private FATHER'S HANDS ARE LINED WITH DIRT ✧ Flintkit

[GRANITEPELT]

He’d been on the dawn patrol this morning—initially, he’d tagged along to skirt ThunderClan’s side of the Thunderpath, but he hadn’t been able to resist checking WindClan’s border just in case. Should Cloudedsky learn of the truth, she may come to visit her kin—and Granitepelt eagerly awaits that day. He does not know why discovering the truth about Sootstar’s eldest litter has enraptured him, but he finds himself yearning for the day he can come face to face with both of them. He wants to search their features, find similarities—because surely, surely, any of those were from Flint?

Speaking of his cavorting father, the little kit who is his namesake hops about, determination creasing a white-lined face. Granitepelt’s attention slowly reconvenes on his son. “Look.” Dark green eyes zero in on a butterfly, brilliant orange with black webbing through its delicate wings. Such a lively thing was a rarity in ShadowClan’s territory. “Show me how a warrior pins their prey.”

Curiosity begins to crawl, spiderlike, through his head. Would Flintkit be able to catch the creature—and if he did, would he kill it? Would he wait for instruction? Is he his mother, a healer at heart, aversion to taking lives?

Or is he something much closer to the cat he resembles, watching him play?

// @FLINTKIT

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — granitekit . granitepaw . granitepelt
  — he/him ; warrior of shadowclan
  — heterosexual ; taken by Starlingheart
  — short-haired gray tom with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Meg

​

 

[FLINTWISH]

Flintkit often feels like an island. Perhaps he hadn't been the kindest kit so far, but the others seem reluctant to cast even a glance in his direction. Why? he wonders, lost for answers. Why won't they talk to me? Why won't they be my friend? As if he is some contorted spire piercing the sky above their bog, too tall and dangerous to play with; too sharp and strange to look at. There are flashes of realization between his questioning, though, like sun dappling through thick canopies of leaves. He sees Granitepelt's slate fur in the dashes of light, sees the warrior's half-lidded sage gaze, his shrewd scowl; and all that light, all that resemblance, converges on him. He is cut from the same stone and polished until reflective. For all of Starlingheart's warmth, for all her honeyed words and nourishing influence, he is still cold granite.

He is making his own game, one that he can play with no assistance, when Granitepelt calls out to him. Look, he commands, and the word echoes around camp as if he is the only warrior that Flintkit has ever known. He may as well be. Wide gaze flicks to follow his father's; each beat of the butterfly's wings shine in his jade green and salt blue. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, and if Flintkit is understanding correctly, Granitepelt would like him to kill it.

Show me how a warrior pins their prey. It's a strange game for a child, isn't it? Even one with aspirations to leadership like he holds. But Flintkit does not understand the strangeness of his father, or the reason why other cats seem to dislike him so, or the way his father makes him a lonely rock in a vast ocean. When Granitepelt tells him to pin the butterfly, he only nods, falling into a crouch as unpracticed and clumsy as any kitten's.

He can do it because Granitepelt is asking him to. He can do it because he is the son of two respectable ShadowClanners. He can do it because he has to do it, he knows, if he wants Granitepelt to keep looking at him with anything close to warmth; if he still wants his father's favor over his other siblings. It is hard not to notice the way he does not address Ghostkit, the way that Nettlekit is only looked upon when Flintkit is not around. He wants someone to look at him. Anyone. If it is Granitepelt that does so, then he would fight tooth and nail to keep the tom's eyes on him.

His hind legs bunch, and then spring, and soon his body is a marble arch in the air. Flintkit's paws reach for the butterfly and exhilaration stabs through him as he watches the butterfly's wings crumple between his iron oxide paws. He hits the ground, his landing less-than-graceful as a limb or two stumbles for stability. The wings shed orange copper onto his paws as the scales dislodge and flutter loose. When he sees the insect between his paws, though, specks of guilty mold bloom at the back of his throat. It was beautiful, and now it is crumpled in a heap before him, not quite dead but not fit to go on living. Its wings are torn and bent so that it may never fly again. Its body was half-crushed beneath Flintkit's own weight. Ice needles quietly between his toes; at the sheaths of his claws. But Flintkit tries not to show this grief on his face when he turns it back to his father, pallid and waiting.

"What now?" he asks.​

​

 

[GRANITEPELT]

Granitepelt watches in silence as Flintkit drops into a crouch. White-tipped paws smack crudely into the butterfly, pinning it to the earth as efficiently as a two moon old kit is capable of. The warrior surveys the expression on his son’s face, looking for weakness, for any sign he could be feeling ill. His mother cannot kill a lizard without hurling up her breakfast, but Flintkit has his prize, the dust from its colorful wings flaking off onto his paw pads. “What now?”

Flintkit looks back at him, and though the boy puts a brave face on, Granitepelt can tell he feels… displeased, somehow, about the butterfly. The slate-pelted warrior comes to stand over his child’s shoulder, peering at the insect between his paws. “What do you think?” There is no warmth in his tone. There is nothing urging his kit to let the butterfly go, though Granitepelt will let him make his choice—here—now. He will reveal his true nature to his father, Granitepelt thinks, one way or another. “When a warrior pins their prey, what do they do with it? You show me, Flintkit.” He does not smile, but there is a wicked gleam in the dark, mossy pools of his eyes. “Show me now.”

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — granitekit . granitepaw . granitepelt
  — he/him ; warrior of shadowclan
  — heterosexual ; taken by Starlingheart
  — short-haired gray tom with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Meg

​