private ˙ ˖ ✶ chicken tenders in my hotel ┊ lupinepaw.

[Cherryblossom]

Their moss-gathering mission had quickly devolved into an impromptu climbing session. Or lesson, depending on who was asked afterward.

Lupinepaw's feathery tail dangles in her face, and she resists the urge to swat it like a kit. It'd only been a few sunrises since Blazestar made them all apprentices, but she already feels more mature! No thanks to Slate, of course; who, along with Dandelionwish, were the sources of today's quickly-derailed excursion. Her hind paws flex impatiently into the ground, while her forepaws stay propped up on the tree trunk. Their chosen tree is a sturdy thing. It's not as wisened as the Tall Pine, but it's about as wide as Lupinepaw is long, and it bears a story of ridges and scars to dig their little claws into.

The fiery tip of her tail twitches, another symptom of her growing impatience. The boy's lengthy form hovers just a little farther above on the tree. Right now he kind of looks like a raven who'd flown way too fast through the forest and plastered itself onto one of the pines: mostly immobile with a few nervous twitches here and there. "C'mon, Lu!" she groans, tapping a pale paw on the trunk. "I did it fine. All you have to do is make it to that branch." Said branch sways, enticingly and ominously, in the breeze some tail-lengths away from where he perches.

@LUPINEPAW​

 

[LUPINESONG]

( tags )
In the few sunrises since Lupinepaw's ceremony, apprenticeship had proven itself to be packed with things to do. In a clan as busy and bustling with cats as Skyclan, there was always something that needed to be done, whether it be hunting for prey or moss, and that was excluding all of the training there had to be done. A certain smokey black young cat welcomed the newfound busy-ness of apprenticeship, as there was plenty to be distracted by. Lupinepaw was decidedly not thinking about something, which didn't bother him because how could someone be bothered by something they weren't even thinking about? Right, it was impossible, and thus Lupinepaw remained unbothered. Besides, he had plenty of more pertinent things to worry about now, such as the fact that he was currently stuck to the side of a tree trunk.

When moss-collecting lost its novelty, Lupinepaw thought a more fun way to pass the time would be to practice their tree-climbing skills. Cherrypaw seemed to be a natural at it, climbing up to the lowest branch of the old tree with relative ease. Lupinepaw, he quickly realized, was not. Small claws ached with the effort of holding up his long body while his limbs quivered with some combination of exertion and nervousness.

Cherrypaw waits impatiently below, encouraging him to make it to the low-hanging branch above him. It's only a couple tail-lengths away at most, but from where Lupinepaw was, it might have very well been in Thunderclan territory. "I think I'm- slipping-!" he mewed, definitely feeling his paws wavering. But he wasn't defeated so easily, and braced himself to give one final push and ... jump!

Claws slipped and skittered uselessly on the weathered bark, and Lupinepaw would plummet the short distance back to earth and toward the fluffy calico form of his friend beneath him.

//mobile

"SPEECH"

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

Cherrypaw isn't disappointed in Lupinepaw. How could she be, when she had never really expected anything of him anyway? Well, that was a lie. She expected him to be her friend, another soul to share the burden of being an apprentice, especially one of Slate's. She sort of expected him to be a good SkyClanner too, with his height that seemed like it hurt to grow to and angular features so reminiscent of their best warriors, but maybe she'd been more influenced by the darker voices in SkyClan than she should be.

She likes him too. The boy is as eloquent as any adult, a good conversationalist, with ebony locks as fine and smooth as her own. He doesn't often dive into the childish scuffles of Doompaw and Cherrypaw and the like, but she occassionally catches his voice backing her up. His voice is as soft as Sparrowsong's, but he smells sweeter than any flower she's ever stuck in her fur. That softness bothers her though, catches on her like a claw snagged in downy bedding. He ducks his head all the time, like he's always on the verge of a scolding, and if she were his height she'd already be trying to lord over everyone else. He's just, just so—

"Hey, wh—oof!" Her exclamation is swallowed by a sudden mouthful of black fur—and flesh and bone. Lupinepaw's full weight slams into her nose, almost instantly crumpling her beneath a smoky payload of flailing limbs. Her nose screams. Tears ricochet up her sinuses and into her eyes, and she rocks hard onto her forepaws. She feels Lupinepaw scrambling off of her, vaugely, like someone slipped a thick pad of moss above her spine right before he fell. His bony, coltish form feels like someone dumping a load of pebbles on that pad.

