private LOOK AT THE FLOWERS YOU NEARLY BOUGHT — bluefrost

[Thriftfeather]

It is through a clouding disbelief that Thriftfeather finds himself stumbling on shivering limbs into the nursery. He doesn't need to pause to remember the well-tread pathways he used to follow through WindClan's camp; his body valiantly carries Thriftfeather where he needs to go, just as it always has. Each step is as automatic as the last. The distance between his mind and body is broken only as he needs to duck his head to slip into the nursery.

"Bluefrost," Thriftfeather breathes her name.

At once, he is struck with the reality of what has happened. What Sunstar has said and what he hadn't said. You will not leave until—? Until tomorrow, until a lifetime has passed, until Thriftfeather steps wrong, or until Sunstar comes to some kind of terrible conclusion about Thriftfeather. His heart still hasn't settled, even as Thriftfeather gracelessly collapses near Bluefrost.

"I was told to wait here," Thriftfeather wishes he had more to offer to Bluefrost. His eyes flick downward just as his paws decide by their own accord to fold into a more comfortable position—strangely detached from the worry and fear that constricts his chest, tight enough that it is an effort to keep the even pattern of his breath from devolving into gasps, "Is it—how is everyone? How are you?"

@BLUEFROST ​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Time is impossibly still; she measures the days by the spill of light that encroaches her space in the nursery, by the rhythmic suckle of her children's hunger. She cannot tell if it is dawn or twilight when a broad-shouldered golden figure fits himself into the sparse enclosure she shares with her detested brother. All she can see is an orange glow threaded through his fur; all she can scent is him, impossibly, dusty and barren and himself, alive, unbloodied. His steps are wobbly and uncertain; she wonders if he, too, had no expected to live this long.

"Bluefrost." His voice is soft like petals. She has not been spoken to with such reverence in what feels like moons, and she is starved for the feeling it brings her. Bluefrost lifts her muzzle away from the kits suckling at her belly and gazes upon Thriftfeather with shimmering eyes. "You are alive. You are here." She does not reach for him, not initially; she is too spent to dole out what remains of her affection.

Even still, when he goes to lay beside her, she closes her eyes and inhales the air around his fur. That scent she had cherished had cost her much, but — but it is his closeness now that matters to her. "What did... what did Sunstar say?" She searches his expression, seeing much, but understanding little. "How long... are they sending you back? I..."

He asks about the kits. About her. Bluefrost's eyelids sink to a halfway point, eclipsing the glowing green of her eyes. "Rimekit is sick. I had to take her to Cottonsprig." Her whiskers tremble, but she does not otherwise lose what is left of her composure. "The others are healthy... for now. I am..."

How is she? Bluefrost tears her gaze from Thriftfeather's, back to the kits who drain her, who need her, and she falls silent. She is not herself. She is not whole. She does not know what will make her whole again, if anything can, but for now...

"I am... better. Better, now that you are here." She turns back to him, almost demure. It has been moons since she has reached for him in any capacity. It has been a lifetime since they were exchanging words beneath a dusky sky, before their lives had intertwined inexplicably, forever. "I have missed you." She allows herself this one thing, this confession, before quieting again, before letting her attention shift back to the kits who feed from her.

『 out of character. 』 ✧･ﾟ:* 『 about. 』

• ooc: —
• 
• Bluekit . Bluepaw . Bluefrost, she/her w/ feminine terms.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — 18 moons old, ages realistically on the 14th.
  — mentored by Sootstar ; mentoring Brackenpaw ; previously mentored n/a.
  — windclan queen. sootstar x weaselclaw, gen 2.
  — penned by Marquette.
  
  
  lh blue smoke she-cat with white and emerald eyes. aloof, dignified, poised, haughty, composed, distant.
  
  

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

What did Sunstar say? Bluefrost asks, and Thriftfeather feels shame curl around him like an old friend.

"He told me to—he said I needed to defend myself. My life," He lowers his voice as he speaks—as if the kits are at an age to understand Thriftfeather, as if they don't need to hear this, "So I told him everything I could think to say. He knows about Ghostwail now—about everything," The tightly held ring around the secret has expanded; under normal circumstances, Thriftfeather would have never allowed for this.

