development 𓆝 AU REVOIR, ADIÓS ☾ DISAPPEARANCE

[EVENINGPAW]

BINGO EVENT - MUSKIE
TLDR; she gone !​

Any onlookers perceptive enough to do a double take would already know that Eveningkit had been restless. Too many things have happened; the vanishing of Clanmates had been just the starting point, equally as sad as what followed, but they were occurrences that she would have managed to push through. Hope lives in even the tiniest of hearts.

But then, it just kept happening.

It started with Lichenstar's almost-disappearance. News had reached Eveningkit's ever-perked ears, and it had taken all of her willpower not to start wailing right then and there. Not because she particularly cares if others would find it annoying — that sort of thing rarely matters to her —, but because it'd have felt inappropriate and tone-deaf to worry over what almost happened, when other cats have been steadily going missing.

Then Riverpaw.

Now Hazecloud.

Such a little heart is not big enough for the hole that brother and mama had left behind. Eveningkit doesn't believe that either of them will be gone forever; she cannot think that, not even for a second, needing some sort of fuel to keep on going even in the wake of such tragedy. But Hazecloud has always been the one who soothes her, who makes her more mellowed out than anyone else... her safe space, now taken from her by force. The warriors and council speak of trails; that they go stale or lead into places too dangerous to traverse at a time like this; that sometimes, there aren't even any proper trails to follow; that the search has to be called off before it even begins.

To add insult to injury, Eveningkit is unable to go and look for them herself. It's a pitiful curse to be forced into the safety of home when all her heart wants to do is to run and search and look into every nook and cranny. Days have passed in inaction... and Eveningkit cannot keep it up any longer.

She uses the cover of night, plan already developing hours before the sun even starts to set. Her maw remains tightly shut that day, uncharacteristically quiet and stoic, not mustering the energy to even smile at her siblings or ask what the other warriors are up to. Body and mind find themselves in waiting- it drags on for ever, and she can barely wait til she's certain everybody has fallen unconscious.

It feels wrong when she jumps behind every reed to stay hidden, but if she can get a chance to find mama... anything is worth it.

Her nest remains empty when the camp wakes come morning. Scents that remain even hours after the fact lead to a soft impression amongst grass, square-like shapes pressed into it and reeking of Twoleg.

Only one possibility is evident; Eveningkit has fallen victim to a trap and has been taken from RiverClan.

​

 

[LAKEMOON]

.·:*¨༺ ☾ ༻¨*:·. Lakemoon is far more familiar with the nursery's residents than she would have cared to be, her interest in entertaining children only extended so far- enough for her two kits and their cousins on occasion. Still, when lending a paw to kitsit or spend time with her children, getting to know the others was only natural. It wasn't a bad thing, kits were Riverclans future, a potential apprentice for the blue tabby. Eveningkit had never done much to end up high on the tabbies radar, she was an adventurer as far as Lakemoon could tell- but lacked a certain rambunctiousness that would otherwise draw more attention to her.
The smell of two-legs however, that was on her radars far more than she would have wished. Dawn casts the sky in soft hues of pinks and lavender, pushes a delicate breeze into camp. The breeze laced with the smell of something acrid, smoked… the tabby rises, looking to the early-rising clanmates that lingered around. The scent trail was easy enough to follow even without the milk-laced scent of a kitten, but that's what broke Lakemoon into a run. The scene she finds tells a clear story, the linear outlines of kennels and cages still vandalized their grass, the kits scent…
Wasn't Graykit's or Snowkit's, guilt immediately follows the rush of relief, but Lakemoon knows the return to camp must be swift. Medicine cats, warriors, queens, apprentices… kits, stolen.
"One of the kits has been taken by the two-legs." Her stride into camp is brisk, "Where's Lichenstar? Someone check the nursery." Would Lakemoon be able to recognize the missing piece without waking a queen? The tabby didn't want to risk it- didn't want to be the one to tell the den of mothers and children that one of their denmates had been whisked away.

‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── SMELLING LIKE A BONFIRE ⋅ ࿏ ⋅ LOST IN A HAZE ──┐‎

• 

• 
  LAKEMOON ☾ she/her, warrior of riverclan, 27 moons.
  ⭃ lanky blue tabby with low white and navy blue eyes and a slightly twisted right hind leg. A large facial scar stretches from her right brow to her left cheek, and another crosses at her chest and stretches down the length of her stomach.
  ⭃ daughter of Tempestmoon && Lilypad ࿏ sister to Wolfwind ࿏ mate to Lilybloom & mother to Snowkit, Graykit
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking
  ⭃ penned by Noor ↛ @toyangel on discord, feel free to dm for plots.

​

 

[shellpaw]

she'd thought it strange, of course, when she'd found her sisters nest cooling. hazecloud's scent still lingers beneath the rumple of her siblings moss, marks of unease pricked into the tattered corners of greenery where they've worn it thin in worry ; shellpaw knows it well. hers looked much the same, a mental sickbed, however donned with shells and pebbles and feathers as it was. there was no time for adjustment. another sunrise wrought another disappearance, another twoleg to venture past their boundaries and kidnap them to be taken.. somewhere. somewhere. there is no solace in somewhere, no solace in the place starclan could not see.. she feels each loss like a limb, still seeping pomegranate red, dousing her further in devilish shades until she'd nothing left to give. time is a momentary salve ; eveningkit marionettes her each move, finds her the moment shellpaw breeches the cattail spouting from camps entrance, ailing and aching from the meadowlands hardships. her dear sister, river - ribboned fledgling, brought a staunch to the bleeding. allowed her a peaceful rest, lilted her to sleep in peace knowing the babies ( not so much anymore ) remained unharmed.

her return is joyous for only a brief moment — the girl stops, waits for expectantly, braces herself for the pounce of a little she - kit. when it doesn't come, shellpaw sniffs.. she heads for the nursery on paws grown nervous. foolishly, foolishly.. what could happen to her, here in camp?

but she is not here. her nest cools further.

there is a trembling moment between the time in which she's turned, exited the nursery, and lakemoon's brisk call in which her mind seems to stutter. she struggles to comprehend — the silver molly wasted no time, shows little emotion despite the heart - shattering words dripping from her serrated tongue. she says a kits been taken far easier than claythorn had gritted it out in lieu of moonbeams capture, troutsnouts, far more simple than foxtail's stuttered hazecloud. her first instinct is a blurted how, but shellpaw knew best how. it took only a moment, a sense of bravery far bigger than their body, an attitude unquelled by life and fear. an untarnished mind, thinking only to save, protect. it was how they'd been raised, empathy instilled in the valleys of veins that pulse riverclan blood hot and proud beneath their fur… a sense of dread begins low, static in her paws. her mouth runs dry. she stares at lake moon just as she had claythorn, foxtail, would stare at the next and the next to say they took another one.

she forces a glance around. horizonkit was present, twinklekit.. but eveningkit. eveningkit was missing.

" no, that can't be right. " it's a muttered start, to herself, breathy in midst of short, heavy puffs of breath that fall from her alabaster maw. the fur along her spine begins to lift, curls bristling into something straight and thornlike, shards of frost she feels to her very marrow. her maw opens, heaves a breath, swivels her skull around as if she could spot her stop the trees, over the water, atop the warriors den.. her absence screams. can no one else hear? " she has to be here somewhere. she has to, she — evie? " louder. she says her name louder, quicker, rheumy eyes wider than they've ever been, waterlogged at strawberry edges with tears that threaten to track down fluffy cheeks. this wasn't happening, she thinks, hazily, frantically, feels pins and needles creep up the pink - purple of her paws — panic. a stone sits heavy in her rib cage, heart a desperate butterfly that settles only to feast on her bloodstream. her veins brim cold, lungs ambling to keep up with the steady uptick of her rabbitbeat pulse, " evie! where are you, eve — eveningkit! "

