pafp FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD — in front of the medicine den

[RAVENSONG]

"Now, walk gingerly with it." Ravensong coaxed Squishpaw, having just finished using his teeth to wrap a swath of cobwebs tightly around her paw where an infection-saving marigold poultice had been applied. He looked down on her and clicked his tongue. "I saw specks of dirt in that cut—you are lucky you came to me when you did. A nasty infection would set you back at least a week." He continued in that usual stern voice of his, juxtaposed so glaringly against his relative youth.

"Tell your mentor to take it easy on you for the rest of the day, and tomorrow. My orders." He carefully let go of Squishpaw's foreleg and would watch the tortoiseshell to make sure it was comfortable to her. "And you come back to me tomorrow so I can check it, yes? Did Oddpaw get hurt as well?" His pale green eyes shifted to meet her own and they retained that stony coolness until he finally broke and sighed, reaching over to give the younger cat a playful prod to the ear.

"What did you find that was so amusing to poke at anyway?"

wait for @Squishpaw !

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[Squishpaw]

Squishpaw sat without speaking - though her mouth opened a few times before shutting again - with her ears slightly flattened in contrition. She had winced slightly during treatment but was quick to obey orders and to stay still when required. Despite her sheepish body language, her eyes tracked Ravensong's every movement like she would hunt a butterfly. She frowned at the orders to take things lightly, especially as she heard "could have been set back a week." Did that mean it was even more important to work hard? One look at Ravensong's cool expression convinced Squishpaw not to argue, at least not this time.

Squishpaw straightened once her paw was released and her fur fluffed in excitement. She could answer these questions, they were easy and would reassure Ravensong! "Oddpaw didn't get hurt!" she said. "No one else did, I just got too close." She did not mention that Oddpaw had been the member of the group to actually pick the item up, so Oddpaw had been very close as well.

"We didn't know what it was," Squishpaw added with a shrug. "It was a really shiny thing though! Like fish scales, and fish scales can be sharp too! But it was really straight and buried in the ground so I don't think it came from a fish."

Squishpaw tilted her head. "Do you want me to show you? I thought we should show it to Cicadastar but Iciclefang told us to drop it." Squishpaw realized a bit late this could come across like she was trying to blame Iciclefang, which she wasn't really, but she also wasn't upset enough with the idea to try and backtrack. She just blinked at Ravensong expectantly.​

 

[CARP-PAW]

FIGHTING IT IS HOPELESS ————————————​

​

The acrid smell of blood was in camp again. It had been around when Cicadastar's kits got born, and it was stinky. Carpkit hadn't really enjoyed the smell of it, and had spent time in the nursery with her head buried underneath her mother's tail. ('Not really enjoying it' meant that Carpkit was whining for the rest of the morning until the winds carried the smell away.) So the minimal smell of it underneath something as equally stinky to smell cause Carpkit's eyes to narrow and water.

Finally, the kit could ignore it no longer, padding over towards Squishpaw and Ravensong- unexpectedly quiet, for her typical behavior. Her ears were perked, however, listening to the conversation as she leaned down to try and see the poultice-cobweb conversation. Finally, her head tipped uptowards towards Squishpaw, inhaling- and then the tumble of words came. "That looks like it hurts! Are you okay? Did Ravensong fix you up? I bet he did. What are you two talking about? I wanna go see. Take me to go see?" Carpkit glanced towards the two of them, then the older of the two, her eyes wide like the moons. "Pleeeeease?" The begging eyes were in full use, here.

"speech"
​

——————————————————————————————— sinkin' in your ocean ​

 

[FERNGILL]

Iciclefang had been right, it seemed; she'd been wise to draw Squishpaw away. Rocks could slice up paws, but... that thing had been no rock. It had shone like scales, but hadn't been as flimsy- fish had no capability to break pawpad-skin after all. No the ones he'd encountered, anyways.

Though Ravensong was Fernpaw's friend, and he visited for that purpose... there was always a part of Fernpaw that instinctively avoided the injured. He caught up with the midnight medic when there weren't any patients, or they were sleeping- so he tended to hover a little away from the medicine den when someone was being treated. Even for a cut- which definitely wasn't contagious. It was just... adamant aversion that he couldn't help, despite how irrational he knew it often was.

Still, when he saw Carpkit race over, firing a barrage of questions- talking about going to find the thing that'd drawn Squishpaw's blood- his working eye shot a bit wider, and he meandered over. "Oh, I saw it, Carpkit. It's really boring..." he said, drawling his voice out with fake-drowsiness. He almost yawned, caught up in the facade- and spared Ravensong and Squishpaw a quick glance, begging them with only a look to play along. "I've got a way cooler rock in my collection." Maybe she'd bother him with the pleading, instead...​

✦ penned by pin ✦​

 

[CLOUDSPLASH]

"See, your first mistake was listening to Iciclefang," a voice chimes in. It's quickly followed by a scruffy blue-and-white pelt, then a mischievous flash of silvery eyes. A babble in front of Ravensong's den had caught the attention of Cloudsplash, who'd been lazing only a few tail-lengths away before hopping up at the sound of curious kittens. Her eyes dart to Fernpaw for a second. Maybe she shouldn't have said that in front of Iciclefang's brother, and in reach of the molly's own sharp ears, but she soon remembers she doesn't particularly care. It was a joke! Maybe the kids wouldn't see it that way, but that'd be a good thing. Wouldn't want them to grow up boring.

