private HUMAN FLOWER ; iciclefang

[CICADAFLIGHT]

As he stalks alongside Iciclefang, beads of icy water still dripping off matted black curls, he realizes quite abruptly that he's looking down at his mentor. Despite Cicadapaw's slumped stature, he no longer has to crane his neck and toddle alongside the tortoiseshell. Instead, long limbs corded with lean muscle carry him on strides so long he has to slow his pace slightly to trail behind her, and he has to tilt his hooked muzzle downwards to meet frozen blue eyes. The tom comments colorlessly, "I'm taller than you now."

Regardless of Iciclefang's reply, he sits in the drifting fog of his mind for a bit, silence and thoughts of gurgling. Cicadapaw's favorite training is no doubt the days they trek to a clear area and he's pitted against another apprentice, or Iciclefang herself. He's working, during their training time and his own, to incorporate his penchant for inhabiting the deepest parts of the river into how he hunts and fights. Already he prefers to dive into the blackest of the banks and wrestle fish from the currents instead of fumbling them out on land, deathly silent underwater despite his clumsiness on dry ground. The freezing water doesn't inhibit his penchant for twilight swims in the shallows around camps or practice dives on patrol.

"I tried a new battle move on Sandpaw," he mews ruefully, recalling his childhood sparring opponent. The minute he'd lured the cream-pelted apprentice into the shallows, drawing her in with whiplike strikes and eel-slinking dodges, the fight had been his. One cut-glass eye above the water, slow and malevolent as an alligator, and he'd been on Sandpaw, wrapping overlong limbs around her and barreling the both of them into the depths.

He'd outlasted her, of course. Cicadapaw can stay underwater for longer than anyone he knows—his single bragging right. Any cat who didn't swim already would surely be a goner. And yet, as his denmates bumped his shoulders and complimented him from the small watching circle they'd gathered in, he hadn't thought of victory, of ego. He'd only thought of what it would have been like if he'd wrapped a leg around her throat, held Sandpaw in those shadowy depths until nothing had been moving but her pale fur. "I don't think you were there," he mutters. He wishes she had been, that he'd finally eked out a rare smile or word of encouragement. Not so. "Too bad."

// @iciclefang !!

"speech"

​

 

[iciclefang]

Iciclefang has noticed her apprentice’s growth spurt—it’d be impossible not to. When she’d first touched noses with the black-and-white tom before leaving for Highstones, she’d had to crouch, craning her neck forward. Upon her return from the mountains, he’d been a little taller, a lot ganglier, strange-looking with mismatched eyes—but still, he had met her at her shoulder, his youth still a factor. Not so anymore. Iciclefang now has to look up at him when she instructs him or reprimands him, and it feels strange. His passive observation earns a stern look through ice-blue eyes. “Perhaps, but it changes nothing until the -paw leaves your name,” she says.

Water still drips from the curls in his fur from their earlier plunge. He describes trying a new move on Sandpaw, rues that she was not there. Iciclefang’s eyes narrow. “I wasn’t. If I didn’t see it, it doesn’t count.” She reaches for his strange eyes, one burning gold, one pale as frost. “Perhaps you’d like to try it on me, and we can make it count.”

She nears the water’s edge. The own pelt is fluffed out against the cold, but it means nothing to her to slip back beneath the waves, to churn water with powerful legs. “We’re at the point in your apprenticeship where we should be focusing on battle, anyway.” She pushes off the shore, into the river, ignoring the way the frigid depths shear into her body with long, frozen teeth. “Let’s see if you can do to me what you did to Sandpaw.”

, ”​

​