CRANE YOUR NECK [ ✤ ] INTRO

[LAMBFANG.]

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I'LL MAKE MYSELF BELIEVE

Sunlight reflects off the lazy river water in shards of splintered light, refracted on the stony face of an older apprentice. Lambpaw, 11 moons old and soon to be twelve, a hardworking apprentice set on passing her warrior ceremony. First, though, she's got to catch this fish. Her face is set in a scowl as it so often is, the furrowing of her brows seeming more from anger than the concentration that truly draws them downwards. She is still as a statue by the riverbank, brown eyes fixed on a salmon as it swims closer, closer...

Lambpaw leans forwards just so in anticipation, and topples face first into the water.

"BLUGH — " she splutters and splashes, flailing gracelessly in her panic before she dips fully beneath the water, and she stills. The flow of the river rushes in her ears, the soft tickle of bubbles surrounds her. A momentary calm; it's all she needs to regain her composure. She turns, limbs syrup-slow beneath the surface, and pulls herself back to shore.

With a soft grunt, Lambpaw heaves her body back to solid ground, thick fur now drenched with rivermuck. Well, it does good to cool her off at least. Lambpaw heaves a sigh; damn her luck. Damn her tail, stumpy and useless as it is. She's still not used to balancing without it, only just got out of the medicine den before the doc joined the stars he served. She hopes she didn't pass her own poor luck off to him, she'd feel just awful if she did. It was her own fault losing it after all, trying to play hero when one of the twolegs' dogs got loose. Just her luck that it'd get loose when she was patrolling, though.

She's getting all lost in her head again; she knows the hunting party's staring at her. Laughing or something, probably. She doesn't particularly want to know, so she shoots a glance back at the river, starts speaking aloud to soothe her frustration. "Foxdung," she grumbles softly. "Almost had 'im."

Another sigh. "...'Least I can still swim just fine." Her mouth twitches upwards just a bit at this, before settling back into it's stony expression, and she turns back to face the rest of the hunting party.

I CAN SLEEP EASILY ALONE
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₊°✧ info ; visual

• //
  
  ​
• LAMBPAW named for her sheeplike coloration.
  — she/her. 11 moons.
  — riverclan apprentice, mentored by clovernose.
  — stoic and unyielding. poor social skills.
  — lost her tail to a dog at the twolegplace bordering riverclan.
  
  casual character, low activity. penned by saturnid.​
• "SPEECH"
  ​
• 

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[CLAYFUR]

The brown and white tom observes Lambpaw with curious hazel eyes; she seems intent on catching a specific fish, and Clay finds himself leaning forward, trying to get a better look. He wants to see her catch the fish, eagerly awaits the chance to congratulate her on a good catch. But then… the apprentice falls in, facefirst, and he gasps. Concern twists across his expression, and he rushes forward as her head goes under. Oh no, oh no. This is Cindershade all over again.

Before he reaches her, the apprentice is dragging herself slowly from the water, and the warrior stops short. Lambpaw grumbles about nearly having caught the fish, but for the briefest moment she seems amused by the evidence of her swimming ability. Still, Clayfur steps closer to the ever-serious she-cat, tipping his head to the side. "Are you okay? You went under for a second there—you didn’t hit your head on anything, did you?" He frowns lightly, trying to assess her for any injuries. "It would’ve been a great catch, if you hadn’t fallen in," he laments, but he doesn’t fault her for such a mistake. Stars know he’s made that exact same mistake, time after time. This is just a learning experience for the blotched apprentice.​

[ YOU ARE THE STARS TO ME ]​

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[Snakeblink]

MAYBE I'D BE A SAINT IF I WEREN'T ————————————​

Snakeblink cannot help it: he snorts when Lambpaw loses her balance and plunges into the river. He is strongly reminded of his own misadventures as a youngling learning under his mother’s long-suffering tutelage: i he’s a good fish-hunter now, it was not always the case, and he’s taken his fair share of dives while learning to copy Salamander’s effortless swipe of her paw to pluck fish out of the depths.

The chuckle is more directed at himself than the young molly taking a nosedive in the water. Still, it feels uncharitable to laugh and not offer any help afterwards.

Clayfur voices some concern over the apprentice’s dip and he tilts his head towards the tabby warrior, silently agreeing to his words that the catch would have been good — had it actually been caught. ”Perhaps you might try catching fish directly from within the water,” he muses. It’s the method he likes best himself, when the weather agrees to it. ”The dive would be deliberate, then.”
​

——————————————————————————————————— so god damn lonely ​

ooc. information.

• 
  
• — Snakeblink • he / him. 42 ☾, riverclan warrior
  — a sleek, skinny tabby with long ears and a scar over his right eye.
  — gay, not actually evil, penned by @Kangoo
  
  
  

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[FERNGILL]

Out of the medicine den at last, his trophy from his weeks there a mar upon his face, Fernpaw had figured fishing would be a good icebreaker before he fully submerged himself in the frigid depths of re-learning everything he had already been doing badly. With his mentor on this particular fishing patrol, the fire-pelted apprentice was not far from Lambpaw when he heard that alight ploosh of a body plunging into the water- a noise that instinctively swivelled his head.

What annoyance that might have sparked within him at being distracted from his own task was snuffed out by the smothering of worry; though by the time he had drawn near, Lambpaw was already out of the water, and Clayfur had done enough fretting for the both of them. Ran in the family, he supposed...

Snakeblink mentioned diving, and Fernpaw fixed his attention upon the warrior for a moment before his healthy eye settled itself back upon Lambpaw, a nod moving his head. Though his fire-warmth had been a little dulled, Fernpaw's cheerfulness was as persistent as it had ever been on the outside, even if it didn't feel as good on the inside anymore. "Oh, and it's pretty fun, too... diving in," he offered, smile lilting his words. It was something he was good at, something he enjoyed, at least. ​

✦ penned by pin ✦​

 

[dovethroat.]

Dovepaw did try to keep an eye on a fair number of the apprentices—he felt he had some sort of duty to do it, or something like that. He and Fernpaw were, as far as he was aware, the eldest of the group. Without much else to do (and less severe injuries to recover from), Dovepaw had assumed upon himself a more observant persona. Lambpaw he had seen a bit of—it was generally easier to find interesting things in those around the same age as himself. A six moon old may as well be a badger that he was forced to sleep in the same den as.

"K-Keep, uh, y-your body l-lower, m-maybe," Dovepaw suggested softly. His past mentor had taught him the value in keeping oneself low to the ground. "More... l-leverage."

He hoped that was a good word for that. Dovepaw hated giving advice—it was hard for it to not be embarrassing; he wasn't exactly flourishing—it was not very natural to him. But he figured he could give some words.

[⋆]​

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[.littlepaw]

Littlepaw turned away from whatever it was that she was doing in the reeds to join the group at the riverbank, apparently consoling Lambpaw and trying to give her pointers. Weren't they older? Weren't they supposed to be better at hunting then her? She had already caught two fish in the time that they had been hunting out there, so what was the issue here? She gave the apprentices a dirty look and went back to her hunting, glancing into the water and finding a small minnow right below the surface.

She swiped a paw into the water after leaning down, careful that her shadow didn't go over the water. She missed, though, and cursed. "Mousebrain!" She glanced back at the others before sitting down, wrapping her tail around her front paws, and waiting until they were done so that she could continue hunting for something other than fish. They wouldn't get anything done with such blabbermouths around.
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walk "talk." thought​

penned by helly​