private I AM THE MASK YOU WEAR — cottonsprig

[SNAKEHISS]

Snakehiss stirs in the night. He did not rest much these days, not when he had to constantly be on guard for predators and other rogues ( especially those DuskClanners ). Thankfully, he had steered clear of them lately; perhaps tonight he could finally rest his eyes without worry.

That is, until triangular ears prick up and detect pawsteps nearby. "Who goes there?" Snakehiss snarls, rising onto spindly legs and raising his hackles at the unexpected visitor he had. Ivory daggers unsheathe, digging into the earth and readying to slash into flesh. Nobody was to be trusted in these lands as far as he was concerned. If he had to fight to live to see another day, then so be it.

The black tom's muzzle coils, fangs eclipsing from parted jaws as he stares down the shadowy figure ahead. Then, his vision adjusts. Moonlight dapples onto the smoky stranger as well, revealing an all-too-familiar blue-gray pelt and a flash of dark aquamarine hues. "Cottonpaw," The exile hisses in disbelief, as she was the last cat he would expect to find. Snakehiss blinks, irises narrowing as he contemplates what to do. Seeing her all of these moons later feels surreal; seeing any WindClanner after so long feels strange. It was an abrupt reminder that WindClan was still alive and well, presumably still being run by that disgrace they called a leader.

Snakehiss does not move to approach any further, though his threatening stance does not immediately deflate. Claws dug into the ground, thin tail whipping behind him, the disheveled tom sneers, "You're far from home, aren't you?" Could she be on her way to the Moonstone? Was she finally receiving her full medicine cat name? But... why would Wolfsong allow her to embark on such a journey by herself? Besides, she did not seem to be taking the normal route to Highstones... "Rather dangerous for a medicine cat apprentice to be in these lands all by her lonesome... don't you think?" The former deputy inquires, an icy and baleful tone underlying his words.

His tongue grows dry, thirsty for his enemy's blood. I could attack her right now... The thought invades his mind, mostly against his will. In fact, he could probably kill her if he wanted to. Snakehiss has never had the stomach to kill anyone, not even a loathsome rogue, the lowest scum of the earth. However, after the humiliation she had caused him, after the loneliness she had inflicted upon him... he knew that he at least wanted to give her something to remember him by. Would StarClan forgive him for it? Perhaps they would be willing to make an exception — she was the daughter of the blasphemous Moor Queen, after all.

𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐃 ✹ . + ˚ · 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐀𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐎𝐁

• @cottonsprig

• 

• 

  a former windclan deputy living in exile, snakehiss is twenty-one moons. he is a skinny, disheveled black cat with green eyes and a single white patch on his chest. prominent scars line his left jaw, the base of his throat, diagonally across his chest, and his foreleg. ✦

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[cottonsprig]

"I'll be alright, Peonybreeze. Just taking a walk..."

Protective is the tom who took on her situation, but insistent is the she-cat who refuses to be caged. She does not begrudge the former DuskClanner for worrying over her but she detests the need to be worried over at all. Her thoughts wander, her paws taking her in directions that she does not know - her sister, Foxglare, Juncoclaw, they must fear for her safety too, huh? She could linger foxlengths from the border, wait to see one on patrol and create a diversion...

No, no, that's insane. To even find the border at all would be an attack on her safety, something that she's run away to maintain. Cottonsprig lets out a morose sigh and shortly after, she hears a voice. It is too familiar, the way it makes the fur on her shoulders stand on end. She tenses her jaw and notices the black furred tom from strides away - yet she cannot run. She cannot flee, even if she begs her paws to listen and spin her around. They do not edge in closer together but Cottonsprig cannot help but wonder how they managed to be fox-lengths from one another at all. Her ears pin back as he calls her by an old name, and something in her flares.

"It's Cottonsprig now, rat-breath. Don't disrespect me," she hisses, her teeth clenching together. Although she makes a show of her forced ferocity - her claws arch into the dirt beneath them and her tail lashes - she cannot help the similarly obvious movements to protect herself. With every sweep of her tail, she graces her rounded belly. Her limbs bunch up, as if she's ready to pounce, but even she is unsure whether she's capable of lunging for a kill or darting to escape.

