- Aug 9, 2022
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It is not the injury that casts his face in a brooding shadow, but the meaning behind it. Scars meant nothing, he had several, multitudes, inside and outside; his heart bore the brunt of it, his flesh the rest. One day he would be nothing but scar, knotted and twisted pink ridges latticed over every inch of his body; he would be a walking corpse, shambling from one task to the next. One day they'd consume him, drown him within the folds of battered and torn flesh until he was nothing but a wound. Smokethroat was well-accustomed to cleaning his own cuts and scrapes, seeing Beesong if they seemed significant but it was this new one on his chest he wanted no part in acknowledging and so he'd left it seeping and raw, hidden by matted fur plastered over it to hide it from view. Deep enough it would eventually raise, claim his chest with its mark. An experienced combatant like himself knew that scars never faded, no matter how small they were they would lingered even if it was just the memory of them but this was a blatant display of disrespect eternally marred upon him.
He remembers the gathering, the scars once born across both Weaselclaw and Hyacinthbreath's chests, their then deputy Duskfire equally wounded. Only sparred were the medicine cats. He imagined a world where it was the norm to mark your most loyal with bloodshed, to show your heart, to expose it so readily. Spilling bloods of the cats who trust you, who you supposedly trusted, permenantly etching your insignia upon them for their entire lives. The anger he felt then was miniscule to the rage simmering in his chest now, he'd gone to the river's edge to look at even covered in fur he would need to clean he knew it. It was there forever now. A mark, a brand, a sign of defeat at moorland claws, a reminder of what merciless acts lay beyond the gorge and rolling hills. Smokethroat leans forward, inches into the water until it is up to his chest just below where the new wound lie; the gash along his belly burns from the cold river rushing past it and he thrusts his head down beneath the surface of the current to scream furiously frothing bubbbles and a howl muffled under waves. When he lifted his head back up, whiskers heavy and dripping water he felt no better for it. A paw was raised, sloshing the water upward to clean the bloodied tangle of dark fur at his chest and he felt his claws unsheath instinctually; what if he...carved it more. Removed the single flash, darted an X across himself in a mimicry of the one Hyacinthbreath bore...but no, even that felt horrid. A traitor to Wind was not what he was but a killer of it he could accept.
