private ♡ YOU STILL LOVE ME ANYWAY ♡

[splashdance]

The sky isn't clear. Pale and dark clouds intermingle, drifting across the expanse and only shedding beams of light below. Snow falls lightly, at least, but still tremor a chill in the air that even the thickest-furred cats she knows will struggle with. No flowers bloom, the grass isn't green... Hope could only be felt between the twitching whiskers of a kitten who does not yet know despair. The world is unhappy when leafbare makes itself present. Splashdance tries to grab at morsels that would brighten the scenery and light a new warmth in her chest, but... It's hard.

A stone turns in her paws, clustered by several others she's gathered in fruitless attempts. This one is chipped, and the one beside it is discolored. One is pretty on one side, but the other side is so caked with mud that she cannot even scrape away with her claws. Imperfect, each of them. None quite in a state free to give away. And as she looks on to her efforts, thinks of the one she would want to give them away to... sorrow fills her chest. The stone she holds is tossed away, bouncing down the damp snowmelt and out of her vision.

Maybe... maybe she isn't meant to find love. Perhaps her entanglement with Midnightash was supposed to be StarClan's sign of such; that the stars have guided her here and that should be enough for her. She's much too greedy, then, to even think of handing another stone off, and so soon at that. The dark furred molly tucks her paws beneath her, hiding most of her body just beneath a twisted root. It's a painful thought, to think that she's undeserving of something so many have. And yet, each shiver of her shoulders makes her believe it more and more.

A tear crests her cheek. A paw darts out, and the stone that's discolored is swatted at, nudged mouselengths away.

Her paw moves to clear the last one from her view. This one is colored just like him; the mud is unsightly, no doubt, but the riverbed slate is near identical to his pelt. She struggles to even nudge it away, her ears flattening to her head as she simply stares at it. Dotted with snowflakes, it looks more like he might in a blizzard. She grimaces for now its as if StarClan is teasing her for her foolishness. The stone feels heavy in her paw and she cannot bring herself to throw it. So, instead, she places it back down gently. She shifts her weight and rests her head atop her paws, looking out at the slowly changing territory. It'll be covered in snow again by nightfall. She should really be getting back to camp...​

 

[pebbletail]

(☼) as the snow melts, so too does the iciness between the two former best friends. they are amicable now, even if they are not back to the shoulder-bumping, company-keeping companions they had once been. as pebbletail begins to learn to juggle his duties as a new lead, he also juggles his relationships, finding them rockier and more complex than ever before. shellpaw has sunk away from his side, into the paws of pinepaw, and he does not begrudge the girls' relationship. his sister has been his best, most faithful companion since birth, and watching her branch out to find more kindred spirits gladdens the boy. it's simply that he can see the stewing anger in her, a low burning fire sending smoke into her cracked lungs, already damaged from long ago winter air.

similarly to his waning relationship with his sister, he thinks of his best friend. splashdance had found herself content with midnightash, a sudden but genuine connection, and even if pebbletail had been against it for personal reasons, he had let it lie by telling himself it had been what the woman had wanted. however, since many snow-strewn days ago, when she had collapsed in his grasp, sobbing about her mother, about her mate's lack of understanding, something boils inside the slate tom. they are on thin but stable ice now, but he can feel every burning glance from midnightash, has dreamt of her clawing him in his sleep. it isn't as if he has done anything wrong, but stars, it feels like he has.

now, mere days ago, word had reached pebbletail's tufted ears that a fight had occurred between the two mollies - one that had resulted in something more than a lover's spat. they're no longer together, a clanmate whispers. they've moved their nests to other sides of the den, another replies. does he know? the first asks, and they all turn to glance at him. he lowers sunspark eyes, and slips out of camp. splashdance and midnightash are no more, that much is clear from the tortie molly's guarded, crabby behavior, and the pitch femme's lack of presence within the clan. pebbletail's not sure what their argument had been over, isn't sure if midnightash had caught himself and splashdance speaking one too many times. he feels guilty, when everything tells him not to be.

in the haze filled forest, pebbletail's paws take him along well trodden paths, up and down the river, pacing, tail tip twitching. his paws sweep the melted ice, stones clattering beneath his paws. they are beautiful, swirled and spotted all over, a rainbow of colors and shapes. one catches his eye, a dark, pitch hue, splattered with a wave of pale white. a small smile hovers on the tomcat's maw, and he scoops up the rock with his paw, knocking it along a few inches.

lost in thought, it is too late to spot the dark shape huddled by the water before he pads distractedly into her eyeline. the young man's breath catches as river blues find deep flame. "snowy," he murmurs, and then narrows his eyes. the wide head tips, and he pads closer, brow furrowing. "it'll be getting dark soon."

