camp FLYING IN A DREAM — catching snowflakes

[CLAYFUR]

The sky has truly opened up today, gray clouds giving way to light snowfall that leaves the earth coated in a faint dusting of white. Clay has seen snow before—of course he has, he hasn’t been living under a rock for this long—but it still manages to amaze him every time. It’s the child in him, his mother would say, but she remains one of the only cats to be endeared by his antics. And he can’t lie, he misses his mother. As much as he idolized his father, it was her who nurtured Clay and his sisters for so long. It was her who first planted the seeds of wonder in his heart, who fostered the optimism that he’s carried with him all this time.

Now it’s all battered and bruised, that optimism. It’s been through a lot, as has Clayfur, and since days it’s a miracle that it’s still kicking, still breathing. Still fighting. So much has gone wrong. But things have to get better. They have to, it’s only fair. All these hard times are going to come to an end, because that’s what RiverClan deserves, and Clay is always going to look on the bright side of things. Like, yeah, their situation with WindClan is shit right now, but as long as he stays positive he won’t lose his cool completely!

The snow falling daintily from the sky is further proof that things are looking up for the clan. Sure, the river’s been rising, but there’s snow and it’s beautiful and there are still good things in the world just waiting for them.

Giggling, the chestnut tabby tips his head back, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue, until a snowflake lands on it. It’s cold, and he laughs even harder, a bright smile lighting up his face. "Guys! Look! I caught one!" He looks around the camp and sticks his tongue out, but the snowflake has melted by now. Boo. That just means that he needs to catch more, though! He turns in a circle, tail flicking happily as he attempts to catch another on his tongue.
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[ WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN? ]​

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[RIMEFELL]

The clouds have steadily dragged their hoary bellies across the sky until they could crawl no more. Rimefell has watched it intermittently between inspecting the Gorge and turning over stones by the swollen river. His head is tipped back now, his fur intercepting snow in its pursuit of the ground, and his torn ear gives a mighty flick as Clayfur declares his delight. When his chin lowers and his borealis eye subjects the oaken warrior to scrutiny, he frowns.

"There will be enough to fill your belly," he warns lowly. "You will forget the color of the sun and sky. Soon the winds will make claws of the snow." If he experiences any misgivings over meeting Clayfur's lighthearted optimism with bleak bluntness, there is no indication of it. Rimefell drags his paw through the powder thickening on the ground and lifts it to his face. "There must have been signs," he mutters. "What are you? A whisper or a shout? Ripple or wave? Herald or calamity?" He squints at the storm-heavy skies. "Are you the worst or just another step closer?"
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[Pinepaw]

"nothing but pain on the edge of a knife"​

Pine couldn’t tell up from down when it came to Rimefell’s words, but he knew enough to simply nod along and he padded by Clayfur and the old cat. The tabby paused, watching the warrior spin in circles in the drifting snow. Huh, I’ll have to try that sometime, he thought, continuing past the two.

Later, when it was dark, a shrewd eye would have seen the young cat turning in circles at the edge of camp, trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue.​

✦ ★ ✦​

 

[DogTeeth]

A light smile grazed his jaw at the sight of the playful warrior, and may that light never know snuff for it was little flames like this that kept the clan so warm. Heated the shells of their hearts, and certaintly drew a small breathy giggle from the blonde. If he wasn’t eating something dubious, one didn’t need to gamble much that Clayfur was entertaining himself somehow.

Dogteeth had once been in giddy happiness, but only then did flowers spring from the dirt. Before the blankets of smothering frost. The smile on his maw laid faint and fading with each whip of the wind. His daughter was grown, and his duties were limited by his skills. " you did it ! " The laperm cheers around a thick pearly smile, daggered and meant to spear fish now dry with hunger.

A hunter, he was hardly, a fighter he was less. A fisher he couldn’t be in winter, but at that, he was the best. A poem sites somewhere between the stars and Dogteeth’s idle thoughts.

Rimefell’s presence is like a shadow, yet blotched and withered.

Ominous words betray the feelings of glee, torment it with the inevitable possibilities. Elderly and scratched as he was, his jaws wield a wise tongue for any willing to listen. Dogteeth obliges, teeth tightening and throat bobbing with the grip of impending doom.

The little one, brown of fur and curious of eye passes on wordlessly. That wouldn’t do, no, don’t let the childish whims die with the summer flowers themselves. With a sudden surge, he digs a paw into the dusty frost and pulls up a small clump. He swats it in the air toward Clayfur with a wide grin and gentle wag of his curly furred tail.

" If we lose our spirits... then leafbare already wins... no matter what's coming " he suggests softly, to Rimefell.

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OOC INFO REF

• —
  
  
• — Dogteeth
  — twenty-five moons
  — 2023 VOICE & ACCENT
  — warrior of Riverclan
  — gay | crushing on n/a
  — small curly-furred blonde and tan tom with blue eyes.
  — very gentle soul / easily upset and sensitive
  — deals a nasty bite
  BIOGRAPHY——— ✧
  
• 
  
  

​

 

[CLAYFUR]

Rimefell is a strange clanmate. Clay likes him, sure, but almost every conversation with the old man leaves him confused. The old tabby is never straightforward, seems to only speak in riddles or codes or any kind of pattern that makes it impossible for Clay to wrap his brain around. One of the apprentices had said something about brain damage that one time he ate sand, so maybe he should get that checked out.

Clayfur ceases his spinning in circles, letting his mouth gal shut for a number of heartbeats as he observes his clanmate, mulls over what Rimefell is saying. "That’s terrifying," he finally says to the scruffy-looking tomcat, hazel eyes going wide. Clay is only half joking, and his heart is thumping loudly in his chest. What does any of that mean? Should he be afraid? Has the old man finally lost his marbles? Is he speaking to Clayfur, or to the snow itself? Is he stating some kind of prophecy?

