How deliciously daunting it must be for wee Flintpaw. Unfledged eyes gawp at the towering spiral of lifeless bark, awash with building resignation. Doubt takes root in the heart before it does the brain and nerves. As such, he anticipates an eager start once she regains her wits, and whatever paltry resolve she musters will soon be lost to the breeze. That's anguish summarised. Strength may be shown in the initial push, but the growing sense of futility will reach a deafening point, for it is loudened by every subsequent step. One will find their willpower sapped once past the threshold. This he knows, because he has walked this route since his return to the marshland. The young apprentice is poised to discover her limits in the coming moments, the sorry soul she is, and he's content in being privy to the spectacle.
Smogmaw finds his breath hitching when the other's claws get their first taste of bark. Only, Flintpaw stalls in her motion, and presents a look tinged by expectation, as though silently asking for something. "C'mon, get up there," he meows, words gliding forth on an icy breath. "You won't fall." It's a belief swiftly debunked. Come a pawful of seconds later, she's collapsed and crumpled, intimately acquainted to the twigs scattered underfoot. His tail flourishes dramatically. What a shambles.
A gravelly hum emits when she gives it another go. At a pace rivalling that of a lowly snail, leaden limbs carry the fragile feline skyward. He cannot show it, hence he doesn't, but his delight knows no bounds in observing her navigate from one tree branch to the next with precarious charm. The tom has half a mind to yawp up at him, a distraction to disrupt his focus and render it as unstable as his balance, yet he's unable to find reason to. By this point in time, Flintpaw nearly claimed the Sycamore's crown as his own, no less than a whisker away from her target.
Sunset-kissed eyes narrow ever nominally, vision tightening around the far-reaching tendrils and the cat caught up in them. His companion is naught but a vague, stationary outline, having reached the tippity-top, though a squint aids him in deciphering the mannerism written into their face. What meets his scrutiny is an expression arrested in fear's icy clutches, a posture emanating pure terror and surrender. No triumph lingers on his tongue, it is lost alongside the breath stolen from his lungs.
The laurels go Smogmaw, today. He has won. Amidst the apprentice's underlying helplessness, a steeper level of vulnerability unfolds. Yeah, it's kind of fucked up. That's a kid up there. Nonetheless, Flintpaw's misfortune comes as a drop of vigour to his otherwise monotonous lake of existence, so forgive him for indulging.
"You did it!" hollers the deputy, deaf to their pitiful mewling mere moments before. "Now, get down here! Hustle! Come on!"
