private ˙ ˖ ✶ fire: the people ┊ scorchpaw.

[Cherryblossom]

Howlingstar, Little Wolf, and Orangeblossom are moving on to on to greyer pastures of conversation. Their new topics include things like new litters (she had enough of kits when she'd been a kit), how the prey is faring (as long as it ends up in her mouth, she's good), and what the latest ThunderClan news is (she doesn't even know any of these cats). They're starting to talk about adult things, like what the warriors talk about over shared tongues or during quiet lapses on patrol. Now, they're just doing it at the Gathering instead of at home. Cherrypaw thinks she's already heard enough of it, so she politely chirps an excusal—"It's nice to meet you, Howlingstar and Little Wolf!"—and ducks back into the congregation.

The little wanderer drifts through the dark again. Shadows cling to every surface they can, outlined in silver, rippling along patchworked pelts, stretching over the paw-trodden turf. The warmth of so many bodies, and the atmosphere of a clear Greenleaf night, ebbs and flows against her flanks. The brief reunion with her mother had been like sticking her head into a pocket of cool air, a breath to save in her lungs before plunging back into the heat of the crowd.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a firefly. No, a flicker? Of a flame, something like a burning wisp. It drifts between two tall, strange shadows, moving away with a motion too fluid for fire. Curious, she hurries after it.

It's a cat. She's about Cherrypaw's size and Cherrypaw's age. Thick orange ribbons course through her pelt, burning through the sea of black and white that'd hidden the rest of her from Cherrypaw. A butterfly wing like Eggpaw's winks at her in the moonlight, afternoon blue shot through with streaks of silver. The scent drifting off her pelt is entirely foreign. She smells of no trees at all, just the roar of an open sky and the kiss of unfettered wind. She smells like she swims through grass and the very earth, parting it before her as easily as twisting aside a branch.

She taps the girl's shoulder with her tail. "Hi," Cherrypaw meows brightly. "Your fur is sooo pretty." Moon yellow eyes sweep over her fur again; her markings seem to billow when she turns, like a fire smoldering into the night. "I'm Cherrypaw." Her smile is pearly and guileless. "What's your name?" Head cocked, Cherrypaw blinks expectantly at the stranger.

@SCORCHPAW​

 

[SCORCHSTORM]

Scorchpaw's conversation partner is serviceable enough. Applepaw, she says her name is, and the reek of mire and bog on her two-toned pelt is telling of her ShadowClan allegiance. She supposes she should have expected as much. ShadowClan's had been the same stench to cloud that harrowed patrol, the ones to wound Sootstar and spell defeat for WindClan, the mud mixing with the red ichor her clanmates had spilled all the way back home. It smells different without the tinge of copper.

But she grows bored of this conversation and elects to weave through the ocean of bodies in search of new excitement. She is not normally so social; Scorchpaw feels like a girl possessed as she scours over each face, some already in conversation with others, some not, all of them strangers. Why does she mingle? Because she will have no other time to? But WindClanners tend to keep to themselves, anyway. Does she really want companionship from the Clans that seem to hate her own flesh and blood? Or does she just want to put on a good face, one that her Clan can be proud of when it is all over?

Whatever it is, her paws still in their drive as Cherrypaw's tail taps her shoulder.

Scorchpaw curls around to face the other calico, at once confronted with woody pine claustrophobia and thick floral sweetness. She's smelled this before, too, or at least some version of it back when Scorchstreak had walked into camp with blood blossoming on her pelt. She had not borne the same star-culling injury that Sootstar had, but the wounds had been burned into the young girl's mind, a reminder of her dear mother's mortality.

But now she stares into yellow eyes soft like daisy petals, and there is no metallic curse cast upon her senses, just a saccharine grin and cherubim frame addressing her of all cats. Scorchpaw says nothing at first as she merely registers Cherrypaw's compliment. Somehow, it strikes her. Maybe it is because there are hardly cats her age in WindClan aside from her own siblings; maybe it is because she has never felt like the object of anyone's affection, and maybe she isn't even now, but to her young, inexperienced mind, Cherrypaw's praise is reason enough for her ears to go hot and her tongue to buffer.

