private BLACK ROSES AND HAIL MARY'S ✧ lemontongue

[POLLENFUR]

Pollenfur’s treks to see her sisters in WindClan and her nephew in SkyClan are trickling to a thin stream. Not only is it increasingly dangerous for her to be seen on the moorland border especially, but her paws now struggle with the weight of an undeniably burgeoning belly. She is swollen with the kits she bears, her breaths nearing pants by the time the earth turns from straw and dust to heather under her paws. But no matter how long she waits, Brightshine does not come—and she feels her shoulders sag. Perhaps there are complications with her sister’s own pregnancy, but normally she’d have at least sent Heavy Snow or Lilacstem to visit with her and bring her news…

She prepares to leave, tail drooping behind her, when there’s a snapping of foliage underpaw. WindClan scent washes over her, and she stiffens, her fur bristling. She has dared too much—and pregnant!—and now she’s going to be assaulted by StarClan knows how many brutes. The tortoiseshell turns, honey-drop eyes silvered in the moonlight, and crouches, belly brushing the gorse. “I’ll leave, I’m just passing through—I swear, I mean no harm to—”

The tom is alone, a warrior she almost does not recognize. But beneath his scent, the one all moor runners carry of dust and wind and sunshine, is something so familiar it causes her heart to leap into her throat. “Lemonpaw?” She stumbles, her fluffed-out fur trembling at the ends. “Do you… do you remember me?” She’d been at his mother’s side shortly after his birth, and she’d loved her until Sootstar had driven a wedge between them… And suddenly, Pollenfur wonders if Lemonpaw knows that his mother walks with StarClan now.

✧ INFO.

• @LEMONTONGUE
• 
  — pollen . pollenfur
  — she/her ; loner ; windclan warrior
  — pansexual ; taken by Hyacinthbreath
  — long-haired chocolate calico with amber eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — pixel by Birdman

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[LEMONTONGUE]

Since becoming a warrior, hunting alone has become a more frequent pass time of Lemontongue's. He prefers it this way - the cinnamon tabby is free from judgemental glances, from over-analyzed scorn.

He's done nothing wrong, he tries to remind himself. Nothing but being born in the wrong place, he remembers - one so quick to exile if one takes a wrong step. One so quick to separate families, to separate kits from their mothers.

He creeps toward a grazing rabbit, body low to the ground as he hides in taller lengths of grass. The foolish thing pays no mind to him as he grows closer, and Lemontongue prepares to leap forward - to claim his catch so he can return to camp for the night. Long ears twitch, a beady gaze lifting before Lemontongue has time to strike. He moves swiftly, trying to be quicker than the prey in his strike, but it runs off with little warning, leaving the tom to growl in frustration. Cloudy paws change course, bounding forward after the runaway rabbit.

But a shift in the wind causes his race to pause, as the scent of rabbit is carried away from him and a new one takes its place. The smell of cat - one that doesn't intertwine with the moor-scent he's used to. A stranger - an intruder - is nearby.

His priority changes then, and the tom turns to follow the new odor instead. What good would come out of leaving a stranger near their borders, with the capability of wandering in and wreaking havoc?

As he'd done in following the rabbit, he crouches down in the moor's grass while he tracks the scent down. And when he nears the stranger's location, pale eyes spot calico fur turning to leave. Flickers of moonlit color, slivers revealed between stalks of grass, bring a sense of familiarity to him - a blurred nostalgia he doesn't know the origin of, but now that calls for him to lean forward for a better view.

The snap of foliage beneath his foot startles Lemontongue as much as it does the stranger, and as the pregnant she-cat crouches down, he rises up to reveal himself. He means no harm, and she means no harm either, so she claims in stammered-out words. Perhaps she's lucky that it's him who'd stumbled upon her - others would have hunted her down, treated her like the rabbit he's meant to be catching right now.

"You're on WindClan territory," he starts, hoping the molly hadn't meant to seek refuge here, to birth kits here, "You really shouldn't be --"

"Lemonpaw?"

Round eyes blink in confusion. His apprentice name had been shed a while ago now - so long ago that he's taken aback by the sound of it. "Huh?" Where does he know this calico fur from? He searches her face, and it doesn't take the tom long to realize why familiarity had hit him earlier - why comfort hits him now.

"... Pollenfur...?" Lemontongue slowly says, as if searching for a confirmation he's certain he already had, "What are... It's... It's Lemontongue now, but... What are you doing here?" His mother's mate had disappeared shortly after Honeytwist's exile, and part of him expects her to be nearby. But when he parts his jaws, he can only find Pollenfur's scent, and not the warmth of his mother's. Why had she returned to the moors without Honey with her? He's glad to see the calico again, but his mother hadn't come to visit in a while now - not since before he'd earned his warrior name.

