sensitive topics DREAD-BOLTED THUNDER \ death

[LITTLE WOLF]

In her lifetime, Little Wolf has held many roles. Mother, daughter, lover. But most important of them, in this moment, is big sister. She has been watching over him for some time now, watching him struggle and hating every moment that she could not go to him and make it better just like she had done when he was just a kit and one lick was all it took to heal any wound in the whole marsh. When she walks through them she pauses for only a moment to look at the faces of the cats that she loved, the ones she could no longer be there for in life. Hailstorm, he who she walked with only in dreams, who she would have gladly walked with her entire life had it not been cut short that fateful day. She's proud of him, of the cat he has become in the wake of his loss and then her eyes find her kin and she lets out a soft high. Raccoonstripe had always been hot headed, and even now he demands their brother be healed. His pleas strike a chord in her heart. If she could go to him, tell him it's okay, that Berryheart would be alright, she would, and it pains her so much that she cannot. Cobwebtail too, begs for their brothers life. Oh how she wishes she could give it back, but it does not work like that, only in the stories she used to be so fond of telling, but never in real life.

She runs a starry tail along her son's back as she passes, presses her nose to her mothers cheek as she mourns for yet another child. There will be good days ahead Little Wolf thinks, her sole consolation for a moment that threatens to rip her heart from her chest and kill her a second time in her grief. Her presence here held more purpose than to stand around thinking of what if's and things that had yet to pass though. No, she had a greater role to fill. "Berryheart" she calls out to him, her voice soft, muted, as if she is merely waking him from a restless slumber and not stirring his spirit from death. She nudges his cheek with her nose "It's time to go" she whispers.

She understands why he would want to linger though, when she looks at her mother she too wishes she could curl up next to her brother and pretend she is a kit again. Everything would be alright as long as Howling Wind and Gray Wolf were there. But she knows now is not the time, she would see her mother again one day but for now, life was for the living, and she had a whole other world to show her brother too. A father that he had never gotten to meet to introduce him to. A brother and a niece waiting anxiously to see him again.

With a starry figure at her side, she departs once again for the stars. But not without one last glance backwards at her family, at her friends while they mourn. She smiles sadly and then she and her brother are gone.

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[Moonwhisper]

—————————————————————⊰☾⊱————————————————————

There is a deafening in her ears as noise pours in and smothers her in sound. She's a whisper like her name, present and unseen as she stares with gradually widening eyes at the clan clustered around the medicine cat den and the crying and screaming of her kin roaring thunderous above it all and she says nothing. A cold chill winds its way down her spine, her long fur rising electrified with adrenaline and dawning horror; the tortie point opens her mouth but not a sound drips from her maw as her ice gaze burns into crumpled black and orange flecked fur swaddled in her grandmother's forepaws like a newborn kit being cleaned but much too large and too still for her mind to let her believe anything else than the truth.
Berryheart was dead.
Whispers, he called her, when she was a kit she mumbled everything through sealed lips and clenched jaw and her voice maintained its elegant purr that never rose in volume higher than mild emphasis. He'd once asked her to join him in his den, learn medicine and train as his apprentice but that was when she'd first started feeling the fires rampaging inside her, a blaze that tore through her blood and scorched her in a need to be stronger; she'd rejected him then and remained training under Raccoonstripe - her uncle's voice is a piercing yowl of sound that demands authority as if he could boss around the very stars and for a moment she wonders briefly if he could but there is a heaviness in the air as the silence wraps around clan. A wheeze of sound echoing into nothing but the overbearing tumult of static that flooded her senses with a tingling numbness.
Berryheart was dead.
The cats her clan was being left with to keep them whole and safe were ones who had failed her once already, her mother's body in a cold hole atop a mountain because Hailstorm and Flamewhisker had not brought her home and their reward for this was power, the power she sought after to prove she was capable like any other warrior here - given to cats unworthy by any means because her grandmother's kindness that she once admired was now as pitiful a sight as Emberstar's joyful ignorance. Tears spill over spotted fur, her teeth show as she grits them so tightly together she feels one chip from the force and she whips her head away to no longer look at the vision of limp tortiseshell fur and the knowledge her family had lost yet another of their own as if the stars could not wait to take from them time and time again.

☾ break all the rules - live like a queen or die like a fool ☽ —— do you care what they think

•  
• 
  
  
  Moonwhisper
  —⊰⋅ Warrior of ThunderClan
  —⊰⋅ She/Her
  "SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
  —⊰⋅ LH Tortiseshell point w/ice blue eyes
  

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[RACCOONSTRIPE]

The crowd crumbles to dust as his vision blurs, darkens, thickens. He barely registers Batwing's callous murmur to be quiet. He sees through Honeydapple urging them all to move away—move away, from his littermate, from the brother who’d nursed beside him. Their mother moves between them, the tears rolling from her eyes. She knows what he has fiercely denied; he can see that, as her chin finds the soft space between Berryheart’s ears, as her paws cradle him for the last time. Raccoonstripe exhales, incredulous. “It’s okay,” Howlingstar croons to her child, and then he knows it’s over, it’s over. “It’s okay to let them take you.”