"After, he said—" Your life was never WindClan's to take, Sunstar had said, but the words stick in Thriftfeather's mouth, "He told me I wasn't really in any danger after, and he told me to wait here until..." Until nothing—Thriftfeather's face turns towards the mouth of the den, as if Sunstar might appear then, having decided a proper until. Thriftfeather concludes, "Until what, he hadn't said."

Perhaps Bluefrost would have demanded a proper answer from Sunstar had it been her in his position. Now, still peering at the limited view of the outside world from the inside of the nursery, Thriftfeather wishes he had pressed for a real until. At the time, he had been happy to cling to whatever mercy was provided. As consequence, Thriftfeather has nothing to say to soothe Bluefrost's worries, and he has nothing to lessen his own. Until repeats like a bird's warning cry in his mind.

Bluefrost continues on; she tells Thriftfeather that Rimekit is sick and at once Thriftfeather remembers that Bluefrost had mentioned an illness spreading around camp—had that same illness found its way in here, or had it come to Rimekit sooner, while carried across the expanse of WindClan?

His mind conjures up unwanted images of Rimekit, too still and too quiet from the squirming thing he has so briefly known. Thriftfeather closes his eyes against the imagined sight. It does nothing to snuff the new kind of worry that has taken root in his chest. Rimekit seems so small—they all do. Thriftfeather cannot fathom fighting an illness at that age.

"She's the best of both of us," The words are as much for Thriftfeather as they are for Bluefrost, "Already, she's the best of both of us. She's a fighter—she's already strong." His eyes pull open and return to Bluefrost, "Had Cottonsprig said—did she say anything about how long the treatment would take?"

And then, soft enough to injure him, Bluefrost says that she has missed him. Thriftfeather feels it like a crack to his ribs. The sound that punches out of him is appropriately pained.

"I'm sorry," That she needed to know his absence, that he hadn't known where to set his paws from the start, that she even needs to be forgiving of his faults, "I've missed you too. I hated—I hated not seeing you."​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Thriftfeather's voice is low. He tells her in hushed words that Sunstar had heard him out about Ghostwail, about his duty to DuskClan's youth, about everything. "He told me I wasn't really in any danger after, and he told me to wait here until... until what, he hadn't said." Bluefrost's jaw tenses just slightly. "Does he mean to keep us all in limbo, waiting for his verdict?" The frost in her voice seeps into every consonant, freezes over. But there is nothing she can do. She has never held power over Sunstar, and now she holds power over nothing, no one.

The helplessness is the worst part, she thinks.

Still, she cannot rebuke Sunstar entirely. He has let Thriftfeather live; there is no blood marring his golden pelt, no wounds inflicted. Sunstar had not sent Thriftfeather away from his kits, either — and for what purpose he had not done so, she cannot grasp.

Frustrated, she exhales and closes her eyes. Thriftfeather is rightly concerned about Rimekit. "She's the best of both of us," he says, and Bluefrost's body trembles with guilt she cannot suppress. No. She is the best of my foolish sister and some cat she cannot name. She was born away from her Clan, outside of the medicine cat code, and StarClan is punishing us all.

Thriftfeather's question is like a burr in her ears. "Cottonsprig said she will do everything in her power to make sure Rimekit lives," she murmurs. "She gave me lungwort so the rest of them will not get sick." She lowers her gaze, back to the vulnerable bodies who feed from her. "I keep thinking of..." Her father, withered, rasping, his pelt tattered, her blue eyes glazed with delirium.

Rimekit cannot go the way he did. Even StarClan would not allow that, surely.

"I knew you would not be able to see me," she murmurs. "I thought of you often. I even tried, once... after Wolfsong counted the kits, I tried..." Her smile wavers. "He told me two."

And there had been two, in truth — not that Thriftfeather will ever know.

『 out of character. 』 ✧･ﾟ:* 『 about. 』

• ooc: —
• 
• Bluekit . Bluepaw . Bluefrost, she/her w/ feminine terms.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — 18 moons old, ages realistically on the 14th.
  — mentored by Sootstar ; mentoring Brackenpaw ; previously mentored n/a.
  — windclan queen. sootstar x weaselclaw, gen 2.
  — penned by Marquette.
  
  
  lh blue smoke she-cat with white and emerald eyes. aloof, dignified, poised, haughty, composed, distant.
  
