- Jun 7, 2022
- 416
- 336
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the sky erupts.
manifestation in the dark ribbons of misted clouds, shaded like stars he could no longer see. his veins buzz with forsaken glory, burning from the inside out with the flood of tarred ichor. in his time here he had settled ; adjusted to the vantablack, salt - frozen eyes cast hollow and dark with the effort of maintaining his slice of watershorn territory. a small inlet of land, a shore overhanging a small, bottomless pond, water thick and too still. never moving, not even when he presses a paw to its ink - laden surface, not able to mirror the ripple of life water had once had. it had plastered to him, slinks up the skeletal wiring of his forepaw and ribbons grossly between too sharp knuckles — but from it casts a vision of rolling meadows, of the sway of claw - marred willow, of fog - capped fools with broken eyes and too many ghosts at their den.
he watches often. watches intently. watches with a bitter seethe, a lashing of great curled tail, ringlets of talonlike claw reaching out to scuff violence into the stone beneath him and the sky erupts — a growl like thunder, for he always was such. a storm, riotous and all - encompassing, drenching all those who came near enough to take his downpour. he watches and feels himself growing cloudburst dark, ribboned in shadow that tightens around his ribs, heightens his anger until it hits from his body in a halo of frizzed and wild curls. he sees it all : he watches life drain from his beloved eight times over, watches the waves thrash and wade over his night - splain body in a cruel mimicry of his rat of a medicine cat. the traitorous thing, gone to leave him in the dead of night. running.
hed died for her. he’d always been a foolish, heart - driven idiot ; stupid, stupid, stupid. when his voice grows hoarse from his despairing wail ( the forest seemed to quake with enjoyment, feeding on his abject misery ) he realizes that she is wailing as well. he feels only hate. hatred, feels it boil over and feels his scream turn to rage he’s never felt before. his love dies and he can do nothing but hate. he watches lichentail tuck her namesake between trembling striped legs and scurry to camp like a struck hound, watches her drag and mope in moons after, watches her mourn the life she’d never deserved to serve as closely as they had. she watches her grate through death after death, watches as his closest convert dies alongside his daughter, watches her as his last does as well. she scrapes the remnants of fishbone crown and wears it in broken, skin - tearing shards. he prays it hurts.
his hatred grows stronger. grows into every curl, every wisp, every whisker and claw and pearlescent tooth he bares. it gleams in his wild eye, slitted and glaring towards any who creep close, gleaming forever silver in the bitter mouth moonlight. terror rakes it’s claws across riverclan’s flailing corpse. they slit its throat as hers had been, claws overflowing with the blood he had pumped into the life of the meadowlands. the effort, the tears, the wrenching himself to the top. he watches when dogs attack, when two legs invade. he prays it is divine retaliation. he prays the stars have realized their foolishness and crumbles the ground beneath their paws to snuff the life nine times over, just as his mates had been. death upon death, death upon death.. they never enter this place but cicadastar sees anyway.
their cup pours over on a warm summer day. spills with kittypet blood and a pale, pathetic mimicry of what had once been a proud, private clan. they join their ranks alongside a shadowclan - born mutt and its unpunished father. a clan of code breakers and a floundering, besmirched legacy.
“ just like that. all of it — ruined! just. like. that. “ his voice snaps like lightning, breaking the air of tension that trembles at all sides. he steps to the side, paces, sways his head with each long, lashing stride. eyes flow from the darkness and he is too enthralled in his own anger, his misery to care. the mongrel ascends his rock and alerts the clan to snowypaw’s riverclan blood — announces their shame with none of her own on the day his children were to be warriors. his veins glow brighter, thinks he can feel the anger of starclan itself pour through him, emitting from every pour in frostbleached fury, “ my children, my loves.. my lights. raised in this joke of a clan, a joke of the future i’d left for them. their father would be rolling in his water - logged grave! “ each syllable louder, shouting, raging. a show, once — a peacocking show of power, power harnessed! now only a reminder of how far the rivers crown had fallen.
