pafp BAD IDEA RIGHT? ;; spar/embarrassment

[LUPINESONG]

❀‿ Lupinepaw couldn't seem to shake the funk that she was in. The threat of sickness loomed larger and larger every day, seeming to coincide with the ever-shortening of the days and the chill beginning to longer in the air. That wasn't to mention the other threats that loomed ever present in the forest as they always had—she couldn't bear to think about Yukio, one of the queens she had grown up under and a friend of her mother, being brought back to camp limp and lifeless after an outing that should have been as safe as any other. Everything was an added weight atop her shoulders, manifesting in a pervasive tightness beneath her ribs and paws slowed with fatigue.

She wanted to be anywhere but the Sandy Hollow right now. She was sparring—if one could call the lousy display of sheathed paw swipes and stumbling dodges "sparring"—with Falconpaw, embarrassment and frustration climbing with every (frequent) misstep. In her single moon of apprenticeship, Lupinepaw could not say with any confidence that she excelled in any one particular skill, but she did know with painful certainty that she had no innate combat instincts. The molly's movements were over-thought and clumsy, attacks were insecure and soft-pawed, and she was overly aware of any possible eyes that were laid upon her, witnessing her make a complete fool of herself.

She was making some attempt at a dodge away from the other apprentice's lunge, spinning on unbalanced paws when it happened. A chilling spark of nerves shot up her spine as the tom's teeth found purchase in Lupinepaw's long, tufty tail. Her brain short-circuited, mind blurring with only an alarm that sounded, OW OW OW OW STOP IT I HATE IT OW MAKE IT STOP!

An ear-splitting screech sounded in the air as a black furry shape leaped—comically—high into the air away from the other apprentice. Lupinepaw's paws hit the ground with a puffed-up pelt and tears of pain—but mostly frustration—springing into her eyes.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" she snapped at her opponent thoughtlessly. It would take another second of glaring at the boy to realize that she may or may not have overreacted, and that she had likely screamed loud enough for the entire forest to hear her. Very quickly her anger was snuffed out to be replaced with horror. Oh no.

Spoiler: prompt!

i. lupinepaw, in the midst of a spar, gets her tail bitten by her opponent. extremely averse to this sensation as she is, how does she react? does she display her discomfort openly, or does she try to bottle it up?

JUST LIKE THAT ⊹₊°❀‿ THE MOON GOES FLAT

• OOC: @falconpaw! get sick'd 4head ! loopy is contagious but not displaying obvious symptoms in this thread.
• 
• 
  lupinekit . lupinepaw
  — trans she/her. 4mo apprentice of skyclan
  — ??? ; single
  — tall, long-haired black smoke with low white and green eyes
  — smells like sweet lupine flowers and young pine needles
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — icon by saturnid, fullbody and chibi by nya
  — penned by eezy

​

 

[falcongaze]

❝ CALLIN' IT QUITS NOW ✧°.☀ ————————————
Falconpaw's name was well placed. He had been named after a bird of prey- one of ruthless speed and wicked sight. He had been trained at a young age- Vermillionsun had made sure of that much. Sparring was getting easier. His spar against Cherrypaw, and now this against Lupinepaw. Both had left themselves with openings, with which he was driving his attacks, battering Lupine backwards. And he thought he had it, that final lunge that he gave.

Lupinepaw spun away at the last moment. His eyes widened slightly, but his mouth was clamping over a mouthful of her tail. His ears flattened, and almost as soon as it happened, Falconpaw was drawing himself up short and skittering backwards- her screech caused him to flinch, and already, apologies were flying out of his mouth. "I- I'm so sorry, Lupine, I didn't mean-" He inhaled sharply, cut off as she screamed at him. Falconpaw's ears were lowered, intensely genuine in his apologetic face. He really didn't mean to bite her tail, of all things.

Falconpaw's heart thudded in his chest, the rousing nose thundering in his ear. Very slowly, he uncurled himself from where he believed that she was going to strike him. ".. Lupinepaw, I didn't expect you to spin like that-" Falconpaw winced. Any explanation he could have given perhaps would not have been good enough, no. "I'm sorry." He finished, his head drooping gently and tail lowered. That was definitely going to be something he'd be teased- or even bullied about- later.

// @GREENEYES mentor tag!!

"SPEECH"

[penned by dallas - ☀]

———————————— ☀.°✧ BABY, I'M A WRECK ❞ ​

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

Cherrypaw felt like she'd been sidelined for nearly the whole day. After one of her very first spars with Falconpaw, her mentor had taken it into his own paws to train her. It certainly felt like it was working. Her shoulders and thighs ached, sunrise after sunrise, and she still got winded and had to stumble away after only about five heartbeats. Not to mention the fact that being beaten, over and over again by virtue of her own stubbornness and Slate's unwillingness to go slower, did no wonders for the soreness of her ego. She felt swollen inside and out these days.

Whether her beast of a mentor is here or not, she's been instructed to observe the spars of the other apprentices. Of course, she's rooting for Lupinepaw, standing with the ship even as it sinks hopelessly. Cherrypaw has half a mind to simply look away because 1. she didn't want to watch her friend suffer any longer and 2. there was really nothing to be gained from watching Lupinepaw flounder and Falconpaw attempt to accomodate that while still attacking her. Her yellow eyes glaze over as the sun creeps higher into the sky, head turned towards them but registering nothing.

She's beginning to slip into a daydream when a scream shatters it. Cherrypaw jerks back to painful alertness, shoulders bristling so hard they could shoot her hairs out like quills. Lupinepaw is whirling on Falconpaw, angrier than she's ever seen her gentle friend. Though the target may be Falconpaw, it gives her no satisfaction to watch rage and hurt marr Lu's kind features. Her opponent, to his credit, couldn't be quicker in his apology—for what good it'll do him, because Cherrypaw is already up and storming towards him. Quicker than anyone who could grab her scruff and drag her away, she aims a sheath-clawed slap across Falconpaw's bowed face. "You should be sorry," she hisses, tail lashing.

It's one thing to have pushed Cherrypaw around in their match. For all her arrogance, she was perfectly aware of her own belligerence and all the bridges she'd burned with it. But Lupinepaw was practically harmless. Maybe it hurt to call her friend's flaws into the spotlight, but the unavoidable truth was that she'd stagnated while most of their litter was surging ahead in combat. "It's your fox mouth that did that, you know. Why don't you go back to where you came from instead of hurting nice cats?" she spits, shouldering her way between her friend and rival.

Maybe on another day, one with nicer weather, she wouldn't have been so angry. But Slate is grinding her to the bone. But the air in camp is filled with coughing, and good SkyClanners thrash and burn in their nests. But there have so many bodies she's starting to associate the sweet of lavender with blood, and at night she ponders her own neck permanently wrenched at a 90-degree angle. "Why don't you bite me instead?" she challenges, aiming to give Falconpaw a goading little shove.

Spiderpaw's death had lit a small flame in her gut. A little creature who kept the sadness away from her brain simply by consuming it, tragedy after tragedy. It practically feasted upon the plague, growing thick and hale with all her wide-eyed gaze fed straight into it. The guilt of slapping his hang-dog face is real, but so is the thrashing flame in her stomach which swallows it whole and rears its head up into her own head, a burning parasite wearing Cherrypaw's face like a porcelain mask. She couldn't do anything about anything, and though she doesn't know it the parasite knows. The least she could do is make sure it punishes Falconpaw for the good deed of feeding it yet another morsel.​