wc rebels i , carrion ⁀➷ cotton

[FOXGLARE]

⁀➷ Fighting Sootstar's pack of loyalists left him bone-tired and weary. Though, he should've been grateful that he still had enough blood in his veins that it could clot into his fur, that he had enough strength to feel the soreness of his body when he walked upright and had not been felled by one of Sootstar's hellhounds.

Still, something had been tugging at his stomach even before the attack. Something that had been sitting there for nearly a moon, but grew heavier with the arrival of their prodigal medicine cat apprentice and the young one she whisked along to rescue in her escape.

"Hey, have a moment?" Foxglare murmured lowly as he approached the ash-dusted she-cat. He was loathe to take one of their healers away from their critical work, but it seemed he caught her in what had to be a rare moment of solitude. He would meet Cottonpaw's—Cottonfang's? He didn't know how to parse the questionings surrounding her name—blue eyes with a searching glint of his own. Some of them didn't trust her, her proximity to her mother held her in the scrutiny of the rebels she sought her refuge in. But Foxglare found himself wanting to trust her, for whatever inexplicable reason his heart softened for her. In any case, he hoped that she was at least trustworthy enough to give him a straight answer, "Sedge. Where is he? Is he still...?"

Was he still trapped there in Sootstar's snake pit? Why hadn't he arrived alongside her, or with any of the late-comers who made a break for it in the night and joined their barn congregation? Would he have to relent to the impulse that pulsed in his heart and itched at his feet all this moon? The urge to tear off onto that rat-teeming moor to fight Sootstar's army singlepawed to get him out of there pulled at his chest and his limbs. It was his responsibility, Fox knew, to ensure Sedgepounce made a clean break. He was a damn fool for not running to look for him first the day they made their escape. He could only hope that when the other arrived he would be able to forgive him for not standing behind his word to look out for him...

But first, he had to know... Where was he?

HOW COULD YOU THINK, DARLIN', ⁀➷☾⁺₊ I'D SCARE SO EASILY?

• OOC: @cottonfang
• 
• 
  — sun . fox . foxpaw . foxglare
  — he/him. 14mo moor-runner of windclan
  — a large, scarred golden tabby with high white and grey eyes
  — smells like wet oak wood and dewy sedge
  — sounds like leon kennedy, with a vague texan drawl.
  — the straight-faced and taciturn adopted son of houndthistle, lived as a twolegplace loner until 7 moons old, now a moor-runner of windclan. stalwart and resilient, he is not easily shaken and lives by a very strict personal code of honor.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — hs by ava, fullbody by antiigone
  — penned by eezy

​

 

[cottonsprig]

It's a break to breathe - her paws are not as skilled as her mentor's, but they are quick, and do well with the lesser injuries presented to her. Wolfsong's offered her a break, something she's loathe to accept but she knows better than most that an exhausted mind will not prove well in these circumstances. Her breath shakes as she considers the countenance of her mother, the fury that the woman had simply in being slighted. They share the same blood yet fight so viscously against one another, and -

"Hmm?" Foxglare pulls her from her spiraling thoughts. The freckled tom looks worn, his own pelt disheveled, and she pitches forward to stand. Cottonfang - or whatever the tom would wish to call her, she responds to so much these days - is more than eager to help her friend with whatever ails him. However a beat passes and he murmurs a question instead, and her mouth slacks. It's a too-long pause as she eases herself back to sit down.

"Oh - Foxglare, I'm..." should she apologize? Cottonfang thinks of her last conversation with the mottled tom, how angry she must've seemed, when all she was, was scared. It was Snakehiss - all his fault! - yet even the blame dies before it reaches her tongue. It was never his fault in the end. Her actions were all her own. "He's gone," she breathes - no, moreso croaks, as fatigue weighs nearly as heavy as the gravity with the situation. She tries to hold his gaze and be respectful, for she's certain that if he must ask, then the answer will hurt him more. "Snakehiss and he - they got into a scuffle by the gorge. Sedgepounce fell into the water," she shivers, thinking of the corpses dumped over in a similar way. "I'm... I'm sorry."​

 

[FOXGLARE]

⁀➷ "He's-..." a choked whisper says.

Cottonfang's blow is delivered softly, bloodless, and oh-so-sorry in the uneasy quiet of the barn. Not a drop of blood falls upon the wooden floor as the feeling of teeth rend into his chest and tear apart the delicate flesh residing beneath his ribs. It was as if he was plunged into the icy depths of the river himself, the pressure of rushing water pressing his lungs together and rendering them unusable for more than a moment following the escaped word.

It was useless, then? He no longer had to agonize over whether Sedgepounce would forgive him when they saw each other again. He would never see him again. He was gone. The crushing stone of guilt weighed down upon his bones and something boiling made its way toward his face from a crashing tide inside his chest.

Stupidly, Foxglare realized just then how much he missed him. Was he allowed to miss him? It was harrowing, knowing that he'd betrayed him by rushing to join the escapees without ensuring the other tom's way out. It seemed so selfish a desire now, but he just wanted to see him.

A breath leaves his lungs at last, shaky and unfamiliar to the ear, bringing him back into the barn. Cottonfang is still looking at him, and suddenly the sad forget-me-not petals of her gaze appear so much colder, peering straight into his soul with pity but also... assessment. Fox is suddenly aware that he is being watched and he feels much smaller than he ever has before. He had no idea what he could've looked like to her as his mind reeled and his insides ate away at itself, but he would freeze abruptly before her eyes. A stiffness shadowed his frame as he drew together the miserable feeling into a burning, white-hot pearl pressed into his core.

