private i'm your shame 𖤓 cottonsprig

TIGERSTING

liquid sunsets
Aug 28, 2024
25
10
3

The issue began small, irritation blooming, traveling from one eye to the other. It was easily ignorable as she attempted to adjust to a new normal without her fathers. But then the weepiness of her eyes can no longer be blamed on the death of her sister or so easily ignored when the pain prevents her from performing even the simplest of tasks. These tasks prove difficult due to the concerning cloudiness, the blurring of the edges of her periphery. Still, she did nothing, as fear warps her common sense. Tigersting could still see the masked concern (or was it disgust?) on Brackenpaw's face when they awoke, she could imagine from just the sensation that it was an unsettling sight to awake to at the crack of dawn.

At last, after the suggestion by Brackenpaw she may "lose an eyeball" if she did not approach Cottonsprig. The fur along her back bristles as she approaches the medicine den and she casts a sidelong glance to Featherspine before pressing her cheek into his neck quickly, before he could resist the sign of affection. Tigersting grimaces and then presses into the den, head hanging low with shame. Her skin seems to broil beneath her chocolate pelt from a combination of embarrassment, dread, and a fever which began to wrack her body the day prior. "I need you," she whispers, hazy eyes directed upon Cottonsprig. I need you ðir. "There's something wrong with me-" Tufted ears flatten to her skull as she begins to shiver. "-you'll fix it, right?" Tigersting shrinks closer to the smoke she-cat with her russet face contorted with panic. "I'm sorry, I should've come sooner... I know it..."


  • @cottonsprig

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    daughter of & sister to || moor-runner of WINDCLAN || 15 moons || she/her
    — chocolate tabby w/ low white, fiercely bright eyes
    — a reckless cat with an abrasive personality​
 
There are plenty of cats in WindClan - many able bodied and at the ready for almost any given encounter. Cottonsprig would of course neglect to say that she does not keep tabs on every single one. They slip through the cracks far too easily for a young she-cat consumed in her own woes. Even her mentor's children, doubled over with grief and loss, fall to her peripherals as she scrounges for a purchase elsewhere.

But when Tigersting finds her, she knows she messed up.

She, herself, or the russet feline before her. The rims of her eyes crust and there's a rheumy film over them. As the other pleads, she notes the gentle tremor of her form - and furthermore the collateral warmth that radiates from her burning skin. Alarm comes first, and then anger and frustration quickly after. Her maw opens as she pushes to her paws, but the other's pitiful guilt tenses her jaw instead. No use... there's no use in berating the young warrior and calling her foolish. All she must do, now, is fix what she can.

"You're warm, Tigersting," she murmurs, her cheek pressed to the other's. Tigersting used to be a kitten who toddled around her formerly smaller paws... now the other towers over her with her fathers' behemoth strength, and still whimpers like the child she used to care for. "I'll care for you," she says, neglecting now the word fix. She can tell the scent of infection now that it clings to every leaf and branch that holds her home. "You will rest here, eat when you can, take my remedies... I will do all I can..." ... to salvage what remains.

A flutter of fear as she guides Tigersting to the closest nest, her heart now tremoring with the shakes of the warrior. I will not lose you, too.
  • ooc //
  • MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE
    ♥♥♡ WOUNDS ; can confidently stop bleeding and mend lacerations. will often request that you keep your injury clean and wait it out first.
    ♥♥♡ INFECTION ; as a side effect of likely her own doing, very dutiful with technique and treatment shortly thereafter.
    ♥♡♡ ACHES & PAINS ; will defer to a dark tunnel and rest. if pain persists, maybe she will offer something.
    ♥♡♡ BROKEN BONES ; has never dealt with a broken bone. likely will ask that you never move. ever again.
    ♥♥♥ TRAVELING HERBS ; learned well from her previous mentor. will pile even too many remedies to tough the wilderness with.
    ♥♥♥ KITTING ; having kittens of her own and helped several others with their litters, she is very well versed with calming techniques and quelling pain.
    ♥♡♡ POISONS ; she knows what they are... but that isn't enough, isn't it?
    ♥♥♡ ILLNESS ; having worked through two yellowcough bouts, she is confident in her remedies. much else... she's operating on trial and error.
    ⸻ cottonsprig is a dutiful and excitable medicine cat. she enjoys company and loves conversation. she'd rather not have too many curious noses snooping around her den... but who is she to quell curiosity?
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    ⸻❥ cottonsprig is the primary medicine cat of windclan. a former princess to the moors, she harbors many guilts for her actions throughout her short life. she has no consistent partner, unwilling to commit and settle, and she is training celandinepaw in medicine.
 

Tigersting's body withdraws back as she senses Cottonsprig's momentary frustration. Cottonsprig does not chastise her, does not put a voice to the truth: Tigersting was harebrained to not visit sooner, get ahead of the infection and prevent it from arising altogether. She is only assessing her temperature, but the contact of the she-cat's cheek against her own unravels the chocolate tabby further. "Please." Tigersting repeats meekly, leaning into the pressure of Cottonsprig's cheek until she removes it to lead herself to a spare nest.

Wolfsong raised her within the walls of this den, every spare moment of time she'd pop in to be in within his proximity, ergo within Cottonsprig's. His protege became her family, despite strains upon their relationship in the past Tigersting may always idolize her as a little sister would. She was just as abandoned as Tigersting and her siblings were. Tigersting understands the implications of her symptoms. The strange strain of Cottonsprig's voice does not tell her this but rather she'd known since the moment reality set in, shortly after the fever did.

She squints, fixes her sickly stare upon the medic. Chills forcibly make her body convulse and she must lower into the nest, continuing to weakly glare at Cottonsprig all the while. "I saw... ðir trained you well." There is a halfhearted attempt at a threat within those words, a reminder that Wolfsong taught her... implying he would surely know a way to reverse damage done, a last ditch effort to grasp at her idolization of him. But even this is untrue. Tigersting understands this, which makes it all the more difficult when she realizes the predicament she has put Cottonsprig in.

"Bad, it's bad." She screws shut her burning eyes and inhales deeply, a ragged sound as she fights back more tears. When she cracks open her she can just hardly perceive Cottonsprig, her sooty fur so indistinguishable from the shadows of the den. "It's okay," the tabby hiccups, resting her chin on the other's paw which rests on the edge of the nest she inhabits. "It's okay Cottonsprig... whatever you can do for me. Whatever you can't..." Cottonsprig can't perform miracles, neither could Wolfsong no matter how hard she's convinced herself he could. Her sight, it can't be reversed, it's only going to get worse- a hard to swallow truth for the both of them.

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    daughter of & sister to || moor-runner of WINDCLAN || 15 moons || she/her
    — chocolate tabby w/ low white, fiercely bright eyes
    — a reckless cat with an abrasive personality​