FIVE MORE MINUTES, MOM |☀| group 1

[LIGHTSTRIKE .]

❝ WE HAVE YET TO CRASH ✧°.☀ —————————————————————————————
Waking was a slow, terrible thing.

His silent pleas had been heard when the group had finally settled to sleep. His paws had felt heavy, and it had taken all of his concentration just to put one in front of the other. Nobody commented on it, and he kept his trap shut. They had to keep moving. They had to get out, they had to find the others, and they had to make sure they were okay.

It was the shuffling of cats around him that had pulled him from his deep, somewhat blissful slumber. It wasn't that it was a good sleep, it was just... quiet. No headache, no fog, no throb, just silent darkness.

Lightstrike's head felt as though it were full of sand. If he didn't know any better, he would have wondered if his skull were about to burst from the pressure inside it. Each beat of his heart was another droning throb, and if he had a little more energy, he would have groaned. The right side of his face was pressed into the cold stone floor, he'd realized at some point. On some level it felt good, yet it was simultaneously too much to handle. He didn't want to bother moving.

Not fair, part of him wanted to wail like a kit. This wretched headache was supposed to be gone by the time he woke up. He was supposed to feel fine, ready to keep moving through the oppressive darkness. If anything, he was inclined to say he maybe felt worse.

Around him cats rose, but he was still trying to find the energy to even begin to move. He felt ill, honestly. A fleeting thought wondered if he would prefer just feeling hungry instead. Maybe he was just hungry. Not that he was sure if he could eat even if the fattest squirrel were dropped at his paws right then. The thought made his stomach turn.

Between the ringing in his ears and his own miserable self-reflection, he hadn't realized someone had been speaking (to him, maybe?) until he heard his name and jolted. He was probably taking too long. Yeah, yeah, he wanted to say, but only managed a grunt, finally beginning the laborious process of rolling onto his belly, peeling himself from the earth. It made his head swim, and he thought he could see spots in his vision, but he neglected to comment.

With a slight tremble of weakness to his legs, Lightstrike forced himself to sit up, eye squeezing shut and hoping his skull wouldn't actually pop. Swallowing hard, he raised himself the rest of the way. "Okay," he mumbled. "Let's go."

// feel free to have been saying anything to him or not, he has heard nor processed any of it

[penned by its_oliverr - ☀]

——————————— ☀.°✧ BUT WE STILL MAY AS WELL ENJOY IT ❞ ​

​

 

[FERNGILL]

Fernpaw hurt. He was not sure exactly where- or, indeed, if there was even a causality at all- but he knew from the moment he woke that the day would have a healthy dose of ache and there would be very little he could do about it. When consciousness grabbed him, his mind also wandered to the thought of the cats in pain; of Lightstrike, who'd murmured a hauntingly familiar injury, and of Iciclefang, though she had insisted she was fine. Of course. He would bet she wasn't- part of him wanted to get out of this cave just so he could see it.

Everyone was dusting themselves off for more journeying, voices and scents beginning to become a little more obvious to him. Bobbie and Milkpaw were recognisable enough, the only cats of Sky and WindClan present- Smogmaw too, as such. Iciclefang he hardly needed to worry about- she wouldn't sleep in even with the most enticing temptation- and Stormywing was pretty easy to find too. The only one not accounted for was...

"Lightstrike?" Fernpaw asked, and it seemed to trigger something; the shuffling of paws, the movement of a body. It was slow, though... and the (if he remembered rightly) golden tom's voice was cracked and mumbled as he insisted they could go. Worry twinged Fernpaw's gut for someone who might be struggling the same way he had, with no nearby saviour to relieve the pain... grimacing, he took a step toward the Thunderclanner's voice. "You- do you need to lean on someone...?" He was hurt, he'd said as much. He surely couldn't do it on his own... but if he wanted to, Fernpaw wouldn't refuse him.​

✦ penned by pin ✦​

 

[iciclefang]

As much as she’d like to avoid speaking to Fernpaw, Iciclefang feels something off between him and Lightstrike. She’d only half-listened to Fernpaw’s attempts to engage the golden tabby, but now she turns sharply. Had the ThunderClanner not paid attention to any of it? The tortoiseshell remembers the scent of blood on him when he’d joined the rest of them behind Smogmaw, but many of them had been injured in some capacity. She scrutinizes the space she thinks Lightstrike is occupying.

“He needs a medicine cat,” she says simply, “and we are sorely lacking.” She thinks of offering herself as a shoulder for Lightstrike to use, then nearly laughs at the absurdity of the idea. She can hardly walk herself, and her shoulder is stiffening a little more each second, the muscles seizing when she puts too much weight on it. She decides to let Fernpaw have what he wants—a chance to prove himself.

ooc ✧ 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦

•  
•  
• 

  — iciclekit . iciclepaw . iciclefang
  — she/her ; warrior of riverclan
  — lesbian ; single
  — short-haired tortoiseshell with white and ice-blue eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Pin

​

 

[smogstar]

Taking the helm of their journeys meant Smogmaw stood the furthest distance away from any amount of conversation. A solitary boon in the midst of so many banes. Half of these sorry souls he walked alongside had yet to leave apprenticeship, whereas the other half scarcely crossed the boundary. Effectively, they're all children, and barring his own, the tom held a deep aversion to children. Their unseasoned observations frustrated him to no end (oh really, Stormywing, who knew an underground cave would be cold?). And the burden of overhearing them is compounded by their futures depending on his own survival—which was, given the current circumstances, a matter of question at best.

For all intents and purposes, a deaf ear remained turned to Lightstrike's plight. They cannot afford to tarry when energy was such a precious and finite resource. If the lad insists on being a hindrance to their progress, the utmost kindness he could give is embracing his mortality now, so that they need not waste the effort in tending to him. "Ready to go?" Smogmaw asks, joints crackling as he stretches the stress from his shoulders. "We're pushing the end," he then states, "and I've no gripes with dragging anyone by the tail to get there."​

 

[LIGHTSTRIKE .]

❝ WE HAVE YET TO CRASH ✧°.☀ —————————————————————————————
He had been mentally preparing himself for another long, long day when that same voice spoke up again, and he realized it was Fernpaw, the RiverClan apprentice. A tired eye turned in his direction then, brows furrowed. Silence stretched out, enough to wonder whether the tom had ignored the offer and leaving Iciclefang to comment first. In reality he was thinking, and thinking hard.

They were talking about him, saying he needed a medicine cat. "No shit," he muttered at last. Was he holding up the group worse than he'd thought? Oh right, Fernpaw had been offering to help. "I can walk fine," he finally said in the same low voice, beginning to plod in the direction of the deputy's rough tone. "Didn't break my legs."

Yet it seemed that once again his paws didn't want to obey him, and Lightstrike stumbled for the umpteenth time, and nearly right into someone else. A growl rose in his throat, but he swallowed it back. Smogmaw said something about tail dragging. "Oh, shut up," he grumbled. "Come on. Th'sooner we get outta here the better. Gotta go find everyone." Focus on walking.

[penned by its_oliverr - ☀]

——————————— ☀.°✧ BUT WE STILL MAY AS WELL ENJOY IT ❞ ​

​