LET ME BE YOUR OWN ☼ ICARION CARRION

• // " #848DAE"
• 
• PEBBLETAIL ☼ HE / HIM, RIVERCLAN LEAD WARRIOR, 13 MOONS. PENNED BY LAVS
  
  
  a large blue tabby with low white and vitiligo. pale blue fur covers the length of pebbletail's stocky body, sliced through with darker tabby stripes and spots. baleful orange eyes peer out of heavy set sockets, and his muzzle, paws, and tail tip are dashed with white.

​

 

[splashdance]

The pawsteps that approach her mark a familiar gait, peppered by an extra step. A stone being nudged along a rubble path, by paws that've long since been grown into. Splashdance wonders if she's dreaming. As she looks up, looks towards him and his figure as it becomes clearer, if she is fast asleep in her nest. The light shines beams on his riverslate pelt, his well-muscled body rippling with each step. Even with the hunger of leafbare, he remains a steady force to be reckoned with. He is a perfect choice for his mother's council, she believes. He is a symbol of RiverClan itself. He is...

Her tail unwinds itself from her side when he speaks. "Snowy..." It's terribly soft, a forbidden moniker shared between only them now. Her ears flatten to the sides and her remorse is immediate - her guilt in wanting becomes so evident in her heart as it skips a beat. Despite her cold demeanor, her aptitude to only speak with him in private moments and ignore him elsewhere... he's still so warm. He still cares. She thinks of the stars again, of how they've watched her paws tred to today. She wonders if her mother is watching her, now, and keeping her safe (or if instead, she's gleeful in her spiral, sour in her traitorous ways.) Her breath unintentionally hitches, and her lip quivers. "Pebble..." A gentle response.

He presses closer, and with his insistence of the night, she responds quicker - "Lay with me?" Don't leave. She tugs on their thread of connection, forever taut yet unbroken. She longs for him to agree, bask in the dying sunlight with her, hold her close... Midnightash would've thought this foolish. Would've told her to get home. But he - he knows her better than almost anyone. Great StarClan, how did she mess this up so horribly? She swallows the lump in her throat and follows her request with, "Just a moment. I... want to show you something." The stone - the muddy, clay bound stone, is clasped between her paws.

Everything tells her no. This is exactly what Midnightash anticipated. She isn't ready for this, much less deserving of him. Pebbletail, who is patient and kind, and hardy and witty. Who's heart bled for her even when she locked it from his reach. Her teeth click together as her chest pounds louder, holding fast to control where the rest of her body begs to flee. Snow dots her dark pelt, lingers on her long whiskers.

"Please?"​

 

[pebbletail]

(☼) she gazes at him with some odd light in her eye, a glimmer he hasn't seen since... well he's not sure he's ever seen it. her ears flatten, her tail tip twitching against her side before it flicks away. her breath hitches, her lip quivers. he longs to press his body into her own and halt the nervous tics, soothe the anxious energy radiating from her narrow frame. he swallows a breath in his throat, wondering briefly if the monicker of snowy has now been stripped of its good meanings, a reminder of the mother she will never now get to speak to. "splash," he amends, and she whispers his own name much the same, gentle, trembling. her pitch fur glimmers in the fading light, golden streaked, snow dusted. beautiful.

