private AUTOMATIZE \ scarpaw & rosepaw

[REDFLOWER]

REDFLOWER

That vengeance is the business of a man

Redflower has not seen her children since she'd left them, tiny and crusted with snow, at ThunderClan's border. She has lain awake at night in near-agony, wondering if they had lived long enough for a patrol to find them. She has scored the walls of her burrows, her anguish built from the frustration of not knowing. If they have failed, then what has this all been for? She'd prayed—not to StarClan, but to the spirit of her kits' father, hallowed and righteous, no doubt lingering close and ensuring his progeny had completed their tasks.

The leafbare had not treated her well. She had sickened from the cold and the lack of adequate shelter, and without a medicine cat to heal her, she had languished in solitude, certain she would die. In her fevered slumber, she clung to a single hope: Finish what I could not. I will find you even in death, and I will guide your paws.

But somehow, the sun had risen. Redflower's lungs ceased their rattling wheeze; prey returned to the forest, and even the unclaimed territories beyond began to tremble with birdsong and rabbitscent. She took her time regaining her strength; some part of her, some survivalist's intuition, told her she could still die if she did not. When newleaf had melted the last of the winter's frost and she could breathe without hissing in pain, the tortoiseshell slipped from the hole she'd stuffed herself in and made her way toward the place she'd left her children.

It is a risky thing she does, crossing a well-marked and recently-patrolled border; she does so with care, picking her way through tree branches and keeping a watchful amber eye on the shadows below. If she had any way of getting a message to her kits without putting herself at risk of slaughter, she would—but for now, she must have courage, she tells herself. Redflower returns day after day, rolling in filth to disguise her scent… but she does not see them. Surely they have become apprentices by now, she thinks, her flanks heaving with building fear on the seventh day of her trespass. Surely they have not been cast out, surely with medicine and prey and warm dens, they survived to see—

She is vindicated, at last. They are out with warriors—but she does not see their pelts. Mentors, she supplies. Redflower had found fox dung and had rolled until there was almost no semblance of cat left; perhaps her kits' mentors are distracted by the stench and have wandered to find its source.

The tortoiseshell creeps, belly low, voice urgent. Scarkit and Rosekit—Scarpaw and Rosepaw now, she tells herself—stand alone in the undergrowth. "My children," she hisses, her eyes round with surprise at how they've grown. They are muscular and well-fed, in comparison to their rogue mother, and their dark fur is sleek. Do they remember her, and the days they'd spent in cramped discomfort, the lessons she'd so painstakingly taught them?

Redflower waits for them to approach her. She will be a ghastly and unwelcome sight, no doubt; her tortoiseshell fur is tattered and matted, and her familiar scent is awash in predator dung to disguise her presence. She is gaunt, hollowed and skeletal after her sickness, but a familiar fury glows like stoked embers in her gaze.

"Rosepaw. Scarpaw." She tastes their new names. "We don't have much time. What have you learned? What have you seen?" She leans closer, her whiskers trembling. "What is happening in this Clan of traitors and killers?"

ooc

information

• @SCARPAW @Rosepaw ❀
  
• Redflower is a scrawny, tattered tortoiseshell-and-white she-cat with blazing flame-colored eyes.

  Exiled rogue with no home; formerly a ThunderClan warrior and a supporter of the usurper's regime
  Widow of Skyclaw; mother to Scarpaw and Rosepaw
  Hostile to all; will start fights; will not show mercy; will flee, depending on the context

 

[SCARPAW]

It's not uncommon that he patrols with Rosepaw. She still swoops in around him, answering questions before him, lunging for prey before him, all of it heedless of Dayfern's discontent. He questions his sister's blatant defiance to authority—and perhaps beneath the haggard, broken pieces of his heart, he actually worries for her. But Rosepaw is smart, and obedient when it counts. So he keeps his thoughts to himself. It is rare that he knows better than her.

The patrol is calm until Dayfern's voice presses warning over their heads. Careful, she'd said. Fox-scent. Scarpaw and Rosepaw idle some lengths behind their mentors, wary to get too close. He watches them press further into the tangled forest undergrowth when the voice hits his ears.

My children. Scarpaw freezes, head snapping toward the lone figure crouched in the grass. "Mama—" he gasps.

Redflower is so different than he remembers. Her pelt, matted in dark mud, clings to her ribs, her face. She leers at them like a ghost. Some...thing, cobbled with dirt and bramble and a cold, haunting stare. But he remembers the food they had to eat, how the half-rotted things gave almost nothing to the bones. Remembers her burning eyes.

They scurry to her. This close, the smell is overwhelming—a thick miasma that Scarpaw must clamp his teeth against, lest he gag outright. A paw itches to clasp over his nose, but he refuses to disgrace his mother.

His mother. She whispers their names like she was there to see their ceremonies herself. At once, Scarpaw wonders if she had. Oftentimes, it's almost as if he can imagine her around, hiding in the heavy backdrops of ThunderClan. He can feel the weight of her stare and the promises he was meant to keep.

Redflower's presence is always there in the back of his mind, hovering over his shoulder, watching him.

"ThunderClan's deputy is dead," he blurts, voice a hushed whisper. Redflower's terrifying face is burning into his mind, his memories of her coalescing into this new, stranger version of her. "Roeflame. Killed by a fox. And...Burnstorm, with her." Would his mother know the names? Recognize the faces they'd once held? Scarpaw lapses into brief, fraught silence, wondering.
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