BEECH GIVES WIND SPEECH *:･ﾟ✧ sunstride

[SCORCHSTORM]

It is still a novel idea that WindClan's history is not as expansive as the moors they make their home on. Scorchpaw has only just begun to explore its past as well as its sun-blanketed grasses. When she was a kitten, she had mistakenly assumed that her clanmates had been apart of WindClan for their whole lives, wrapped up in its eddying gales and too caught up in the whirlwind to escape. Rather, she finds that many of them had been a part of WindClan for its whole life; that the cats she surrounds herself with bent the winds to their will to create their heathery home with Sootstar at their helm. It is strange to imagine Scorchstreak or Badgermoon before their time as exemplary warriors; she has only had the briefest glimpses into their pasts, but she knows they were never apprentices themselves; that they had come into WindClan as fully realized warriors. It is strange to imagine any great WindClanner living anywhere except the moors she has come to roam and love.

But she knows that more stories exist than ones of chasing hares and wild open air. It is why she seeks out Sunstride today, bicolor gaze heavy with focus. The grasses rustle and give voice to the wind that guides her, as if to say look over here. "Sunstride?" she calls, still kittenish in her trepidation to disturb the lead warrior, and even more so in her curiosity. Part of her regrets calling out. She's just a child, and he surely has better things to do than lay stories upon her. But she catches his attention, and so she must continue: "Um... Wolfsong told me that you both come from the mountains." The structure builds itself in the back of her head, tall and desperate peaks heavy with snow she has never seen. It seems cold there, and unforgiving, and so she must know about it. She has only ever known the flat, rolling moors; she cannot imagine being closer to the sky than WindClan already is, and yet there is a place where she can grow taller still? Her gaze shines with embers of questions yet unasked. "Can you tell me about them?"

@SUNSTRIDE​

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[SUNSTAR]

Scorchpaw was hardly alone in her lack of understanding. He had come to these moors a stranger, doing the bidding of yet another. He had stood beneath the moorland sun and watch Sootstar return from her death; he had seen much more to follow. To learn that it would not be the beginning or the end of WindClan had shaken him in a way that he had not comprehended. Certainty in his history began to crack. Something like guilt, like rage took its place. That she should come to life again when he had not seen such things in his homeland — that they may die and remain so, while this strange cat took another chance, and another again — she had spoken of StarClan's power, and he had been helpless but to swallow her words as truth. It had shaped all that followed. She had given him a name, and purpose. All he may do is accept. Even if such allowances do not sit well within the warrior's mind.

Once he had been different. The careless joy of his youth had remained in pieces across their trek. Each time he tells of its stories, some if it returns. Never has he been entirely capable of deciding whether or not that was something good.

Yet as Scorchpaw asks in halting words, hesitancy in her small posture, he cannot even think to refuse her. Where he rests towards the edges of camp, a bird between his paws and its feathers slowly beginning to pull apart from its breast, he smiles. One more to the growing pile, and Sunstride holds up one paw in a gesture of thought and patience. "I am glad that you have kept him company," he admits with a soft smile. "There is much he would like to share, and few who care to listen. It is good that you are not among them." Another feather, and then another, thought by now his gaze rarely leaves the smaller apprentice's. "Tell me first, then. What all has he told you of? That they are tall enough to scrape the sky? That the snow beneath our paws melted so rarely that we may make dens beneath it should we stray too far from camp?"

＞ˏˋ〘  OOC NOTES ╱ REFERENCE ╱ 07.10.2023 𝘏𝘈𝘕𝘋𝘚𝘖𝘔𝘌 𝘈𝘚 𝘓𝘐𝘍𝘌 𝘈𝘕𝘋 𝘗𝘖𝘐𝘚𝘖𝘕 〙ˊˎ＜

• ooc: —

• 

• SUNSTRIDE. named for his coloration and his bold chasing of fate.
  —— cis male, he - him. approx. 40 moons old. lead warrior of windclan + former rogue.
  —— gay, monogamous. mate to wolfsong from 07.05.2023.  npc x npc, no larger family.
  —— has recently regained some of his earlier lightness, but maintains his steady facade.
  
  sunstride is broad and bold– a creature standing above most of windclan, though not a beast beyond its borders, with fur that flames red and deepens to a burnt amber with every whorl and stripe. his eyes, in comparison, are a pale summer's blue, still as bold as the rest of him.

• "speech"

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