"okay," he accepts with a slow dip of his head, and pads closer, stalwartly ignoring the hammering of his heart. rolling the small stone beneath his paws, he places it gently to the side, now unwilling to part with it. there's something, some secret hope, that keeps it with him. they're no longer together. does he know? splashdance and midnightash! who'd have guessed it? will pebbletail buck up the courage? do you think it was 'cause of him? the voices of his clanmates, horrid gossips that they are, ring in his head as the slate-blue tomcat pads into the undergrowth, kneading at the ground with his paws, softening his place. he sinks down to splashdance's level, curling his paws beneath him, freezing for just a second as his pelt brushes hers. then, with a decisive movement, he curls his body in a different way. he moves so she is nestled in the crook of his stomach, their faces close together.

the sunspark gaze finds the small rock in her paws, and a question forms in his eyes. he will not speak, not yet, not until she's said what she needs to say, because to build up the hope that this small stone is what he thinks it is would be torture if it weren't true. "beautiful," he murmurs, and his eyes are no longer on the rock. they stay locked to her face, her lovely white freckled nose and river blue eyes he has drowned in more times than he can count. the rock is beautiful, but it's not what he's thinking of in this moment.

LET ME BE YOUR OWN ☼ ICARION CARRION

• // for those stalking, this canonically takes place new year's eve " #848DAE"
• 
• PEBBLETAIL ☼ HE / HIM, RIVERCLAN LEAD WARRIOR, 13 MOONS. PENNED BY LAVS
  
  
  a large blue tabby with low white and vitiligo. pale blue fur covers the length of pebbletail's stocky body, sliced through with darker tabby stripes and spots. baleful orange eyes peer out of heavy set sockets, and his muzzle, paws, and tail tip are dashed with white.

​

 

[splashdance]

Splash, and she has to stop herself from frowning. Hope has not dashed from her eyes yet (and guilt still swells in her heart.) Does it taste like a dirty word to him, she wonders? Stolen from the lips of her still breathing mother, heisted from the mind of her deceased one. A secret between them, a long played game - is he tired of playing? She would understand. Oh, she would bleed herself dry to show that he was okay to leave her alone and never speak with her again. Dramatic, maybe, but perhaps her muddied blood is all she has for show.

The rumors reach her ears just as they do his - but the merit she gives them is middling. He agrees to her request, and she hardly thinks of the nuisance voices in the back of her mind, only adding to the chorus of anxiety that dwells there. He takes his time and she imagines him pressed to the ground before her, perhaps allowing her to clasp his paws in hers, but instead - (Do you think it's because of him?) - he curls up behind her. He holds her close to is chest and cranes his head over hers.

Her cheeks flush and her ears burn red-hot. She realizes without a doubt that this is not something Midnightash has ever inspired within her. She realizes moments after that she can hardly even think of the russet-mottled molly more than her name. Being clutched close to riverslate-and-snow trestles, with sunspark eyes that always forgive and forgive and forgive -

"Beautiful," he says, and she looks back to him. She feels as if the world around them has halted entirely. She is not hungry nor tired, not sad nor exasperated. She is whole, with the missing piece of herself living in the tom's ever-bleeding heart.

"I don't deserve you," she murmurs to him, their noses only centimeters apart. Her paws clutch the stone she has, and for a moment she notices that he has something, too. Splashdance does not press, does not discard hers in favor of his. She remains honest and steady, for this is a version of her he deserves. This is the molly she should've always been - she's more than a disappointment for having rarely given him this much of her. The stone lifts in the little space still between them.

"It's like you," Splashdance says. "It's... it's your coloring, almost completely. But -" and she tilts it, turns it so that the clay-baked side shows clearer, "- something has gone and ruined it. It sat in clay too long, and the sun has baked this muddy mass of the wetlands to it. The... the clay is like me. Dirty as the marsh..." she trails, only for a second as she hears her own voice. She shakes her head, "I don't deserve you, like this rock doesn't deserve to have half of its beauty consumed by the clay. Yet I've been here for hours, Pebble. And I can't pull the clay from the rock. I can't..."

A long beat. She feels as if her heart has stilled entirely.

"I can't part from you, Pebbletail."

Her eyes grow watery. Splashdance lets the stone she holds settle on the ground between them, her paws pulling closer to her body. She almost wants to recede from him, from this, because hurting him hurts her, and she feels like that's all she does. But she remains with her heart splayed out, almost stubborn in her pain.

"I love you."
​