private AND DARLING, YOU'D BE SUBLIME — sparrowsong

[BLUEFROST]

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XXXXXThis morning when Bluepaw had woke, sheltering beneath the sparse burned limbs of the sycamore, her pelt had been slick with morning dew. Her bones are cold—though leaf-fall’s days are still warm enough, the nights are seasonably laced with frost, and when she moves it’s stiff and awkward. She misses the fluffy moss of her nest back home, now infested with stinking rogues who likely don’t wash the fleas from their fur, and the thought is enough to make her ache. Her stomach, too, is empty, but there’s no fresh-kill pile in sight—it’s every cat for themselves here, with the Clans so disorganized, and StarClan only knew if any patrols had gone to the Carrionplace yet this morning.

XXXXXShe blinks tired green eyes, shoving herself ungracefully to her paws. There are dark and full stormclouds gathering in her head, and she almost stumbles away from the other Clan cats, into an unauthorized swampy grove dripping with Spanish moss and lichen. Her breath feels like it’s coming in gasps between her ribs, and she has to slow down. She’s trembling, her fur beginning to bristle where it isn’t slicked down with damp.

XXXXX“What is happening to me,” she murmurs, and to her surprise—it comes out like a sob. She tilts her face to the gray morning sky, her throat restricting as it never has. She thinks of her mother, spitting at her Clan—“Fools! StarClan will not want him!” Her father’s body, growing cold, the eyes half-open and glazed, pale. “You’re all cursed,” he’d told Cottonpaw. All—all of them, all of his kits, but he’d spoken to Addervenom, to Harrierstripe, to Moorpaw, and especially to his precious Cottonpaw. He’d barely looked at her in life, except to tell her he was proud of her every now and then—but she had never been her father’s darling the way her twin had been.

XXXXXHer lower jaw shakes, and her eyes begin to gloss with tears. Her vision blurs and doubles before her. Bluepaw’s shoulders shake with another sob, this one gritty and painful, and the tears stream from her emerald eyes, falling in unceremonious droplets near her white paws. “StarClan, I can’t—” She shudders, a wail cracking from her heart and bursting from her throat. “I can’t do this! I can’t do this without you, so why—why are you LEAVING ME?”

XXXXXThere’s a rustle behind her, faint whispers of paws on grass. Bluepaw stiffens before she turns.

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@sparrowsong!
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[sparrowsong!]

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The world was falling apart around them. For a second time they had been uprooted entirely, driven from their home by forces beyond their control, their will. It still hardly felt as though any time had passed at all since they'd left Twolegplace for the first and final time.

Sickness was rampant, and many had been hurt in the chaos from which they'd fled, but... everyone was alive.

The marshes of ShadowClan were cold and unfamiliar. Damp earth seeped into their paws, fur, even their very bones, and it felt as though any of them were hard-pressed to find and stay on dry land for any period of time. At a moment's notice their feet would sink into the grass despite their efforts, frequently earning a startled squeak and a feverish flicking of the afflicted paw.

Part of them felt guilty for having fled from the claws of the rogues so easily, to have left their Clanmates fighting a vain battle. Sparrowsong simply couldn't. If they hadn't seen Ravensong, fled along with him to help the sick tom out, they were sure they would have eventually been cornered in their frightened stupor.

Even so, in the end, it meant they were one of the few that had made it out without injury. It meant they were an able body, capable of hunting despite the hunger and mud weighing down their paws. Hunting was the only thing they could do, the only thing they had been doing, ever since they'd recovered from yellowcough.

Never enough. It was never enough.

They weren't quite sure where they were as they wandered, worries that they'd gone too far beginning to rise in their throat. Perhaps they should turn back, return to the others.

Nearby a voice murmured to stop them in their tracks, words lost to their unexpecting ears but containing the sadness of a barely-repressed sob all the same. Unfamiliar, definitely not one of SkyClan. While the tabby had thought themself to be alone, they weren't surprised to find another cat nearby. With all five Clans in one territory, four of which confined to a small area, privacy was few and far inbetween.

Concern drew the small cat closer, ears tipped back before flicking forward when the voice started again. A plea, a rising wail, a head lifted to the sky above. Why are you leaving me?

WindClan, they belatedly recognized when the scent reached their nose through the heavy dew-laden air. Uncomfortably they shifted their paws, and it was enough to alert the other cat to their presence. At once both stiffen, green eyes whipping around to meet gray, and Sparrowsong's mouth briefly parts for words that don't come.

This cat looks remarkably like Sootstar, comes the thought with a prickle of discomfort, yet pity twists their heart all the same. What were they meant to say?

"Star- StarClan hasn't left us," they say softly, although who the reassurance was for was undetermined. The warrior's ears tilted back again, eyes round with concern and uncertainty. StarClan wouldn't abandon them, not now. Not when they'd given them a path, a sign to cure the ill, a chance and hope.

The SkyClanner's gaze dropped to their paws then. "They've kept us safe. They watch over us." They hadn't lost anyone. Rogues may swarm their territory now, but... they were all still together in the end, weren't they? "Any day now everyone will come home with the cure. Everyone will get better, and then things won't be so scary."​

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[BLUEFROST]

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XXXXXBluepaw whips around at the sound of terrain squelching under another cat’s paws. She has completely abandoned any sense of self-preservation—what if this cat, this warrior bearing SkyClan scent, had wanted to assassinate her—had wanted to listen in one some ill-whispered secret? Her pelt begins to fluff up, her green eyes snapping with rage and embarrassment. Not only had another cat witnessed her exposing her innards, spitting emotion onto the forest floor like the remnants of her breakfast, but it’s a SkyClanner, a kittypet.

XXXXX“And what do kittypets know of StarClan?” Her tone is cold, but there’s no hostility in the tabby’s pale eyes—nor is there any malintent, she thinks. Part of her longs to unsheathe her claws and tear them across the other cat’s pelt just for daring to be so close to her in a moment of vulnerability. She does not—though she feels terribly exposed, cornered, she scrabbles for what little composure she can. It lays in shreds at her paws.

XXXXX“Any day now, everyone will come home with the cure,” they say, and Bluepaw’s chest fills with stones. “What does it matter?” Her voice drops again, brittle. “My father is dead already. I have other kin rotting away too—a littermate, an aunt. I have written them off already.” Her mouth creeps across her muzzle into a long, flat line. “They will not survive, either.”

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