FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH [ ☾ ] CHERVILKIT

[Swansong]

( ☁︎ )　 Chervilkit. The name feels wrong, looking upon his cat who's nearly the same age as he is. Draped in gentle dove-feather and sunlight, doll-like eyes and sharp, sculpted frame. A cat suspended in time, haunting their camp, not quite belonging to either the nursery nor the apprentice den. He approaches on soft paws, a quiet kind of curiosity alighting his half-lidded eyes.

"Little ghost..." Swanpaw murmurs, a soft echo. He's heard her called it before, and looking upon the shaky, pale creature before him, it feels even more fitting than when she was small. They'd been in the nursery together, in the medicine den together, and yet she had been left behind while he had not. "You've been a kit for far too long, haven't you...?" It's quiet, imploring, not quite pitying. There's a sad little smile across Swanpaw's face. Even with his apprentice name, he's hardly accomplished more than she has.

I WANNA BE HAUNTED ☁︎ I WANNA BE LOVED ! 【 11.6.23 】

• // @CHERVILKIT
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• "SPEECH"

• ☾ 　⁺　₊ 　⋆　SWANPAW.　APPRENTICE OF SHADOWCLAN.　HE / HIM / HIS.
  7 MOONS & AGES ON THE 17TH.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ☾ — A PALE, ELEGANT CREAM TABBY WITH PERIWINKLE BLUE EYES.

  
  HALFSHADE xx SMOGMAW. LITTERMATE TO APPLEPAW GARLICPAW & ASHENPAW. OLDER SIBLING TO HALFKIT TANGLEKIT & DREAMKIT.​

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[CHERVILSHADE]

'Little Ghost' was the name that Chervilkit had heard more than her own, as though it were more apt than the very moniker that she had been gifted at birth, undeserving of what her mother had bestowed upon fledgling form. It was fitting, even now. The molly haunted the Shadowclan camp as though the lethargic murk had become her home, flitting through patches of dark and light like a restless wraith, one yearning for slumber yet never seizing it with its two frangible, intangible hands.

Dull, hornwort-green eyes turned towards the almost seraphic tom, who gave her a not-quite-piteous look. Swankit - no, paw - draped himself in the plumage of his namesake, a delicate and sunlit palette as though leaf-bare's first coat of snow, lying delicately atop the bowed knolls and the rising mounds. She found it quite pretty, in all honesty. Such smiles of brightness through the infallible gloom were almost comforting, in a sense. Every day is a new day, her mother mulled to her quite often. Like a four-leaf clover or a rich piece of prey in starvation, it was the odd one out that often inspired her. They were much like her awkward and gangling stature, like a specter floating and breathing among the living.

Chervilkit mirrored Swanpaw's smile, though it appeared like it almost pained her as if her overwhelming sadness ate at her as the perpetual ocean's tide ate at the seashore. Soft features marred and folded to give her a ghost of a grin, a polite curve upon the colors of destitute clouds. "I have. I'm sorry, I don't know why exactly... I wish I did." She mewed quietly, voice lilting as though it were caught in the crux of the hurricane. There seemed to be no respite for the girl's tone, always trembling and shivering in the cold of her own disquietude. "I wonder if I missed anything... Like I was meant to do something to prove myself..." Sorry that I am this way.
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[Swansong]

( ☁︎ )　 Chervilkit mirrors his smile easily, a quiet and destitute thing. It looks good on her, this ghostly whisper of a grin, even as the sadness clouds it, even as it doesn't look quite fitting. She's got a delicate face, a pretty face, soft yet sharpening as it curves into the same parody of joy that Swanpaw himself wears.

When she speaks, her response startles him a bit, and his own comes surprisingly quick for the lethargic cat. His words were not meant as accusatory, and he rectified the mistake hastily. "Ah, don't apologize --" (If there was some wrong she was atoning for, surely she had paid her penance.) "It was the sickness that kept you... Only the stars know why." His voice is soft, certain. He wonders, at times, why it is that the stars would claim him and then let him free. There must have been some reason he was spared, when his mother was not. Some reason Chervilkit was spared too, such a delicate thing with her tired eyes and her whisper-thin voice, fragile like the first frost of leafbare.

Her worries draw a ghost of a breathy laugh from Swanpaw. "I wouldn't know," he murmurs, tone light. "I wonder much the same, ah... But we can't go back now. The time was taken, and we can't take it back..." Could Swanpaw have known his littlest siblings, before they vanished? Saved them? Could he have become the type of cat his father would be proud to come home to? The path is not as clear for him as it is Chervilkit, yet even for her a simple change of name is but a cobweb over the wound, too little too late.

I WANNA BE HAUNTED ☁︎ I WANNA BE LOVED ! 【 11.22.23 】

• //
  ​

• "SPEECH"

• ☾ 　⁺　₊ 　⋆　SWANPAW.　APPRENTICE OF SHADOWCLAN.　HE / HIM / HIS.
  8 MOONS & AGES ON THE 17TH.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ☾ — A PALE, ELEGANT CREAM TABBY WITH PERIWINKLE BLUE EYES.

