tunnels floor made of bones [morbid discovery]

[SCORCHSTREAK]

The tunnel’s progress had slowed, understandably, while Scorchstreak was away. WindClan had other problems to deal with—their dead and dying clanmates, the temporary loss of their home, injuries following the retaking of their territory. Still, after the incident that she’d heard of with Smokethroat (Smokestar?) not too long ago, the calico worries about WindClan’s safety. Without a quick way to keep an eye on their water-dwelling neighbors, how can they ensure that no surprise attack will meet a moor runner patrol? They need to finish this tunnel soon, especially with the chill of wintertime closing in on them. The colder the dirt grows, the harder it is to dig. When the frost hits in full and everything turns to ice, there will be no hope of finishing the tunnel until the usual thaw of springtime sets in.

There is no secondary option. To protect their home, the tunnelers need to finish this up—soon. They haven’t yet encountered water underground, which is a blessing, but the clay that they’ve found themselves digging through recently is proving to be a source of irritation. "This is clay," she explains quietly to her apprentice, "don’t dig into it with your claws. You have to use more force than with dirt, so I find it easier to just spread my paws out, no claws." She pays no attention to any complaints the young tunneler behind her may have; the two haven’t been paired as mentor and apprentice for very long, and already Scorchstreak has learned exactly how to tune Pinkpaw out when necessary.

Caught up in thoughts of her apprentice, the calico snaps back to the present when a dark paw brushes against something hard trapped within the soil. She scrapes a claw along it in the dark, dappled head tilting curiously to one side. It isn’t rock, but something else… the answer to her yet-unspoken question comes quickly. Bone. "Oh—feel that, it’s bone. I wonder what it belonged to." Surely no cats had died down here before they’d begun digging the tunnel, and from the feel of it, the bones are too large to be from a rabbit or a mole. Perhaps a badger or a fox had died, and their bones made their way down here.

// apprentice tag @PINKPAW ​

[ BE A FIRE, BURN THIS DOWN ]​

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[PINKSHINE]

While Scorchstreak is totally stressing about tunnels and stuff, Pinkpaw has, like, no idea what's going on! She's just here because she HAS to be and it's totally not fair... Scorchstreak is talking, and because they're in the pitch black Pinkpaw doesn't even have anything to ignore Scorchstreak by paying attention to instead, so she has no choice but to listen, ugh. Scorchstreak tells her about something called clay. Too bad Pinkpaw can't see what "clay" looks like because she can't see ANYTHING down here. Maybe if she really pays attention, the ground felt kinda different here. " What's clay look like? "

Paws out, no claws. Pinkpaw was gonna guess that they dig clay with their teeth instead, but that sounds way better. Just paws... like, when her nest was sort of cozy but not quite and Pinkpaw had to fix it by kneading her paws? Or like when she was a little bitty Pink-kit with Brightshine in the nursery?

She's confused, when Scorchstreak suddenly stops. Oh—feel that,. Pinkpaw goes to feel it. it’s bone. Pinkpaw squeals, " Ewww, i just touched someone's bones!! " Despite her very apparently horror, she continues touching it.

staring at the mirror gotta smile, smile 🌸🌷🦄🦩 don't be late, we got plans!

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• ( IT'S TIME TO START A FUCKING RIOT, RIOT! ) PINKPAW APPRENTICE OF WINDCLAN. DAUGHTER TO BRIGHTSHINE & HEAVY SNOW. SISTER TO HEATHPAW, DOWNYPAW, & FINCHPAW.
  —— SHE / HER; UNOPPOSED TO THE USE OF OTHERS
  —— CURRENTLY 4 MOONS OLD. AGES EVERY 16TH
  
  A tiny, longhaired calico she - kit with yellow eyes, ringed blue around her pupils (sectoral heterochromia). While you can clearly see her flame markings on her face, the rest of her body is currently covered by a grey fever - coating. Though the whites of her are still very much visible. Pinkpaw bounces around WindClan without a care in the world! Her emotions are big, and she makes little effort to regulate them, resulting in both her usually cheerful disposition, as well as making her prone to sudden bouts of extreme anger or sadness. Rarely seen without a smile!
  

  HEAVY IC OPINIONS! Pinkpaw is a very irrational and childish character!​

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[RABBITCLAW]

The tunnel project was becoming more and more of a pain as they progressed. She remembered they had a whole debate on which way to go and ended up running into a badger and now this. Outside of being kicked out of their home, things regarding their tunnel project was not going great. They were already behind schedule and with leaf-bare approaching finishing would be a rush order. She had decided to join her sister and by extension... A brat, but anyway. They were here to dig and that's what they would do. Ears tilt at the mention of a bone. Bones were not common, but she wouldn't say that she's never seen bones on the job before this. She's run into bones before and sometimes it was better not to think too hard who they belonged to. If there hadn't been someone whose been gone for awhile, coughs in never came out of the tunnels maybe it could be them. However, she doesn't remember if they lost someone to the darkness some moons ago. Besides, we only started digging around here.

