private care for the future // sunstride

[cottonsprig]

Cottonpaw feels like there are fleas in her pelt. Her mother denouncing StarClan in the name of her father had been one thing - but claiming the land before the Moonstone and thus blocking the other Clans from it... that sort of damnation feels different. It feels worse. She begins to wonder if she's never dreamt of StarClan because her mother severed the attachment for her, and now she intends to do so for everyone else, too. Is it selfish of Sootstar, she asks starless nights and windless moors, or is it a form of equality the small green eyed leader begs for?

Do the stars see Sootstar anymore?

It's cold. It's too cold and Cottonpaw follows her paws in what she believes to be their aimless wandering - yet she finds a broad shouldered rusty furred tom at the end of her path. Sunstride. She remembers her brief discussion with him back in ThunderClan, how he managed to convince Sootstar to stay put while they licked their wounds (at least, that's what she's lead to believe.) Her mouth is dry for a second and she wants to ask him for wisdom, as if his mind is more grand than the expanse above them. But they don't talk to her, they never did - Sunstride at least entertains her.

"Hey, Sunstride," she smiles and sits a comfortable distance from the tom. Her ears angle away and her blue eyes flick over the other bodies around camp. Could she speak with the wrong words? Would she be ridiculed, much like Brightshine's expansive family, if her mind followed a different trail? She picks her tone carefully, choosing one not unlike her normal, and pitches her deputy a careful question, "Do you think... do you think some cats know they are doing wrong, or do you think they believe themselves good despite it all?"​

 

[SUNSTAR]

That is a question that he has pondered for far too many moons. More than he has lived within these moors, at the very least. Standing before his father when he was not tall enough to meet him head-on, chin tipped terribly upwards. Listening to him speak of fate in every way that he did not like. His crimes were not so terrible as Sootstar's. They had seemed the end of the world, then, yet now he knows that they were truly born of love. They were the mistakes of a cat who could not give his heart the way that he wanted to, and suffered as he caused such suffering. Day in and day out, Sunstride begins to understand that more. Is that not his life here in its entirety? A cruelty that is both endless and ending? A blindness he is close to curing? He wants to do what is right, but what could that be? What is right for himself dooms another. What is good for his clan creates a villain. Sootstar had loved WindClan, once. Just as she had loved the stars, and her children.

"That is a difficult question," he remarks, slightly surprised. He turns his head just slightly so that his gaze takes on all of her. No matter if he pretends not to, he knows precisely what she is asking. "I suppose it depends on you ask. What is right for one is not for another. What is good for myself might be terrible for you." Sunstride nods to the freshkill pile, dwindling as the seasons change. "If we are both starving, and I take the last piece of prey, am I wrong for doing so? You are younger, but I am a hunter. You heal those in need of it, but I feed the clan. Which of us deserves the strength?" A useless story. But one that he cannot help but tell in the hope of a fragment of understanding.

"Some must think themselves good. Or perhaps I only hope that is so, because to do such terrible things knowing the harm that they cause– that is beyond my comprehension, or hope."

𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓  ╱╱ 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐕𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 〚 11.22.2023 〛 —————«

• OOC. —
• 

  SUNSTRIDE. WINDCLAN DEPUTY & MOOR RUNNER.
  ——– HE – HIM – HIS ╱╱ 48+ MOONS OLD, ADULT.

  NPC x NPC, LONERS. MATE TO WOLFSONG; FATHER TO BEARPAW, SINGEDPAW, RIVEPAW, SUNLITPAW AND FEATHERPAW. MENTORING SCORCHPAW.
  
  TH ╱╱ LARGE CHOCOLATE ROSETTE TABBY, ICY EYES.

• "speech"

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