shellpaw jerks herself aside, stumbles towards the warriors den, towards the apprentices den, chokes on a hoarse, ever - weak, " EVENINGKIT! " tears fall. she can't scream loud enough, feels the toil of stress beneath her ribs that has her panting, drooling with effort at the corners of her maw. she prays itll be silly in a moment, when the girl peeks 'round the corner and surprises her with a beaming smile. got you! she'd be overreacting, she was just overreacting, she was just — " nooo, no, no.. " she croons, low and desperate and brimming with a frantic insanity that has her tail fluffed bottlebrush thick. her eyes squeeze shut, ears pinning and tail wrapping tight around her body to let steady tears dollop the bulk of her cheeks and smear her ever - wet nose. she doesn't have to say it, screams it instead in the way her body arches, draws in on itself in an awful, ugly crouch that flutters her flanks in awkward, ragged gulps of breath : i can't find her, i haven't found her, shes always here to greet me. she's not here. who else could it be?

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐏𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 ° 𓇼 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒

• i.
• 
• SHELLPAW 𓆉 SHE / HER. SEVEN MOONS OLD, APPRENTICE OF RIVERCLAN, MENTORED BY LICHENTAIL ; SMELLS LIKE SALT & RIVER BLOOMS. HAZECLOUD xx LICHENTAIL, NIECE TO SMOKESTAR. PENNED BY ANTLERS ----------------- ° ❀ ⋆
  frail alabaster molly with lilac striping and watery amber eyes.
  
  she is pallid ; platinum splotched with ribbons of dovey lilac curls, wisped ends like memories of a distant shore and plush enough to conceal the juts of malnutrition beneath. tufted elderdown fur conceals a body worn fragile by tumultuous youth, too thin in some places and round with baby fat in others. her face is short - muzzled, framed half mast by eyes coined rheumy, rosen amber. the anemic cold pink - purple at tender paws and nose tell a lifetime of sickness, further made obvious by the feathering weakness in half - whispered tones.
  

  CHRONICALLY ILL ; prone to wheezing, nose at a constant drip from longterm illness - induced nasal polyps. not contagious.

​

 

[HORIZONPAW [transferred]]

When he wakes, Eveningkit is gone. Horizonkit is frosted-over by the time the warriors make it to the emptying nursery, a cold draft sitting where Hazecloud and Eveningkit's bodies should be. Chills crawl up his fishbone spine and tremble his paws, white and ash pressed together like a prayer. Vaguely, he feels Twinklekit besides him, more aware of it than ever. Whether she continues to pace around, or volley straight for their mother, or simply huddle with him; he keeps one tear-filled eye trained on her.

I tried, he wants to say, when a familiar stormcloud pokes her head into the den and blusters away. I tried to find her. I tried! Her absence is as readily noticed as her presence, bright and shimmery as wave-rippled sun. He did his due diligence. He asked his snail; he scoured every nook and cranny of the nursery, parted sedge and flattened reeds; he even mustered the courage to squeak a question to one of the other queens. But the sun had not risen yet, and he was lured back into stillness by sleepy murmurs and the growing clamors of denmates.

A familiar face peeks into the den next, and Horizonkit momentarily brightens. "Shell...?" "No, that can't be right." Small ears barely catch the murmur, strained towards her like sunflowers towards the noon. Desperation tumbles from her mouth like pebbles, clattering between rows of ivory, sanding them down till it spews from her maw unhindered. Fear seizes his stomach. He tucks his tail tighter around himself, a smaller target for her desolate rampage.