Pinkpaw is something alright. "Then stop touching it!" Even in the darkness she can vaguely make out the apprentice still touching the very thing she found gross. With a groan and a roll of her eyes she looks at her sister Sorchstreak, "I hope we don't dig out more bones." While she's not new to bones per se, it's not like she wants to dig out bone after bone after bone. It's disturbing and sometimes you just don't want to think about what happened to whatever poor unfortunate soul you dug out. It really was best not to think about it and go on your merry way.

 

[Marmotbite.]

♢​♢ THE BEST MISTAKE YOU EVER MADE ♢♢​

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marmotpaw & 12 moons & female & she/her & windclan tunneler apprentice​

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"If we find more, we could proll'y tell wha' it was, maybe" she adds quietly, tail flicking. She's not super interested in all this talk of clay - honestly, complaints and questions about the new kind of soil are just about all that's on the tip of everyone tongue, and so she's grateful for the change in topic. She may like being a tunneler - finding saftey in the shelter of the narrow darkness, pride in following in sootstars mighty footsteps - but sometimes she wished things were more interesting than dirt dirt dirt. She'd had a taste of the brutality the moor runners got to experience everyday, fangs and claws sinking deep into the rogues as they'd taken back their camp, and now more than ever has she wished she'd grown just a bit bigger. That she wasn't this small, that she hadn't become a tunneler.

— it sounds so fuckin' beautiful when you say my name ♡

• Actions && "Speech," && ' Thoughts/Quotes '
  
  ooc: —
  tw/cw: —
  
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  — a shockingly tiny she-cat with pale blue and cream ticked tabby fur, save for a single patch covering her right eye that is brown instead, and mismatched green-orange eyes. she has heavy scarring along the entirety of her left side, from her face all the way down her chest, belly, and flank; which has been there since kithood. she is a twitchy little thing, known for her bad attitude and an unfortunate habit of biting when startled.
  
  — physically medium && mentally medium
  — non-violent powerplay allowed && healing powerplay allowed && minor injury powerplay not-allowed
  — please attack using [b][color=#9ab973]action here[/color][/b] and tag account

 

[RATTLEHEART]

It was annoying, being forced to suddenly speed up their tunneling efforts in order to get things done before Leafbare fully settled over the entirety of the territory. Understandable, considering everything that had come crashing down on the clan at once, but still grueling to some extent. Rattleheart was tucked down in the tunnels alongside her sisters and the apprentices, making sure to push dirt and clay against the forming walls to build them up enough to the point where she would call them stable. She was vaguely listening to what Scorchstreak was telling Pinkpaw, but she had admittedly started to tune out, mostly for the sake of her mind not collapsing under the younger's constant protests and questions. It might have been understandable that she was unhappy over being a tunneler - though not at all understandable to Rattleheart - but that didn't mean she had to make things harder for the rest of them.

Her attention was only finally torn forcibly away from the task at hand when she heard Pinkpaw squeal, turning with a frown on her face and a scolding on her tongue - until she saw what the apprentice was reacting to. "Oh." It had been some time since she had run into bones while tunneling, and she couldn't immediately identify what this chunk of them had belonged to. Her head tilted over to one side, scanning over the wall before she winced, a dark thought popping into her mind. "Hopefully we didn't run into some kind of makeshift burial ground. None of the old rogues would have been near here, would they?" The bones didn't immediately look large enough to be from another cat, but didn't they all have certain tiny bones inside of them, like teeth? Wolfsong would probably know better than any of them - hopefully.

Pale green gaze shifting over to Rabbitclaw next, a faint smirk curled on Rattleheart's muzzle, amusement glittering in her eyes. "Why, are you worried we might all end up haunted by some vengeful spirit? Imagine it, a ghostly badger trying to hunt us all down for disturbing its resting place..." There was an intentional ghastly lilt to her words, which were made even more unsettling by the effect of echoing down the walls of the newly forming tunnel. She was just aiming to mess with her sister, but Pinkpaw and Marmotpaw could end up as unintended collateral damage.
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[ PENNED BY EO ]​

 

[SCORCHSTREAK]

The lead warrior has already turned to look in Pinkpaw’s direction, expecting some type of visceral reaction from the apprentice. The girl first asks what clay looks like—which Scorchstreak doesn’t respond to, because there’s no way to tell what this clay looks like down here in the dark—but quickly turns her attention to Scorchstreak’s discovery. Her squeal is to be expected, but still the older tunneler pins her ears back in an attempt to block out the worst of the noise. "Then stop touching it," she hisses, in unison with Rabbitclaw. Her sister goes on to say that she hopes they don’t find more bones, but Scorchstreak finds herself curious as to what the bones are from. She can only hope that they find more bones, if only to satisfy that curiosity.

"I’m sure we’ll find more," she huffs, digging quickly at the clay that holds the bones in place. Marmotpaw chimes in from behind, saying that they could tell what the bones are from if they could find more. Her digging is interrupted by her black-patched sister, however; Rattleheart adopts a dramatic tone of voice, speaking of a burial site or a ghostly badger. The calico stifles a snicker, rare amusement flickering across her features. "These do feel quite like badger bones… Tell me, Pinkpaw, do you think your first battle training session should be against the ghost badger?" She flicks her tail against her apprentice’s shoulder for emphasis, tone devoid of any indication that she’s joking.​

[ BE A FIRE, BURN THIS DOWN ]​

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