LONG WINDED BLUES OF THE NEVER — DOVETHROAT

[RAVENSONG]

The black stone lay underneath his nest. It was settled against his elbow uncomfortably. Ravensong could perpetually feel it in any way he shifted in his nest. It was good like that—he did not want to change it. Just as the tabby invaded his thoughts and tormented him through the gossip of his Clanmates, there was not a world where he could imagine Dovethroat absent from it.

"As much as I tried, I could not find a stone that matched your fur. I apologise." Ravensong murmured as he led the warrior through the waterlogged reeds of the territory in search of a herb. The medicine cat gathering wore heavy on his soul and he busied himself even more in his work. He had insisted to be escorted by Dovethroat for this mission. If the tabby protested, Ravensong would persist until he gave in. The tension between them thrummed like the energy one could feel before a lightning strike. One moment peace and then in a split second fangs at throat.

"Throat, for your politeness, hm?" His oversized ear flicked backward to look over his shoulder at his companion, eyes glinting underneath the unrelenting sun of greenleaf.

@dovethroat.

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[dovethroat.]

Dovethroat had, unsurprisingly, at first refused. Why on StarClan's green earth would he spend any time, one-on-one, with Raventhroat—let alone go out into the wilderness with him to act as nothing more than a glorified little helper? Was Raventhroat trying to make him angry? Rub the reality of what had cleaved them apart from one another in his face? Make him kiss his paws? What was this pointless, obviously malicious plan of his? Dovethroat's disagreement reached a fevered pitch before he just got annoyed and their argument, as their arguments always did, got nowhere.

That was how Dovethroat found himself where he was, embarrassed and silent; significantly domesticated from how discontent he was with the proposal before they had left camp. His fluffed up fur had turned into something just a bit ruffled-looking, and his eyes were drawn almost permanently to the ground.

"...Th-That's fine," he murmured, supremely unthreatening. He did wonder how hard it could really be.

Unenthused eyes looked over to Ravensong. "I'm n-nice to p-people who d-deserve it, wh-when they deserve it," he mumbled. "A-And m-maybe for m-my mentor. Breath; th-throat. Who kn-knows," he was very deliberately trying to sound ininterested—whether or not he was actually was debatable.

[⋆]​

​

 

[RAVENSONG]

His eyes, as he understood, did not see a spectacular array of colors like so many of his Clanmates did. That was perhaps why Ravensong had expressed little interest in trinkets, rocks, and shells with pretty colors and patterns. He had certainly memorized the shade of Dovethroat's fur. But he could not find something satisfactory to what he wanted for Dovethroat. It would have to remain like this until now.

"You do not mind a late one?" He hummed, whiskers brushing past another clump of reeds. It was wet. It must have rained last night, he thought.

Once Ravensong was deserving of that nice treatment. He wondered if it would ever be his again.

"Do you realize that we were named after birds, and then our second name relates to the sound they make?" Ravensong's nostrils flared as he tried to pick up a very particular scent. "That sort of coincidence... is almost divine."

His jaws snapped, teeth clacking. "Chervil." He rumbled, abruptly changing the subject. "Small white flowering plant with larger leaves. It smells sweet. That is what we're looking for."

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[dovethroat.]

Looking tired (but in reality being rather awake), Dovethroat shifted his gaze from the ground beneath him to Ravensong's leggy form. At the suggestion, his face froze for a moment; as if he was unsure how to reply. "...No. I d-don't care," he mumbled flatly, walking a few paces behind Ravensong with no large amount of joy. "Wh-Why am I h-here, even? I d-don't know anything b-because I c-can't get taught—d-do you just w-wanna rub it in?" At least he had gotten up to the point of voicing some of the reasons of his discontent.

"I th-thought you said that k-kind of stuff did not make any s-sense to you," Dovethroat remarked, watching him sniff with an unamused face. Whiskers twitching, he almost recoiled at the sudden redirection of Ravensong's voice. "...S-Sweet how?" Sweet, he thought, was a mostly unhelpful descriptor. Many things could smell sweet.

Regardless, Dovethroat tucked his tail between his legs and went about sniffing out chervil—keeping an eye out for a white flower with big leaves.

[⋆]​

​

 

[RAVENSONG]

"You are here because it was revealed to me in a dream that I must take the big, light-colored tabby tomcat with me to look for chervil." Ravensong replied tartly, his blunt sarcasm falling flat as he began to ire of Dovethroat's pointed misery. "Must you always search for a meaning, Dovethroat?" His voice wavers in warning and he glances back at his companion. His heart ached. But there is a meaning. I chose you. "Sometimes, there is nothing special about anything we do or what happens to us." He grits his teeth and thinks of Dawnglare. He thinks of Rain and he thinks of Beesong's absence in the heavens. He thinks about how the WindClan medicine cat died as Ravenpaw became Ravensong.

