hooves and claw ☾✩☽ mousepaw

[Moonwhisper]

She does not want to be here hunting with Mousepaw, but that was their assignment and she was a dutiful apprentice if anything. Moonpaw did not want to backtalk, complain or otherwise be unruly, she had goals to aspire to and understanding her place was part of that. Still, she had to bite her tongue to withold a comment on it and its not like she was going alone either; their were warriors present obviously due to the boars still roaming the territory. It was easy enough to avoid the tortie, but eventually they came across tracks that stopped her in her own. Moonpaw lifted her spotted muzzle, scented the air and wondered briefly why the smell was so fresh before a rustle in the woods sends the patrol scurrying for cover. Momentarily she is surprised, jumping in place but not moving until the flat snout of one of the beasts crashes through the underbrush and suddenly she is motivated once more. The ragdoll apprentice feels her legs burning as she rushes forward and collides into the first tree she sees with claws out; her brief stint in SkyClan has given her just enough skill that she is up it to the highest branch she can reach before she's left breathless and panting; draped over it like a fluttering leaf.
The boar, for its part, doesn't seem too interested in following and she assumed they couldn't climb by how bulky they were, by the bluntness of its odd hooves, but there is still a moment of fearful uncertainty as she stares down at it snuffling about the roots before it begins to wander off; the pack of them linger nearby grunting noisily and she's finally able to breath. And realize she has company. Pale blue eyes widen as she turns, spots Mousepaw in the tree just next to her on another branch so close they could probably leap the gap to join one another, but she stubbornly remains fixed in place and also out of a small bout of fear she might miss her jump. Hurt limbs on the ground next to the great tusked things that killed Graystorm. It makes her shudder at the thought.
"...well NOW what..." Would they wait for the pack to continue onward, where had their warrior chaperones gone?

---

[Ooc]
@MOUSEPAW !
​

 

[MOUSENOSE]

Unlike Moonpaw, who sullenly accepts their task with grace, Mousepaw had loudly complained to Silverlightning and Raccoonstripe. “I hunt better alone,” she’d huffed, to no avail. Blah, blah, something about teamwork. The mostly-white she-cat wears a cartoonish frown as she pads after the tortie-painted she-cat. The creatures she’d first scented on the patrol with her mentor are still trampling the undergrowth of their territory and ruining their hunting attempts with their noise and stink. “I can’t smell anything through the boar smell,” she grumbles.

Moonpaw stops in her tracks, and Mousepaw bumps into her. “Hey, watch it!” But their blue eyes are narrow, intently trained on something. Mousepaw shoulders her, leaning closer until their faces are side by side. “Is that…”

They don’t have time to finish their thought. The unruly snort of a boar behind them sends a thrill of fear through her body. Moonpaw shoots away, quick on her paws, and Mousepaw does not hesitate, either. She thanks StarClan she’d been assigned to Silverlightning during kithood—his climbing skills have truly come in handy with the dogs and the boars smashing through ThunderClan every other moon. Claws wrench easily into the bark, and she hauls herself to a low-hanging branch out of the creature’s reach. Her flanks heave with effort, but they’re safe—she turns to see Moonpaw fixing her claws into the tree adjacent to her’s.

“Well now what…” Mousepaw shakes, her fur fluffed out into a tremendous blue-spotted cloud around her. “You tell me! Aren’t you supposed to be the smartest apprentice who ever lived?” They snort, but the crude remark is an effort to hide the tremble in her voice and paws. “We gotta do something… I’m not gonna be a snack for those ugly things!”
​

[ PENNED BY MARQUETTE ]​

 

[Moonwhisper]

