private and the lake is nothing but blue | stryker

[betonyfrost]

Although it may not be accurate to describe Betonyfrost has incurious, neither would it be inaccurate. She hasn't caught herself wondering about ShadowClan's newest face and held little interest in his mismatched eyes. He was an outsider—not marshborn as far as Betonyfrost knew, not as she had been, and so Betonyfrost harbored doubts as to his true place here. Regardless, he was another set of paws to work and another set of teeth to hunt.

He would either be welcomed fully into the clan as Skunktail's kin had been, or he would be found to be lacking in something fundamental to ShadowClan and sent back to whichever hole he had initially crawled from. Betonyfrost quietly hoped for the latter and knew, despite that, it would be the former.

It would not be accurate to call Betonyfrost incurious: Stryker eats like he knows hunger and, for the first time, Betonyfrost wonders about him.

Betonyfrost doesn't seek him out—not purposefully. The sky is rosy and new, perhaps the reason that camp is lulled into quiet. Betonyfrost finds herself at his flank by happenstance; she had settled into her space without noticing him. Paws tucked beneath her chest and tail pulled to her side, Betonyfrost tips her head his way. She remembers that she isn't incurious then. Her green eyes narrow.

"With how many of my clanmates speak, you would think the marsh is a terrible place," Stryker isn't included in that—my clanmates. Betonyfrost hopes he notices, "You would think that there are better places to be."

More prey, dryer grounds, fewer biting flies—why here?

@STRYKER

shadowclan warrior | blue mackerel tabby | 31 moons | tags​

​

 

[BLACKSTRIKE]

➼➼ For each ShadowClan cat who welcomes him into their clan, who seems not to mind his presence, there seem to be two more who think he should be thrown to the wolves—though thrown to the foxes may be more appropriate, he thinks. It would be fine if they did—he’d run off when the marsh colony dissolved, and had managed to survive without a clan for a long time—but he fears the leader’s threat more than anything. He fully believes that Chilledstar would not hesitate to kill him if he stepped out of line. Some of the other ShadowClanners also seem to hate him, though, and he finds himself frequently shaking off their cold glares. Today, the owner of the eyes that focus on him is Betonyfrost, who seems to pointedly exclude him from her mention of her clanmates. Understandable, he thinks, and draws his tail up to lie across his haunch.

The gray tabby seems to be leading him into a conversation, asking a question without actually asking, and mismatched eyes shift to her. "There are," he says in response, without protest. He wholeheartedly agrees with the idea, but a life on his own outside of the marshland hadn’t turned out quite so well as he’d imagined it would. When the territory was taken over by cats both familiar and strange, he had stayed just out of sight, just out of reach. He’d been able to live quietly and in peace, but a cat hardly the age of a ShadowClan apprentice living alone on the fringes of the marshland had found hunting to be a difficult task. He was lucky to find prey at all, much less catch it. "But this is far better than where I lived before." He hopes that she won’t press the matter, will just move on with her day, but something tells him that she won’t.

➴ i think i found a home

• ooc: —
• 
  STRYKER ❯❯ he/him, former carrionplace loner
  ➼ thin black and white tom with mismatched blue and yellow eyes. calm and nonchalant, difficult to anger.
  ➼ currently on a probationary period; shadowing forestshade.
  ➼ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted
  ➼ penned by foxlore

​

​

 

[betonyfrost]

Betonyfrost's green eyes glide over Stryker—they slide away from him, down to where she knows the horizon sleeps. It isn't frustration, not yet, but something near enough that Betonyfrost scoffs as if it was. She doesn't move overly much: her paws remain folded beneath her chest, and her tail simply changes the side to which it is tucked. It is easier for her to talk like this, looking outward instead of at Stryker.

"Were you living on the underside of a rotten log, like a worm? Or maybe in the gut of a monster?" She asks, incredulous.

Betonyfrost doesn't think so low of her home, not truly. It has always been as beautiful as it has been ugly: everything in equal measure. Oftentimes, it is simply easier to remember the ugly—her ears flaking into soot-colored dust that settled dark against the paw-pressed snow, the scent of blood that that accompanied Comfreypaw's untimely departure.

Countless moons spent hungry.

"I've never been elsewhere," Her eyes flick back to Stryker—shallow curiosity—and she thinks, quietly, that had she been born in someplace other than the marsh, she would have been born without an intrinsic part of herself. "But had I had the choice, it wouldn't have been here. It isn't often that we have so much prey."

shadowclan warrior | blue mackerel tabby | 31 moons | tags​

​