pafp DRAIN THE WHOLE SEA / mossball mishap

[SHADEPAW]

Shadekit was making the most of their newfound freedom. He could run around to his heart's content, no parent at his side, making the most of the camp. It was vast in comparison to the nursery. It was a perfect playing field for a one-kit game of mossball, where he was just throwing it up as high as he could and watching it smack down to earth. Up, down, up, down, green eyes watching the moss stretch up toward the clouds before gravity snatched it back down to the murky ground. Over, and over, and over, and sometimes it would land right next to him, sometimes a few kit-lengths away, sometimes... in the brambles that made up the walls of the camp.

Shadekit blinked and stared at the sprig of green ensnared in the bare branches. He glanced over his shoulder. She had started the game in the middle of the camp... apparently, she had been throwing the mossball with more of an angle than she thought. Her tail twitched in a sharp, staccato motion as she turned back to it. The sun glinted off thorns. Sharp. She reached a hesitant paw up, gauging how far up the mossball was. Too high. She rocked back onto her haunches, stretched upward, trying to close her white paws around the mossball, but still fell a couple of inches short, and was only a few breaths away from getting a faceful of spikes. Too close.

Her tufted ears twitched back, brow furrowing. Some mucky feeling was bubbling up in her, and to fight it off, she pattered away to find the nearest cat. Ferndance and Needledrift always helped when Shadekit asked. She had no reason to think anyone else would do otherwise. She zeroed in on an apprentice that looked like sharp rocks and scattered snow. Somethingpaw... Stonepaw... Rockpaw... whatever her name was. All that really mattered was that he was taller than Shadekit. "Hi! I need help!" She chirped. "My mossball... I threw it, and I didn't mean for it, but it went up there. Can you get it? Please." She stared up at Flintpaw with wide eyes, a paw pointed at the impaled mossball. Her gaze flicked to it. Sure, she could ask for another, but it wouldn't it be easier for Flintpaw to just get it down?

[ please wait for @FLINTPAW. to post first! ]

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[FLINTWISH]

Flintpaw hardly notices the small brown fleck that asks for his attention. Really, he has hardly noticed much since Granitepelt's exile — and maybe he should be over it, now, since Granitepelt and Siltcloud both had proved themselves to be of the most awful sort, but it's a little hard to just get over the fact that your father is not only a murderer, but a serial murderer, and on top of that even a serial murderer whose victims were his own flesh and blood. It's been weighing heavy on Flintpaw's brow and numbing his stony body to all sensation or stimuli that flickered about him.

It's only the fact that Shadekit lingers for so long that Flintpaw notices her. Dual-toned eyes finally wrest themselves from a landlocked stare and shift down to the earth-toned tabby who is staring up at him. What did he say? Flintpaw wonders, blinking slowly. Black lips twitch into a grimace as she realizes she doesn't know. But she follows the outstretched paw with her eyes, and eventually she puts it together: the mossball has gotten stuck. "Oh," he murmurs, "uh... sure."

Flintpaw approaches the brambles and a spark of memory flicks over his tongue, tangy. He is a kitten and his siblings are chiding Sweetkit for walking right into the bramble wall, and Screechkit is trying to make his sibling look less ridiculous for the mistake. The mossball almost glitters at him in the present light, taunting him closer to the sharp thorns for the sake of a kit who he, frankly, cared very little about. Sprucepaw had died because of her. And Halfshade died because of me. The echo rings through his skull. Flintpaw reaches for the mossball in a deft motion, successfully avoiding the needle points.

"Here," the apprentice chuffs, tossing the mossball back to the kit. He examines her with eyes as hard as the gems they were cut from. Her pelt is dark like Sprucepaw's had been; she even bears some of the snowy flecks that had dotted the apprentice's muzzle. Flintpaw and Sprucepaw hadn't been close, but she'd been one of the few friends he'd had at all — and now Shadekit and her siblings were here instead. He supposes he can't blame them. Not like he blames himself for Halfshade, or for Heavybranch; not like ShadowClan blames him.

Maybe there is some kinship in that, actually: that ShadowClan hates them both. That ShadowClan hates Ferndance for daring to use precious resources to expand its ranks; that ShadowClan hates Flintpaw for daring to bear the pelt of a cat who had thinned those ranks out. It hates, and it hates, and he hates, too. He doesn't like Ferndance. She was weird, and she spoke like she knew about Granitepelt better than he did, or better than Starlingheart did, and that irks him; but StarClan, can he hate Shadekit for that, or would it make him a hypocrite?

"... What were you playing?" he asks, whip tail twitching.

𝐌𝐘 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑 ✧ 𝐈 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑

• 

• 
  
  — flintkit . flintpaw
  — he / they / she ; apprentice of shadowclan
  — short-haired solid blue tom with low white and blue/green heterochromatic eyes
  — "speech" ; thoughts
  — chibi by sixbane, signature by dreamydoggo
  — penned by meghan

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[CHILLEDSTAR.]

DON'T YOU GIVE ME UP, PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP​

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hate is a common theme in shadowclan but can they be blamed? so much against them. constant death and heartache. it blackens a heart faster than a fire spreads through a forest. hate seemed easier, somedays, than it did to care. to care required effort. kindness in return, most times. to hate... was so easy. it was just a simple means of anger. turned into a turmoil within of dislike and like, and then boiling right down to just rage. rage at that cat. rage at the beast. rage at everything. to hate could be liberating... but shadowclan needed to learn to turn that hate elsewhere. to hate cats like granitepelt and siltcloud. to hate death. to hate widnclan. to hate everyone else. shadowclan could bond on the way they hated everyone but each other. wasn't that what being a clan meant?

"oh. moss ball. are you all playing mossball? would you like to learn what i played with my mama when we were younger? needledrift played too... long ago."

simpler days. days when needledrift didn't hate chilledstar. when they were still friends. did they miss them? they don't know. they really don't.
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[THISTLESIGHT]

false hopes are more dangerous than fears .
︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

A long-forgotten memory, shadowed by long days past, laid to rest in a forgotten corner of his mind to collect dust. Thistlesight couldn’t recall a day where he acted like a kit, far younger, living in crowfood, unpleasant and unsanitary for a kit to live, but it was familiar. A place to rest, but never a place to call home, better yet, a foreign land that the smokey tom disliked thinking of—times of hardship and bites that stung like burns.

He remained close, within their peripheral, simply observing, but not within reach for proper conversation, unless he was dragged into playing mossball. Admittedly, Thistlesight wouldn’t mind joining, and perhaps he would, but content to observe, watching the moss ball near their youngest.

A keen gaze flickered to Chilledstar, ears angled in a questioning tilt, wondering what the other had in mind if Shadekit accepted, but Thistlesight would gladly offer his inquiries if denied. ​

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thought speech​