Aren't you supposed to be the smartest apprentice who ever lived? Ugh, this girl-she was already debating making a run for it despite the risk.
"If my competition is you then yes, I am." She snaps, voice brittle like ice and tone impatient as though she scolded a particularly loud kit. Which, as far as she was concerned was what Mousepaw was. The tortie point shifts her paws on the branch to try and adjust her footing, a brief moment of unease creeps into the back of her throat and she swallows it down with a huff of a sound before inching further along so she can lean down and look about the area more properly.
"Snack." Moonpaw rolls her eyes, "You'd make them sick probably, actually there's an idea...while they're throwing you up I can leave." A spotted paw raises, she taps it along her chin in a thoughtful gesture before snorting dismissively, "Quit your yelling anyways, if we just stay quiet they might go on their own."
The boars, just from her observations, were weirdly territorial but not actively hunting cats? That her uncle had died as he did was horrific but they did not eat him. They were not prey, which made it monumentally worse in her opinion. Prey at least indicated a purpose, the killing for just existing too close was cruel but most animals weren't as smart as cats. They were savage and unrelenting in their single-minded goals.
Moonpaw slips down to lay across the branch, making sure to distribute her weight so she was comfortable but not at risk of falling, "...might as well settle in."
​

 

[MOUSENOSE]

Moonpaw’s response to her jab causes Mousepaw’s green eyes to narrow. “Your competition is me, and if we get out of here alive I’ll make you eat those words!” Green eyes burn into the other she-cat’s icy ones before they fall to the beasts trudging around in the forest. Moonpaw’s retort about feeding her to the boars makes her ear flick with agitation. “You’re one to talk! ‘Least I don’t taste like kittypet.”

Admittedly, it’s a low blow, and Mousepaw really doesn’t even care about kittypets like some of their Clanmates do. After all, Sunfreckle had been a kittypet long ago; by that logic, the two of them share a quantum of kittypet heritage. But she knows Moonpaw is highly sensitive to such remarks, and she’s lashing out with everything she’s got. The other girl is wittier than her, and it makes her burn up from the inside to admit it.

Moonpaw settles on the branch, and Mousepaw, with an irritated sigh, does the same. “I should be out training today,” she says. “Instead I got stuck with you.”

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — mousekit . mousepaw
  — she/they, apprentice of thunderclan
  — pansexual ; single
  — long-haired blue tortoiseshell with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Rai

​

 

[Moonwhisper]

Moonpaw's nose went up and she turned, uninterested in convincing Mousepaw they were not even on the same level. She was to be a noble and dutiful Warrior of ThunderClan and the other spotted molly was nothing less than a problem child who acted out of line. It would be a wonder if she and her equally weird siblings even got names within the next few moons, let alone at all.
The next jab had her fur bristling because it naturally hit her one sore spot and was also so hypocritically assanine she barely resisted snarling in reply.
"At least I REJECTED my useless kittypet father while you still cling to yours!" It was cruel, she regretted it the second it left her mouth because Mousepaw was already dealing with a lot of horrible things related to said father. Sunfreckle wasn't a bad cat, nowhere near as competent as her own mentor or mother was but to call him useless especially after what had happened with that litter was too far even for her. Moonpaw sucked in her breath, held it for a quiet moment after before sputtering out a strained but sincere, "Sorry...I just..." I just hate being called a kittypet. That was no excuse, but it was true; she hated how much power that one word had over her still.
"...I didn't mean it."
​

 

[MOUSENOSE]

Moonpaw’s pale, plush fur begins to needle at Mousepaw’s jab, and she almost regrets making it. After all, she doesn’t care that Moonpaw has a kittypet for a father, but the other she-cat is so infuriating she couldn’t help but hit her where she hurts. The pale tortoiseshell’s mouth twitches into a frown at her denmate’s immediate barbed response—“At least I REJECTED my useless kittypet father while you still clung to yours!”

Mousepaw’s lower jaw tightens. Admittedly, she forgets Sunfreckle had been a kittypet once, though he does not keep that knowledge secret by any means. Still, it’s not that part that hurts her—it’s the insinuation, the clinging to, that she realizes is a hotter and deadlier truth than she’d known. Mousepaw is not half the independent cat Moonpaw is—and she can’t admit that, not now, even when her rival manages to apologize for her remark.

She grits her teeth. “I don’t care if you call him a kittypet. He’s not ashamed of it like you are.” She turns her eyes away, uncomfortably aware of the tears prickling in their corners. “He loves me, and I love him, and that’s what matters. Do you really think—” she falters, something lodged in her throat, something like sadness and dull anger, “—do you really think it’s better to not have a father at all than it is to have a kittypet one?”