He doesn't say a word while his older sister falls to pieces outside. Instead, he watches her wilt and succumb to the sands, the shards of her all scattered like lilac-stained porcelain. She's really gone? That's it, she's gone? He tried his best not to scream while everyone was sleeping. But no one was sleeping now, and there would be no one left asleep in the search for her. Slowly, he raises his chin to wail. "MOM! PEBBLEPAW!"

riverclan kit | "speech." | tags​

​

 

[pebbletail]

(☼)pebblepaw opens his eyes to the nursery walls, to the fading scent of hazecloud as he crouches in her nest, the warmth of smaller bodies next to him with one missing. the boy wakes to another part of his world shattering. he hears the bird shrieking of his sister first, her howls for eveningkit casting over camp and shooting ice into his heart. "shell?" he calls, and tufted ears flatten as sobs choke the calls. pebblepaw's own amber gaze is tinged with red, eyes bloodshot from sobbing himself to sleep. "no… no!" eveningkit's absence is clear in the light of day and pebblepaw berates himself for not noticing it in the darkness of night. "not her too, starclan…" his voice is low, threatening to break with each breath he takes as he realizes what is going on. horizonkit and twinklekit had not stirred him in his slumber when they'd noticed their sister's absence - no one had seen the little she-kit vanish into the ether of night and the claws of twolegs.

horizonkit begins to wail and pebblepaw is shaken from his frozen horror to the sight of his little brother, chilled to the bone. "i'm h-here, 'ri," he murmurs but his voice is trembling in an effort to keep himself together. riverpaw's gone- their oldest is lost to the same claws that eve and hazecloud is, and pebblepaw takes up the mantle of oldest child with grief heavy upon his shoulders. sunset optics shimmer with unshed tears that threaten to fall should he not do something, and so he clings to his little brother like a lifeline. the fast fading stormcloud kitten fluff of horizonkit's head tickles pebblepaw's nose as he buries it, taking several deep breaths that sound tortured out of his lungs. "i'm here, we'll get her back, we'll bring her home."

lips quivering, the apprentice stands, attempting to guide his littler siblings out of the nursery and into the watery daylight that dawn brings. if lichenstar is not near by now, the dappled boy will run to fetch her, owl like eyes wide and sorrowful, a guilt piling atop the grief that threatens to tear him to the ground. "mom!" he echoes his little brother's words, everything crashing down around him. tears finally fall. "eveningkit is… she's…" gone.

I DO NOT HAVE WINGS, LOVE ☼ I NEVER WILL

• // fetching @lichenstar // on mobile so excuse any typos xoxo" #848DAE"
• 
• PEBBLEPAW ☼ HE / HIM, APPRENTICE OF RIVERCLAN. NEPHEW TO SMOKESTAR. 7 MOONS OLD, PENNED BY LAVS
  
  
  a large blue tabby with low white and vitiligo. pale blue fur covers the length of pebblepaw'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.

​

 

[Snakeblink]

MAYBE I'D BE A SAINT IF I WEREN'T ————————————​

Anger is not a common expression on Snakeblink's face, and it does not sit well on it. It slides on his usually neutral features like oil on water, a rigid coldness in the line of his mouth and of his adder eyes. All that tension flows into his limbs, paws jerking into motion with the unsettling jitter of the reptile he was named after. "A kit?"

Apprentices wander; queens take walks out of camp, and medicine cats travel the territory almost as much as patrolling warriors in search of herbs. These he could explain. But a kit, even one with the same truant tendencies as Hazewish and Catfishleap used to have, should not have gone far enough for twolegs to take them. Not unless the twolegs had indeed come very, very close. Threatening their camp, their clan, trampling over their territory—

His voice, when he pries his jaws open, is a reedy hiss that breaks ever so slightly with the effort to keep it level for the sake of the already agitated younger cats. "Lakemoon, will you please show me to the scene? I would like to see where the twolegs' trail leads." The unsubtle brutes are as easy to track through the broken reeds as a rampaging boar. Hopefully they will have taken the kit to their strange shining camp and not further out, where the clan cannot follow.​

——————————————————————————————————— so god damn lonely​

ooc. information.

