I've been watching him for my entire life || Intro

[Wasppaw]

I love you, and if you want, I'll call you King

She was something of a shadow around camp. Dark pelted disgraced daughter of a Sootstar loyalist and an outsider, brought to the camp and accepted into their ranks by a leader chased off by his own shadow Wasppaw had lived quite the life before she even got to say 'hi'. Vocal and opinionated at birth, Wasppaw always had venom on her tongue. But she had been good. To fit in. To be worth the pity this clan had given her and her siblings. Oh, she had been hated in secret, of course she had. When the parents are untouchable, why not go after the kits? Surely they must agree with their parent's positions by virtue of their birth. Why else would they look just like their parents?
To many words had been put in her mouth at birth so when the weather turned heads away from her inherited crimes, she had welcomed it.
Good. Good that he was gone, vanished into his name-sake with his love and the healer. Good that her father had sworn her off in favor to preach some perversion of reality. Good that she and her siblings were left here in the lion's den while still learning to walk. Good.
When the weather turned violently cold and the snow came tumbling down, Wasppaw had helped. She lifted paw and claw and tail to help the cats she knew were talking of her. Her lithe build. Her green eyes. Her coal coat. 'She looked just l ike him, did she not?' Even her smile was uncanny - another thing they would say she stole from him. A shadow around camp by design. Simple. Kind. Unoffensive. She did her best. Studying the ways other apprentices were welcomed, regurgitating their lines back to them. Friendly. Funny. She was bent on being known as something. Not-him would work fine. Even if she shared his brain. His thoughts. His opinions.
"A shadow of Snakehiss, to cowardly to do anything worth the scrupulous eye kept on her." They would whisper over the wind. Just enough to catch her ear. Just enough to test her ability to control herself.
Never enough. Would she always be never enough?
"Here you are," She purrs, gently placing the prey before the ever-outstretched paws of the clan's elders. She brought three pieces, their favorite, and made sure they were as each elder liked. This was routine now. Just as her training, just as all her social activities, Wasppaw did her best to look good in the eyes of others. Tangled in their webs, always seeking what words lay behind on lookers eyes.
"Snakehiss' daughter was so kind for bringing the elder's their daily meals. Just what they like too - and warm. To bad she didn't catch them herself." Were those the words they thought when seeing her?
"Fresh and hot!" She smiles, cold air seeps out between her fangs but it doesn't sting like it did during the blizzard. Was it good that the weather was changing? It was hard to say - during the hot summer months it might be hard to live in her safe shadows. Worry claws under her pelt like fleas.
"Can't stay to long today, helping to reinforce the apprentices' den. I'll talk next time though, yeah? Can't wait to hear how Blazestar's story ends!" Blazestar, Sunstar... what is with this insistence on the sun for names? It's really not that great. Her mind dissolves into her daily plan. Training after this, then I'll help the queens in the nursery - or no, I promised Mistyfoot that I'd-
Lifting her tail in goodbye, the apprentice turns and stumbles a bit. Paws slip over practically nothing and it takes her a second to regain balance. Green eyes skitter across the clearing as heavy paws speed walk back to the apprentice den - only to realize it was not a rock she had tripped over, but another cat.
"See what she just did? Clumsy kit - her head so high in the clouds she forgets to see us down here!"
"How rude! What did that cat do to her? Childish Snake-kit."
"Oh I'm sorry," It comes out bland, tired. Her eyes are worried, but is she? "Let me help you up, I'm so sorry I didn't see you. " With a beat of hesitation Wasppaw moves to help the cat she knocked down up, her eyes never leave the ground. Clumsy. Submissive. Sorry. She wants to go back to her shadows.

But why do I lie awake each night thinking
"Instead of you, it should be me"? — penned by Keee, tags
OOC//All opinions are IC!! <3
Wasppaw suffers from Paranoia and Cognitive distortions meaning she is very likely to think everyone is against her or hates her. She does this by warping things other people say and convincing herself of what she wants to hear. Please know nothing is written to be mean!

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[Beetlepaw!]

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ A cat has to have a high level of tenacity to keep up with the gossip and history of the clan. Beetlepaw didn't mind being unaware that at some point in their life it would be necessary to keep up with the world, but for now keeping her head in the clouds didn't really bother anyone.

Their voice often kept low, evading distracted ears, and their presence drifted through the crowd with very little trouble. With a mind preoccupied by thoughts of things that would never happen, but who's to say they couldn't raise chicks in the apprentice den? Just because no one had ever tried doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Beetlepaw brought no goodies as they pranced through the snow towards the elders den, trying to keep their steps quick to keep their paws warmish. Checking to see if the elders nests needed to be changed or reshaped didn't really require anything special. They were happily on their way till they collided into something hard and were completely knocked onto the very snow they were trying to avoid. Small bubbles of laughter escaped them; it seems like there was no escaping the real world today. A worried face emerged into her squinted vision, and they let Wasppaw help them up.

