private DEATH INSPIRES ME LIKE A DOG ༄ cottonsprig

[WEASELCLAW]

When she awakens, the darkness will press thickly into Cottonsprig's eyelids. The moss of her nest will give way to scraps of leaf litter, to hard earth baked mercilessly into stone by breathless heat. It is both wet and dry here, both sticky and arid. The fur along her body will feel suppressed; there is no wind to part her pelt here. The shadows are omniscient; they brush against her whiskers like a body. The undergrowth crackles, and blue eyes pierce her from the treeline. Weaselclaw emerges slowly, deliberately, his tail swishing behind him, his teeth bared in a ravaged smile.

"Cottonsprig." He spits her name as though it's waste. "Was the name your mother gave you not good enough for you?" There's no love in his voice tonight, no tenderness. The cold light of a forgotten moon shimmers in dead, ice-colored eyes.

He comes closer to her. The stench of death on his pelt will be enough to remind her of the graves she's helped dig. "You've been a codebreaker, little one. I wonder how StarClan feels about what you've done?" Weaselclaw places a paw beneath her chin and lifts her face toward him. It's so like Sootstar's — but it's too soft, too full of the shame that churns within her belly.

My little fool.

"Not that what StarClan wants should matter to you."

@cottonsprig

​

 

[cottonsprig]

The feeling is still unfamiliar, even with the second visit. She wonders, as she opens her eyes to only try and blink the sleep out of them - if discomfort is the name of the game. Whatever this place is housing her mother and father... it's not meant to bring eternal joy and happiness. Spying wild blue eyes approach her, with the same twig-thin silhouette and foul smelling pelt only further confirm's her theories.

He approaches her with a smile, but though aggression doesn't weigh in his features, his tone is too cold as he says her name. Cottonsprig winces, her ears folding to her head as he admonishes her. She had anticipated returning here yet she never thought her circumstances would be as they are. She rolls her shoulders back, and with no defiance to hold her tone, she murmurs a quiet, "It didn't fit me." What's done is done, and he moves on.

His paw holds her chin, forcing her to look at him. She sees her own gaze looking back at her, if she were feral, wild. Codebreaker, he calls her. Cottonsprig doesn't pull from his touch, and her voice doesn't pitch as she speaks again. "I... I've not spoken with StarClan since I found out. Only you -" will that dissuade him from admonishing her further? Does he, like his daughter, strive to feel special? Her tail twitches as he speaks again, and her curiosity ticks, as it usually does.

"Why did you say it like that?" she asks, and this time her voice does raise. "What - what do you know? What have you seen?" She can only anticipate that StarClan does reach this place, somehow. That maybe he spoke with them and they're angry with her - as she expects. Regardless she waits patiently for the deceased tom to speak again, eyebrows knit together.​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

She flinches from his hostility. It brings him a grim satisfaction. "It didn't fit me," she protests, and Weaselclaw's teeth glint faintly in the darkness. "Any name your leader gives you is sacred, fool," he snaps, doglike, in her direction. He paces, aimless. "Sootstar gave you that name for a reason."

He has not come to mince words about her foolish new name, though. Weaselclaw lets her words wash over him, cool as water. "I've not spoken with StarClan since I found out. Only you." The revelation is pleasing. "Because they have not come to you? Not surprising," he rasps, his smile spreading like disease across his tabby face.

And then he hits a sore spot.

Weaselclaw's grin grows. The teeth he bares toward his daughter is broken and unpleasant.

"You still fancy yourself as Wolfsong's chosen, don't you?" Weaselclaw's tattered ears twitch. "I know the truth about StarClan, little cotton bud."

The truth. The truth had caused the rift between himself, Sootstar, and the rest of the Clan, hadn't it? The truth had started early, kindled, and he had waged war against StarClan... will she too?

"Your mother placed that outside his den," he intones. "StarClan has nothing to do with you now, and they never did, Cottonsprig."

​

 

[cottonsprig]

There's dissatisfaction in his gaze as she rebukes him, but after he speaks in favor of his mate, the conversation lies flat. Cottonsprig does not have the need either to prattle on with the logistics of a name - not when other topics are far more damning.

I've not sought them out, she withholds, tensing her jaw. She has access to the high stones, to meet their ancestors - friends and family - and request their help... but she hadn't. A part of her wondered if she was truly waiting for this moment instead. If there was comfort in knowing that since her parents damned the stars, they could be proud of her. That maybe someone could be happy for her.

Such is not the case.

She takes the bait, furrowed brows and narrowed eyes, and his grin stretches unnaturally across his face. Yellow teeth are pointed, almost gnashing as he speaks. "The truth," He titters. "The truth?" Cottonsprig repeats, trepidation in her tone. Her world as it was was already in shambles, shredded by her own claws and mistakes - and with a simple unveiling, Weaselclaw takes what she has left and sets it aflame.

Her heart sinks to her stomach as she tries to recall anything of that time. Nearly four seasons ago... Her mother had been out that night, but that wasn't out of the ordinary, was it? Cats take walks at night, that's not odd. But if she is to believe her father, then her mother would've committed beneath the very stars she detested. Defiance, it should be dubbed. Sootstar took advantage of their threadbare home and attempted to secure her spot on the throne through instigating her darling daughter as medicine cat.

Cottonsprig isn't sure when she stood, but her legs feel weak as she stumbles to sit. Her gaze waters as she looks nearly through her father, anticipating Sootstar herself to wade through the humidity and scratchy tall grass to confirm the claim. But she doesn't need her mother to - oddly enough, she still trusts Weaselclaw entirely. She fears him especially in this wild state, but what would he gain from lying on this side of everything? Nothing, he'd gain nothing other than sick pleasure, of which it seems he obtains regardless.

