private hanging on a thread // periwinklepaw

[nightingalecry]

Her tail twitches. The sun has long since sunk below the horizon line and Nightingalepaw is still awake - perhaps unsurprising, as many of the moorland cats prefer exploring beneath the glittering moon as opposed to the warm sun. Regardless of preference, however, the she-cat simply can't sleep. It's another breach of her peace, another worried thought cracking open what little good she thought she had. Juniperfrost died weeks ago - moons ago, even, maybe - yet his kits totter around and she can't help but wonder if some thread of fate would tie them together, too.

She hates the idea, but it keeps her awake.

It would be sick and twisted to bind one to her in their apprenticehood - though that begs the question of whether or not she'd be a warrior by the time they are apprenticed. Illness has long since left her, yet she and her brother still linger in the wings, watching Clanmates such as Gravelsnap and Snailstride earn their names, waiting for a turn. Periwinklepaw still isn't fully healthy, she supposes - maybe his fainting spells of the past threaten his warriorhood today. But why must she still lie in wait of the inevitable?

Sootstar doesn't trust you.

The thought is a common one yet it rattles her all the same. She stands abruptly from her nest with all the apprentices, clenching her teeth while she steps around them and searches deftly for the medicine den. Nightingalepaw all but pops her head into the thickly smelling den, ears pinned to her head. "Mmm - Peri?" she hates to speak, but at least so late in the night will allow her a whisper without it being so odd. "Are you... awake, maybe?"

@Periwinklebreeze. ​

 

[Periwinklebreeze.]

STEADY THE RIGHTS AND THE WRONGS
periwinklepaw | 09 months | demi-boy | he/they | physically easy (pacifist) | mentally easy | attack in bold #ccccff

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It is nothing unusual to find the boy awake at night - or at the least, sleeping only lightly, the soft snores of his clanmates a lullaby behind closed eyes even as his mind refuses to drift off into dreamland, leaving him feeling as though he never rested at all. A quiet voice awakes up from his drifting, all to familiar in it's raspy lull, and clear blue eyes open to meet mismatched orbs that always remind him of the sky and grass. Beneath the strong scent of herbs, sharp and potent, and the ever lingering scent of sickness that seems to haunt these walls, never truly leaving even when the den has been emptied of nearly all it's occupants, he can catch hers - his sisters. "Y-yeah," he says softly, his voice hardly more than a hum as he hopes to not wake his sleeping denmate. Vulturemask has been as restless as himself of late, irritated as they all are by the lockdown, and he does not wish to put any more weight upon the black toms shoulders.

Long limbs creak and groan like branches laden by a storm as he gets to his paws, slipping forwards to join his silver-tinted sister at the entrance, blinking away the lingering throes of almost-sleep. "A-are you alright? c-c-can't sleep?" he says gently, concern shining through his every word, his every motion, is long tail flicking to tap lightly at her shoulder. There is so little left in this world that peri can treasure - one mother missing, the other made enemy, a sibling in the grave. There is only them - nightingale and periwinkle, two apprentices with to-long names and to-long apprenticeships. Only ever them.

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