“No—Berryheart,” he chokes. His tongue feels like it’s in the way of everything he wants to say, but there’s no time—his brother’s eyes are glazing over. “Don’t leave us. Don’t leave me.” His eyes begin to burn, seared by tears he won’t let go of.

A tortoiseshell tail thumps once on the ground. A single time, an affirmation, a promise. It’s alright. Raccoonstripe watches, helpless again, as the life slips from Berryheart’s eyes, as he whispers his final words. “See you,” he says.

“Oh, StarClan, no. Not you,” Raccoonstripe replies, his voice trembling. He bows his head, and tears scatter between his forepaws.

It’s over.

『 out of character. 』 ✧･ﾟ:* 『 about. 』

• ooc: —
• 
• Raccoon . Raccoonstripe, he/him w/ masculine terms.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — 37 moons old, ages realistically on the 5th.
  — mentored by n/a ; mentoring Smudgepaw ; previously mentored Wildheart, Moonwhisper
  — thunderclan lead warrior. gray wolf x howlingstar, gen 2.
  — currently mated to Nightbird.
  — penned by Marquette.
  
  
  lh black tabby with white and dark brown eyes. charismatic, charming, calculating, ambitious, shallow, manipulative.
  
  

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[Flycatcher]

Flycatcher stands among the cats gathered by the medicine den, lured over by the noises and words of his clanmates. He is a later arrival but it doesn't take him long to figure out what is happening. Flycatcher's head dips lowly when he hears the begging of Berryheart's kin, the assurances that he would be fine, the whispers of his clanmates as they spoke of herbs and Berryheart.

He watches mournfully as Howlingstar is at her son's side, soothing him and assuring him that it is okay for him to go, for his kin in StarClan to take him. The grief of losing a child is one he knows too well and it is one the leader knows all too well herself. Despite her tears, Howlingstar seems to know what is coming, that she has accepted the loss that is to come. Flycatcher hears Berryheart mutter his final words before Raccoonstripe in a rare display of emotions bows his head and begins to cry.

Flycatcher's own eyes well with tears and his heart aches to think of Berryheart no longer with them. That the brindled form will no longer pace in and out of camp. "Farewell, dear friend," Flycatcher mutters softly. "Rest easy."​

 

[DUSKBIRD]

↟↟ᨒ   "No. No." Still off in the distance, Duskbird's voice cracks pitifully. His paws had not moved. Not as the others around him screamed, or cajoled, or promised that he would be okay. Not even as Howlingstar groomed between his ears and promised him that it was all right. Somehow, his mind had not understood. All right meant that he would stand up. All right meant more afternoons in his den, relaxing in the acrid stench, finding comfort amidst the healing that Berryheart had always offered. All right meant learning to rest the way that he did, to find comfort in warm patches of sunlight and good meals. All right was — it was Berryheart, in his den, in this camp, in this forest. Not Berryheart in the stars. Not a distant star-shape he once again could not say goodbye to.

His dam breaks, and Duskbird screams it: "No! Bring him back!" His claws tear at the ground beneath him, and like Raccoonstripe just moments before he is desperate. He would find the berry. If nobody else would, he would do it. He starts forward like a sick prey-thing, eyes too blurred with tears to truly see where his paws were going, but somewhere between where he had stood and where he wanted to go was his uncle, and suddenly Duskbird could not take another step forward. "Berry," he sobs, much like the kitten he had always wished to leave behind himself, lost and confused and seeking reassurance in the knowing cat who looked upon him with patient understanding. "I don't want you to go."

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐔𝐒𝐓  ╱╱ —𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐑𝐎𝐍 〚 01.06.2023 〛 ————————

• OOC. —
• 
  BLAZESTAR x LITTLE WOLF, " ORPHAN " LITTERMATE TO SKYCLAW; HALF SIBLING TO BURNSTORM, MOONWHISPER, HOWLFIRE, FIREFLYPAW, MORNINGPAW. MENTORED BY NIGHTBIRD. NEWFOUND THUNDERCLAN WARRIOR.
  ——— recently discovered his father's identity and is withdrawing into himself. seems distant and troubled, going about his duties absently as if sleepwalking his routine. seems mechanical around his family in particular, or anyone that he suspects knew the truth of his parentage. his ambitions have died quietly.
  
  TOYHOUSE ╱╱ AN ATHLETIC, LANKY CHOCOLATE TORBIE WITH DEEP AMBER EYES.
•  

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[leafhusk]

screams quickly filled the air from what was supposed to be a lackluster day. like moths to a flame, leafhusk watched the healer’s kin flock towards him. she kept her distance like everyone else who only knew him as an acquaintance. her head bowed in respect, and general unease. the molly never really knew what to do in these situations. death always knew when to rear her ugly head. taking the time to visit skyclan’s borders had seemed like a waste of time, now. but they had tried, it’s what mattered.

it’s simply a reminder that you can’t predict this. no matter how many herbs you gather, visits you have with the neighbors, it can’t stop what’s to come.

watching everything is upsetting. she is upset that berryheart is dead. this is something that will be felt for many moons, and while she knows she’ll get over it eventually, she doubts those screaming in agony will. the end of leafbare suddenly feels heavier.​