they finally continue and his ears perk, swivel to listen, to watch. his beautiful daughter is first — so grown, filled to her potential and cloaked in a smattering of night that falls in ringlets of featherlight curls. she is much like him, proud and wicked, with her fathers stone expression. she is named beefang, and it is apt. vicious. his son is addressed next in tones slow, agitating, like claws against stone ( he knows. does it again, again, again.. ) and he is his image. never had he strayed from dark phantom coat, wearing his ghost on spokes of haunted bone. he is named cicadaflight, and it earns a quiet sniff. the founding leader settles at the pool, hind limbs jutting sharp and uncomfortable at too thin sides, glaring down the slope of his muzzle to watch the last of his litter earn her name. cricketpaw, to cricketchirp. names smokestar had chosen, she says. his teeth grit to hear his name on his murderer’s tongue, “ but never was he talented with names. “
it nearly makes him smile, the affection still lingering there.. ghosts his lips as the pool glows, remains on them as he leans close on too sharp elbows, feels the strange warmness emanating from the waters still edge. love beams in hollow eyes and he tests their names on his tongue, not quite as star - studded as he’d have liked.. but theirs all the same, “ beefang, cicadaflight, cricketchirp.. do well by me, darling ones. “ a whisper. stately, regal — desperate, ” for one day, you will take matters into your own paws. “ no threats. a promise.
manifestation in the dark ribbons of misted clouds, shaded like stars he could no longer see. his veins buzz with forsaken glory, burning from the inside out with the flood of tarred ichor. in his time here he had settled ; adjusted to the vantablack, salt - frozen eyes cast hollow and dark with the effort of maintaining his slice of watershorn territory. a small inlet of land, a shore overhanging a small, bottomless pond, water thick and too still. never moving, not even when he presses a paw to its ink - laden surface, not able to mirror the ripple of life water had once had. it had plastered to him, slinks up the skeletal wiring of his forepaw and ribbons grossly between too sharp knuckles — but from it casts a vision of rolling meadows, of the sway of claw - marred willow, of fog - capped fools with broken eyes and too many ghosts at their den.
he watches often. watches intently. watches with a bitter seethe, a lashing of great curled tail, ringlets of talonlike claw reaching out to scuff violence into the stone beneath him and the sky erupts — a growl like thunder, for he always was such. a storm, riotous and all - encompassing, drenching all those who came near enough to take his downpour. he watches and feels himself growing cloudburst dark, ribboned in shadow that tightens around his ribs, heightens his anger until it hits from his body in a halo of frizzed and wild curls. he sees it all : he watches life drain from his beloved eight times over, watches the waves thrash and wade over his night - splain body in a cruel mimicry of his rat of a medicine cat. the traitorous thing, gone to leave him in the dead of night. running.
hed died for her. he’d always been a foolish, heart - driven idiot ; stupid, stupid, stupid. when his voice grows hoarse from his despairing wail ( the forest seemed to quake with enjoyment, feeding on his abject misery ) he realizes that she is wailing as well. he feels only hate. hatred, feels it boil over and feels his scream turn to rage he’s never felt before. his love dies and he can do nothing but hate. he watches lichentail tuck her namesake between trembling striped legs and scurry to camp like a struck hound, watches her drag and mope in moons after, watches her mourn the life she’d never deserved to serve as closely as they had. she watches her grate through death after death, watches as his closest convert dies alongside his daughter, watches her as his last does as well. she scrapes the remnants of fishbone crown and wears it in broken, skin - tearing shards. he prays it hurts.
his hatred grows stronger. grows into every curl, every wisp, every whisker and claw and pearlescent tooth he bares. it gleams in his wild eye, slitted and glaring towards any who creep close, gleaming forever silver in the bitter mouth moonlight. terror rakes it’s claws across riverclan’s flailing corpse. they slit its throat as hers had been, claws overflowing with the blood he had pumped into the life of the meadowlands. the effort, the tears, the wrenching himself to the top. he watches when dogs attack, when two legs invade. he prays it is divine retaliation. he prays the stars have realized their foolishness and crumbles the ground beneath their paws to snuff the life nine times over, just as his mates had been. death upon death, death upon death.. they never enter this place but cicadastar sees anyway.
their cup pours over on a warm summer day. spills with kittypet blood and a pale, pathetic mimicry of what had once been a proud, private clan. they join their ranks alongside a shadowclan - born mutt and its unpunished father. a clan of code breakers and a floundering, besmirched legacy.
