private fork found in kitchen .. cicadaflight

[hazecloud]

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An odd-eyed gaze cannot help but linger on the past. Searching, flitting through memories untouched by another, moments unseen yet lived in the shadows between the branches. Etched across the walls in untold stories, silent to all but three.

It never looked that good when he slept there, he said. She would find truth in his words as she recalled the scene within the willow tree before she and Salmonshade fixed it to fit their new leader. It was barren of anything but a nest. Moss older than Smokestar's absence as she recalled he himself had shied away from being alone at night. Joining his fellows warriors in their own reed-wrapped nests, sharing space with his kin once again.

It had been dusty, moldy, but when Salmonshade dragged it away she had discovered several items hidden beneath. A special stash kept by the father, the items clearly having sentimentality attached. Hazecloud had kept them stored safely to return to toms survivors, fixing them to be a better gift than decayed reeds.

"I found something quite interesting in there." The queen murmured as she approached the mottled form. Midnight seemed to be the time Cicadaflight appeared most often, she noticed, in the short time she had her own share of nightmares in the nursery. Passing one another in the darkness, a silent treaty to preserve the quiet calm. This time she sat beside him as his eyes sought the watery depths, close enough she could feel the rise of his sides in each breath.

"He kept these, tucked away like a secret." At his paws she would reveal them. A long red feather, like the kind he had kept tucked above his tail. Another shell, though not a scallop or conch, but a snail shell, hollow and wrapped in bands of yellow and black. The last recoverable item was a stone, thick and blocky, dressed in swirling forms of the most peculiar pattern. A fossil, though they wouldn't know it any more than an interesting rock.

"I'm not sure which of you three brought them to him but... it's the perfect amount, for each of you to have returned." There isn't a way to make this moment happy, but she accepted that when she decided to move her family in his father's place. Time must move, the past had to stay behind them. "My father did not care for gifts like this. I'm glad that, even though they're gone... you can still have a piece of him back."

✿ ———— I'll be your regular mama ✿ ————— And I'll put that gun away

• @CICADAFLIGHT
• 
  
  
  Hazecloud
  —⊰⋅ Queen of RiverClan
  —⊰⋅ She/Her
  "SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
  —⊰⋅ LH blue smoke with green eyes.
  

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[CICADAFLIGHT]

He is not quite sure how to treat Hazecloud in the wake of her promotion. No longer is she merely the kind cloud - smoked face in the nursery, after all; never again can she simply be the mother of his cousins, the mate of his leader, a cat he doesn't mind spending time with. Now, she is Hazecloud in all - capital lettering, bold black and Gothic in its bleak significance; she is a cat to be admired, to be respected, to dip his head to and heed the orders of. Everything else comes second.

" Hazecloud, " he greets when she approaches him at the midnight hour, dipping his head low under the weight of velveteen ears, under the weight of her new title pressing against his temples. Her closeness unsettles him, like a deer paused to flee, but he dares not say anything; if she chooses to step into his space, so be it. His paws flex against the sand, clawless but alive with movement, kneading his discomfort into the earth. He's wordless, but his ears flicker in stoic acknowledgement of her prompting.

Emotion bleeds into odd eyes like a death - blow when she presents the odd collection of items. He imagines it pouring from his liquid pupils, dripping thickly from his throat like the blow that had once struck his father down—puddling at his paws, better a visceral thing. Let out, bloodletting, a catharsis, a release; the enormity of his feelings allowed to go unspoken. Reality denies him that, and only the lightest of mists blows through the landscapes of his eyes, leaving white lashes to wipe them clean, batting away festering dampness.

" Oh, " he says, and the lonely word carries the weight of its fallen comrades. He takes the little gifts in his paws with more delicacy than he has ever handled anything, holding the pawful of items as if they might break between his heavy paws. He is a creature made for violence, borne for it, as the hunting - dog takes to the rabbit's throat in its teeth, the dray horse to the metal taste of the bit, the gargoyle to the church's walls. He is not quite sure how to handle things gently.

There is a long silence, then, after Hazecloud finishes speaking.

" Thank you, " he says finally, and it is choked with all the tears he has not allowed himself to shed—that he still does not allow himself to shed. Her consideration is jarring. " This is . . . this means so much. "

OOC : —

☆

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