BRAND NEW ANIMAL | introduction

[CHRYSALISWING]

The scarlet of the starting sun. The culmination of the canvas' celestial. The bow of the begotten night.

Chrysalispaw knew them to be the motions of the day, as he had duly observed them since he was but a child, like opening a familiar tome to the sweet songs of sound scrawlings. They were steady as the very breaths that he exhaled, steady as the songster's siren every morning, and steady as the relief of rain in a tempest. The chimera-coated cat greeted every dawn with the same half-lidded stare, as intrusive light flooded through his dreams, as though peeling him from such saccharine sentiment. He enjoyed his beauty sleep, after all, and the candied fantasies that escaped his dull reality. Sometimes, something exciting would happen, but that excitement would fade into a throb of banality. Still, he enjoyed the trite, if not for the comfort it provided. It was an expectation, a constant.

Wintry air ruffled against a feathery coat, as the breath of the wild simply nipped at his sides and spared him its wrath for another occasion. Chrysalis trailed along trodden paths in the snow, where many other cats had once been, as if he followed a transitory legacy by forefathers of the secondhand. Heterochromatic eyes glancing to and fro at each errant noise and movement, with keen and juvenile senses primed to take anything on, though no such opportunity unraveled itself at his step. Fiery russets and inky blacks stood antithetical to the alabaster, and he was aware. It was hard for him, with such a gorgeously unique pelt, to hunt in these conditions. Such was his curse and his blessing.

It was a beautiful day, but beauty was so easily marred.

"Ugh." Then came the contempt-laden scowl of the apprentice, with that tone of disgust that had never truly left their tongue, an acerbic taste that lingered upon the buds. Lifting one wispy paw to reveal the snowmelt that had dirtied his pristine image, he shook it off, though it would be quickly replaced. Chrysalispaw noticed how leaf-bare crept into the camp more than usual, with hands of pallid ichor bleeding into the dens, nails crested and donned at the tapers of each nest. "Disgusting." He cupped one paw and attempted to shovel some out of his way, though the frigidity that flitted through fire-hued feet only made him recoil. It was his first winter, and he hoped it was his last. He hated it.

Twin moons for a gaze stared up at the sun, blazing silent and steadfast upon the blue sky, of which held no blemish nor blush of grey and brute. The sun had almost reached its zenith before it would graciously descend, and the forenoon would then end to meet the afternoon. Then, evening would follow. Then, twilight. It was the same play to the same refrain. Humph... Do somethin' useful, sun, and melt all this snow. Like, isn't that your job? In protest, Chrys kicked at a patch of white. As if that would do anything, but he was, at his core, a child who threw temper tantrums.
​

 

[Orangestar]

Orangeblossom, on the flip side, quite likes leafbare (mostly; her paws go numb and get all cracked, and she finds it harder to keep on top of dehydration, but she's well-equipped for the cold with her long fur). And she loves days like this - cold and clear, no promise of a snowstorm or laden clouds bearing down on SkyClan as a whole. Granted, the last snowstorm she'd been caught in had a pleasant outcome, but those developments were far and few between. And it's nice to see the sun once in a while during the frosty season.

Chrysalispaw, who is living his first leafbare, seems to be having no such interest in the snow. Orangeblossom watches him with muted curiosity from her place atop the stump in the middle of camp, allowing the sun to warm her pelt in a rare show of taking five heartbeats to relax. For starters, he sticks out like a flower in a pile of dirt, so he's afforded no stealth advantage while hunting in the snow like some of his paler-furred denmates. It might, however, come in handy when the light-dappled pine floor returns to its usual glory. Furthermore, he's ... huh. Orangeblossom's analysis of the chimera trails into nothing as he kicks at a snowdrift. She huffs, amused, and draws forward in a little so that she can get Chrysalispaw's attention.

"So, was there something in that snowdrift?" She queries, monotone.​

✦ ooc ✦ info

•  
• 
  ✦ orangeblossom, deputy of skyclan
  — no apprentice.
  ✦ 25 moons, she/her
  ✦ fluffy white and ginger cat with brown eyes. torn left ear, scar on right foreleg.
  ✦ bi, single. @ on discord for plots.
  ✦ "speech" — thoughts

​

 

[TWITCHBOLT]

Twitchpaw was much closer to Orangeblossom in his opinion of leaf-bare; especially the snow. He loved it, in honesty- but more when it was falling than when it settled upon the ground. Rain and snowfall were two of his favourite things to watch, cradled in the highest-reaching arms of a tree. He tore at a skeletal meal, trying to shove it down his gullet before he had to go embark on some more training- he'd not much for dining-table manners, and with all his attention pinwheeled upon his sustenance he did not spare a wary glance, for once, to anything surrounding him. Hunger overtook been the most paranoid sense sometimes- but what a shame it was that the one time he might have needed his ultra-wariness, he fell victim to an unseen strike.

Well- it was only a spray of snow, flung by a riled-up paw, but it was an unwelcoming frigid shock that caught him off-guard and unsurprisingly pulled a shriek of alarm from his throat. Voice frayed from its often-high volume, he almost choked on the cry as it tore from him, and squeezing olive eyes shut he scrambled to his feet and scrabbled backward, skating skitter. "It's- PTTH- in mu- my mouTHFF-!" he sputtered.

Overreaction wracked him, as always. His fur bristled briar-sharp against the cold, the debris of the strike having all but melted by now.​

penned by pin ✧​

 

[CHRYSALISWING]

The monotone voice of the new deputy piqued the apprentice's interest, like the lull of the sea upon the stead of the shore, and multicolored ears pronged upwards. Heterochromatic eyes then fluttered to the fire-and-flurry warrioress, as if she bore some of the same flame that he did, cut from the same cloth of russet and vesper. Chrysalispaw only huffed in the direction of Orangeblossom, his apparent superior - which he cared about as much as he cared about anything else. Still, he was inclined to listen to her. At least she was less annoying than his peers.

"Yeah. The cold was in it." A gruff tone only arrived in breathy intonation, as though leaf-bare had laid his clutches on his very spirit, rustling in between the fronds of ribs and windpipe. Despite his wispy coat, he despised how the cold wormed its way into his pelt, rooting itself upon the fecund soil of his skin. The rime rescinded upon the curls of his exhales, indenting every word as though a taper loosely affixed, though such frost only served to sharpen the blade of acerbic word. Still, the hoar showed through interrupted, hoarse expirations. He simply waited for spring, when the sun would rise into bloom once more. For now, he would reluctantly contend with the irritation of the icy winds.

The arrival of a new and sudden sound almost made the chimaera-colored cat jump from his perch, until he composed himself, though sometimes he was only as graceful as a newborn foal. Twitchpaw stuttered with the snow plastered upon his face, the white wiped against dirt-and-sand coat, like the first snowdrifts of the season. The other's fur bristled and primed as though he had seen a ghost, as though overreaction came as easy as appetite to him, and perhaps it did. Chrys found himself to be much more composed and mature than Twitch, as he would never let such a trite thing distract him. Such elegance only held itself together with loose-fitted twine and wire, though.

It made Chrysalispaw burst out into a rapturous laughter, which was the first positive expression that had graced him today. It was a warmth birthed from a mean-spirited schadenfreude, a combustion from the culmination of misfortune, a wildfire from woe. "Hah, you look so stupid right now!" He aimed to throw more snow at his fellow apprentice's flank, this time with a better aim.

// ic opinions i am so sorry for him​