CREEPING FEELING [ ♱ ] WILL - O - WISPS & PROMPT

The hunting patrol was strangely peaceful.

Or maybe strangely peaceful— but Sharppaw has only known the strange, up until now. She treads across mud and standing water, not pushed further into the muck by the heavy need to prove herself— because she has already done that. Deep in the mountains, she had dug and dug until her paws were frozen and sore; tearing at what would be ShadowClan's share of lungwort. She had trekked back; not lain tooth or claw on the annoying gnats that were chirping ThunderClan voices and RiverClan warriors. She came home with her prize, and no one had said " Welcome Home, Sharppaw! " until everyone had cried over Smogmaw's dead mate and thrown accusations around about something or other.

That's fine. It was all fine. Because Sharppaw could carry herself all on her own. She needed no one to sigh her name. She needed no one's approval.

( Well, that was not very true... But the approval she wanted, she got )

So dare he say, he is in a not - bad mood. It is enough to curb any anxiety towards leaf - bare, even. The season he'd been born in. That flashes of kithood told him were long, and cold, and starving, and horrible. Trek on, trek on. For now, he can still complain of stuffiness, and humidity. Oh, the humidity. Fog is lain thick across the marshy ground, tonight. She can hardly glimpse her own blackened paws, nor the clanmates that supposedly were all around her.

And then— flickering lights over the marsh. A pause. This place— this horrible place, it was one she unfortunately knew like nothing else. too - many moons of apprenticeship had surely gaurunteed that. But... he certainly could not remember a dozen tiny fires— or maybe... suns? Whatever they were, dancing across the marsh. Sharppaw can see no source, smell no smoke. She thinks, if she reaches back far enough, she can remember seeing something like this before, and never knowing the cause.

Her fur is bristling, but maybe it would be too foggy for anyone to tell. Jaws parting. " ...Hey, " The twitch of an almost smile, then falling into a grimace. " Some SkyClanner told me a story. That uh... If you follow those lights, they'll lead you to your death. Also, he completely just made that up for some reason. For no reason. A twinge. Who's someone objectively garbage on this patrol that he could harass? " You should uh... check it out, Maggotpaw. " Another half - smile. As a fellow apprentice, she can still say this.
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  • ooc: PWOMPT! " Someone has said they've seen flickering lights in the marsh at night. Legends say to follow these lights will lead you to your death. " being annoying to @Maggotfur. but no need to wait <3
  • ( IS THAT NOT BRAVE ENOUGH FOR YOU? ) SHARPPAW: Mentored by Smogmaw
    —— he / she , no pref , icked by they prns ; fine with gendered terms ( tom, molly, etc... )
    —— currently 17 moons old. warrior ceremony delayed due to lackluster progress.

    a dark smoke feline that stands at an above average height. Easily identifiable by her namesake – an unruly mat of fur, destined to be cluttered by inconsistencies between her chimera fur. Burdened with a broken tail. Recently, she has realized it can still function, though she has wholly believed in its utter uselessness for so long that it cannot without great effort. Anxious, antisocial, paranoid. Sharppaw has not known peace for a single time in his life, and lives anticipating inevitable dangers to the detriment of herself and others.
    Obsessed with the perceived 'game' within ShadowClan, the rules of which she is unaware of. Striving to be someone more likeable due to this.
    heavy ic opinions! he sucks.
 
Flintpaw finally feels like she's getting skills under her paws. Hunting no longer feels like an insurmountable challenge. Thanks to Scalejaw's training, she's finally catching up to her siblings. Nettlepaw's successes, of course, still press hot on her mind like branding irons; but Flintpaw is catching up. She is. And though her shoulder still stings from her sparring session, and her lungs still ache from that damned illness, she's earnestly excited to feel progress being made.

The thick fog is proving to be a challenge, though. Flintpaw can navigate through it well enough, but he fails to easily track any prey. His frustration builds in quiet layers of sediment between his ribs. Success will take time, he knows; warriors are sure to remind him at every pawstep. But Flintpaw wants success now. He is wrapped up in this when Sharppaw speaks up, pausing their patrol for some reason. It's only when she sees the wisps that her clanmates are fixated on that her own frustration dissipates– but it is replaced by fear.

Fires flicker across the marshlands, blue and dancing, spritelike. They look nothing like StarClan (for Flintpaw has seen them). But surely they were some force of spirit; some supernatural phenomenon? And if they were true portents of death as Sharppaw chittered about, then what did that mean for Flintpaw? She's shared tongues with death before and walked away from it, but she would not like to chance it again. Sharppaw provokes Maggotpaw forward, and Flintpaw's own gaze flickers to his fellow apprentice, heart stopped as he waits to see what she might do. He shouldn't let her go, he thinks; she should turn around and stay right here. But his words fail. Instead, Flintpaw just stands with bristled shoulders, eyes wide with a glassy kind of fear that she can't articulate.

