private a bell is a bearer of time | silversmoke

[Cherryblossom]

It's to Cherrypaw's understanding that Silversmoke and her mentor have been under fire recently. It's sort of her business, seeing as she pads after a daylight apprentice with kittypet blood in her veins. But she has never in three seasons of her life considered herself a kittypet, or even the descendant of one, as Lupinepaw and her siblings do. Nor does she consider their criticisms all that unwarranted, to say the least. It is the unavoidable truth that Edenpaw is not the strongest candidate for warrior in SkyClan. She doesn't even know if they'll graduate at the same time as the rest of them, but they don't appear too concerned about it either. Hazelbeam is competent, save for the unwieldy accessories she allows her twoleg to imprison her in, but Tiggerbounce is on thin ice in her mind and many others'.

She herself has no qualms over the presence of daylight warriors in the clan; she just thinks they could do with working a little harder, that's all. If they were so hellbent on being SkyClan warriors, they could always just leave their twolegs—after all, no one would stop them. And if not, well, then they shouldn't let their detractors bother them so much.

Silversmoke, while tolerable otherwise, has a few other troubles to answer for. Specifically, she doesn't understand why he has to be so stick-in-the-tail about it. Cherrypaw doesn't even want to imagine the levels of snobbery Falconpaw would reach if he had been Silversmoke's apprentice instead of Greeneyes'. And speaking of apprentices, Lupinepaw had been awfully hung up over the fact that Crowpaw now considered this guy his father, something that Cherrypaw would be aggravated by too if she hadn't stopped caring about Crowpaw a couple of moons ago.

Nonetheless, either her mentor or someone with more authority than either of them had relinquished her training to him today, so listen to him she must. In the wake of her father's death, this is just another thorn among the many accumulating in her pawpad. Sunkissed eyes stare at him expectantly, while alabaster toes dig into the cold sands of the Sandy Ravine. It's a blustery, grey day; the wind whips through two pairs of Maine coon coats without regard for whether one of them had just groomed hers before heading out. "Are we just, like, sparring?" she asks, futilely bringing a paw up to comb through her cheek.

@SILVERSMOKE​

 

[SILVERSMOKE]

More than skill, the spotted tom valued loyalty. Loyalty demanded sacrifice of ideals, of position or of morals, not all, but some. It was the lifeblood that kept a clan together no matter the hardships, to break ones faith was to be sentenced to death - so, how was he supposed to feel about cats that held more loyalty to the enemy than to their clan? No one had been able to answer his question yet and so it festered like an infected wound, the rot spreading further whenever he was inevitably proven right by a Daylight Warrior's abandonment. It had never been their blood he'd hated, but their devotion, and staring down the tortoiseshell before him, he couldn't help but wonder what tales her partner had spun about the situation prior. When Slate's apprentice didn't try to claw his ears off, it was easy for his curiosity to disappear faster than the blink of an eye: good, she wouldn't be distracted. A lot had happened within the past half-moon that made him wonder if Cherrypaw was ready to brawl, but there was a stoicism to her that quelled most of his doubts. In the face of death, time refused to stand still.

The wind whipped the fur upon his cheeks into a frenzy, the bristled fluff upon the tom flying in whatever direction the wind whimmed. He squinted against the battering, bereft it would affect his vision for what was to come - he'd just have to remember to stand upwind. "I don't know what Slate has or hasn't taught you. A spar is the best way to see where you're at - to see if he's missed anything important." It was equal parts likely and unlikely he had - the other Lead had been stuck in the medicine den recently, delegating Cherrypaw's training to someone else, but he didn't seem to be the type to ignore missed lessons either. As loathsome as it was to say, the black tom wasn't terrible at his job. "You're almost a warrior, so this'll be treated as a normal spar: claws sheathed, the first one to concede defeat wins. Use whatever you can to your advantage, there's no such thing as cheating if it means that you win." He gave the calico a once-over, strategies forming in his mind as he let the silence grow awkward. 'Alright Slate, it's time to see if my apprentice is better than yours.' "Begin."

