I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO GREAT THINGS || GHOSTWAIL

[Thriftfeather]

While it is difficult for Thrift to think of this as normal, he has come to know a routine in WindClan. He will wake sometime before dawn and press himself flat into his nest, a white paw rested delicately over his gifted feather, seeking comfort in the softness of it against his pad. He will breathe in-and-out until his body remembers how to do so without his help, and then he will be visited. He doesn't think the other kits find him very fun — Thrift understands, in a dejected way. He doesn't feel very fun here.

On occassion, Ghostwail will bring Thrift a meal. He isn't big enough to eat even half of a rabbit, as seems to be the preferred prey of WindClan. As such, what is brought to Thrift is the smaller of things: finches with their beaks spread wide and boney-tailed field mice. Today it is a rabbit kit that dangles by its scruff in Ghostwail's mouth, that sways in time with her steps. A flash of a memory, in the creeping dawn-light it was his mother's amber eyes he'd seen, rather than Ghostwail's striking red.

Disappointment is a friend that visits Thrift often.

He visibly swallows, dry mouthed, when the rabbit kit is dropped before him. This is familiar too — rather than a trick of the light, Thrift finds himself for however brief a moment trapped back then. He's crouched beneath a gorse bush, eyes wide and heart thudding an escape attempt against his ribs. He doesn't try to move, doesn't want to see what had just happened, and yet despite himself his body shifts closer. A thorn catches his ear and the noise that leaves Thrift is no more than a whimper. It's enough to turn a gaunt face his way. Thrift's life was going to change even before this moment, but this was when, on some level, he began to understand.

In the present, Thrift feels sick. The rabbit kit lays in a sprawl, limbs akimbo. The side effect of being dropped carelessly. He'd always known prey was dead by the time it made its way to him, but never before did he understand what that means.

"No," Thriftkit says, because he understands now, "No, I don't want this."

Had he been louder, Thriftkit would have sounded petulant to any listening ears, but in his hush he sounds nothing more than painfully desperate.

@GHOSTWAIL​

WINDCLAN KIT ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 3 MOONS​

 

[GHOSTWAIL]

She did not like this thing. It was a refrain that had begun her head, quietly at first, from the moment she had discovered it cowering under a bush - then louder and louder as the days rolled by. She did not like the thing, the pudgy little kit she had taken as spoils, the scrap of fur that would've otherwise been feasted upon by buzzards and crows in more desperate states.

But she had saved in, taken it into the sanctuary that was WindClan's proverbial hallowed halls. She had presented it to her master, her queen, and it had passed inspection beyond all logic. Now, she cared for it in the most unbecoming of ways. She hunted for it, she watched it grow.

She despised it.

Days ago, a clanmate had trotted up to the ghastly woman with a tender smile - a simpering grin. "How do you like being a mom now, Ghostwail? I never really pegged you as the type, but I guess it suits you!"

She had turned her great, burning eyes upon them then, glaring. She was no mother and the thing was not her child. An unfortunate loot, yes. A very poor choice in prize, definitely, but her child it was not. It was Thriftkit, borne of nobody, legacy of nothing, leech on the belly of the clan she served until Sootstar decided that it was his time to begin repaying back that debt.

Until then, someone had to feed. Someone had to groom it. Someone had to be there to make sure it did not die before the queen could collect.

A rabbit kit would suffice today, she had decided. A rabbit kit that is dropped in front of the burden and promptly refused. She narrows her burning eyes in disgust.

"You are in no position to want for or not." Venom drips off her tongue. "You are fortunate enough to be here, to be brought to the most powerful clan in the forest and have accepted by the most generous and becoming leader StarClan will ever bless. WindClan deals you mercy and sanctuary and you have the audacity to respond to our kindness with disrespect and ungratefulness."

Teeth flash, pale pink lips curled back into a snarl. "You will eat. Insolence is not an option you have to spare here, kit."​

- you call for peace when it suits you​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Thriftkit doesn’t completely get some of what Ghostwail tells him. This time, it isn’t that gap between himself and reality that prevents it, but the simple consequence of Ghostwail’s casual use of words Thriftkit has never heard before. He knows what it is to be scolded — try as much as he might to be a good kit, sometimes Thriftkit would wander too far or play with a brightly colored berry his mother told him twice before to leave be. Even if audacity passes by Thriftkit without meaning, he understands that he’s done something bad by refusing the rabbit kit.

“It’s — it’s bad,” Thriftkit insists, because he doesn’t know the words to express that he cannot eat something so familiar. It takes all of the bravery he has — body flat and tail swishing tight circuits behind him.

But he cannot hold for long beneath Ghostwail’s disapproval. Thriftkit isn’t brave. He’s never needed to be brave before. He folds because it is what Ghostwail wants from him, and because Thriftkit understands now that scolding is far from the worst she is capable. He shimmies closer to the rabbit kit and, after an uncertain glance at Ghostwail, tears into the rabbit kit’s side.

It’s warm. Not enough to be mistaken for alive, but warm in the way all things beneath the sun are. He feels sick. He takes another bite and finds blood on his chin.

“This isn’t good,” Thriftkit says, because he doesn’t know the fine line between words; he doesn’t that he means: this isn’t right. Thriftkit finishes the rabbit kit, and remembering some of what Ghostwail had said, knowing ungrateful even if it had never been pointed at Thriftkit before, he bows his head and murmurs in a trembling voice, “Thank you for— thank you.”​

WINDCLAN KIT ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 3 MOONS​