sensitive topics A SNAPSHOT IN THE FAMILY ALBUM ✦ PRIVATE

Miraculously, Snakehiss is alive. Tethered to life by a feeble thread, looking about as pathetic as a rat carcass, he still roams the expanse of unclaimed lands like a dead man walking. Even the stars seem to shun him, dimmed and dull in his view ever since he's denounced them. The point of it all? Well, there isn't one, really, though Snakehiss finds merriment in defying what cruel fate that StarClan had tried to throw upon him. To hell with all of them; the residents of Silverpelt, the clans, even that sorry excuse of a clan that dwelled in these parts. Speaking of which, the disheveled tom finds himself face to face with what he briefly mistakes as his own double. "You again,"

The dark-pelted feline's breaths are shallow, his physical condition raggedy and unkempt like a war-torn elder despite him being a young cat. He stares ahead, missing eye akin to the hollowed insides of a rotten gourd and an ugly reminder of StarClan's betrayal. "You've grown... Not the little... scrap of fur you once were, eh?" Snakehiss labors, a twisted grin of amusement creeping onto his maw and revealing a flash of yellowed teeth as he regarded the younger individual.

That smell that they carry is sickeningly familiar, a grim reminder of events past. A reminder of what had become of his home, his true home that he always dreamed of returning to and claiming rightfully for himself. The ribs that protrude from his torso and his feeble limbs do not guarantee such a reclamation to happen soon; Sunstar would unfortunately knock him down with a single tap in this pitiful state. Still, being able to come home was something that kept Snakehiss motivated.

Giving a flick of his grimy tail, the scarred feline snorts cynically, "Still runnin' with those... dirt-breathed degenerates... are you?"

  • 77808083_g3J8sICSoEiBdy2.png
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    — snakehiss / 23 moons / he/him
    — rogue / former windclan deputy
    — father to rowanpaw, viperpaw, rosepaw, privetfrost ( with berrysnap ) & cornflowerkit, rainbowkit, ivorykit ( with maggotfur )
    — sh black w/ vitiligo, green eyes & a single white patch on chest, torn-out left eye & a torn left ear w/ heavy scarring
    click for tags
 
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A corpse spoke to Privetfrost, and he wished he did not recognize it.

You again. The carcass rasped at him with a hoarfrost malady, as though a gravelly wind brushed through hollowed body, quartering the man and leaving none of his mortal form ungrazed by its touch. Disheveled and matted fur made the man before him almost seem as a phantom, or at least some ghastly rendition of a dilapidated costume, of makeshift and misfit parts. Great beast of yore, stricken down and deigned to husks of a former glory, now stood in his way. One of his eyes upon his abraded countenance only returned with an empty socket of dried sanguine, as though it revealed the wicked carrion beyond raven-pelt, singed away by some flame-bladed fury of a jilted enemy. Privetfrost could not help but stare at it, for it almost beckoned him to join it in its unholy vileness, of writhing flesh and earthly desire. It was but one injury upon the grander mess of the feline. Snakehiss smiled with a yellowed grin, though the expression reminded Privet of ragged maw rather than mischievous grin, exposing rotted teeth and the terrible wound that would surely follow. He looked years beyond his age, for vindication had dewretted and wrested him, so much so that there lie nothing left to speak of for a former life. Shallow breaths heaved out of his windpipe, and every exhalation was a struggle to filter out of a failing body. Privetfrost would have pitied him if he could spare more sympathy, if it only welled out of him for a little bit, like a fount of graciousness that he had never had the fortune of being born with. Like his father, he was of barbs and crow's-feather - always to revere but never to hold close.