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — mousekit . mousepaw
  — she/they, apprentice of thunderclan
  — pansexual ; single
  — long-haired blue tortoiseshell with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Rai

​

 

[Moonwhisper]

Would it be better to have no father than a kittypet one? She doesn't know, she hates her bloodline more than she can explain in words, more than she cares to try to explain to a cat like Mousepaw who wears her heart so openly on her shoulder its a wonder she has not yet bled out and died from exposing it others. Moonpaw clenches her teeth together, tries not to reply with more hateful vitriol than she has already ignited, "I don't know! I don't know what's better! At least your father isn't the king of kittypets! At least yours is an honorable ThunderClan cat!" Kittypet or not, though she does not know the details, her grandmother saw something worthwhile in Sunfreckle enough to add him to her council. Three-legged, ex-housecat, she wonders if he too often feels the judgemental stare of others. Does he care? Burnstorm certainly didn't seem to, her mother often forgot other clans might be opposed to her friendliness to SkyClan and Blazestar still. Why couldn't SHE let it go then? Why did it burn so hotly inside her?
"...I didn't ask for this." Morningpaw died for this, "I didn't want any of this." She missed when the border didn't seem quite so terrifying.
​

 

[MOUSENOSE]

Mousepaw’s eyes are still glossy when she lifts her chin to stare at Moonpaw. She’s never seen the stoic apprentice this way—there’s more emotion burning cold in those pale eyes than Moonpaw has ever shown to Mousepaw. The messy-pelted she-cat takes a hesitant step forward, though she has no real intention of attempting any sort of comfort. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think about your father when I think about you.” She grins, though it’s tremulous. “I think about how annoying you are, all without help from him.”

But Moonpaw seems further away from Mousepaw than she had been before. “I didn’t ask for this.” They wonder if the marble-faced she-cat is remembering her sister, dead in the snow—her siblings split up under a full moon at Fourtrees.

“I didn’t, either,” she adds. Apple-green gaze sweeps over the boars milling beneath their perch. “I didn’t ask for Dovekit to die, or Mossypaw to get taken away.” She flicks a cream-colored ear. “I know it’s not the same, ‘cause I was born here and my parents have never wanted to leave… and Mossypaw didn’t choose to leave.” A rare flash of emotional intelligence pulses through her. Perhaps Moonpaw resents the others because of the choices they’d made, rather than the circumstances she’s found herself left in.

Her whiskers quiver at the revelation, but she does not speak again unprompted.

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — mousekit . mousepaw
  — she/they, apprentice of thunderclan
  — pansexual ; single
  — long-haired blue tortoiseshell with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Rai

​

 

[Moonwhisper]

"...that's so helpful thank you." The point drolls out with a roll of her eyes, but truthfully-despite the fact it was sad as both an insult and means to rile her up she did actually like hearing that she was not simply regarded as the SkyClan leader's daughter among her peers. It took some of her worries away, not entirely but it was significant enough she didn't even bite back with an jab herself. Mousepaw was spared, momentarily.
Instead she thinks of her lost clanmates, Mousepaw's siblings. Dovekit, too young to even get a chance and Mossypaw taken away by twolegs while newly apprenticed. It was a death sentence if she heard of one, how SkyClan can simply co-exist with cats who like those horrific monsters is beyond her. But she is not the only one suffering in ThunderClan and while different she shouldn't take her anger out on her clanmates. Even if they were annoying mites like Mousepaw was.
"I sometimes wonder...what it might be like if I had died instead of Morningpaw. She was so much stronger than me, she would have overcome her grief better. I just feel stupid, it shouldn't still hurt..should it?" But if Mousepaw was still thinking of her own littermates maybe it was fine to still despair. Maybe it was normal to carry that ache for so long. "...I was born in SkyClan...technically. Maybe I'm...jealous."
Her mother, fearful of ThunderClan's medicine cat (and who wouldn't have been based on the stories she heard) had carried herself all the way to SkyClan's territory; in labor and exposed to any predator that might've come.
​