"I..." she doesn't know what to say - if anything at all. Snakehiss is undeserving of the details of her life, but like with Weaselclaw, she has the pitiful want to plead to his shredded humanity. Her ears fold back, "Whatever clawing thoughts you have, rest them. Even you wouldn't -" Don't say it, "You wouldn't..." He doesn't need to know! After a long, mournful sigh and the stilling of her tail, Cottonsprig breathes out, hopefully, "You wouldn't attack an expecting queen, Snakehiss. You're above that, right?" And as the words leave her maw, she realizes the gravity of her mistake.

"Let me walk away unharmed, Snakehiss. This doesn't have to get bloody."
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[SNAKEHISS]

Cottonsprig, she swiftly corrects him, tone seething. So, that was her star-bestowed name, not the false title that her wicked mother had given her. So, if she wasn't on her way to Highstones, then what was the blue smoke doing out here?

The black tom curls his lip, noticing the arc that her wispy tail makes through slitted irises, though he does not connect the dots. Such an idea—such a reality —was unfathomable to the exile. It is not until Cottonsprig begrudgingly divulges confidential information that green eyes brighten in realization.

She was... "You... You're..." Pregnant?! How could this have happened? Or, more so, how could she let this happen? Cottonsprig was sworn to the oath of a medicine cat, hand-chosen by StarCan and privileged to commune with the ancestors like no other mortal being could. This was how she repaid them?!

And who, Snakehiss wondered, had broken the sacred law with her? The rogue casts a judgmental glare that rakes across his former betrothed's rounded form. Do they know? Does WindClan know that you're a filthy traitor to your own code? It did not occur to Snakehiss to consider that Cottonsprig had fled WindClan altogether. As far as he is concerned, she is a liar living amongst her own clanmates.

In an instant, Snakehiss' reasonings for hating Cottonsprig had grown from beyond petty, personal disputes. This was a slight against the most powerful, esteemed clan there ever was. The fact that they had not smitten her yet was astounding to Snakehiss. "You are unworthy of the name you hold!" The exile cries out toward the medicine cat, emerald gaze ablaze with a hellborn fury.

The scrawny feline takes a step forward, ivory claws sliding out of their sheaths. Gritting razor canines, Snakehiss pins his ears back and advances again as his tail whips around behind him. "You have turned your back on StarClan. You... are a DISGRACE!" The fight commences with a screech as Snakehiss springs forth, claws outstretched and aiming to pull Cottonsprig down to the ground. If his initial attack was successful, the black cat would attempt to pin the blue smoke molly beneath his paws. Ivory fangs bared, the male spits in her face, "You don't deserve to have a family, not after what you've done to me!" He holds himself as steady as he can, assuming that his opponent is squirming underneath him, before roaring, "Those kits... my children... are living in that star-forsaken clan without their father and it's because of YOU!" If it hadn't been for Cottonsprig, if she hadn't damaged his pride so badly all of those seasons ago, then those kits wouldn't have been born in the first place.

Snakehiss would then proceed to try and sink his fangs into her chest and thrash. This was for StarClan. They would be watching him, wouldn't they? This was his purpose; this is why they had led Cottonsprig here tonight. Sunstar and all of his traitorous rats would meet their judgment, starting with their medicine cat.

𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐃 ✹ . + ˚ · 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐀𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐉𝐎𝐁

• 

• 

  a former windclan deputy living in exile, snakehiss is twenty-one moons. he is a skinny, disheveled black cat with green eyes and a single white patch on his chest. prominent scars line his left jaw, the base of his throat, diagonally across his chest, and his foreleg. ✦

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[cottonsprig]

[ tw for battlecat gore ! permission given to powerplay :) ]

Idiot.

Flames burl in his venom green eyes. Her name lights a match within him but instead of a hearth to curl up beside, a wildfire blazes. Her pleas for humanity, for Snakehiss to not see her as a threat in her current state are squandered - instead he is infuriated, devastated, humiliated more than she realizes. The fire rages beyond his control and the taut skin of the tom ripples with fury.

Idiot. She cannot think much. If she thought she was fawning before, she sure is now. Cottonsprig's eyes pin as she realizes that StarClan cannot afford her grace now (why would they?) His claws arch into the ground same as hers does, but his hold tangible threats whereas she fears hers has been dulled with misuse. Idiot. He takes a step towards her. It's achingly slow, and the blood rushing in her ears obscures the purposeful way he grinds his heels into the grass and dirt.