Little scrap of fur. A strong numbing sensation of something flooded through his face and along the wires of his sleek body, as though it existed as more than a scratch of an itch, and it yawned within him as an abyssal impulse. It contradicted the iciness that had grown within him like a vicious garden, and this was an insatiable fire, searing through him in search of its judgment. Basal emotions, which Privetfrost liked to believe he had far surpassed, always flooded through him when he let his guard down. Disgust, in its purest and most unalloyed sense. It crawled upon his curling maw, whistled along his barely-trembling limbs, fed into a keeling desire to spill the blood of he who dared to face him now. "I will give you one chance to leave. Leave, and you will not die by my paw." Ending your life by my doing will be far greater of a finale than anything else, you worthless, maggot-ridden crowfood. Privetfrost stood in place, as if he had been besieged by the ground that anchored his bones, unwilling for him to move even if it were to scatter away. Was it fear that rooted him to the soil? Was it anger? He did not know, and that terrified him even more so than anything tangible. Fern-green glare trained its leaden attention towards Snakehiss, the tomcat he so resembled in stature and color, like gazing upon some twisted mirror that rendered him a bastard version. He wanted to lunge straight for his neck, crush his esophagus between crazed teeth, but he would only stand where he was.

  • OOC:
  • 7THZAb4.png
  • PRIVETFROST & HE/HIM & 11 MOONS
    —— Warrior of Duskclan / Formerly mentored by Rumblerain
    —— Wine-dark and white-tipped, almost like a magpie. He has black fur except for the tips of his ears, his muzzle and chin, a blaze on his chest, bottom portion of the legs, outer end of the tail, and along the upper ridges of eyes. He has ghost striping that can only be seen in certain sunlight. He has fern-green eyes.
    —— Cool, calculating, and much too mature for such a young age. Enamored with the life of a warrior and burdened by the expectations of his people. Hard to befriend and harder to maintain a steady friendship with.
    —— Penned by Tempest. Contact on Discord (naruk4mi) for plots and threads.


 
Expectedly, the young tom retorts only with a promise of violence. He was a lowly rogue who knew how to do little else but maim and kill, an insult that perhaps another version of Snakehiss may have scoffed at and brushed off as meaningless, but this time he felt insulted. No, not by the male himself, but by the starry faces that he once revered and respected. "Perhaps... you are just another one of StarClan's hounds..." Snakehiss grumbles after a few moments, swiping his tongue over his lips and the surface of his canines. He flicks a narrowed, singular eye up toward the skies in disdain, managing a snort of disapproval, "They... will never stop trying to smite me... will they?" That much was clear. He had left the only home he'd ever known behind for their sake... and how did they repay him?

Slowly he blinks, narrowed onyx pupil fixing back onto the dark tom. "You... should be the bane of StarClan's existence, not me! I've only ever done what they've wanted!" Snakehiss' tirade rattles his strained throat, prompting him to sputter a few coughs from his lungs as he raises his voice for the first time in moons.

Recovering from his fit, the white-flecked exile sneers at the rogue. "A-And, really... what would you be proving, then?" He surely wouldn't be gaining StarClan's favor. Certainly not Sootstar; her spirit was gone forever, surely, banned from StarClan's refuge. Rogues were as mindless and savage as Snakehiss had always known them to be, killing for the sake of killing. "None of it matters... N-None of it. We're all just dogs tied to StarClan's fence — doomed to swelter... and rot... beneath the scorching sun until we die."

Angry at the world, at himself, and the stars, Snakehiss screeches, "Pry my life from my bloody claws, StarClan! So be it!" He was tired of cowering in the face of the ancestors. Whatever happened, he didn't want them and he didn't need them. They were crooked liars, all of them!

  • 0hbao5y.jpeg
    — snakehiss / 23 moons / he/him
    — rogue / former windclan deputy
    — father to rowanpaw, viperpaw, privetfrost ( with berrysnap ) & cornflowerkit, rainbowkit, ivorykit ( with maggotfur )
    — sh black w/ vitiligo, green eyes & a single white patch on chest, torn-out left eye & a torn left ear w/ heavy scarring
    click for tags
 

