duskclan I'LL BE GOOD — seasonal changes

[Thriftfeather]

Leaf-fall nearly finds DuskClan without Thriftfeather's notice.

Realization comes, as many do for him, in the space in the morning where the dawn chorus has quieted and the world is gentle. The wind shifts enough to strike Thriftfeather in his scant shelter and he pauses his grooming, shifts, then swears without feeling. The wind isn't the cool relief that Greenleaf can sometimes provide; the wind is cold. The once-familiar sky hangs above him in a blue a shade deeper than Greenleaf knows.

Had he been in WindClan, this would not have been a surprise. He would have seen tension in the way the usual prey would act, he would have seen the start of blooms—lavender, aster, heath—and known the world was offering one final push at vitality before settling into the dormancy of Leafbare. Thriftfeather would have known its arrival by some innate sense of time that he had maintained in WindClan and lost in DuskClan. At times he had wondered if Greenleaf had suddenly become endless. Now, he mourns its abrupt death.

"Leaf-fall is here," Has anyone been tracking the moons? His eyes flick to the tufty grasses nearby—he'd assumed they'd yellowed from being sun-weary, but was it instead a sign that he had missed?

And then, as his thoughts often do, they find their way to Bluefrost, or they find their way towards something she has said. Hadn't she said she would be giving birth at the start of Leaf-fall? He abandons his attempt at a morning groom fully with this thought—anticipation and worry make the concern of tangles seem suddenly unimportant. Thriftfeather should be there, with Bluefrost, with the kits. If something goes wrong, if she somehow needs help, Thriftfeather will not know until well after the fact. He may never know.

"We need to—to—" Distracted or in need of a distraction, but the threat of further hunger is still motivation enough regardless of the way that his insides have tied themselves into tight knots. Inhale, exhale—he comes back to his body at once, "The birds will be gathering together over the next moon, and they will leave after that. The lizards..." Thriftfeather searches his memory, but he doesn't recall ever seeing a lizard in Leafbare. Do they leave for the same place the birds do, or do they retreat underground for warmth? "We wont be able to rely on them either."

That doesn't eliminate everything Thriftfeather has seen. Quails, despite being a bird, will remain, as will the mice and rats. The predators, circling silhouettes that seem to never come down from their space in the sky or ruddy fur glimpsed only at a distance, will likely also remain.​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 18 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[PRIVETFROST]

Autumn crawled in the land of the scrub-bushes and thistle-limbs, as though it were some repentant reptile cereping along its belly, never flagrant nor graceful in its shadow-set arrival. There existed little gaudy verdancy to herald of summer's stead in Duskclan's territory, with only the sanctuary of gloom cast by the silhouettes and winding and twisting things. Therefore, there was little to show for it within the badlands, where the talons of beauty could not find a perch even between the thorns. Privetfrost had hardly noticed how the wind chilled along his wiry nape, like it had come from the harvest of the russet forest's new plumes, breath from afar that had only settled as an aftermath to Duskclan. Still, he did feel that subtle change, of the sky darkening for just a moment, foreshadowing of a twilight to come. The young warrior was smart enough to realize that with the shifting of the temperatures would come a great alabaster, one that drowned out even the picteresque colors of the moorlands. The sun-brushed grass only grew in dewretted golds, like a scrawling and spindled waxwork upon the ground, yielding even at slightest of light's touch. The birds and the rodents remained, though perhaps they hinged on their timely departure, teetering upon the balance of timeliness. There was a certain order to which the world conducted itself, and a certain delicacy to which nature played its own game.

Thriftfeather worried of leaf-bare's arrival, and Privetfrost felt his own concerns wash to the surface of his mind, as if a bittersweet thought that bobbed at the edges of day-honeyed waters. What the deputy had above himself was age, and the experience that came alongside it. The wheat-colored tomcat knew what would happen to the prey, for it happened every cycle. Privet had never experienced leaf-fall and leaf-bare in its entirety, even as he had been weaned and raised within the sickly seasons, though he remembered none of such a dire time. A little spark fell within the tomcat's fern-green eyes, though it spoke nothing of concern nor fear for the inevitable. The urgency had been lost on him, but would find itself once leaf-bare had actually descended upon the clan. "We will be fine." The wine-dark warrior stated with much more certainty than he surely should have been allowed, almost mellow if not for the serpentine manner in which he wove through the shadows, just to arrive at Thrift's vision. "There is other prey than birds and lizards, are there not? If our situation becomes dire, we can always just hunt farther." Or on Windclan land.

𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐂𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 ── X ── 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒

• OOC:
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  —— PRIVETFROST / He/Him / 9 Moons
  —— Warrior of Duskclan / Formerly mentored by Rumblerain
  —— Wine-dark and white-tipped, almost like a magpie. He has black fur except for the tips of his ears, his muzzle and chin, a blaze on his chest, bottom portion of the legs, outer end of the tail, and along the upper ridges of eyes. He has ghost striping that can only be seen in certain sunlight. He has fern-green eyes.
  —— Cool, calculating, and much too mature for such a young age. Enamored with the life of a warrior and burdened by the expectations of his people. Hard to befriend and harder to maintain a steady friendship with.
  —— Penned by Tempest. Contact on Discord (naruk4mi) for plots and threads.

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