private care is imprecise ✧ brookstorm

[lichenstar]

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Patience is a virtue.

But time doesn't care for virtue.

Sitting up from a restless sleep abruptly, frost cold eyes sweep the medicine cat's den for a familiar foggy pelt. Hazecloud has gone... no doubt to take care of kittens that mewl and cry for her attention and need her in a way they will not need Lichentail so much as want her. The deputy swallows with trepidation, knowing already the action to be necessary and painful. It is a tale repeated in every unsightly scar, in a tail bent too sharply to be correct. It was not the first time to wake up in a sweat surrounded by the scent of earth and spring-blooms...

Even still, it remained unsettling every time it wasn't her nest she stirred in. There was no familiarity in the scents of feathers that once adorned her fur in a mark of affection, now affixed to moss with loving sentiment. There is a distinct lack of a soft breathing that yearns for a pale, dusty pelt that is not here; Ravensong must be searching for herbs, after what great burden this drawn-out war had placed on him. Moonpaw must be lurking nearby, is sure to lecture her if she tries to leave.

An ear flicked in irritation is quickly distracted by the sound of a foliage-dense curtain moving, dragging with it a few rays of lingering winter sun and a dark, gouging shadow across the floor.

There is a sickening satisfaction to see her whole. And alive. And safe. For a moment it feels like it was six months past, just Brookpaw coming to lecture her mentor for getting sick and delaying her training. But the glower... the hard stare.. it is not that of some inconvenienced girl. There is a simmering emotion behind jaded eyes. Her mouth hangs open, thinking to say her name... to ask if she was okay.

It is muted by the burning of a half-healed throat. Only a quiet, confused locking of gaze to ask the question.

@brookstorm

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CLAIM THE BURIAL I SEEK IN DREAMS

FLOWING RIVER CEMETARY​

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[brookstorm]

Brookstorm's anger had suffocated beneath grief for far too long. She had tried to be patient - told herself that Smokestar would award her her name, smeared with the blood of her family, and she would be gifted the chance to slaughter the rogues that took them away. And then Lichentail made an army - one without her. And they returned broken and bruised and -

She stands like a phantom in the den's entranceway, frustration pouring out of her in uneven breaths. She's not crying, no - she's refusing to spill anymore tears. But Lichentail looks at her with relief and Brookstorm cannot help the initial want to cuff the woman's torn ear, claws out and all. Moonpaw's nearby, surely. The white femme would not be happy with the new, preventable injury.

"You left me behind," she accuses her former mentor. She swallows, and when she does she notices how in pain her throat is. Her tail lashes behind her, "I could've gone on that patrol - you know, I would've been fine, Lichentail. I - I -" the blue she-cat tremors over her own words, tripping over her own tumultuous, stormy emotions. She grits her teeth together, "I should have been there. What if you - what if you had died? What if Robinheart-?" Brookstorm doesn't physically react to her denmates name as it slips off of her tongue, but her chest hurts when she considers it.

"You would have died alone. Hazecloud - she needs you, here. Your kits need you. Here." Brookstorm pauses and exhales a shaky breath, eyebrows furrowed, "Next - next rogue attack, you're sending me, you understand that? I can't - I can't let you ruin your own family like that." Does she look at Lichentail and see Buckgait? Does she see Lightningstone in Hazecloud? In those tiny, scrappy kittens - does she see herself? Her head hurts. "And - Robinheart. I don't give a flying foxdung what she says, she stays here, in camp. I can't -" lose her too, she does stammer this time. She frowns and feels almost disgusted with herself, "Do you understand me?"​

 

[lichenstar]

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It is tangible in the same ways a heavy fog is... dense and weightless all at once. It swirls around silvered paws as if a heavy cloud and it is frigid where it pools in her eyes. A feathered fear prompts the will to fly- a buried understanding of what anger looks like and its quiet embers soon to catch and roar- but where would she go? And what good would it do?

"You left me behind."

Already her paws shift uncomfortably, summer-pond eyes following an imaginary stream across the floor to travel farther from the scornful look that meets her. That's what this was about? Were her motivations so plain? Did her warriors see those she'd selected and know, in silent agreement or worse yet- furious anger- that she'd explicitly shoved Brookstorm out of the options?

She doesn't get the chance to come up with much of an answer, the misty swirls of bristling fur do not cease in their bristling even once. "What if you had died," digs against her skin like the words themselves have barbs. It isn't a pleasant reality to consider.. but one that'd passed in fleeting thought many times on days when the pain was blinding, when even sleep felt unattainable to pass miserable hours.

Lichentail is not a coward.

But she cannot will herself to meet Brookstorm's gaze.

She opens her mouth to speak, the words not even formed on her thoughts to know what she even intended to say. Hazecloud's name is enough to frustrate her- she does not need a child to remind her of what she risked to keep this clan alive. So what if she had died? If it had meant spring-bloom eyes were not ripped from her head? If it meant two mewling daughters and a howling son got to see sunrise after sunrise? Frustration bubbles in her chest, feels like bile in the back of a war-torn throat.

Hazecloud had not needed her in the snowy mountains beyond their stars' reach. She had not needed her on nights spent nestled against Rookfang. Did not need her when she touched noses with Batwing in more than friendly greeting. She was a priority... always, lovingly sought after and cared for but the lynx point's presence was not what kept that woman's world turning. She would live without her all the same. Her children would live knowing their mother had been RiverClan's blade, a deputy so wholly committed to the well being of her flock that she had bled and died for it.

Her tail lifts, begging Brookstorm to stop. She mentions Robinheart too many times to escape her notice- is there something there? It doesn't matter, the conversation moves quickly and she opens her mouth. Pleading she pause so Lichentail might address any of the myriad of demands and curses spewed at her- but she is relentless. And she ends her tirade with a demand.

"I... didn't," she starts, grinding her teeth after every syllable as they scratch out of her throat as if stuck there like burrs. "Die."

Pondering over possibilities was pointless. It hadn't happened. "Wasn't. Alone." She'd had plenty of warriors there and even if none of them were particularly close to her, what did that matter? It would not make death more comfortable to be laid under Hazecloud's gentle gaze for every struggling breath. Would not ease a smile on her face to hear a stupid final joke from Snakeblink before the lights became inky darkness. Would only shatter her further to hear the soft, begging wails of her kin like it already had.

"No."

She doesn't mean for it to come out in a growl... but the low vibration feels less agonizing than the pitched façade she normally presented.

Her face scrunches in barely restrained anger, daring finally to brave the stormfront directly as crystalline shores meet sharp reed eyes. "Neither of you. Are leaving." She struggles to her paws, demands herself to stand and command some sort of presence. "I am still," she hisses softly, "Your deputy."

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CLAIM THE BURIAL I SEEK IN DREAMS

FLOWING RIVER CEMETARY​

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