Their cheerful voice came out in short, quiet bursts. "You may l-look like a f-flower…" The dark apprentice began while shaking the remaining snow off that clung to their short fur. Finally making eye contact with their disheartened peer. "But y-you have all... the s-strength of a bull." Their tail curling up high behind them as if to say no harm done.

ooc Information

• ooc: —
• 
  
  

  Beetlekit — She/Her ･ 7 moons ･ Windclan kit･ PENNED BY @Ghostunes

  ☀︎ A timid mostly black she-cat with chocolate striped spots on her chest face and foot.​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

All the time, good cats die. They get immortalized, memorialized—etched in stone as martyrs. Sedgepounce doesn't think that death makes cats better, though, and he'll never think that winding up dead and stinking and fly-swarmed does anything to make Snakehiss worthy of redemption. He's always felt sympathy for his children. Wasppaw is just one of several kits left to suffer by her parents' misgivings and it's pained him all the while. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean Sedge's ever known how to help them.

He witnesses the collision through the corner of his eye, paws preoccupied with shuffling a fresh-caught meadowlark onto the freshkill pile. "Whoops!" the tomcat calls jovially. He pads closer as Beetlepaw swipes snow-tufts from their coat, tail held high, ignorant to the mark of lark-blood smearing his chin. "At least we've got lotsa fluff to break our falls," he hums, gesturing to the piles of snow stacked around. Beetlepaw is fine, he knows. Wasppaw is...

She's troubled. Hidden beneath those plaintive layers of pleasantries and indifference. And why wouldn't she be?

Sedgepounce's attention pins to either apprentice with purpose. "I think the elders are set for a while. Have you both had time to eat?" Prey this Leafbare has been plentiful since the blizzard. They need to take advantage of the food supply to keep everyone well fed, apprentices included, lest WindClan's favor starts to turn.
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[laurelpaw]

What did you call the shadow of a shadow? Laurelpaw didn't know. She didn't think such a thing existed and therefore had a name, and she had never been well-spoken enough to think one up, anyway.

Though, maybe, she could simply call it: me. It was a description she certainly deserved, slinking around after littermates like she was now. She hugs the periphery of perception like an old friend, seeps into and dissolves within it as a fish into deep water; this is the first home she learned she had, before she had finally claimed that Windclan was — Windclan is my home, I belong here — with grit teeth. She takes little issue with being bold now, speaking out and claiming her place where nobody would do it for her, but she finds she cannot say the same for… all, of her siblings. In fact, if she dares to go further (and she always takes dares), she might even say that she cannot trust any of them to outrun whatever troubles that may find them. Another cat would likely tell her this is belittling and selfish of her to think, but nobody else is her — nobody else has them to take care of, and nobody else will ever do it in her place.

Not even their mother. Not even Snakehiss.

Her green eyes somehow escaped becoming piercing beneath the influence of her parentage, but they are terrible in their own way: dull as stone, but just as hard, allowing no passage into their depths. They are trained now upon Wasppaw, no doubt deep in her own neuroses, crawling up to the feet of the elders and offering them a meal. That's good, Laurelpaw guesses, knowing that giving food to the old of their clan was not only a strict point in their code but an excellent way to appear selfless and upright. The tortoiseshell carries on her observation as Wasppaw attempts some sunny conversation, but inevitably cuts the act short, no doubt eager to get to her training for the day — she was soon to be named a warrior, after all — and she considers slinking back to the tunnels herself, provided they aren't snowed in as of the recent weather, but she remains where she stands for just another few moments. Watching. Waiting. For what, she didn't know. Yet. She always found something, if something didn't end up finding her first.

There— the stark black and orange of Beetlepaw flashes suddenly against the pristine layer of snowfall, and before she can move, Wasppaw is barreling into and knocking them right into it.

Laurelpaw reacts almost instinctively. She's at her sister's side in an instant, not to help, no, but to defend: to usher her away, lest someone pipe up with something or another about how terribly rude that was, and how maybe they were beginning to look just like their father in his own apprenticeship. Laurelpaw would spit on such an accusation herself, but her hard head wasn't her siblings', and she couldn't know what it might do if it lodged itself somewhere up there in theirs'. But Beetlepaw at least seems forgiving about it all as Wasppaw hauls them back up, giggles bursting forth in icy little puffs.