  

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Thriftfeather can only speculate as to Sunstar's intentions. He cannot stop the way he tracks every change to Bluefrost's face or the way his heart assumes that the tension is directed towards himself despite the way his mind knows better. It is a failure of his that he has nothing more for Bluefrost; he suspects that even were Sunstar planning to set Thriftfeather loose in some nebulous future, that knowing would be better than wondering.

He swallows the errant desire to apologize—there is nothing more.

Thriftfeather's ears catch over a single word as Bluefrost speaks of Rimekit's treatment. They fold atop his head before perking back into attention, "It's yellowcough?"

He prays that he has his herbs wrong, but it is a difficult thing to forget. The fear redoubles in his chest; when Bluefrost had mentioned sickness, Thriftfeather hadn't realized just how dire the situation had been. Still, he clings to a papery hope that the sickness is anything else. Perhaps lungwort has been found to have multiple uses, perhaps he truly is ignorant on the name of the herb that had saved WindClan the first time. Thriftfeather had been spared from falling ill the first time, and now he quashes the thought that Rimekit is paying recompence for it.

I keep thinking of... Bluefrost trails off. Thriftfeather leans as if he could chase the words to their conclusion, and is instead left to suspect without knowing what it is Bluefrost sees behind her lowered gaze.

"She's a good medicine cat," Cottonsprig is a good medicine cat—such a fact needs to be enough, "And we—WindClan already has lungwort. There isn't a gap between when she's first sick and when—and the first treatment." And that needs to be enough.

The confession that Bluefrost had attempted to see Thriftfeather doesn't surprise him; she's stubborn enough to try. It softens him just as much as it fills him with disbelief that Bluefrost could truly care for him as he does for her despite the fact that Thriftfeather is so painfully himself. His eyes flick meaningfully over the four kits between the two of them, and then he offers Bluefrost a wavering smile to match her own.

"Two?" Playfully incredulous—Thriftfeather clings to it in a lack of any other levity, "Someone should let him know that he was a little off."​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[BLUEFROST]

She had not told him the sickness in camp was yellowcough — and when he realizes, horror eclipses his tender expression. Bluefrost only nods. The word is heavy. It speaks for itself — it had rotted their forest from inside out only seasons ago. It had left cats without kin. It could do the same to us, now.

It is one thing to lose a father to illness; it is devastating, harrowing, to watch your mother lose her composure, to watch her retreat into herself, to succumb to certain madness. It is another to lose a daughter. Bluefrost would share Cottonsprig's pain, and, even unwittingly, so would Thriftfeather.

"She's a good medicine cat," he tells her, referring to Cottonsprig. "And we — WindClan already has lungwort." She nods again. "It will not be like before, surely," she murmurs.

He drags his tired green eyes over the kits, and she can see that he, too, misses the moonbeam of Rimekit's pelt among their smokey grays. He tries to be playful for her, regardless of all that they shoulder, jokingly mentioning to Wolfsong that he was a little off. Bluefrost's eyes soften.

"My mother had five, you know. I felt... close to her, out in the moor, under the stars." Nevermind her mother had damned the stars with her final breath; nevermind she had upbraided Bluefrost before she'd been sentenced to die; nevermind she would curse these kits, all five of them, without blinking.

In all my memories of you, I am pleading with you. In my imagination now, I am pretending.

"Perhaps that is why I chose her name." She touches Sootkit with a gentle press of her nose. "She looks just like her, does she not? Like her, but with your gold..." Legacy, legacy. Perhaps they are blessed that Sootstar cannot touch these kits, that Ghostwail cannot haunt them.

Not unless they haunt them through us, I suppose.

『 out of character. 』 ✧･ﾟ:* 『 about. 』

• ooc: —
• 
• Bluekit . Bluepaw . Bluefrost, she/her w/ feminine terms.
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — 18 moons old, ages realistically on the 14th.
  — mentored by Sootstar ; mentoring Brackenpaw ; previously mentored n/a.
  — windclan queen. sootstar x weaselclaw, gen 2.
  — penned by Marquette.
  
  
  lh blue smoke she-cat with white and emerald eyes. aloof, dignified, poised, haughty, composed, distant.
  
  

​