- Dec 27, 2022
- 123
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Lichenpaw is rather new to clan life. Write about a night he is kept awake by the glittering stars and bright moon. Does he believe StarClan is really up there?
// cw for descriptions of death & illness
( ☘ ) Lichenpaw hasn't been getting much sleep lately. Not that he ever has, but since the dog attack his insomnia has only worsened, a fogginess in the apprentice's mind and a dragging to his steps. Tonight, like so many others, he remains sleepless. The forest is always too quiet, he's still not used to it. The sky, however, unlike the dark of the apprentice den, is always bright.
He has taken to looking up at the stars, on nights like this.
The Clan-Cats (despite everything, he still struggles to label himself as one of them) speak of a power to the stars, the spirits of their ancestors bounding across endless forests bountiful with prey, smiling down upon them from overhead. He's still not sure if he believes it. Death is an ugly thing, twisting and mangling, life wrested from body with no semblance of gentleness. The sky here is so beautiful, unimpeded by streetlamps which once blinded his eyes should he try to look up. Even filtered through leaves, it is magnificent. There is something worth worshiping there, certainly, but he finds it hard to believe that those caught in death's cruel claws could escape to somewhere so far and so grand.
He thinks of his youngest sister, runt of their litter, leafbare-sick and thin as a skeleton. If he told the ThunderClanners, would they say that she is up there too, her legs given strength to run again? Or would she be barred as a Clanless heretic, cast out of the stars and left to fester in her rat-eaten corpse? Both options make him sick. She is gone, she's been gone for moons and moons and she is never coming back. That's just the way that it goes, he accepted that a long time ago.
He watched the stars like this, too, after Emberstar's death. The Clan cats seemed comforted by the thought of her hunting alongside the rest of their starry-pelted ancestors. He cannot find that same comfort, however much he tries.
// cw for descriptions of death & illness
( ☘ ) Lichenpaw hasn't been getting much sleep lately. Not that he ever has, but since the dog attack his insomnia has only worsened, a fogginess in the apprentice's mind and a dragging to his steps. Tonight, like so many others, he remains sleepless. The forest is always too quiet, he's still not used to it. The sky, however, unlike the dark of the apprentice den, is always bright.
He has taken to looking up at the stars, on nights like this.
The Clan-Cats (despite everything, he still struggles to label himself as one of them) speak of a power to the stars, the spirits of their ancestors bounding across endless forests bountiful with prey, smiling down upon them from overhead. He's still not sure if he believes it. Death is an ugly thing, twisting and mangling, life wrested from body with no semblance of gentleness. The sky here is so beautiful, unimpeded by streetlamps which once blinded his eyes should he try to look up. Even filtered through leaves, it is magnificent. There is something worth worshiping there, certainly, but he finds it hard to believe that those caught in death's cruel claws could escape to somewhere so far and so grand.
He thinks of his youngest sister, runt of their litter, leafbare-sick and thin as a skeleton. If he told the ThunderClanners, would they say that she is up there too, her legs given strength to run again? Or would she be barred as a Clanless heretic, cast out of the stars and left to fester in her rat-eaten corpse? Both options make him sick. She is gone, she's been gone for moons and moons and she is never coming back. That's just the way that it goes, he accepted that a long time ago.
He watched the stars like this, too, after Emberstar's death. The Clan cats seemed comforted by the thought of her hunting alongside the rest of their starry-pelted ancestors. He cannot find that same comfort, however much he tries.
