- Mar 25, 2024
- 22
- 2
- 3
༺♱༻
In the past few days, things had slowly calmed, as they always did over time, however slowly. The sky clouded over, the sun hardly visible most days beyond their cover, as if the world was mourning with them. He had been holed away in the apprentice's den for days, hardly able to bring himself to emerge, but today he does, slinking out from beneath the ferns that shaded the den like an extension of their long, wispy shadows. The next weeks would be an attempt to return to some sort of normalcy, some sort of pattern - things would not ease for many, many more moons, if they ever did, but he could not abstain from his duties forever, nor could he permanently hide away from the eyes of his clanmates, no matter how it was that they looked at him.
Because he had not left the den very much, he had not eaten much, if at all, and his hunger had been almost entirely forgotten until it hit him with full force the moment the scent of recently caught prey on the fresh-kill pile was carried over to his place near the tree stump. He would need to ask to be taken out to hunt before he could eat, though, and his whiskers twitch in a slight frustration at having to ask a warrior to help, but there was nothing else to be done - he'd just have to wait a while longer, and that was that, because he would not ask permission to eat sooner. The apprentice pushes himself to his paws, and he half wishes there were more shadows to hide in so that he could mostly avoid talking to others except what was necessary, not in the mood for idle chatter.
And for better or worse, this wish, of all the recent wishes he'd had, is granted.
Darkness falls all of the sudden like a blanket over the forest, shutting out the sunlight that had been filtering through the cloud cover, and he immediately looks up, catching the last ring of light left in the sky that had not been extinguished. The sun had vanished; there one moment, and simply gone the next, as if its light had been put out, as if it had just been taken. The yowls of many cats immediately go up in confusion, in alarm, in despair, and fear lights a spark in his chest, a franticness that had been becoming too familiar lately, and all he can do is stare upwards, bewildered and frightened. Their clanmates, their leader, his parents, the sun?
StarClan must be furious.
"speech"