Fernpaw claims, with slight desperation, that whatever they'd found was boring enough to force a yawn into him. Cloudsplash hadn't been on the discovery patrol, but Squishpaw's eager description piques her interest at least. She thinks the young girl might give into Carpkit's lavish attention, so she doesn't bother imitating her. "Weelll, your rock and that thing sound equally cool," the warrior remarks, tail swishing. Various thoughts run absentmindedly beneath her casual words, chief of which surrounded the thing and its danger. "You said it was in the ground right?" She grins at Squishpaw. "Maybe we can pull it up and eat it like an herb, and then when the other clans touch us they'll get a poke just like you did." Cloudsplash is faintly aware that she should be teaching them not to poke just any old thing instead, but the pain probably already taught the calico all she needed to know. As for Carpkit, well, the more foreign objects she touched, the faster she'd learn!​

 

[SALTSTING]

"I do not believe that is something we should be teaching, Cloudsplash." That he must express such things to a warrior older than him is unpleasant– were he more prone to emotive speech or thought, he would even call it ridiculous. "Iciclefang is a capable and trusted warrior. Our apprentices should undoubtedly be listening to her. I believe that dropping it, as Squishpaw says, was the correct course of action." His dark gaze, though eternally impassive, is somehow cutting in its intensity as he stares upon the other young warrior. Though the others present may wish to maintain some semblance of familiarity and friendliness with each other and with Carpkit, Saltsting has no such interest. He will not pretend to do anything but follow the rules.

And yet– and yet, despite his entirely reasonable lack of interest in entertaining this kitten, his voice has found its way from him on its own. (An irrational conclusion, yet the only one that remains within his mind.) "I have seen Fernpaw's collection for myself, and can say that, objectively, it is far more interesting than one sharp object so far from camp," he lies.

 "𝘐 𝘋𝘖𝘕'𝘛 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘌," 𝘐 𝘚𝘈𝘠, 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎𝘓𝘠, 𝘈𝘚 𝘐 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘌 𝘋𝘌𝘌𝘗𝘓𝘠  ╱╱ 8.08.2023 ˊˎ＜

• ooc: —
• ✦　　. 　 ˚　.  SALTSTING. FORMERLY UNDECIDED. HE - HIM OR THEY - THEM. YOUNG WARRIOR OF RIVERCLAN. SEXUALITY ﹖ PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ——
  
  
  ——  a black smoke with low white and dark brown eyes. his purebred father lent him much of his structure, with the oriental shorthair's characteristic angular features and large ears alongside a tall, lean frame, yet it is his mother's genes that rounded him out, adding strength to his shoulders and toughness to his paws. a kittypet and a colony cat, and saltsting is something entirely new.
  

  ✦ IMPORTANT NOTE. saltsting is touch averse and very vocal about it. icly, riverclanners should be aware of this. repeatedly touching him without the necessary comfort level will leave him with a poor opinion of any character.

• "speech"

​

 

[Squishpaw]

Squishpaw was a little surprised to find a kit that just sat and watched rather than bounced around full of questions, but maybe Carpkit was more introverted. She didn't let those wide eyes bother her as she and Ravensong spoke.

Then the banks overflowed and Squishpaw found herself the focus of a flood of questions that were then answered by Carpkit herself. Was this how it felt to talk to Squishpaw? She felt a flash of sympathy and a little bit of guilt she didn't want to examine too closely.

"I can't --" Squishpaw began to say, and then was summarily rescued from explaining herself by Fernpaw and Ravensong. She wasn't quite sure she felt comfortable calling the sharp thing boring, but the thought of Carpkit playing with it quickly made Squishpaw nod along. Ooh, interesting rock collection that Squishpaw did actually have some interest in, oooh --

Okay, but Cloudsplash was funny, and Squishpaw couldn't hide her giggle in time. The idea of brushing up against a cat in battle and them getting poked was just too good! No claws were necessary, just a touch and Squishpaw turned into a burr. Everyone would get pranked so hard. Of course, there was the problem of not being able to touch her clanmates anymore, which would make Squishpaw sad. Maybe there would be a way to have it so RiverClan was immune?

Ravensong uttering Squishpaw's name brought her back into the conversation, though she wasn't sure what all she had missed. No one was looking at her expectantly at least! His words reminded her of her interest in Fernpaw's rocks and Squishpaw nodded. "It is far from camp, and it wouldn't be a good idea to go and bring it back here," Squishpaw added to the conversation. She eyed the older cats around her and knew her words to be true.

She looked between Carpkit and Fernpaw. "We could go see Fernpaw's rock collection though!" Her eyes gleamed hopefully.​