a tale of blood | needledrift

[CHITTERTONGUE]

જ➶ Being discharged from medical care is a wondrous thing. Perhaps he thinks himself sane now and yet his paws have taken him back to the scene of a bloody ending. His head is low as he smells the acrid thunderpath. Listening to the rumbling as many monsters by pass him without a care in the world. He knows all too well that if he decides to take a step that they will have no care in sending him to whatever afterlife he cares to think about. Starclan perhaps? Surely not. A grin pulls at black lips as he suddenly sits down and shakes his head. Of course not. He is just like any scavenging Shadowclanner. Looked down upon like the rats they fight with daily. So why give him the chance. Any of them a chance. Oh. Oh he wishes his dear mother was here to give him solace in this life instead of going to the stars. He feels so broken and seperated from his family. So why did he do what he did?

"It was for them. I love them. It was for them."

"But was it truly?"

"Of course! I couldn't let that scheming killer come back to do more harm."

"Yet now you are conflicted. Pained. Regretting."

"No never. It needed to be done. Stop it."

"Yes, you enjoyed it. Watching the monster come an—"

"STOP IT!"

A sudden snapping of jaws, the ramblings of a frayed mind. Silence filling the air but not so silent and he turned to look over his shoulder. That blind blue eye coated in water, stressed. Tears not to be fallen. He holds himself in with that single tear never to fall. Instead he sees from that orb of of amber a familiar figure. A familiar pelt. Did she hear? She must think him mad. The thought breaks a sudden cackle from his maw and he whips his head away from her then. Don't look at me. He wants to say but his throat is plugged with laughter that he wheezes through. It hurts. "Needle...needle...go back." He mutters finally, a gasp of breath as he shakes his own head. Yes, yes, he had done the right thing. But never will he say he took joy from it. Just the right thing to protect his broken family. What he had left.

@Needledrift ​

 

[Needledrift]

Everything leads back to the Thunderpath. This stinking, dangerous place where monsters roared by, completely unfazed by the cats that called the surrounding forest home. Heartless, careless things, things that made eyes water and noses scrunch up - the fumes that came off of them were hazard enough; their rolling black paws were another thing entirely...

Chittertongue's mother had been killed here. ShadowClan's first leader, their leader before leadership was considered in such definitive terms. Briar... Briarstar... had been the head of the colony when Needle had been born, the head of colony that had nursed her first kits alongside Needle's own mother. Things had felt simpler then, more easily understood. Cats lived and died in the freedom of the colonies and whatever happened after that was a mystery. Now, Briarstar looked down at them from StarClan, an ever-silent, omnipotent guide. Still, coming back to the Thunderpath felt like visiting unhallowed ground, a pitch-black cemetery made up of dried viscera and bad memories.

You enjoyed it, watching the monster... A delusion wrapped in delight. Chittertongue's nervous giggle interrupts his own fractured monologue and the she-cat halts. Waits. Blinks. Her jaw hangs open, a constant reminder of the traumas she herself can't quite rid herself of. She can't imagine why her friend would continue to come here, here to this awful, stinking solid black-tar river, why he would want to relive any of it.

She shakes her head, wordless, defiant, as she nears him; her nose makes gentle contact with his shoulder. A comforting gesture. An "I'm here for whatever you need" gesture. She doesn't shift her jaw to speak because she knows she doesn't have to, not with him. She doesn't feel like she has to speak for this, this nebulous breakdown seemingly about pain and regret. She doesn't understand that this is not some nebulous trauma-infused call from the void brought on by thoughts of Briar's death as ShadowClan sheltered underneath her unmarked grave. She doesn't know what this is about and as naive as she is, she doesn't question it at all. She is simply here, as she is needed to be.​

i will never leave your room, tell everything that bothers you​