- Oct 22, 2022
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@beatae @Blitz Krieg @Marquette @AVA @ghost @scar ; NO PREDETERMINED ORDER, EXCEPT FOR CHILLEDSTAR AT THE END! GO HOG WILD AND THANK YOU!!
An all-encompassing silence defined his and Starlingheart's travels. No words struck him as fitting. No words struck him at all. Words would dilute this journey, Smogmaw felt, and the humid air drawn through his lungs weighed his tongue regardless.
Steadfast pawsteps herald them both well past ShadowClan's territorial edges. Once-swampy land had long settled into compact earth underneath his pads. Dense thicket, now thistly grassland. Hazy remembrance crept at the back corners and ledges inside Smogmaw's mind. Cobweb-like wisps of memory, woven so thick and so tightly by time's passage. Four times, he has made this pilgrimage. Twice, there and back again. Though a dense fog swallows the surrounding domain and shelters Highstones from sight, his paws remember the way forward. Forward movement only. Never straying, never stopping.
For every pawprint left behind, Smogmaw feels two ahead. That number would soon double to four. Then quadruple. Then sextuple. It snowballed exponentially until the illusory venture became no less real to him. He will go beyond the horizon where the most unfathomable forces reside, ethereal and greater than the sum total of all that is or will ever be in the waking world. He will lay himself bare for StarClan's acceptance, and accept him they will, in all his faults and his virtues. Nine stars shall descend from on high and invest their blessings into his being.
Nine times to live, bleed, and die.
Nine chances, in nine turns, to forge a legacy for him and his clan worth remembering.
Only Starlingheart's presence beside him and the occasional clearing or rock formation to climb over signifies reality itself. Otherwise, the leader-to-be may as well be dreaming, simultaneously lucid and unable to define where exactly he treads within his subconscious. Upon cresting another rise in the land, Smogmaw spies a yawning chasm darker than the deepest night. Guarding the entrance, jagged stones like teeth snarled defiantly.
For a fleeting moment, he stalls. A shake to his pelt brushes off the reverie gripping him thus far, and, standing at the cavern's cusp, he finds reason to speak. "This's where you take over, Starlingheart. You know the way better than I."
Moments drag into moons once inside. Musty air hung like the sagging underside to an elder's fur coat. Stale, comforting in an odd sense despite its scent. Intuition bypasses him in this environment especially without the moon's nectarine glow to illuminate his path. He relies solely on his medicine cat's lead, for which he is perennially grateful.
At length, light draws his focus deeper inside, its colour a guileful beacon against the shade swallowing all light. Anticipation births a stone-hard lump somewhere between throat and chest. Whether anxiety, awe, or woebegone trepidation, Smogmaw couldn't rightly discern. An emotion bereft of substance, and therefore an ailment meant to be vanquished outright. Forward movement only, he tells himself once more, and as Starlingheart beckons him into the grotto proper, he is all too keen to comply.
Positioned at the epicentre of Highstone's inner sanctum is the resplendent Moonstone. A terrestrial anomaly, surely wrought onto this world by otherworldly pawsβthe vessel through which StarClan communes with the living, so he has heard, and now through which the spirits must leave their imprint upon his being. Ineffable energy surged in tangible waves from the jagged crystal. It beat rhythmically, matching his pulse in perfect tempo. He lays eyes on it for the first time and does not know where to start. It is a spectacle in equal parts worthy and too great to absorb in one sitting.
"Thank you for leading me here," he murmurs, unsure on how loud he may speak while in the presence of such power and veneration both. "Suppose this is where I make StarClan's acquaintance at last."
His exhale held every breath since his mate was laid to rest. He may see her, he may not. The possibility alone emboldens him, pushes him beyond his limit and into the stone's aura. A thousand stars shone inside, more radiant than the sun at its peak. Light in its most true and basest formβhe would describe its feeling as warmth enveloping his whole being, forehead to tail-tip. He presses nose-first to the Moonstone's surface, and does not recollect much once he is in its heavenly embrace.
An all-encompassing silence defined his and Starlingheart's travels. No words struck him as fitting. No words struck him at all. Words would dilute this journey, Smogmaw felt, and the humid air drawn through his lungs weighed his tongue regardless.
Steadfast pawsteps herald them both well past ShadowClan's territorial edges. Once-swampy land had long settled into compact earth underneath his pads. Dense thicket, now thistly grassland. Hazy remembrance crept at the back corners and ledges inside Smogmaw's mind. Cobweb-like wisps of memory, woven so thick and so tightly by time's passage. Four times, he has made this pilgrimage. Twice, there and back again. Though a dense fog swallows the surrounding domain and shelters Highstones from sight, his paws remember the way forward. Forward movement only. Never straying, never stopping.
For every pawprint left behind, Smogmaw feels two ahead. That number would soon double to four. Then quadruple. Then sextuple. It snowballed exponentially until the illusory venture became no less real to him. He will go beyond the horizon where the most unfathomable forces reside, ethereal and greater than the sum total of all that is or will ever be in the waking world. He will lay himself bare for StarClan's acceptance, and accept him they will, in all his faults and his virtues. Nine stars shall descend from on high and invest their blessings into his being.
Nine times to live, bleed, and die.
Nine chances, in nine turns, to forge a legacy for him and his clan worth remembering.
Only Starlingheart's presence beside him and the occasional clearing or rock formation to climb over signifies reality itself. Otherwise, the leader-to-be may as well be dreaming, simultaneously lucid and unable to define where exactly he treads within his subconscious. Upon cresting another rise in the land, Smogmaw spies a yawning chasm darker than the deepest night. Guarding the entrance, jagged stones like teeth snarled defiantly.
For a fleeting moment, he stalls. A shake to his pelt brushes off the reverie gripping him thus far, and, standing at the cavern's cusp, he finds reason to speak. "This's where you take over, Starlingheart. You know the way better than I."
Moments drag into moons once inside. Musty air hung like the sagging underside to an elder's fur coat. Stale, comforting in an odd sense despite its scent. Intuition bypasses him in this environment especially without the moon's nectarine glow to illuminate his path. He relies solely on his medicine cat's lead, for which he is perennially grateful.
At length, light draws his focus deeper inside, its colour a guileful beacon against the shade swallowing all light. Anticipation births a stone-hard lump somewhere between throat and chest. Whether anxiety, awe, or woebegone trepidation, Smogmaw couldn't rightly discern. An emotion bereft of substance, and therefore an ailment meant to be vanquished outright. Forward movement only, he tells himself once more, and as Starlingheart beckons him into the grotto proper, he is all too keen to comply.
Positioned at the epicentre of Highstone's inner sanctum is the resplendent Moonstone. A terrestrial anomaly, surely wrought onto this world by otherworldly pawsβthe vessel through which StarClan communes with the living, so he has heard, and now through which the spirits must leave their imprint upon his being. Ineffable energy surged in tangible waves from the jagged crystal. It beat rhythmically, matching his pulse in perfect tempo. He lays eyes on it for the first time and does not know where to start. It is a spectacle in equal parts worthy and too great to absorb in one sitting.
"Thank you for leading me here," he murmurs, unsure on how loud he may speak while in the presence of such power and veneration both. "Suppose this is where I make StarClan's acquaintance at last."
His exhale held every breath since his mate was laid to rest. He may see her, he may not. The possibility alone emboldens him, pushes him beyond his limit and into the stone's aura. A thousand stars shone inside, more radiant than the sun at its peak. Light in its most true and basest formβhe would describe its feeling as warmth enveloping his whole being, forehead to tail-tip. He presses nose-first to the Moonstone's surface, and does not recollect much once he is in its heavenly embrace.