They happily chime about her strength, despite her apparent look of a flower, and… Laurelpaw casts a glance at the littermate that most resembles their squirming worm of a father, unable to anticipate what reaction that might have. At least it isn't "you look like him".

"…A lot of fluff. Yeah," she tentatively breaks the silence, as if testing the ice over a river. Again, her mind drifts to the tunnels; she wonders how many of their entrances are home to a considerable amount of packed-in said fluff, and feels a piece of herself lament that she might spend the rest her day digging them out instead of submerged in their familiar dark, learning to run their vast lengths and breadths. With the elders fed, Sedgepounce finds appropriate to bring up eating to everyone else, an idea to which Laurelpaw offers Wasppaw a nudge. "He's right. Time to eat." Neither too harsh, nor too much like a friendly suggestion, lest she think she can slip away without food and not experience Laurelpaw dragging her right back to the pile.

we are made ✦ from the sharpest things

• ooc: —
• 

  LAURELPAW ✦ she/they, 12 moons
  — windclan tunneler apprentice
  — speaking, thinking, attacking
  — snakehiss x berrysnap

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[Wasppaw]

I love you, and if you want, I'll call you King

"You may l-look like a f-flower…But y-you have all... the s-strength of a bull." Fire burned in her gut. Intestines twisted around bone. A bull. Was? Was Beetlepaw insinuating that she was clumsy? Brash? Loud? That didn't seem like the multicolored molly but still, that is what they said, wasn't it? And then Laughter. Giggling and bubbly, Beetlepaw smiled up at her.
"O-oh," Her voice caught on some invisible line. Had she overstepped? She must've - somewhere she must've wronged Beetlepaw and this was... I don't deserve this! It was his fault not mine! But the laughing? What was that? A way to diffuse the situation?
"Haha..." She tries to smile back, trying her best to match the other apprentice's energy but her heart is ragging a war against her head. What was happening? Did this mean things were okay?
No, of course things weren't okay. She made a mistake. In camp. In public! It wasn't the cold making her shiver anymore.
Almost reflexivity the molly's head dips as Sedgepounce approaches. Her heart thrums in her ears. He was here was reprimand her. 'She attacked Beetlepaw,' the story whispered over the wind, worming it's way in the dens. 'On purpose. She did it on purpose.' It deformed, flashing behind the eyes of the on lookers. No I didn't! I promise. No I didn't. But she couldn't scream, she could let anything out. That would give them reason to say those words to her face. Would they exile her like they did her originator? Living without Wind Clan she could live with... but her siblings. She couldn't imagine being apart from them. They might even be brash enough to follow her into the wild. If they did, she wouldn't be able to help Laurelpaw protect them.
Sedgepounce's eyes stab into her as he orders her to eat. Diffusing the situation maybe? Ushering them along? Eyes were on her now. From the dens. The tunnels. Lark-blood drips from Sedgepounce's maw. Spittle is thick in her throat. To thick to swallow. Saliva threatens to slip over her lips, to dribble all over the snow.
Mutely she nods, her spine resisting the urge to bend into an apology. Then - peace. Her musses relax, her chest expands. Laurelpaw. Green eyes leak a little as the familiar pressure of her sister is there. Laurelpaw's fire burns bright, protecting all of Snakebite's spawn. It burns those that wish to hurt them, singeing their whiskers in warning. Why can't I be like that? She used to be, she has to remind herself. Before....
Maybe it's because they are sibling, but she instantly picks up on her sister's insistence through her tone. It's because they're siblings that she knows there is no escaping her sister's suggestion, not without being dragged back to the fresh kill pile.
Laurelpaw looked out for them. No Berrysnap. No milk-mother. Just Laurelpaw.
"He's right. Time to eat."
Again she nods, turning into her sibling. A silent 'I'll follow you' shared between their touching pelts. " Only if you share," She attempts a joke and a smile at her litter mate. The comment a way to diffuse the tension bubbling behind her eyes. She is quick to catch the dribble that comes out of her mouth before turning.
"Sorry again," She mews to Beetlepaw as they pass, and this time she is very careful to not get to close to the apprentice. Her mind buzzes, preoccupied with worries and thoughts she knew she needed to bring up with Laurelpaw to untangle. She hopes this is normal. That all she wants to be. A normal cat. She lets her littermate lead her away, shame hanging heavy on her coat and the world a little bit further away then it was a while ago.
But why do I lie awake each night thinking
"Instead of you, it should be me"? — penned by Keee, tags
OOC//All opinions are IC!! <3
She needs to go to therapy LMAO.​

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