private always calling me a wannabe } smogmaw

[ONYXPAW]

I WISH YOU COULD SEE THE WICKED TRUTH — She had been given a new mentor. Not because she had done something wrong, or because she was falling behind in her training. It had been a simple matter of circumstance, Avocetfall's time as a warrior coming to an end after many moons spent serving his clan - and even more moons simply living before that. Really, Onyxpaw was happy for him. Happy that he finally got the chance to relax and not have to worry about so much all the time like she found herself doing, but she also couldn't help the faintest bit of bitterness that hung at the edges of her mind. Sour that he hadn't been able to tough it out just a few more moons in order to complete her training. It was a foolish desire, especially when her new mentor, Scorchfrost, was a perfectly respected warrior in the clan.

Perhaps she was just projecting her own insecurities outward, blaming Avocetfall for her own training woes when in reality she had no one to blame but herself. Why was it that she couldn't just have hunting click for her? She wasn't returning to camp every patrol empty-pawed, sure, but it wasn't like she was catching anything impressive either. Her ears were flat against her head as she contemplated, the rat that she had snatched up from the pile sitting ignored and half-eaten at her paws.

It was only when Smogmaw strolled into camp when she seemed to have an epiphany, stumbling rather clumsily up so that she could move over to his side. Chilledstar and Smogmaw were two cats that were meant to be highly respected and listened to by all - surely he would have some insight into what she could do to better herself. Yet for a moment Onyxpaw found herself rendered silent, unsure how to phrase what was lingering in her thoughts. "Smogmaw, what were you like when you were..." Her words died briefly in her throat, suddenly struck by the fact that he hadn't really been an apprentice, had he? He had never been Smogpaw in the same way that she was Onyxpaw, a thought that had never properly crossed her mind before. "When you were my age?" It was the best way that she could think of to phrase it, drifting back to a time before Shadowclan had been so firmly established. Before Smogmaw had been Smogmaw.

// @smogmaw

CAUGHT UP IN A RUSH ✦ IT IS KILLING YOU

• 

• 
  ✧ shorthaired tortoiseshell point and chocolate point chimera with blue eyes
  ✧ 6 moons old; ages the 1st every month
  ✧ bisexual; crushing on yellowpaw
  ✧ daughter of monarchroot and sleetjaw
  ✧ shadowclan born; silently loyal to her home
  ✧ difficult to befriend; shy to most except yellowpaw
  ✧ "speech", thoughts, attacking
  ✧ peaceful powerplay allowed

​

 

[smogstar]

Season by season, the ShadowClan cats who'd lived in colonial times shriveled in assembly. All those who remember life before the hierarchies, the sanctimonious dogma that which divides kin from kin, and this new strict adherence to tradition, they are either dying off or getting on in their years. Smogmaw, at sixty-one moons, is one of the scant few who can still see the clans as a recent development. An experiment, more like. An experiment slated to dissolve eventually, yet here they are.

A lowly living cat such as him shouldn't dare to question divine caprice, but he is helpless. Why the stars chose to fracture two warring colonies into five separate entities, rather than a unified whole, is sheer folly to him. His only recourse is to keep these thoughts to himself, and play the part that is written for him in stone.

It's ingrained in him, almost instinctual. The way he's come to stifle his impulses to fulfill his clan duties. How quickly he'd become used to prowling back-and-forth across camp, muzzle downcast, devising patrols. How much more naturally it's become to command, to lead. Grey and automatic and instinctual. It is his calling, until Chilledstar keels over for the final time.

The apprentice scuttering on over and gracelessly taking a place at his side takes him unawares. More than the sudden emergence, it is her question that has the deputy befuddled. "Oh," stumbles out his immediate response, brows knitting as he meets her gaze. "Uh- you're what, six moons old or going on that soon? Hmmm..."

Smogmaw does not envy cats of Onyxpaw's sort. Cats whose entire understanding of the world is interwoven only with the threads of clan ethos and customs, holding no idea what life could be outside its confines. Cats who cannot fathom a life where personal agency and self-preservation come before anything else. To his chagrin, there is nothing to be done for them. This is life now.

"Well," he begins, resuming his walk. "I was named Smoky... at six moons, I'd have only been living in the swamp for half a season or so. Mum got sick and died, and my dad brought me 'n my littermates to the colony, 'cause his sister had a nest here." Steps falter to a scrape and halt, and his hindquarters are quick to follow, bringing him down to earth. In Clanrock's shadow, he crouches in a knead and muses: "Briar was leading the colony, back then... yeah."

A sniffle. Realising he had yet to provide proper response and answer the question itself, a dry chuckle escapes him, solitary and crisp. Amber eyes realign with Onyxpaw's, and he blinks once. "I was struggling. There were rules and expectations in Briar's colony - not as many as a clan today, mind - but my life up 'til then was just, y'know, following my nose and playing. I got confused a lot, and didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do half the time, even with all the guidance in the world." ​

 

[ONYXPAW]

I WISH YOU COULD SEE THE WICKED TRUTH — Smoky. The name felt foreign as she turned it around over and over again in her head, naturally reminding her more of the current leader of Riverclan, rather than the deputy that was swiftly sitting alongside her in the shade of the Clanrock. In the back of her mind, she wondered how he had ended up earning his current moniker, instead of a name that had incorporated the old in with the new. Smog felt appropriate for him, but was smoke not similarly fitting? Onyxpaw was only broken from her pondering by him continuing on, speaking of the colony and the Briar that had been leading it. A cat that she had never gotten to know, lost before her time had ever come along.