• 
  
  
  — Snakeblink • he / him. 51 ☾, riverclan warrior
  — a sleek, skinny tabby with long ears and a scar over his right eye.
  — gay, not actually evil, penned by @Kangoo
  

​

 

[lichenstar]

✦ ˚ ✧ ˚ .˚ ✦ ✦

CLAIM THE BURIAL I SEEK IN DREAMS FLOWING RIVER CEMETARY ✧

• For each star-gleaming blessing received, there must be sacrifice. The lives laid down and long-since buried can't be undone, will not rise on shaky limbs and crawl into abandoned nests... And the same can be said for those missing. Nine of the heaven's residents had pressed wisp-wet noses against thin-furred planes of a grief-stricken face and dug agony after agony into the sinew of her soul. With the days that followed, it felt as if nine more earth-bound bodies had to be stolen for balance... and each life hurt more than the last, in perfect symmetry of a starry ceremony.
  
  Troutsnout (Was she the body of forgiveness?). Turtlepaw (The persona of duty?). Moonbeam (The breath of freedom?). Riverpaw (The altar of motherly love?). Hazecloud (The idol of perseverance?).
  
  What sleep that is to be found is done so fitfully, in sweaty-backed fragments, in tosses that pull her from clan-mates that would otherwise have pressed against her for companionship. Stubborn or just cowardly, even with the passage of near half a moon since her ascension, she lingered in the warrior's den to cling to the ghost of her former self. The Lichentail that did not have to hide from the willow den. The Lichentail that still felt she had time. Dreams are fewer in number than the grainy, colorless horrors of night terror- screams echo in familiar voices with far too much clarity for comfort and they sound so life-like that-
  
  Eyes ringed red with exhaustion snap open at the whimpering cries of her children. She'd though Shellpaw's yelling a figment of nightmare's illusion but with the chorus growing louder with the addition of what two boys she had left, it summons wakefulness and urgency in the form of a nest hastily stumbled from, flecks of moss caught in disheveled fur and abandoned in disarray on the den's floor. "I'm up- I'm here-"
  
  But for all her haste it seems the calamity has already come to pass- a violaceous nestling is crunched so tightly in on herself it looks as if her bones are broken in unnatural ways to compress that tightly, her flanks rise and fall in such shallow panic, there is a familiar anxiety that wells up in her throat that she will not be able to breathe at all soon. Her firn-freckled son stares at her from where he'd stood to wail for her, having only just stepped away from his smaller, tear-drowned brother to find her.
  
  Bewildered and lost for context, the sound of Snakeblink's voice is a welcome familiarity and it is searched for almost ravenously. Adder-tailed by his agitation, the scowl that scores his face is a haunting answer in itself, even without the addition of Lakemoon's bristle-backed searching. "Eveningkit..." Her ears swivel towards Pebblepaw before her eyes find him again, still trying to catch up a half-wakened mind to what was unfolding in front of her... but the name being said sinks like something heavy in her stomach.
  
  Anytime a name had been said- "Where?" She lurches forward to press her forehead to a tear-stained cheek quickly, pulling back if only to stare in flooding heather-field eyes, "Pebblepaw," and the tightness of fear does away with the soft-bellied mother that fawns after her children with delicate nicknames... at a loss for words on what she could possibly ask that might make this more okay. What reassurances she could give them that might ease their bleeding hearts. That was...
  
  That was what Hazecloud was good at. Not her.
  
  "Shellpaw-" She stumbles to figure out which kit to fixate on, becomes overwhelmed with the need to sweep them all between her paws and hide them under like a hen roosting over too-small chicks. They are much too big now... all of them... even the littlest reach their fifth moon and are far closer to apprenticeship than their wriggling, newborn selves.
  
  "Take... take your siblings inside," her voice quivers with the command, "Don't leave the nursery... until I come back-" Her touch is fleeting, not nearly long enough to offer them any sort of sincere comfort, always glancing against them in fluttering moments. As gentle as a butterfly's wing but just as short-lived. Turning on her heels to approach her lead warrior and the former journey cat, she glances between them with a gaunt, impatient expression, expectant to have Snakeblink's demand met post-haste.
  
  Eveningkit... now made six. (The offering of devotion?)
• about
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  penned by tieirlys
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