pafp busy like a bee ❀ silliness

[valerianpaw]

It was only recently that Valeriankit and her littermates had ventured out of the nursery. Applekit and Garlickit took to it immediately while Swankit and herself were a bit more reserved. Currently her siblings were off, with her brother likely dozing somewhere, and her sisters playing. Or well, Applekit was playing, Garlickit was probably talking to the snail again. As for Valeriankit, who wasn't quite in the mood to sleep (though she loved snuggling with her brother), and had no interest in joining her sisters' antics. Instead, Valeriankit was entertaining herself in simpler ways. While she wasn't the biggest fan of getting dirty, the muddy earth of their camp did cause some amusement. Currently, the petite kit was quietly following the large paw prints of her father as he went about his duties. Her steps were quiet aside from the occasional 'splat' as she skipped from one large print to the other. Her ears twitched as she caught gruff words from her father as he spoke with other warriors, though she paid it little mind as she followed him around. It was likely a silly sight to those watching, as the deputy's tiniest daughter trailed after him like a little duckling. She had continued with her antics for a moment, before tumbling over her father's striped tail when he suddenly stopped. Blinking her dual hues, the quiet child lifted her head to blink up innocently at her father, a very slight smile on her maw. "Hi, papa."

//pls wait for @smogmaw <3​

[sweet like honey]​

 

[smogstar]

Valeriankit's survival had been called into question moments after she'd entered this world. There was little Smogmaw could do but watch as his mate tenderly plucked the she-kit from the ground into a delicate coddle, imparting upon her an extra level of nurturing compared to her littermates. In every sense of the word, Valeriankit was a runt—and while he hadn't echoed the extent of Halfshade's concern for her, it would be false to suggest he hadn't pondered the prospect of her not making it beyond kithood. After all, such is the grim fate that befell the smallest of his own littermates, an untold amount of moons ago.

In defiance of possibly losing her, Smogmaw and Halfshade chose to give her a name, and silently vowed to cherish their youngest daughter unconditionally. So, to observe his youngest daughter initially teeter on the edge of survival, and then, weeks later, depart the nursery alongside the rest of her siblings, it imbued Smogmaw's veins with the purest of reprieves.

Though he goes about his duties with a blank face and a blighted mind, at the heart of his thoughts is the conjured image of the family he's built, and it makes everything just a smidgen easier to endure.

"...the underbrush around the Sycamore, and nowhere else," he remarks to someone who better went unnamed, who'd obtusely taken their apprentice to a boggier area of the territory for stealth training. Clearly, what'd happened to Ghostpaw sailed through one ear and right out the other, without so much as leaving a faint trace within the bounds of their empty skull. He's on the verge of saying more, something along the lines of being a doddering fool, when a disturbance of his tail grinds him to a halt.

Slowly, he would pivot around, and as a squeaky voice pervades the air, a gentle smile would touch the corners of his maw. "Well, hullo," he muses, before craning his neck lower to match Valeriankit's bicoloured gaze. "You need to stop being so cute—it's unbecoming of a ShadowClan cat. What're you up to, anyways?" ​

 

[Yarrowpaw]

Yarrowkit didn't like to think too hard about his father. Betonyfrost refused to speak of him, beyond asserting that he was a ShadowClanner, and with the exception of Roosterstrut - whom he had developed a fondness for - he lacked any sort of friendly male figure in his life. Certainly, ShadowClan had plenty of tomcats, but no one he could look up to and think of as someone he wanted to be like one day. No one for him to feel proud to be descended from, no one to hopefully compare himself to. The option was a warrior he hardly knew or his mother, with her sharp attitude and frost-curled ears, and she could not be his mother and his father. Quite frankly, he didn't think he wanted a double-dose of Betonyfrost's parenting, though he loved her in the loyal way a child loves their parent.

Therefore the chocolate tabby watched Valeriankit as she placed her tiny feet in the divots left by her father's pawsteps with a look of uncharacteristic solemnity. His eyes wandered down to his own paws - too large for his body - and wondered what it must be like to know your father, to be able to trail him and talk to him and be called cute by him. Yarrowkit felt an uncomfortable twist deep in his stomach; a feeling he usually felt only at night, when darkness pressed in on all sides and the cool air nipped his nose and he longed for the feeling of warm, gentle touch. He could not name it as profound, love-starved sorrow, but that was surely what it was. Disquieted by the intensity of emotions, he ducked his head and began grooming dirt from between his toes, opting not to interfere in the interaction between father and child.​

 

[Halfshade]

Of course she loved all four kits equally, but one constantly had her attention slightly more and she could not help it. Applekit was bold, Garlickit quite silly, Swankit constantly napping at her side but Valeriankit wandering off filled her with a dread she could not place; the tiny kit who they though might not make it had overcome the odds but Halfshade still worried. Would she get bigger? She seemed healthy but would that stay as such? She rose to go hunting but found the little torbie had not gone very far; in the distance she spotted her trailing Smogmaw like a duckling and relaxed before spotting the other kitten nearby. Not one of hers.

She did not give Betonyfrost much of her attention and in turn did not pay mind to her children, as far as Halfshade was concerned they weren't there and while she would do her duties as a queen she did not give them anything more than the barest acknowledgements. Comfreykit was at least somewhat charming in the way an impetuous kit was, but she had no opinion on either of the other two and so she merely offered Yarrowkit a single glance before padding forward with a warm purr and pleasant smile to her mate and daughter bonding in the way only Smogmaw knew how to. That he humored them and their antics filled her with ease, she had worried at first he might not know how to handle himself with the kits but he had adapted a very nonsensical manner of talking to them like he would any other clanmate with far more affection and it was a little jarring to see but welcoming all the same.
"Oh, don't tell her that. She'll go rolling in something and I've already cleaned Garlickit twice today..." It was hard to remain pristine as she insisted in ShadowClan but she tried all the same.
​