private LET IT RUN MY MOOD ♥︎ CROCHET

[DOEBLAZE]

Once @Crochet has been brought back to camp—once they've talked to Orangestar—once the whole flurry of joining protocol she normally wasn't so personally close to has finished and the dust has settled, Doeblaze leads her sister to a quiet corner of camp. The ferns nod sleepy greetings as the pair of lilac she - cats settle down, and Doeblaze can feel her face splitting into a smile far easily than it has for moons now. Here, voices muffled by thick banks of bramble and fern not unlike the one she'd delivered her first litter in so long ago, she looks at her sister. Really looks at her, softening green eye taking in Crochet's tall frame that's long outpaced her own, the fluffy tawny - hued fur so like her own.

Doeblaze reaches out hesitantly to rest her own ivory forepaw on her sister's, the two of them overlapping in barely distinguishable shades of creamy white fluff. Lashes droop low over a seaglass eye and her mouth crooks into a soft smile, warily enjoying the press of fur against hers in an unoffending touch. It's been so long since those chilly days when they'd all rest before a caged fire and she'd wash the fur between her sister's tufted ears. A moment of contented silence passes, and for once, she lets it.

" I don't even know where to start, " she mrrows with a half - laugh, eye flickering skyward to where a warm blanket of blue drapes over night - lit gold. Firsts, seconds; mates, kits, losses, gains, scars. There's so much Crochet has missed in only a single turn of the seasons and a pawful of moons, and so much she wishes her sister had been there for—fur pressed to her own, blue eye crinkled in determination. An upbeat attitude she'd long lost in herself. Something to rest on, a pillar.

" You have nieces and nephews. Six of them, to be exact, " Doeblaze mrrows, eye roaming Crochet's face to gauge a reaction. " They're out patrolling right now. You can meet them at sundown—if you want to, I mean, " she adds, hesitant, as though afraid her sister might turn away from the family she never knew, from all that has happened to Doeblaze, to the cat she is now—one hard to reconcile with the cat she had been so many moons ago.

" . . . So much has happened. I mean, my eye . . . everything's different, really, " she admits tiredly. A question waits in her throat, bobbing thornily on her tongue; there is no good answer to it, not if Crochet had been driven all the way out here. She asks anyways: " How's—how's Mom? "

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[BLOOMFUR]

❀ the taller lilac sticks close to her sister, pressing close like she’d disappear once more if she dared inched away. a curtain of ferns lazily part, opening up to a bustling land of cats of varying shapes and sizes. it’s not until that very moment, crochet realizes she’s never seen this many cats in one spot. her blue eyes widen, staring owlishly at everything before her, barley blinking during the initiation process.

crochet settles on the hard ground with a simple mrrp, curling her feathery tail around her body. her eyes soften, looking at her sister, how the ivory curls around her fur. it’s grown, which didn’t feel possible, but it is and bobbie ( doeblaze, she knows, but let her hold onto it for a bit longer ) is beginning to look like their mother; a statement she hides behind a bitten cheek.

six? that’s like… a lot. she assumes they’re all older, otherwise their conversation would include unpaid babysitting. crochet doesn’t know if any one of these six younger relatives would even want to meet her, this skyclan is so large… "i can meet them, uhm… who are the sires?" she wonders, but she isn’t reaching for an answer. in the fenced world, caretakers are usually just the one, while here, in the word of ferns, it’s most likely similar.

her singular white paw settles underneath her sisters, leaning into her shoulder comfortingly. "it has, but, we’re finally together again, yeah?" she chimes encouragingly, a quiet ache behind her eyes. this is going oddly well, despite crochet’s conflicted feelings about doeblaze leaving. it was something that had to happen eventually, champagne explained that clearly, but to leave and not say anything.. crochet was lucky that doeblaze was so close by. she could’ve visited, a grim reminder.

"mom’s getting old," she cuts to the point, looking down at their paws. "so is our owner. neither of us could tell what was going on, but mom started worrying about someone coming in and taking me away. so she told me to leave before anyone could do that, i think she always knew you were still around. somewhere."

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[DOEBLAZE]

Her sister looks a little shell - shocked, a little overwhelmed, her brilliant sky - blue eyes blown wide as the owls that liked to swoop through the trees at night, filling the dusk - purpled sky with their soft, mournful cries. Doeblaze can hardly blame her—if it's felt like a whirlwind to her, she can only imagine how it's been for Crochet, suddenly bundled into a new camp full of strangers and with the unmasked reality of everything that's changed placed before her. She can't keep a deep sigh from winding its way out of her chest, unspooling into the pine - scented air; SkyClan has been home for long enough that it's getting harder to remember life before it, the cat she was before it. Before everything, really.

