaw’s hind legs. The surrounding cats tried putting up props to lift the tree, but that didn’t work, so the all-powerful Lionblaze held up the tree so that Greystripe could grab her and escape.

It took a while (and a lot of Jayfeather’s patience) for Briarpaw to recover from her injury. She received her warrior name, Briarlight, at the same time as her siblings. She’s grateful that ThunderClan had become used to her injury and don’t stare at her anymore.

Soon afterwards, she gets a chest infection. Briarlight begins to feel angry at her broken spine and the trouble she’s causing for Jayfeather and the Clan. Millie tells her that there isn’t any trouble and she reminds her of what she still has left. Luckily, Briarlight’s fever goes down.

She becomes Jayfeather’s helper, but not a full medicine cat. She continues this role until River of Fire when she sadly dies of sickness. Briarlight was a very brave cat throughout her life, and would greatly be missed by Millie and the rest of ThunderClan.