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[Cherryblossom]

Cherrypaw flicks an ear, looking more like a structural failure of the ear in the wind than a purposeful action. "Mmhmm." The girl has never been her mentor's staunchest defender, yet Silversmoke's underestimation of him gives her pause. Perhaps it was the veiled delegation of responsibility, that her training had never been in her own paws but in the hefty, tar-balled ones of someone else. Or maybe it was just his way of talking to her directly under the guise of her apprenticeship, letting her blame Slate on failure and herself on success. Moons ago, she would've been content to relegate all her shortcomings to Slate. Now, it doesn't seem quite as wise, not when her training was staked in the foundations of her birthplace, and her lack of accountability had not only failed her but Little Wolf as well.

"You're almost a warrior," the tomcat says, and yellow eyes narrow imperceptibly. Silversmoke seems entirely serious about warriorhood—what else should she expect from the white knight of a warrior's purity? She doesn't take it as badly as she might think him though. To be called a warrior, close to it at least, was to be respected. Soon enough, maybe come Greenleaf again, she'd have an apprentice of her own to face down in the Sandy Hollow, her gaze on them as contemplatory as Silversmoke's is now on her.

The rain-spotted feline continues, and Cherrypaw is forcibly reminded of his background, so similar to Slate's. He'd been a rogue before all this too, if she remembers correctly. Or at least, he had not been born in SkyClan or the pines before they were SkyClan's. With Slate as a mentor, a "dirty" fight was just a fight. She nods as he gives over to silence again, eyes falling from his mismatched eyes to his shoulders and limbs.

On his mark, the calico begins to circle him, vaguely conscious of their size difference but finding some solace in it nonetheless. Maybe Silversmoke was just Slate, but...silver. Which didn't make it much easier, but maybe it'd make her more comfortable, for she and Silversmoke hardly interacted even when she was friends with his apprentice. As she would with Falconpaw in a few days' time, Cherrypaw makes an experimental jab towards Silversmoke's face with a paw, then follows up with a hard cuff or two into the thick mane around his neck with the other. His ruff would likely stop her claws from piercing his skin. Relatively unfamiliar with unsheathed combat, she only hopes her smoother pelt would do the same.​

 

[SILVERSMOKE]

There were many similarities between Silversmoke and Slate - size was one of them, a penchant for fighting the other, eye scars had also become an ironic likeness between them. But, to the Lead Warrior, that was where the resemblance ended. Slate fought like a brute with nothing to lose, Silversmoke fought like a brute with nothing to lose, but he was a little bit lighter on his paws; a spar could easily turn into a dance when being forced to keep an opponent on the good side of his vision. Paws squared as the calico circled, head already tilted oddly in anticipation of such a tango. The fur upon his back arched towards the canopy-concealed sky, unsheathed claws flexing against the earth as if making biscuits on bare skin. Before SkyClan, battle had been his beautiful home, a thing worth striving for when ambitions and selflessness had been things of children's tales. It was too easy for the former rogue to snarl, too easy for his pupils to narrow into grass-thin slits with the promise of killing anyone that came too close... too easy to be the enemy that Cherrypaw would have to fight dozens of in her lifetime.

A paw lifted and swiped towards Cherrypaw and instead found the apprentice's paw that'd been shooting towards him. His green eye reacted before his blue, narrowing at the collision before the other's appendage slipped beneath his own. Claws find the fur upon his neck and pull at the knots, threatening to drag him forward until the Lead Warrior pulled back against the pain, strands of silver hair flying from him. The white flash of fur plucked from him seemed to matter little compared to the thrill of the fight, the Lead Warrior's smile hungry. He'd been out of commission for the fight against the rogues, too busy healing a shoulder injury, forcibly saved by two siblings. It meant his last fight was a loss, and though he knew it wasn't a true fight against Cherrypaw, it didn't stop instincts from trying to emulate it. It was for the best anyhow - another clan wouldn't hold back half as much as he was. Using the momentum, Silversmoke aimed to swing his head forward, hoping to headbutt Cherrypaw and follow up with a flurry of blows with a sheathed forepaw aimed at creating some distance between the pair.

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