Snakehiss spoke again, but to Privetfrost's ears, it sounded more like the rattlings of a cadaverous and gaunt beast. Upon his fern-green glare, Snakehiss was no different than he. Stripped away of the honor and reverence that he once held, there existed little to distinguish him from the enemy, and even littler to tell him apart from the meals he could not sink his teeth into. The oilspill-pelted tomcat prattled on about Starclan and smiting, as if his spine and his eyes still lie stiffly facing skyward for any sign of a once-savior, groaning of the past that had consumed his waking self to the present. Disgust still remained ever-plastered upon his facial features, blaming him for everything that the former clan cat had done. He invoked the name of Starclan, and yet the divinities had turned their star-set eyes away from their fallen tyrant, perhaps ashamed of the monster that they had created. Privetfrost did not break away from the one-eyed glare that rended at his sinuous flesh, like he was a funeral pyre to strike alight, martyr for all the problems exhumed by the specter of a man. He only lashed his snow-tipped tail behind him, for the more that the tom screamed to anyone for sanctity, the more Privetfrost grew impatient. Impatient of the cat-and-mouse game that was being played between the tom and deaf gods, impatient of the impudence that stoof before him, impatient of it all.

"You are the only dog here. I am not damned, not as you are. Your actions have led your here, as have mine." Privetfrost growled with sentiments far too grown for a feline his age, as if the finality of his tone were wrapped in the cerement of the other's own undoing, for Privet simply considered himself an enactor of his word. He did not answer the rogue's question that was meant to defile and debase him more than anything, and he would not grant even the slightest sliver of satisfaction (nor distraction from what he was meant to carry forth). Clan cats were all the same to him, crying their hearts out about how they were forced to follow the laden path that Starclan had set out for them, as if they were chained by the wrist and dragged roughly around by the hand of life. It was their own action that allowed them to rise past any ancestor, surpass what their forefathers had failed to achieve. It was their own claw that seized their future, and not the woven prayer of gossamer-string and butterfly-wing that would rescue them from despair. Snakehiss screeched at the earth and the heavens, akin to a temperamental child who knew not of the rigors of his own hands, flaying himself alive just for a silver-lining of redemption. He almost pitied the other, like a dog pitied the rabbit, thrashing the cavities of fragile organs about until the heart did not thrum and the lungs did not rise. It, perhaps, would be the greatest mercy to grant him an ingentle death.

I will give you what you want. What you deserve. Without any emotion bleeding into angular countenance, the Duskclan warrior leapt for the corpse of a father. Snakehiss' white chest protruded from the tarred sea of his rawboned stature, like a target that guided his will into action. He would finish what Snakehiss had started, and put an end to the miserable ghost of former glories. Ivory fangs clashed into starveling flesh, with sweet sanguine welling out through the saving grace of his wounds, that would wash over the pall of Snakehiss' form. The warmth of blood gushing upon his lashing tongue, the pained begs of a fragile windpipe underneath his strength - it was all so familiar, all so cathartic. Even as ears folded against his skull could he hear the shriek of a dying man, like the ghoulish cry of a spurned vulture, carrion-feeder meeting the end of the prey it once gloated over. Privetfrost only clamped harder onto his killing bite.

This is what seizing my future must feel like. Like catching prey. Like granting it mercy. A revelation, like a pang of hunger, rolled through the young warrior.

  • wat da hell pringle doin to shake 😂
  • 7THZAb4.png
  • PRIVETFROST & HE/HIM & 11 MOONS
    —— Warrior of Duskclan / Formerly mentored by Rumblerain
    —— Wine-dark and white-tipped, almost like a magpie. He has black fur except for the tips of his ears, his muzzle and chin, a blaze on his chest, bottom portion of the legs, outer end of the tail, and along the upper ridges of eyes. He has ghost striping that can only be seen in certain sunlight. He has fern-green eyes.
    —— Cool, calculating, and much too mature for such a young age. Enamored with the life of a warrior and burdened by the expectations of his people. Hard to befriend and harder to maintain a steady friendship with.
    —— Penned by Tempest. Contact on Discord (naruk4mi) for plots and threads.