"Thank you," the girl stumbles, glancing down at the white blaze on her chest as if becoming aware of it for the first time. But it's hard to tear her gaze completely from the other apprentice. Cherrypaw, she learns, with moon-white fur inlaid with ruby reds and onyx blacks, feathered as quails and just as beautiful. "I'm Scorchpaw," she returns upon request. Suddenly, she wishes she were Rumblepaw, or Luckypaw, or Parsnippaw or any other apprentice with more couth than she possesses. Her tongue feels too big in her mouth, and though she'd approached Applepaw with courage, for some reason she falters under the weight of Cherrypaw's expectant stare.

"I, um, like your fur, too," she manages, ears twitching. And she does mean it. "It's nice to meet you. Um, I'm a WindClanner. And he--" she pauses, pointing out Badgermoon with her wispy tail, "--is my mentor." And father, she thinks, though she doesn't tack that part on. Finally, she returns her gaze to Cherrypaw, her confidence slowly precipitating. "Is this your first gathering?"​

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[Cherryblossom]

It'd be a lie to say that Cherrypaw isn't expecting a compliment back. That was just how these things worked: she strolled up to a cat and gushed over them, and they always seemed more eager to talk to her than they had before, with a little extra for her generosity. But somehow, she's still a little surprised that the other girl—Scorchpaw—would tell her that she likes her fur too. It's something about the way she shapes her words, as though carefully untangling from the same stiff dry grasses that fleck her pelt, thought politely preceding speech as it hardly did for Cherrypaw. Or maybe it's the nervous flicker of both her ears, the tips of them white like someone had bitten them off and they'd grown back white. She seems like she might've fumbled the sentence back into her throat; there's some kind of restlessness within her that suddenly reared when Cherrypaw spoke.

Cherrypaw's interruption had surely broken her from some kind of enchantment, ripped the moonveil from her head, and left her exposed to the eager and chaotic world. She might've been as bad at navigating it as Crowpaw is, but for a distinct willingness to learn that her friend lacks. One thing all three of them have in common, though, seems to be their unburdened sincerity.

"Thank youuu," she purrs, tail looping happily around one of her legs. She'd worked on her presentation all night in preparation for the Gathering. Though Scorchpaw's fur isn't quite as smooth as Cherrypaw's, she's content with the praise from someone with a pattern that lovely.

She goes on to say she's a WindClanner. Instead of balking, or spitting up a curse, or attacking her right under the moon's eye, Cherrypaw just thinks to herself that it makes sense. The scent clinging to her pelt is the moorland smell, one which she has no recollection of. She'd been asleep when the weary warriors trudged home to their midnight camp. Cherrypaw's head tilts again, softer this time and in the other direction, when Scorchpaw points out her mentor too. The black-and-white tom is roughly the size of her mother, and he sits in her vicinity with the poise of someone who belongs there. He has to be a deputy, then. "Wow," she mrrps.

Not wanting to be completely outdone, the girl glances around for her own mentor. She'd been trying to avoid him the whole night, happy to be free from his burning gaze for once, so it takes her a few seconds to spot him even with his gargantuan size. With her tail she gestures to the stony shape of Slate, hunched perhaps among the other lead warriors, amber gaze dulled in the cool light. "That's mine." He's spoken about WindClan before, never with a tone even approaching positive, and probably wouldn't be thrilled if he spotted his apprentice with a WindClanner. Cherrypaw takes all his instruction with a grain of salt though, so she doesn't regret finding herself this close to one.

"Is this your first gathering?" "Yeah. I was made an apprentice this moon, actually!" she informs her, puffing her chest out. In the corner of her eye, Scorchpaw's mentor shifts a little, and the pale of his fur catches in the moonlight. "Do you like your mentor?" she wonders aloud, turning a more thoughtful gaze back to Scorchpaw. Of course, the question's cause is more to have a good segue into poking fun at Slate behind his back than interest in Scorchpaw's mentor, but she's not entirely disinterested in the other girl's mentor either. There has to be a reason she pointed him out; Cherrypaw doesn't know if she'd immediately comment on who her mentor is.​