“ just like that. all of it — ruined! just. like. that. “ his voice snaps like lightning, breaking the air of tension that trembles at all sides. he steps to the side, paces, sways his head with each long, lashing stride. eyes flow from the darkness and he is too enthralled in his own anger, his misery to care. the mongrel ascends his rock and alerts the clan to snowypaw’s riverclan blood — announces their shame with none of her own on the day his children were to be warriors. his veins glow brighter, thinks he can feel the anger of starclan itself pour through him, emitting from every pour in frostbleached fury, “ my children, my loves.. my lights. raised in this joke of a clan, a joke of the future i’d left for them. their father would be rolling in his water - logged grave! “ each syllable louder, shouting, raging. a show, once — a peacocking show of power, power harnessed! now only a reminder of how far the rivers crown had fallen.
they finally continue and his ears perk, swivel to listen, to watch. his beautiful daughter is first — so grown, filled to her potential and cloaked in a smattering of night that falls in ringlets of featherlight curls. she is much like him, proud and wicked, with her fathers stone expression. she is named beefang, and it is apt. vicious. his son is addressed next in tones slow, agitating, like claws against stone ( he knows. does it again, again, again.. ) and he is his image. never had he strayed from dark phantom coat, wearing his ghost on spokes of haunted bone. he is named cicadaflight, and it earns a quiet sniff. the founding leader settles at the pool, hind limbs jutting sharp and uncomfortable at too thin sides, glaring down the slope of his muzzle to watch the last of his litter earn her name. cricketpaw, to cricketchirp. names smokestar had chosen, she says. his teeth grit to hear his name on his murderer’s tongue, “ but never was he talented with names. “
it nearly makes him smile, the affection still lingering there.. ghosts his lips as the pool glows, remains on them as he leans close on too sharp elbows, feels the strange warmness emanating from the waters still edge. love beams in hollow eyes and he tests their names on his tongue, not quite as star - studded as he’d have liked.. but theirs all the same, “ beefang, cicadaflight, cricketchirp.. do well by me, darling ones. “ a whisper. stately, regal — desperate, ” for one day, you will take matters into your own paws. “ no threats. a promise.
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i. HE LOVES HIS KIDS. IM SOOO SORRY LICHEN < 3
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" speech "
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★ ⋆ CICADASTAR
−−−FOUNDING LEADER OF RIVERCLAN. HOMOSEXUAL, MATED TOSMOKESTAR; FATHER TO CRICKETPAW, CICADAPAW && BEEPAW. DARK FOREST RESIDENT. SMELLS LIKE FROST ROT AND DIRTY FLOODWATER. PENNED BY ANTLERS−−−−⁺₊✧
he / him. gaunt, curled black tortoiseshell smoke with paralyzing permafrost eyes. his structure sings a feral sort of hymnal, presenting an almost dangerous sort of beauty veiling what monstrosities lie beneath the ivory of his skull. frighteningly thin, sunken cheeks drawing a shadow beneath high, sharp cheekbones with tall, angular ears settling high atop the flatter slope of his cranium. he is beautiful, in a haunting sort of way ; but for all this looks, his expression is lax, void — corpse - eyed and hollow until spoken to, when he smiles with too many teeth, blackened frostbite pulling back his maw to bear canines set beneath curling whiskers, pantomime skeletal. a predatory gracefulness from the lines that press the image of exhaustion beneath ice water hues to the slow, sure gait in which he walks, nameless strength poorly concealed within the gaunt lines of his physique. always holding himself with a tragic sort of grace ; poised, prim and uncanny, shrouded forever at tendril - like limbs with thick, dark mist.