Some of this molten misery would leak into his limbs as his mind conjured up the image of a smooth-pelted assailant, cold-blooded as his namesake, watching Sedgepounce slip off of the bank and tumble into the darkened waters below. His claws dig into the ground below with an uncomfortable scratching sensation, and his vision tunnels into an icy glare. He recalls her, cozied up beside Snakehiss even as he sneered and bullied her friends, Sedge included.

"Your Snakehiss?" he growls lowly, some of his hatred for the man bristling upon his pelt and bubbling up toward her. He should've killed him when he had the chance, when he and the rest of Sootstar's dogs came a-barking. Hell, he should just charge onto the moor this second to drag his sorry tail over the gorge himself.

A chiding voice of reason reminds him that she fled to the barn to join the rebels without Snakehiss by her side. Cottonfang's outright rejection of Sootstar, in clear opposition to the venomous black tom standing alongside the Mad Queen, surely meant something significant. Foxglare takes another breath, slowly, and steps back once.

"I... m'sorry," he mutters curtly. It wasn't her fault, no. He balked at the thought that he would want to punish her somehow for his pain. "Y'didn't... bury him." Foxglare doesn't know why he says this, neither an observation nor an inquiry. It made him sick all over again, though, to think of him lost in the water alongside the thieves and cowards that took advantage of their weakness just a few moons ago. "...When... did it happen?"

HOW COULD YOU THINK, DARLIN', ⁀➷☾⁺₊ I'D SCARE SO EASILY?

• OOC:
• 
• 
  — sun . fox . foxpaw . foxglare
  — he/him. 14mo moor-runner of windclan
  — a large, scarred white and golden tabby tom with grey eyes
  — smells like wet oak and dewy sedge
  — sounds like leon kennedy, with a vague texan drawl.
  — the straight-faced and taciturn adopted son of houndthistle, lived as a twolegplace loner until 7 moons old, now a moor-runner of windclan. resilient, but not invincible. the continued stresses of war and a significant loss have led him to hold fast to his strict internal moral compass for fear of faltering.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — hs by ava, fullbody by antiigone
  — penned by eezy

​

 

[cottonsprig]

Your Snakehiss? He breathes with a rumble in his chest, several long beats of understanding and consumption later. Cottonfang resists furrowing her brow or screwing her nose upwards - he's hurting, he means nothing by it, and so why is she defensive over it? Her fault, her actions are hers but Snakehiss is not. Hers. And something in her screams to make that clarification, though she knows at the end of the day it makes no difference. At some point, they were padding after one another, and she foolishly followed his whims and pushed all of her closest friends away.

Before she can right herself and form a response, he apologized. It does little to calm the simmering in her limbs but she still shakes her head, "Don't worry 'bout it." Maybe if the roles were reversed, she, too, would blame Snakehiss for everything. After all, at the end of the day, he was the only one to see Sedgepounce go. She shakes her head - no, no body to bury. Sootstar was firm on making sure no 'traitor' had honor gifted to them. When he speaks again, she shakes her head, gently, as if there's some disbelief still within her.

"Not long ago," she says, "I checked for his body a few times, but -" again, she drifts to blame someone else. I couldn't do much, I was under watch, saying anything to that degree makes her sound paranoid. "I'm sorry, Foxglare, really," her paw lifts just to press into his, gently, in hopes that her care is shown.​

 

[FOXGLARE]

⁀➷ Foxglare breathes. Mechanically: in once, out once. Of course she couldn't retrieve his body, of course, she would not have been allowed to. Why did he ask? Why did it feel so important? The molten pit in his core grew bigger, heavier, as he came to terms with it. Just another life torn apart and swallowed up by Sootstar's madness, the frayed nothingness of Sedge's end tore claw-wounds into his lungs.

She touches her paw to his, and vaguely he is aware that he's grateful for her acts of gentleness, but overwhelming this is a sense of crushing in his ribs and his head, and the touch of her paw with the weight of her gaze became all too quickly too much to bear any longer. "Y'have... nothing to... apologize for," Foxglare murmurs, slowly pulling away from her touch and further collecting himself inward. "Thank you for tellin' me," he gets out quietly, painfully, before pulling himself to turn away and striding to exit the barn into the frigid embrace of the cold. He needed to be alone.

/out!

HOW COULD YOU THINK, DARLIN, ⁀➷☾⁺₊ ID SCARE SO EASILY?

• OOC: dont mind me replying so so late i just wanted to close this out hehe
• 
• 
  — sun . fox . foxpaw . foxglare
  — he/him. 15mo moor-runner of windclan
  — a large, scarred white and golden tabby tom with grey eyes
  — smells like dewy oak and sedge
  — sounds like leon kennedy, with a vague texan drawl.
  — the straight-faced and taciturn adopted son of houndthistle, lived as a twolegplace loner until 7 moons old, now a moor-runner of windclan. resilient, but not invincible. the continued stresses of war and a significant loss have led him to hold fast to his strict internal moral compass for fear of faltering.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — fullbody and chibi by antiigone
  — penned by eezy

​