coldcoldcold ⛧ starlingheart

[ASHENFALL]

˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 He hated being here. Ashenpaw's head still ached any time he so much as moved more than a pawlength at a time, and his stomach still rolled like he was tumbling through the sky. Neither of these feelings compared to the misery, thick and foglike, that invaded his body with each passing minute spent longer in this cursed place. The smell of bitter, aromatic herbs tinged with the earth-deep scent of blood permeated every breath, and though he thought he would grow nose-blind to it eventually, he never did.

The stink would dull for a little bit, but only to smack him again full-force when his ghoulish memory would inevitably loop once more to that day. Pooled blood, a gaunt face, empty eyes, squirming neonates.... they embedded themselves into even the deepest corners of his brain and he would feel sick all over again. He hated it here. Maybe that stupid badger should've just bopped his head right off, just so he didn't have to sit in this awful purgatory.

She was walking toward him again. She often did, it was her job or whatever. It used to be so easy to hate her, all her avoiding glances and with her annoying kids and a droll frog-brained mate. Then, everything exploded on itself, and she bore the scars to prove it. Ashenpaw wondered if he had helped curse her. He didn't mean to...

He could not forgive her. To do so would be traitorous (to his mother and to the devotion that held his body in place, and knitted his heart sturdily inside his ribs).

It just. Felt bad.

"I'm going to the apprentice den to sleep, I can't be in here," he says before he realizes he is speaking. It's followed by a wince, his low drone is still too loud, too vibrational in his skull, but he stares at her with a dull, stagnant water gaze all the same. If only to force her to acknowledge him.

YOULL ASK WHAT CAN I DO? ⭒☽⛧☾⭒ AND THERE WILL BE NO ANSWER

• OOC: slightly retro ! @STARLINGHEART
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  — ashenkit . ashenpaw
  — ftm transmasc. he/him. 11mo apprentice of shadowclan. mentored by smogmaw
  — muted blue torbie w/ pale blue and amber eyes
  — smells of rainsoaked fern and swamp milkweed
  — all ic opinions!
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — sig by nya, fullbody by antiigone, sticker by saturnid
  — penned by eezy
  

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[Starlingheart]

It is not hatred that makes her glance away whenever she is confronted with the visage of Ashenpaw, rather respect. He didn't like her, he had made it abundantly clear by the way he too so often avoided her gaze, in his sharp words and withering glances. It was easier this way, she tells herself. He thought she had taken his mother from him, and she is not certain if there is anything in this world or the next that she could ever say that would ease that pain, no herbs that could persuade him into forgiveness. She was not a murderer. Or was she? She had inadvertently killed Heavybranch, after all and by direct extension, Halfshade as well. The lungwort was nonexistent in ShadowClan though. She had searched and searched and searched, looked all around the territory until her paw pads cracked and bled and when she had come up empty pawed for the thousandth time she had hunched over and sobbed, already grieving for the lives she knew would be lost because of the unforgiving nature of the marsh. They had been lucky to get the those three precious doses from ThunderClan. From Berryheart.

Just because Ashenpaw disliked her though didn't mean she would refuse to treat him, it didn't mean she wouldn't ever do her best to save his life if it ever came down to it. He was still a ShadowClanner, a young one no less, and she had been bearing the weight of her responsibilities for far to long to be dissuaded by a prickly apprentice.

'We will need to get more horsetail she thinks to herself, her white socked paw hovering over the one remaining dose. She is broken from her thoughts when her patient suddenly speaks. His words are venom that make her ears press against her skull. It draws a heavy sigh from past her lips as she watches him. In his disoriented state he would not make it all the way to the apprentices den without help, of this she is confident. "Ashenpaw... I know you and I are not- not the best of terms but please- please lay back down or you'll only make things w-worse for yourself. I take it you don't want-want to spend more time with me than you must hm?" she asks, training her single eye onto him with an unreadable expression across her face, her tail curled around her paws. "If you want to go that-that bad I wont stop you. But please stay."

( ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ) fly me up on a silver wing

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  STARLINGHEART SHADOWCLAN MEDICINE CAT; SHE / HER ; SISTER TO PITCHSTAR, CHITTERTONGUE, NIGHTSWARM, SKUNKTAIL, AND LILACFUR. MOTHER TO NETTLEPAW, FLINTPAW AND GHOSTPAW.
  

  A skinny she cat with short black and white fur littered with scars and one singular green eye.

  ✦ Easy in battle + has little to no formal battle training
  

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