His gaze darts around in search of someone else—a translator, or a distraction—and lands upon a young apprentice. For a moment he thinks that Pine will rescue him somehow, in a way that only a younger cat can, but the child just continues past. Clay considers calling out to him, but Pine looks content to just… keep going. So he sighs, turns to face Rimefell again, and cocks his head to the side. "I hope I’m not the worst. I think I’m pretty nice, really."

A spray of snow hits him while he’s focused on the old cat’s reaction, and Clay gets some of the powdered ice swiped straight into his open mouth. It’s cold on his tongue, more so than what he’s been catching from the sky, and the earthen tom flops dramatically to the ground. Snow wets his fur, but he doesn’t really mind. Like, it’s not any worse than the river water, right?

He coughs and sputters around it for an embarrassingly long time given the small amount of snow that actually got into his maw. Damn you, Dogteeth, and your quiet pawsteps! Once he’s done with the dramatics, though, Clay draws himself back up onto all four paws, breathing harshly and mostly laughing. "You’ll pay for that," he mutters, rolling his shoulders and stalking closer to Dogteeth. It’s a shame he has to do it, really, because he likes the other warrior. But his vengeance must be exacted.

Once he’s within snow-hitting range, the tabby draws a pale paw through equally white snow, aiming to send a flurry of it flying in Dogteeth’s direction. "Take that!" And then he’s scrambling backward, no matter if his poorly-aimed swipe of snow hits the intended target or not. He rushes to stand behind Rimefell—hunches down, as though that will help him avoid an errant smack of the older cat’s paw. Aside from the smack-risk, it’s perfect, he can use the old man as cover!
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[ WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN? ]​

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[RIMEFELL]

"Wins?" He scoffs after a period of silence during Clayfur's attempted conversation, a silence that said nearly as much as the uninviting stare Rimefell had burdened him with. That same gaze afflicts Dogteeth now, though now whetted by distaste and incisive mockery. "This is no tournament of wills, you starry-eyed twit. The sky is not merely a place for you to lose your head in fleecy clouds, and you would do well to remember the snow does not care whether your chin tilts up or down." His upper lip curls and the grizzled feline stalks several paces away from Clayfur's sprawl to watch the roiling gray pall above their heads. "Storms do not need to win. They must be survived, which is not done by smiling at a black horizon."

A broad paw carves through the thickening mantle of snow, borealis-born eye fixed on the wound. The sky's cotton already seals the valley into little more than a scar. Rimefell's frown is a mountain's jagged peak.

His chest fills slowly with a deep breath, prompted by Clayfur's assumed position at Rimefell's back. A ragged ear flicks and long whiskers twitch. "How typical," he begins lowly, as safely calm as the center ring of a tempest, "that you would mistake your doom as salvation." In a violent bloom of motion, Rimefell twists on Clayfur, intent on wrestling him down with teeth at his scruff like a mother wrangling an unruly kit.
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[DogTeeth]

Dogteeth stiffens subtly, having seemed to rustle the bat’s nest that seemed this elder’s temper. The blonde tries to keep his eyes settled low, not to meet pupils lest the worries and anxieties transfer like disease. His own mind had been, fragile lately, susceptible to fright. Withered by claws and hardship, a scholar nonetheless.

He tries to cling to the moment, despite the topic of doom dripping from knowing lips. A butterfly wing laugh ripples from his jaws as his snowy assault lands, the earthen hued warrior pulled by dramatic strings and Dogteeth almost feels guilty- almost wonders if he had threw too hard but the laughter sings and his worries rot for once.

" Starry-eyed twit?! " Dogteeth blasts out in squawk like a prodded hen. His eyes narrow and shift to Rimefell fearlessly. Only to be blinded suddenly with a spray of white dust, and he staggers- blinking rapidly and jaw slack in surprise.

you would mistake your doom as salvation.

When he reopens his white speckled lids, Rimefell is moving quickly on his paws and Clayfur can be spotted behind the older chimera’s twisting legs. " HEY, what are you doing?! " Dogteeth’s smile is gone and his curly hackles rise and quiver in ringlet. Playful, was not a word he would use to describe Rimefell so- in horror he can only imagine the man was reprimanding Clayfur. Dogteeth rushes forward and aims to tug Rimefell off of the warrior by the fur of his shoulder.

​

OOC INFO REF

• —
  
  
• — Dogteeth
  — twenty-five moons
  — 2023 VOICE & ACCENT
  — warrior of Riverclan
  — gay | crushing on n/a
  — small curly-furred blonde and tan tom with blue eyes.
  — very gentle soul / easily upset and sensitive
  — deals a nasty bite
  BIOGRAPHY——— ✧
  
• 
  
  

​

 

[CLAYFUR]

Okay, so, in Clay’s defense, he thought the worst that could happen was getting smacked. If he’d known that Rimefell was liable to, like, tackle him to the ground, he would never have tried to hide behind the guy. But instead, here he is, teeth in his scruff keeping him on the ground. At first he assumes that Rimefell has decided to join in on their snow-throwing, but then he hears Dogteeth shouting, so maybe this isn’t actually a friendly little wrestling match.

The chocolate-striped warrior panics, flailing about for a brief moment. He’s gonna kill me, his mind screams at him. "Listen, we can talk about this," he manages to say, high-pitched and nervous. He tilts his head to look at Dogteeth, but otherwise remains limp in the older tom’s hold. "We were throwing snow at each other—you can’t just dunk me in it. It’s not the same!" As he speaks, Clayfur swipes a paw through the snow, as though he’ll find any sort of foothold there. He’s pretty sure he’s just stuck at this point, until Rimefell decides to let him go.
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[ WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN? ]​

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