Naturally, she had been told many stories about the colonies by the elders of Shadowclan. They were always eager to find any young cat whose ear they could bend, but stories were far from the real thing when it came to understanding. The mere concept of only two colonies rather than the five clans was foreign to her, unimaginable even though it was hardly ancient history. The clans were still just finding their legs, yet she felt as though they were immovable monoliths. Certainties that could not be changed now that they had been created. "That was... Briarstar, right? Our first leader?" Although she had technically asked Smogmaw as a way of reassuring herself, she didn't exactly mind a sudden history lesson. It made her feel more connected to a past that she had never gotten to see. One that even her parents rarely spoke about, preferring to focus on their future rather than the past.

In fact, she'd been so caught up in the beginning of his tale that she had nearly forgotten what she had first asked about, startling a little when the older tom chuckled and continued on. The next words that left him were... not what she had been expecting. Although truthfully she wasn't really sure what she had been. For him to just know what he was doing from the get-go? To have never struggled in the same way that she was going through now? That actually would've just ended up making her feel so much worse. This was a story she could relate to, scared as she was to admit it. "Oh. Honestly, that's... that's kinda how I feel, a lot of the time." Her expression gained a sheepish edge, her attention focused down on her front paws instead of back into Smogmaw's amber gaze. "There are so many other apprentices I can talk to, and I've got Scorchfrost now, and nobody would turn me away if I asked for advice. I know that, but it's just so hard. I feel like I never know what I'm doing." She finally turned back to him, claws kneading uneasily at the dirt beneath them. "How did you end up dealing with it? I mean, you're our deputy now..." Clearly he had to have discovered some kind of solution. Some secret that she simply hadn't found herself yet.

CAUGHT UP IN A RUSH ✦ IT IS KILLING YOU

• 

• 
  ✧ shorthaired tortoiseshell point and chocolate point chimera with blue eyes
  ✧ 7 moons old; ages the 1st every month
  ✧ bisexual; crushing on yellowpaw
  ✧ daughter of monarchroot and sleetjaw
  ✧ shadowclan born; silently loyal to her home
  ✧ difficult to befriend; shy to most except yellowpaw
  ✧ "speech", thoughts, attacking
  ✧ peaceful powerplay allowed

​

 

[smogstar]

Barely had his breath relinquished an answer when his blunder dawns on him. Stars, to what extent have the seasons blurred his memory? Briar assumed the marsh colony's control only during the latter part of his tenure within it, and in a rather fubsy span after the fact, both it and the pine colony were left as charred remnants and distant memories. No, it'd have been the old coot himself, Hare Whiskers, who'd presided over his former home, at least during the timeframe Smogmaw referenced. He finds himself unable to swiftly rectify the mistake, for young Onyxpaw has latched onto the remark like a woodpecker to the Burnt Sycamore, and now peppers him with a related set.

His features tighten into something between a wince and a scowl for but a moment; as always, he is reluctant to concede any fault.

There's a befuddling depth to the tortoiseshell apprentice's words as she proceeds, he finds. They prod out from the same interminable cavity that dwells inside him, a vacuum that demands further understanding from the surrounding world. She delineates her place within the clan's social fabric, speaks on the existential struggle of knowing what to do and when to do it, and, at length, seeks his advice.

In turn, the deputy is humbled, and at a loss. Though Onyxpaw fights the same uphill battle—navigating which steps to take, which protocols to respect and abide by, but moreover, learning the how and why behind it all—she occupies a context very alien from his own. Smogmaw only secured his heading when the old world order collapsed and a new one rose in its stead. He watched from the shadows as new rules were forged and different values cemented their presence. The code was a natural outgrowth, a culmination as much as an invention. But, above all other considerations, what allowed him to flourish were the weaknesses laid bare within the new structure itself, the weak spots, the cracks.

This apprentice standing before him came into being long after the clan experiment found its footing. Her purpose is not to adjust to a societal structure different to a previous one; instead, it is to carry out her assigned function in the clan without question, without the thought to ask why or hesitate in her conviction. Even if it doesn't appear so, the life she leads is radically dissimilar to the one he lived. What experiences she will have and what trials she may face could feasibly resemble his, but would take place under circumstances thoroughly remote from those he knew.

"First, I'd like to say I was wrong. It was Hare Whiskers leading the marsh colony at the time, though Briar would come to succeed him eventually." Amber eyes give her a once-over, scanning her figure down, then back up. "Already, you put things into perspective, Onyxpaw," he begins as gently as his gruff tone allows, regarding the apprentice with a measure as inscrutable as alway. Yet his gaze burns with its intensity, unblinking and undaunted. "So long as you keep up with that, and have a goal and the resolve to fulfill it, all else fades to the background."

Smogmaw's heavy throat bobs as he swallows, the words coming thickly as his mind scrambles for something further to share. At the end, he settles on a sigh. "It'll take you a... significant amount of time to determine what you want, and how you'll get to it. Then you'll have to figure out what goals and duties are worth pursuing, which ones aren't, and which ones could be postponed," he lectures, eyes narrowing. It's a vague trail, surely, but specific advice seems irrelevant to this conversation. What works for one may not work for another. "I decided to start my path towards leading this clan some day, and opportunities presented themselves as they did. And here I am." There's a deep nod at the last line, a stoic, yet firm sort-of affirmation.​