/ mentor tag: @scalejaw

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    flintkit . flintpaw
    — he / they / she ; apprentice of shadowclan
    — short-haired solid blue tom with low white and blue/green heterochromatic eyes
    — "speech" ; thoughts
    — headshot by me, signature by dreamydoggo
    — penned by meghan
 
  • Wow
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🕱 NO I DON'T MIND YOU ARE A BEAUTY 🕱

maggotpaw & 12 moons & female & she/her & shadowclan apprentice

Maggotpaw has been trying to get along better with her clanmates - if only because she'd realized just how much worse the other clans were. She'd been lucky enough to born into shadowclan instead of any of those awful smelling and utterly loud groups - and though there are many here she could care less about, there are still a select few clanmates who are... tolderable. And so she continues on, her day-to-day as mundane as ever, if filled with less snacks thanks to the recent additions to the code.

Today is hardly different, just another attempt to hold herself back from slurping down the lizard clutched tightly in her jaws before they even make it back, when sharppaw offers a reprieve. Turquoise eyes widen at the sight - if she were to give such a thing meaning, perhaps she'd even say the stars themselves had alighted upon them, carrying starclans message. But she is not that kind of cat - instead, she views them with thinly veiled curiosity and practicality.

"That does sound like something those kittypet lovers would say," she says absently, tail flicking and whiskers twitching. "If following them leads to your death, what do you think eating one will do?" she jokes, feeling oddly playful. Maybe, if she eats them, she'll never die? That sounds... plausible. And he's hungry anyways. She doesn't bother to think much further than that - she's moving, earlier prey discarded as she leaps, jaws snapping onto an unsuspecting orb with a pleasant crunch.

Maybe her hunger is finally getting to her, but it tastes yummy.

  • Actions && "Speech," && ' Thoughts/Quotes '

    ooc: —
    tw/cw: she's eating bugs again oops
  • a massive tabby she-cat with striking turquoise eyes, there has always been something not-right about her. cold and apathetic, and more than a bit unhinged, the monster that is maggotpaw is a volatile presence within shadowclan. she seems strangely taken by magpiepaw, putting herself in role of both tormentor and protector.

    physically medium && mentally hard
    non-violent powerplay allowed && healing powerplay allowed && minor injury powerplay not-allowed
    please attack using [b][color=mediumpurple]action here[/color][/b] and tag account

 
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˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 One of the perks of having watched your mentor be violently killed in front of you is that for the next few days following it, you're allowed to tag along on patrols and do simple chores around camp because you no longer have anyone to breathe down your neck about getting to the training grounds and everyone else pities you just enough to let you slack off a teensy bit... However, having no one to disappoint also meant that there was no one to impress, either. Ashenpaw skulked poutily alongside the rest of the patrol with his—impressively well-caught, mind you—bat dangling from his maw as Sharppaw halted the patrol to stare at... Okay, some admittedly freaky-looking lights.

He was content to mull over whether giving Smogmaw or Swanpaw his prey would yield him a more satisfying display of gratitude as Sharppaw yapped about how some Skyclanner died chasing after the lights. (Obviously, it wasn't true. How would a light kill a cat? Getting flashed to death? Right...) But Ashenpaw failed to consider he was surrounded by a bunch of frog-brains. He would watch with mild interest as Maggotpaw dropped her prey to go chow down on the lights of death, and would similarly be somewhat disappointed when she didn't drop dead in her tracks when she did so.

"Hmm, nothing? That's too bad..." Ashenpaw said as he set down his own catch. "Maybe you need to eat a few more to you know," he clicked his tongue for emphasis, "Get the job done."

Ashenpaw noticed the telltale stillness of a terrified apprentice standing beside him and slid his bicolored gaze to behold Flintpaw standing there with—as expected—a stupid look on his face. "Did you seriously believe that?" he snorted at the blue tom, "She's just pulling your tail, featherbrain, lights don't have teeth..."


  • OOC:
  • designfluffyneck2_by_jrentropy_dg93zrs-pre.png
  • ashenkit . ashenpaw
    — ftm transmasc. he/him. 7mo apprentice of shadowclan
    — gay ; single ; not looking
    — longhaired muted blue torbie with heterochromatic pale blue and amber eyes
    — smells like rainsoaked ferns and swamp milkweed
    — “speech”, thoughts, attack
    — fullbody by tropics sticker by saturnid
    — penned by eezy
    — currently in an era of grief and anger, approach with caution. all ic opinions!
 
———————————she/her | menacing ——————————
Amusement is all that found Scalejaw's features as she padded alongside the apprentices. Flintpaw- of her own rearing now- was coming along nicely. Nothing like her father in skill, Scalejaw had found. No, she was shaping her into something better, she believed. Stronger then Flintpaw's own siblings, but the work was hard. It would all end just as well when her apprentice could learn to properly hunt, too. The fog was a tricky environment to be training in, but it made for good practice.