A day, she thinks before he collides with her, crashing their bodies to the ground. The air is knocked from her lungs, disgrace is wailed into the air, and all she can think is, A day is all I had?

And then, suddenly, it's all too fast again. Spittle drips from his feral lips as he reems her for everything he can - and yet all he has to admonish her for is her transgressions against him. On instinct, her legs kick out against his stomach, but it's awkward and she misses several times over. If there were any humor in the reunion, Cottonsprig would've mused agreement. They share that thought - that Rowanpaw and Rosepaw would've never existed if the path that they walked was prewritten. Cottonsprig thinks with tears in her eyes how hers was, and yet even then she seems to muddle it up.

But, StarClan, her kits, her life. She cannot meander about the lonerlands for a day and pass the next, no less beneath the claws of a tom who does not deserve her blood to dress him. She has too much to live for - even if much of that is simply to prove that she can.

"Snake -" she tries warbling his name at some point in his rambling, but it dies partially in her throat. Her paws push against his chest, but he gnashes his teeth downward. Yellowing ivory, arched perfectly past her throat and to the meat of her collarbone. She feels them prick and dig. A scream pierces the air and for the following seconds, she's frozen still, the pain too-palpable for her to react in kind. It's the thrashing that does it in. The act to tear and rip her skin from her bones, to steal every last bit of her until she's nothing but carrion.

Cottonsprig reacts. Feral she is not, but painful adrenaline does well to press down her impedingly soft nature.

Her paws reach around his cranium, locking him close to her chest. Claws score at everything they can gain purchase on - she has no time to think of the blood that pools on her paw pads already. She bends and arches her back, her own pearly white teeth exposed - and she bites. It's instantaneous, the gushing of blood in her mouth, but Cottonsprig does not let go until he does and even moments after that. She gags as she tears away from him, standing to her uneven paws and stumbling back from him. Blood paints her silver fur into deep shades of burgundy, and she grits her teeth, letting out a gurgling, deep set hiss as she looks back at the tom.

"Leave! Now!" She demands, trying desperately to calm the shaking of her legs. She gnashes her teeth, tail lashing. "Or I'll take the other one, too."

Between them sits a crushed verdant eye, torn messily from its user.
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[SNAKEHISS]

// tw for gore

Too swept up in his hot, red fury and blind to everything around him, Snakehiss attempts to rip and tear as if he's digging Cottonsprig's heart right out of her chest. Her happiness was undeserved, especially after this blatant disrespect of StarClan. He wasn't even sure if he was aiming to maim or kill her, but at this point, he was just doing what felt right. What felt necessary.

Then, the unexpected happens. Cottonsprig, the soft-hearted medic, digs her claws directly into his skull. Her paws, meant for mending and care, soak up warm blood as they rake across the back of his head and ear. A piercing screech emits from Snakehiss' jaws as he promptly parts from the molly's chest and nows squirms to rid himself from her clutches. Shockwaves of pain bolt down his spine as canines lock around his eye socket now, bone crunching and tissue squelching as half of his vision goes black.

The pain was stinging, nauseating — it was unbearable. More tormented screams lurch out of Snakehiss' throat as his opponent refuses to let go, not until she finishes what she's started. Before long, the pulsating sensation had stopped. His peripheral vision is unbalanced and blurry as he staggers back, nearly falling onto the ground before he barely catches himself. Panting heavily, lungs burning from overuse, his gaze drifts toward the ground. The moonlight casts light onto the silhouetted form of a fleshy, bloodied orb. She... She... "What have you... DONE TO ME?!" Snakehiss yowls in distress, his voice nearly cracking in utter horror.

Leave, Cottonsprig warns him. Snakehiss stepped forth to test the waters, stumbling due to a sudden shift of stability. He instinctively reaches a paw up to his left eye—or where it used to sit, anyway. All he feels is the wetness of his own ichor streaming down his cheek. Great StarClan, she had taken his eye. He was doomed to half-sight forever.

"This... isn't... over..." Snakehiss vows weakly, a weary yet hatred-filled green glare resting on Cottonsprig for one last moment before he hobbled backward and turned to slip into the night.

𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐇 ✹ . + ˚ · 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐃

• 

• 

  a former windclan deputy living in exile, snakehiss is twenty-one moons. he is a skinny, disheveled black cat with green eyes and a single white patch on his chest. he is heavily scarred, including a blinded left eye and a torn left ear. ✦

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