" I'm sure they'll want to meet you, " Doeblaze assures her sister, green eye a pit as soft as roiling fields of grass when it fixes reassuringly on Crochet. Her sister chimes out a question, innocuous and well - meaning, and the warrior takes in a harsh suck of breath. The sires. Duke—stars, how long has it been since she thought of him?—him leaving—the dogs—falling in love, again, for real this time—Blazestar—and then the sudden absence of him. It's all too much to lay out right here, right now, and thankfully Crochet moves on before she has to answer.

" Yeah, " she affirms, leaning gently back into her sister's shoulder, the calloused skin of her scars pressing into Crochet's unmarred softness. She takes a moment to enjoy it, the simple press of a kind touch, bringing dew rising to the corners of her eyes. Then, of course, her question is answered, and she almost wishes she hadn't asked it at all. " I—I figured, but— " she breaks off, shaking her head, suddenly weary.

" I should've come and looked for you guys, " she murmurs, resisting the urge to press a paw to her face and hide the way it crumples—afraid to free her sister's paw from between her own for fear she might dissolve into dayglow. " I thought about it, but it just . . . never seemed—I don't know, right? " She does not want to admit what she already knows; that she had been afraid, afraid that her mother and her sister would reject the cat she'd become. Would hate the one she was now. She settles for a hoarse. simple remark, " Things have been . . . a lot. "

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[BLOOMFUR]

❀ crochet notices that, unfortunately, her sister doesn’t fully confirm who the sires are. duke is one, she’s aware of that, but the second one remains a mystery. she honestly.. doesn’t really care. after growing up with a woman who raised two litters, and chatting around the fence posts, she knows how a queen’s life functions. there are six relatives roaming around! six! the tip of her tail twitches nervously at the thought.

"i hope they like me." she murmurs.

doeblaze’s skin and fur press into her shoulder. it reminds her of their owner, oddly enough, their wrinkly skin petting her squarely on the head. if she closes her eyes, she is brought back to a time of simplicity. warm beds on rainy nights, curled up together while their twoleg watches her moving pictures. things have changed, crochet coldly reminds herself, opening her eyes to a lush filled corner of camp. leaves and twigs halo the sisters, a few stray branches even brushing against crochet’s fur.

the young girl feels protected, but that seems futile. her sister’s face is raw, twisted, and secretly ugly– will that become her, now that she’s staying? darkness coils around her paws, whispers of the forest touching her ears, cooing like her mother used too; something lurks.

there’s so much could’ve, would’ve, should have. it prickles into her skin uncomfortably, wishing her sister would stop apologizing. "i wish you could’ve said goodbye." it’s spoken plainly. some of the new ivory fur pools around to form licks of flames. the name slowly begin to feel less foreign.

"tell me something good about skyclan," she urges, softly.​

 

[DOEBLAZE]

" I'm sure they will, " she murmurs placatingly, pressing Crochet's paw firmly between hers in what she hopes is a gesture of comfort. It's been a while since she partook of such unoffending touches—since her kits left the nursery, most likely—and she is awkward in them, unsure of her motions. It's funny, really, how easily she finds herself moving when scaling trees, when chasing down a bluejay in the branches, when delivering commands to her apprentices—but when she needs to console her sister, she finds herself falling short. She's as unsure in her motions now as she had been in the trees, so many moons ago.

" I think they'll be—happy, really happy, " she mrrows, even as doubt swirls bitter around her back teeth. Some of her children can hardly get along with each other, can hardly get along with her, much less a strange aunt they've never met. Then again, she thinks hopefully, perhaps that's exactly what they need—a friendly face, a familial one, but lacking in her many transgressions, her many failings.

" I . . . " she begins, the words fighting her with each syllable. " . . . Me, too, I'm—sorry. I really am, " she murmurs ruefully, tucking her head low. She's always leaving without goodbyes, it would seem, eager to get the hell out of dodge when it gets tough. Not anymore, she promises herself.

" The community, I guess, " she replies to her sister's soft prompting, seizing on the question like a blessing. It's an answer she's never pondered on, but she finds herself delivering it without thinking—as if the words had been dammed up somewhere inside her all along, waiting for a patient paw to free them. " It's . . . I don't know how to describe it, really, but it's—amazing. Everyone is there for each other, " she murmurs thoughtfully, her lonely eye following the everyday motions of cats around camp, trying to see them through her sister's sky - blues. " When I was in the nursery, everyone made sure I was fed and comfortable. We care for our elders, we follow an honorable code—it's so much more . . . " she struggles for the word for a moment, " . . . together than Twolegplace ever was. "

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