A short breath left her as Sharppaw started up with something incredulous, but that's when her charge stiffened up beside her. Glowing, coal like eyes shifted towards Flintpaw. The stock-still fear of her apprentice was... concerning, to say the least. Maggotpaw eats one, and Ashenpaw has some kind of comment, but it's the alto of Scalejaw's strong voice that would perhaps knock them all out of stupidity. "They're bugs." Scalejaw said.

True to her nature, at the exterior of camp, Scalejaw is much more chilly-natured. Her eyes flit towards the lazily drifting 'fire' in the air. "Focus on them, Flintpaw. Their light fades and comes. Flying fire bugs aren't truly on fire." Scalejaw said, slowly settling into a sitting position, now-bored eyes staring at the nearest one that Maggotpaw hadn't eaten yet.

"yuh"
[penned by dallas].
 

the yapping of his clanmates had caused the tom to rise from his slumber, rather annoyed at how loud they were being. "may you should all go find out for yourselves. first one back alive gets the biggest piece of prey on the fresh-kill pile." a warning glance would be cast upon the group as he joined them, allowing time to quickly groom his pelt after making himself comfortable. lights that led to one's death was a rather complicated concept, and murkypaw found himself on the side of ashenpaw. how could these fools so easily believe something so absurd?


  • ooc : — ​

  • — open to minor/healing powerplay
    — murkypaw / shadowclan apprentice / masculine pronouns / tags

 
Ptarmiganpaw didn't really believe the rumors of lights that lead you to your death. He had so many questions about it. Did they kill you? Did they lead you to something that kills you? What makes the lights? Can they be hunted? Too many questions he couldn't answer, and so he found it to be quite farfetched. When Sharppaw encourages Maggotpaw to go investigate, he is immediately invested.

Not to see Maggotpaw get hurt, but to see what all the fuss was about. He keeps quiet, staying near the others to observe. He's not sure how to defend against lights that hurt you if the rumors are true, but....At least he'll try!

But to his shock, Maggotpaw actually EATS one. He wasn't expecting that at ALL. SHE ATE IT. He thought she was JOKING. Upon closer observation, he sees that these lights... Are little bugs, as Scalejaw says. Now that he knows they aren't dangerous, he lets his anxiety wash away.

"They're kind of pretty."
He says quietly. "What are they called?" He asks, looking at Scalejaw. Scalejaw was cool and smart, so she must know what these weird bugs are called.​
 
[/i]That does sound like something those kittypet lovers would say.[/i] Not untrue. Had they rubbed off on her more than she'd thought? Made her stupid, opened her mind to nonsense ideas. She sort of felt like it was impossible to hate, when an entire clan believed their nonsense so completely, but she guesses every clan did that to an extent. ShadowClan certainly did it plenty.

If following them leads to your death, what do you think eating one will do? What a stupid question. Sharppaw chokes back a laugh, because it's so stupid, maw twisting as if her face wasn't supposed to do such a thing. Kill you quicker Or, uh, probably absolutely nothing— the equivalent of trying to snap your jaws across sunlight, in which you end up with a warm nose and empty belly. In her opinion, the idea was that the lights knew something you did not, not that they themselves were deadly, but of course, no one cared about that. Maggotpaw's teeth crunch on something. Sharppaw is surprised that it's anything at all.

Ashenpaw expresses disappoint, and Sharppaw both agrees, and disagrees. " I think you just ate a firefly, " Sharppaw swallows thick, such a thing like comradery— if that's what was insinuating that Maggotpaw ought to die was— sliding down his throat like poison. Only when Ashenpaw speaks further does he notice Flintpaw, stiff with fear. With a twitch, Sharppaw wonders if that's how he'd looked (—how he still did look). With leering intensity, the overgrown apprentice keeps eyes on him for a moment too long, lips a tick away from a half - smile. She was not reflected in those eyes.

Her head would whip to Scalejaw without subtlety, when she speaks. She reminds herself that she is speaking to her apprentice; that in a few sunrises, Sharppaw would only have to take words from who she wants to.

Murkypaw's words has blackened quills rising along her spine. He had no such authority. Claws scraping at mud. They were all bland, boring, bossy, aggravating— too - cautious. Sharppaw wasn't like that, no, not at all. When Ptarminganpaw wants to know what they are, Sharppaw blurts a lie. " Ultra-poison death flies. Is— your mouth stinging yet, Maggotpaw? "
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  • ( OF THE THINGS I'VE GOT IN MY BRAIN ) SHARPSHADOW: Formerly mentored by Smogmaw
    ♱ he / she , no pref , dislikes gender neutral language ; fine with gendered terms
    ♱ currently 17 moons old as of 11.12.23 / ages every 8th

    dark smoke feline that stands at an above average height. Easily identifiable by her namesake – an unruly mat of fur, destined to be cluttered by inconsistencies between chimera halves. Burdened with a broken tail, often lying dead behind her in the dirt.

    Anxious, antisocial, paranoid. Sharpshadow has not known peace for a single time in his life, and lives anticipating inevitable dangers to the detriment of herself and others. scraping together some higher purpose— making somewhat of an effort to be " likeable "
    heavy ic opinions! he's irrational and mean </3