"I was... never meant to be Wolfsong's apprentice?" she asks pitifully, her tail pulling around her midsection. There's a reality where she's excited to have kittens and the only branching point is whether or not her mother managed to find a cotton bud in time... Stars, she feels like she's going to be sick.

​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

Weaselclaw may as well have drawn his claws against his daughter's flesh, the way she flinches, the way her blood is drawn. Cottonsprig's limbs tremble with too much weight; she sits, heavy and stiff, her blue eyes like shallow waters tread through by heavy paws. "I was... never meant to be Wolfsong's apprentice?"

The tabby rogue studies his daughter for a long heartbeat. Somewhere, somewhere deep within the shadowed chambers of his chest, something flickers. I still don't like to see her in pain, he thinks, but it does not wipe the smile from his white muzzle. He knows she deserves this pain for the betrayal she brought Sootstar, and perhaps it would be for the best in the end.

"Of course you were," he rasps. "You were chosen by Sootstar herself." Age-old defiance flares in familiar blue eyes. "But if you're asking if StarClan themselves wanted you to follow in Wolfsong's pawsteps..."

He exhales, shaking his head. "Then, no. StarClan had nothing to do with it." Weaselclaw's tail lashes. "Your mother made that choice for you. For all of WindClan." His smile cracks across his face again. "And if she ruled still, do you think she would condemn those kits in your belly, the way Sunstar will?"
​

 

[cottonsprig]

Cottonsprig cannot help but tremble. All of her trials and tribulations, all of her success and sacrifice... all attributes to her selfish mother. And her father in his tirade cannot even dare to see his daughter for who she is. Lost and scared, watching all that she's known and all she will know crumble around her. The hell that she's in is very well personified by the air that is equally too dry and chilled to breathe, but too warm and humid to comfortably stand in.

"Right," she chokes, agreeing for the alternative has only served her distance. Sootstar put her on this path, and now... and now she must walk it. Tears slip down her cheeks as she looks at Weaselclaw, unbothered by her grief, by her pain. Her chest hurts as he continues, laying out the map of her life before her. One that she inevitably diverted by straying from her mother's side. Her claws clench the thick mud beneath them, the reality of it being her fault firmly drilled into her mind. Her mistake, of which she never denied, but it's still a terrible feeling to be reminded.

Mention of Sunstar makes her flinch, the tangential thinking of Wolfsong makes her whimper. "Sunstar - I -" she can't think of any rebuttal. Her saliva feels too thick in her mouth and she's forced to swallow and choke out another sob, her teeth gritting together. This is embarrassing. She is embarrassing. Watery blue eyes look towards Weaselclaw and any fury left in them drains. She pleads that his sanity returns as it had last time, that his humanity finds his wretched soul and holds fast for the remainder of her nightmare. Please, please, please.

"Do you condemn them, Weaselclaw?" Cottonsprig asks. She bows her head to look at her belly, too swollen to properly deny anymore. "They're your kin, regardless of - of laws and codes. Do you regret them?" Do I regret them?

​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

Despite everything Cottonsprig has done, Weaselclaw finds it hard to watch her tremble and choke on her sobs. Sootstar would draw her claws over your ears, but... The tattered brown tabby watches as his daughter's flanks heave, as a snow-white paw flutters to her plump middle. "Do you condemn them, Weaselclaw?" Her heart is in her throat, in her mouth, and she threatens to crush it between her shaking teeth. "They're your kin, regardless of laws and codes. Do you regret them?"

Weaselclaw extends his muzzle to Cottonsprig's in a surprisingly gentle gesture. His breath is like a hot wind carrying the rank of carrion, but his words unfurl, petal-soft, enclosing Cottonsprig in what's left of the love he has for her.

"No, I do not condemn them." Weaselclaw draws his face away, his blue eyes grim. "StarClan may forsake these kits, but I never will. They carry Sootstar's blood — and for that, they will always be special." He remembers a day long ago, a memory gone hazy with dizzying hatred and loss, of a little gray kit with a cotton-soft coat drying against his tongue.

"One day, you will rule this forest," he'd proclaimed to his brood, and now he imagines Cottonsprig gently licking clean her son, her daughter, her child with the song of the moor dancing through their veins.

"Your kits will be great," he promises her. "In spite of StarClan, they will be great, and I will watch their every pawstep." It's a promise to her, to himself, to the mother who had forsaken her.​

 

[cottonsprig]

He's still too cold. He is leafbare snow in a sharp, angular body. Cottonsprig still breathes in his rotting scent as if it is the very flowers and herbs that litter her den - his words do not calm her the way she wishes they did. But she pretends, in hoping that her efforts to do so will fool her heart and mind into somehow thinking everything is okay. It circles back to Sootstar - as she's learned it always does with her father - and she does not lament silently about it. In fact, she cherishes that in some way, he still treasures her. That the sin she's committing is beloved by a sinner incarnate. She is somehow useful and not loathed for her horrible decisions. And, for now, that's enough.

Him watching their every move does not scare her. StarClan threatens the same. She wonders if he will drag them, ears folded and eyes closed, to this dingy forest - if he will let them shiver in the cold muck and grin at them just as wildly. Cottonsprig banishes the curiosity for if she thinks on it any longer, she may begin to regret more.

Instead, she leans into his bony frame, still crying with softened sobs as she moves to lay down again. Her limbs begin to feel heavy and before she knows it, she's asleep again - soon after awake once more. Cottonsprig lifts a paw to press tears out of her eyes. Blue eyes flutter to the roundness of her belly, and though she hates it, she knows what she must do.​