"How have you been?" he asks, the frown on his face softening, "And my mother - she's doing okay, right? Is she nearby?" Perhaps she was further out, taking shelter elsewhere.

// aGH sorry this is so late!​

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[POLLENFUR]

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XXXXXXXXXXWhen it becomes apparent Lemontongue will not attack her, Pollenfur rises unsteadily to her paws. She blinks, almost shy, as he corrects her with his warrior name. Of course, she thinks, her whiskers trembling. “Your mother would be proud of you. I know she… she would have wanted to be there. At your ceremony.” Dappled fur ripples along her flank and back bone—and pain fills the golden depths of her eyes. She’d been afraid he’d ask about Honeytwist, and it seems cruel that she should be the one to tell her son her fate.

XXXXX“I’m here… I’m just passing through,” she says, her ears flattening with shame at the lie. She has never known Lemontongue to be cruel, but it has been many moons since she’s seen him, and he owes her no fealty. She cannot risk Brightshine’s place in WindClan. Instead, her expression softens, and she nears him slowly, her gait made clumsy by her swinging belly. “Lemontongue, not long after I left WindClan, I… I found Honeytwist.” Her heart aches, eyes glazed with memory. “She was sick, very sick. By the time I got to her, it was too late. She died while I held her.” Pollenfur bows her head. “I’m so sorry. I… I buried her, not far from the Horseplace, if you want me to show you the grave… but she’s gone, gone to the stars she once loved.”

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[LEMONTONGUE]

"She would," Lemontongue agrees with Pollenfur - not out of sheer confidence in himself, but wistful knowledge that his mother wouldn't feel otherwise toward any progress he could make out here.

His mother would be proud because he'd made it this far. If only she were here too, stood beside her mate to hear the name he'd worked hard to earn, to hold onto. If only she'd been there in the first place, sat among the audience to hear the first call of his warrior name.

Would things be different if she'd never left? Better, even? It would be a miracle, brought down by stars meant to be watching over him, for WindClan to be better than what it is - and any iteration of a happier moorland that crosses his mind finds a way for his mother to fit into it. To return, to remain. To be whole again, a family never left to crumble.

A dream. One that crosses his mind often, one that he'd held a childish hope in, one that - just as his family - falls apart before him. Pollenfur's words are soft as she delivers sorrowful news, but the impact is nothing but. His face contorts - a frown twisted in devastation as he staggers back, his cinnamon-twisted form shrinking down, appearing smaller than he'd stood moments before. He does not feel like a warrior who'd come across a wandering loner, but a small kit again.

"N-No..." he squeaks out, ears flattening against his head, "No -- She can't be... She was fine the last time I saw her, I-I think. I --" Tears blur his vision, and he moves to duck his head down, to hide away his cries. The last time he'd seen her had been so long ago now - perhaps he should have known. Perhaps he should've been aware that his dreams had been more impossible than he'd thought, all this time.

His mother is gone, and Lemontongue will never see her again. Never will he come across her at the border again, as he does now with Pollenfur. Honeytwist had been bound to sickness, far from her storage of herbs that could've treated her, and Lemontongue only finds himself wishing he'd paid attention more. If only he'd caught on to small symptoms - if only he'd remembered which odd-shaped leaf did what. Would his mother be alive now? Would Lemontongue's heart hurt less?

An offer is placed before him - a shared knowledge of where Honeytwist now lies. The WindClanner lifts his head with a sniffle, nodding his head in response. "Please... Please show me, if you can," he croaks out, "I need to see her, please." One last time - he needs to speak to his mother, one last time.
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[POLLENFUR]

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XXXXXPollenfur watches the young warrior crumple, his thin figure lowering to the earth and shaking with despair. “No—she can’t be, she was fine the last time I saw her,” he says, his brilliant lemon-drop eyes glazing with tears. The calico queen bows her head, wishing there was some comfort she could offer him—anything at all. “Your mother lived a life filled with grief that tugged at her gentle heart,” she says instead, her voice unfurling like feathers in her mouth. She remembers the softness that had begun to fade from Honeytwist during her time in WindClan, the way it slowly had been replaced with anger, with resignation. The stars had decreed she leave her true mate in SkyClan, had asked her to give up Clanmates and friends and a lover, and she had become bitter in the end.

XXXXXAfter a heartbeat, she says, “But when I found her, she seemed… she seemed more at peace than I had seen her in a very long time.” It’s little comfort to a motherless son, but she hopes he can find some in this bleary memory.

XXXXXLemontongue asks for her to show him her grave, and Pollenfur hesitates. “It’s just outside your border. I visit… when I can.” Can she trust him, to take him so far, in her condition? But the pleading expression on his face—it isn’t one she can resist, even now. After another few seconds of strained silence, Pollenfur nods.

XXXXX“…I will take you.” She half-turns, beckoning with a flick of her feathery tail. “Follow me.”

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