His long feathery tail flicks over some of the dew-strung reeds, hopefully wetting Dovethroat's pelt with some of the little droplets. "You're right. I was saying that about our names just to prove any cat can assign meaning to any coincidence. With or without StarClan telling them. But even if we come up with it by ourselves, we still want it sanctioned by StarClan. It's holier that way. It's more legitimate. Why do we think so lowly of ourselves? We live on this earth and they do not." Dovethroat is the only cat who can hear him like this—to know the extent of his dissatisfaction with what lay above.

"Sweet like honey." He replies, echoing Starlingheart's description.

"You're good at that, aren't you?"

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[dovethroat.]

Dovethroat let out a big, theatrical show of a harumph. "I-If you brought me h-here to brag about your f-freaky woo-woo dreams, you should m-maybe make the ones that are lies m-more interesting," he set to sniffing at the air, picking up nothing in particular. As Dovethroat looked over at Ravensong, his eyes fell—looking sleepy, but somehow more focused. "Ev-verything that h-happens has a m-meaning. Even i-if it is just f-from the meaning it imparts on o-others. Oth-therwise, th-there is no p-point in doing anything." He remarked. Dovethroat misses Ravensong's look in his direction. It is something that happened wholly by chance, without intent or import—and yet meaning is conveyed by it.

He flinches as the water stings his side. It is not as if he fears water in the same way Ravensong does, but in no universe is being splashed a pleasant experience—especially when you were not up for the game. Blinking wearily, he licks at a spot that may not have even gotten any water on it; it makes him feel better, regardless.

At Ravensong's musing, his eyes go up to the stars—the sky, but the stars are there. He just cannot see them, as it is day. "W-Well, they've all e-experienced something we have n-not directly." He blinked, his trembling voice now just a side-effect of his natural disposition. He is not particularly nervous. "...Dying. M-Maybe that's m-more important than... w-we want to admit."

A silence passes between them. "Or s-something. I don't g-get to know if they're r-really up there."

"...G-Good at what?" There is no malice in his voice—the genuinely silly, at times a bit oblivious in spite of all of his intelligence Dovethroat is on display here. The comment from Ravensong has left him properly confused.

[⋆]​

​

 

[RAVENSONG]

Dovethroat sounded rather optimistic about the outlook on life. Ravensong considered his words but did not say anything. It was a surprise to hear it from the cat he knew to be so quick to wallow in his sorrows. He understood that the Dovethroat he often experienced was not the Dovethroat that the Clan saw. Politeness, after all, had been his name.

He blinked back at his companion, watching him look up into the sky for an answer. Dovethroat seems bolder now, and not particularly angry with Ravensong or himself. There is a truth in Dovethroat's musing. Having seen the dead himself, Ravensong cannot help but agree. "There is this notion that death makes you wiser, I suppose." He hums. But the cats up there are almost exactly like himself. Rain felt his anger and sadness, he could sense that worldly emotion on the ghost. There is something that sets them apart. "I do not know what it is yet." There were more answers to be sought and while hesitant, he was treading carefully.

"Seeing is not believing." He retorted calmly. He could live in ignorant bliss on whether the cats in the sky were up there or not. "Whether they exist or not is not my existential question. It's whether or not they are good and right. And I do not know yet, Dovethroat." Their main flaw was inaction—he supposed—but his life was so short he could not develop his theory without proper testing.

He passes a clump of reeds, the scent he was following is revealed to be a ruse and there is no patch of chervil. His claws tear at the ground.

"Assigning meaning to the meaningless."

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[dovethroat.]

There was a very fine line between optimism and pessimism in many ways, and it seemed like Dovethroat resided squarely on that line whenever he could. In spite of his musing, there is an undeniable undercurrent of bitterness as he sees Ravensong recount his experiences of seeing the dead walk. It is not retold out loud, but Dovethroat does not need it to be—he knows that he is thinking about it. His sickening, white-hot jealousy that bubbled underneath the surface only escaped through his eyes. He said nothing more, nothing less.

"I d-don't know what it is, e-either," Dovethroat remarked, pointedly not looking up at the sky as he continued to search. "And I d-don't get the p-privilege of b-being one of the ch-chosen few, so I never will." He saved the quip about how, even if Ravensong told him his experiences, he could not meaningfully trust him. He figured it was better left unsaid. The time had passed for that.

The confusion in his eyes melted away to dissatisfaction. "And y-you," he sighed, sniffing through another bunch of greenery, "a-are very g-good at avoiding r-responsibility by c-calling things meaningless."

[⋆]​

​