  
  HALFSHADE xx SMOGMAW. LITTERMATE TO APPLEPAW GARLICPAW & ASHENPAW. OLDER SIBLING TO THORNKIT HALFKIT TANGLEKIT & DREAMKIT.​

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[CHERVILSHADE]

Only the stars know why. Even from a young age, Chervilkit wished to know what that unknowably vast expanse thought of her, as if Silverpelt was but another cat, emblazoned into the sky rather than the earth, with needs and wants and opinions on her. It was easier to imagine that Starclan was just one thing rather than a hivemind of howling and flitting specters of loved ones. It was less fearsome that way, too. When Little Ghost prayed with her head bowed to the unmoving ground and her mind to the aimless sky, she imagined she prayed to one specific god-figure that could magically solve all of her problems, her frights, and what lay between her and the unknown. She prayed and she prayed, but mischance had always been stronger than merriness. That was why yellowcough had ravaged them, she mused.

She still believed, though. Perhaps it had all happened for a reason, however blind to it she might be.

The thought of time as an impassable tide that could not be surpassed was a daunting one. If the passage of time were the white-toothed and sloshing ocean, then she was a piece of flotsam from a boat torn open from the inside out. She was stuck in the tide, swimming when she knew naught how to. Time had passed and it was supposed to take her with it, upon gentle and swaying wing. It had taken her, though she had proven to be stubborn and unchanging. Soon, she would erode and waste and yet remain as she was. At least, that was what Little Ghost thought would happen. She waited for time to seize her fragile body and cast her into the cloud-strewn skies, but waiting was all that she had done.

What fear was felt did not show upon a trembling figure, as though a windswept and uncertain bough on the tree, so close to falling to the dirt and never returning to the stature of the other branches. As much as she tried to hide it, she was no actress. It still bled through twitching whiskers and darting hornwort-green gaze. "I suppose not. I guess not even Starclan knows why I was kept from apprenticehood. Maybe it's a sign that I shouldn't be an apprentice..." Her worst fears came bubbling and heaving, like a raspy and irreverent cough, spat out and choked on. Despite the porcelain-plated features, it was an ungraceful notion to wrack the butterfly-wing girl. She had never been prepared to deal with it, and yet she was nothing but the vessel for unspoken words and undone paths.

What else could I be? There's nothing but being an apprentice. The grim scenario of Chilledstar kicking her out of the only home she had ever known popped into a vivid imagination, but she shook it away like the paw to the persistent burr.
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[Swansong]

( ☁︎ )　 Swanpaw is still and quiet as the ghostly kit again speaks. Her words are spat like infection, like the sickness has gone deeper than the body. Hopelessness spills from her maw, unrelenting and bitter despite the shaky softness of her tone, the gentleness of all that she is. Swanpaw hardly reacts, though his voice grows impossibly smaller. "Ah... I did not think of it that way..." he murmurs, hesitant as he arranges his thoughts.

It's a rotten thought, diseased and ugly. A cat not meant to be an apprentice, it's hard to imagine such a thing. Although, if he did imagine it, it would look rather like the two of them. Like her, shaky and rasping and so ephemeral that it seems she could dissipate into the marsh-fog one day to never return. Like him, lethargic and unwilling, a cat death-touched.

It's a painful thought, and it gives him pause. He never wanted to be apprenticed, yet now that he's had his wish granted he finds the alternative just as unpleasant. But if the sickness can be cured, perhaps so too can the despair. "But, you... you live for a reason too... and you will be apprenticed. Soon."

He doesn't know if the reassurance is enough. Perhaps he's misspoken from the very start. "I... don't wish to upset you. I hope I don't..." The airy voice trails off, eyes unfocused for a moment. He tilts his head, thinking.

"We are similar, aren't we...?" It's plain enough to see, in the rasp of their voices and the distance in their eyes. "Maybe..." Another pause. He chooses his words more carefully now. "I need to relearn... We could... try together? To make up for stolen time..." It will be nice once she's apprenticed, he thinks, to have someone who understands.

I WANNA BE HAUNTED ☁︎ I WANNA BE LOVED ! 【 12.28.23 】

• // so sorry for the late reply!
  ​

• "SPEECH"

• ☾ 　⁺　₊ 　⋆　SWANPAW.　APPRENTICE OF SHADOWCLAN.　HE / HIM / HIS.
  9 MOONS & AGES ON THE 17TH.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ☾ — A PALE, ELEGANT CREAM TABBY WITH PERIWINKLE BLUE EYES.

  
  HALFSHADE xx SMOGMAW. LITTERMATE TO APPLEPAW GARLICPAW & ASHENPAW.​

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