private ALL ALONE IN A ROOM — cottonpaw

[GRANITEPELT]

WindClan’s medicine cat den is different, soil and sand instead of stone, and the scent within is both achingly familiar and off-putting. Wolfsong’s scent still clings to the moss, the bracken. There’s none of Starlingheart’s sweetness to temper the bitterness or the air choking, searing hot with spice. He settles onto the ground, feeling strange still to be in an enemy’s camp, an enemy medicine cat’s den. Dark green eyes sweep impassively over the gorse striping the walls, until they come to land on a small, apprentice-sized she-cat with plushy gray fur.

“You are Sootstar’s daughter,” he observes. The resemblance is hard to miss—though there’s none of Sootstar’s iron in this young she-cat. Granitepelt studies her brazenly before turning his face away. There’s an innocence in her features that reminds him of Starlingheart. His heart bleeds worse than any wound a ShadowClan cat could have inflicted. “The worst is the one here,” he murmurs, lifting a forepaw and touching the cut near his left eye; the eye is swollen still. “And here.” He winces, drawing back and revealing the soft white of his belly, where a reddish weal parts the fur. “I’ve got one on my foreleg, too, and here… my shoulder.”

He turns to give the cut on his shoulder a lick, eyeing Cottonpaw with both wariness and vague curiosity.

[ @cottonpaw ]

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[cottonsprig]

She feels out of sorts. Wolfsong, if he were here, would've instructed her on what to do, where to go, how to go about it. Without him, she Cottonpaw feels like nothing more than a kitten forced to wean. She's handled herself thus far, parsing out lavender for the vigils later, pulling apart cobwebs and moss for the smaller wounds. It's Granitepelt's appearance that pulls her from her somewhat fugue state.

She stills in front of him as he glances about the den, and fretfully wonders how some ShadowClanner made it into camp. It's a few seconds and unheard clicks before she makes the connections she needs to. How much changed in the few hours she was gone? She grasps at the straws of her mind for his name, as surely they've at least seen one another in gatherings - but he speaks, a bare bit of nonchalance that does little to soothe her frantic mind. She forces her fur to lie flat.

"One of many. The youngest, in fact," her heart pangs. At one point, she eagerly waited for another litter of her parents, hoping to be a big sister. But one is dead, and the other is (devoted to him even in death, or so far out of her mind that no tom would lie with her like that again.) She offers him a shaky smile, "Cottonpaw," though she wonders what use is a 'paw' with no one to teach her.

He lists his injuries and she nods, deciding to take his word for each one. While hazy green eyes watch her, she trots back to the herb stores. Again its easy to pluck wet moss and cobwebs from the mass, but she stammers as stares at petals and stems and leaves - all before deciding on the goldenrod. It's good enough for the smaller wounds, but the bigger gashes along his underside... She pulls a couple doses, ears folding back as she also plucks the leaves off of a dandelion stalk.

"Alright -" she breathes out slowly, unceremoniously dropping all that she's collected, "After this - all that I'll need you to do is keep yourself clean. You - heh, I don't think I'll have to worry about you in the tunnels, but the breeze around here can kick up some mean dirt," she doesn't know why she's trying to make the tom laugh. The bags under his eyes tell her he's never had a joyful day in his life. As she speaks, though, she's quick to clean the weeping blood off of his wounds with the moss. The goldenrod she's gathered is chewed up and smeared across the more fretful lacerations, such as the one on his belly and foreleg, though she's a bit more dainty in and around his eye. The cobweb comes next, purely to fix each poultice in place. The dandelion leaves are pressed towards him, "You can chew on these if you need to - they're supposed to help with pain," though she knows not how effective they are (should she grab him more? No, no. Someone else might need it.)

"So - yeah, keep yourself clean. I would be careful, since I kinda... covered your eye. Rest when you need to -" a pause, "my den might be full of other cats, maybe, but if you don't like sleeping under the stars, then you can try to find space here." She wants him to rebuff the offer, desperately. Her tail lashes, "I can rebind you every few days, or whenever you think you'll need it." Would Wolfsong be proud of her? Does it matter?

Another beat, a pause, "If my help has earned myself a question - who are you to Sootstar? Surely someone important, if she's let you into camp like this..." Something to do with the lost kittens, she figures, but that situation wasn't one she cared to indulge with much.​

 

[GRANITEPELT]

There’s a sort of nervous energy buzzing through Sootstar’s self-proclaimed youngest kit. He watches the flick of her eyelids, the jittery quality of sky-blue eyes, the puff of too-soft gray fur at her shoulders, her tail. She does not know me, Granitepelt thinks with bitter amusement. “Granitepelt. I was a ShadowClan warrior,” he answers her introduction with an abbreviated one of his own. She’s soon onto other things, pressing a poultice to his eye. He grimaces as the juices leak into the scratch, but he does not move. She tells him to keep himself clean, to stay out of the tunnels, and his body stiffens at her joke. “The tunnels. Not all WindClan warriors go under the earth, then.” He’s relieved to hear this. He’s heard the rank tunneler spill from cats’ mouths at Gatherings, but it meant little and less to him at the time.

Granitepelt watches her face as she pushes a pile of leaves between his paws. For the pain, she says, and he gives her a stiff nod. “Very well. Thank you… Cottonpaw.” He blinks tired dark green eyes and decides to lap one of the herbs up. It tastes green, bitter and herbaceous. He chews it and thinks of Starlingheart. He swallows, and thinks of her some more. “You’ll have met my mate. At Gatherings. She’s a medicine cat.” He does not use past tense. Just because she is in denial does not mean she does not belong to him, after all.

She seems unable to contain herself. Who are you to Sootstar? Granitepelt meets her gaze steadily. “Sootstar is my leader, just as she is yours. I have followed her for many moons. She knew my mother.” His lip twitches with barely-contained disdain. “She and my mother shared a mate, in fact.” His tail flicks behind him. “I swore fealty to Sootstar, and I brought her the kits Sunstride gave away. ShadowClan is a dismal place, full of in-fighting and distrust. Cats are suspicious of each other. Cruel to their Clanmates, even to kits.” His eye throbs. The rest of his wounds follow suit. “My wounds were inflicted by cats who knew my mother and were present at her kitting. By cats I served loyally for moons.” He does not mention the other things—the killings. Not now, anyway.

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