It takes a few seconds for her to look up again, but when she does it's in the form of a watery glare. "Why are you so bad at this?" She nearly spits the words out. With the look on his face, she nearly regrets them too. "I didn't mean it like that." She rubs at golden eyes and wipes away the last of the reflexive tears, but not so that she can get a better look at those wide eyes, liquid and too shiny to just be a reflection of the sun.

"It's not that hard. You, you..." She tries to put the way climbing feels in her mouth and fails. Her paws are smart—they yearn for the best spots upon the vertical like a seedling yearns for the sun, innately knowing where the warmth is, despite the dark soil and despite its lack of brain—but they are also dumb. They can't speak like her tongue and teeth can, and certainly not like Lupinepaw's can. "You can't just stay there. You have to keep moving." Cherrypaw wants to put to words the ache in her muscles when she's holding herself up like that, and how it'll ache anyway so why not keeping moving up, long enough to make it to an actual resting point. But she can't, because it's in her legs and not her brain. She trusts her paws like she trusts her mother, but Lupinepaw has to think about what orders to give his paws in order to move them. He thinks and thinks and thinks, and by the time he ends up telling them to do something it's already too late.

Cherrypaw hadn't been born good at climbing. What kit is? But she had wanted to climb. She doesn't know when it started or why she does. Maybe she saw Orangeblossom scratching up one of the pine trees around camp, explaining its mechanisms to one of the kittypets or loners turned warrior. Maybe one of the older kits had summited Snowpath's grave and crowed to the world about it. All she understands is that she wanted to do it, so she did. She fell and tripped and straight up flopped off every surface in camp, tearing up the den walls and leaving clawmarks on the rocks. Her failures stung and mussed up her pelt, but her mother and siblings picked her up each time, dusting off her mistakes, grinning at the attempt itself. Eventually she started picking herself up too.

Lupinepaw is good at things too. He makes the grown-ups smile, and though he doesn't needlessly squabble like Cherrypaw does, she's seen the glare of gentle eyes over the heads of his crying lookalikes. Renewed annoyance sets the tip of her tail twitching. She's too young to say that she wishes he believed in himself more, so she just huffs, "Do it again. Don't be a kit about it."​

 

[LUPINESONG]

( tags ) Lupinepaw was confused when his short drop was met with a softer impact than he expected, even softer than what he was expecting from the lush greenery that littered the forest floor. But it only took half a breath to realize why, and the boy scrambled to reign control of his bony limbs enough to hop off of Cherrypaw's poor face with a squeak. Lupinepaw's still out of breath from the fall as an apology rushes out of his mouth, "I'm sooo sorry!" He gasps again, stomach dropping seeing her rub her nose. "Are you-are you okay?! I'msorrythiswasabadidea should we get Daw-" his flood of apologies coming out as Cherrypaw bites out her frustration. "Why are you so bad at this?" His speech halts and he casts an upset glance off to the side, mumbling, "I don't know..." Tears welled up in big green eyes, something expected but nonetheless undesired. His eyes went shiny worrying for the welfare of his companion, quivering at the thought of being the cause of her staying in the medicine den for stars knew how long. She tried walking back her exclamation, which was nice of her, and his whiskers twitched at the effort, "No, it's fine, I am bad."

Cherrypaw's attention was sometimes a challenge to snag, but he found himself reaching for it whenever he could. Cherrypaw had enough self-assurance to carry anyone she brushed pelts with. She forged a brightly lit path ahead of her, a breath of fresh air for a youth who more often than not lived as if he was expecting the road ahead of him to drop off into a sudden cliff. Even when she bickered with the other kits or caused trouble for their parents, Cherrypaw embodied a boldness—a bravery—that Lupinepaw envied. Or perhaps admired would be a better word for it. Recently, he found himself seeking out her company as often as he sought out his siblings, and there was a tinge of fear that poked at him that this falling out would dash away any of his hopes of finding a good friend outside of his immediate family circle.

Some of his tears, though, were borne out of the frustration of failing so bluntly, and out of the fear that he was simply not ever going to be able to climb. If he couldn't get even a claw-hold enough to make it to a measly branch only a few tail-lengths in the air, how could he ever expect himself to be able to climb any other tree ever? Lichen-colored pools shimmered at the following thought of Cherrypaw, along with his siblings and mother, frolicking in the treetops while he remained on the ground, muddy-pawed and alone.

He envied those who could hold themselves with such confidence, who didn't even think so much as to doubt themself before saying a word or making a move. He rarely even spoke without having first mulled over the sentence in his head at least a dozen times, and he resented his halting, unsure, imperfect words when they did crawl forth. Lupinepaw was a spider, toiling all day and night to craft his careful, meticulously designed web of thoughts. He cared a lot about the things he said, he wanted to make sure that they came out right.

Climbing was a similar challenge, if not a steeper one due to lack of practice. Lupinepaw so wanted to climb well, he had many daydreams of himself as one of the Skyclanners that patrolled and hunted among the leaves, skipping across branches with poise and ease. It would come as no surprise to learn that it would be the same hesitance that held onto his speech that would prevent him from the lofty treetops he dreamed of. This was something Cherrypaw recognized, even if she didn't have the words to articulate it, as she explained the process again. And perhaps his self-hindrance was something Lupinepaw was beginning to recognize himself, even if confronting it made his chest tighten and eyes sting. Maybe bravery was something not inherent in some but absent in others, maybe it was a choice—or many choices—every day to do little acts of bravery.

So when Cherrypaw huffed and told him to try it again, he was filled with a newfound vigor to 'not be a kit about it.' The smokey cat propped his forepaws on the tree trunk, glancing once back at her for a moment, "Uhm, maybe you should take a step back... just, you know, in case." He turned his gaze back up to the branch above him and took a deep breath, Don't think... just do it. Don't think... just do it... He sprang upward and hooked his claws into the ridged bark the way he did last time, but didn't freeze there. Instead, he kept pushing upward, using his momentum to scale higher. And when he got within reach of the branch, he gave a little wiggle before springing towards it.

When paws were finally firmly—if not awkwardly—planted beneath him on the branch, he laughed incredulously, "I did it..?" Lupinepaw peered back down at Cherrypaw with glee, seeking out sunlit eyes and feeling thrilled rather than spooked by his newfound height, "I actually did it!"

"SPEECH"

Spoiler: prompt ii.

"lupinepaw is easily discouraged, but also a perfectionist. write about how he feels and reacts when he is faced with harsh but constructive criticism."

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

"No, it's fine, I am bad," Lupinepaw sighs, and for some reason that hurts her. It tugs at her soul like someone accidentally stepping on her tail fur, pinching and grinding it into the dirt with his heel. It wasn't her ego she'd beaten on. If he were like Doompaw or Plaguepaw she wouldn't care either; they'd just scoff at her and march on because they were too stupid to heed her words. Lupinepaw was a willowy pine needle to their bramble thorns though, and though she knew it she didn't really know it. She'd been so used to saying whatever she wanted she'd forgotten what it meant to have someone actually listen.

Like Crowpaw, her friendship with Lupinepaw had crept up on her and was just down deciding to make itself known. The way she held these cats so close to her heart was a revelation too, so that she might feel each and every blow to them as though they were meant for her. However, she does not further reel back her words. She supposes she'd say similar things to herself were she this mouse-like—which she never would be—and, anyway, the words needed to be said. Look, they were already having an effect!

Once again, Lupinepaw stretches himself across the tree trunk. For a moment all she can see of him is his inky black back against it, like the thickest groove ever to be carved into the bark. Then he glances back at her, and she catches the glint of jade eyes beneath wind-tangled strands of fur, still gleaming with the remnants of tears. Yet it's a different thing this time, his gaze. It's a little sharper, a little more focused.

He climbs the tree—he climbs the tree! He makes it to the branch! "YEAH!" Cherrypaw just about howls. She dramatically flings her forepaws upon the trunk, tilting her head back to beam up at the boy, brilliant and warm as the sun rising below his feet. "I knew you could do it!" she cries. Then she laughs the simple, childish joy of success and discovery, of being able to share it with someone too.​