private LOSE ME // bluefrost

[cottonsprig]

Cottonfang, Cottonfang, Cottonfang...

Her ears seem to always press against the roundness of her cranium now as she tries to get used to the new moniker. It's not hard - much of it is the same. The cadence, the spacing - the way some say it admonishingly, as if she's a kitten to pity now that her father is dead, her mentor has left, and she's alone with several dozen cats who do not know who she is.. Does she know who she is?

A savior, mayhaps. To one or two souls who deserve salvation from a dying worship. She spreads moss in the dead of night, tugging leaves, stems, petals, all from the storage plots scattered around and placing them down delicately in the nesting. She takes the time to tuck it back into a neat packet - one. She does it again, two. A third is started when there's stirring behind her. She anticipates Sootstar, as her mother tends to seek her out when the stars are lost to the clouds.

Bluefrost's visage looks hardly different in this lighting.

"Sister -" her tone is quick, however not clipped, and it's edges are drenched with both fear and hope. "It's late. Are you hurt?" A hind paw kicks her gathered herbs in an attempt to move them out of sight.​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Her steps are wayward, aimless. Even as a kit, she’d never been one to seek comfort from another cat—even a parent, even an older sibling or a littermate. Lately, though, her nights have been restless. The last time she'd sought Sootstar had been in vain—her mother has retreated into some strange, isolated wasteland in her mind, starless and lonely, fractured. She seeks a last resort, the place her twin sleeps alone now, Wolfsong's scent still gathered in the corners like cobwebs.

She finds herself drawn like a moth to fire to her sister’s den, small triangular ears pricked. Cottonfang is awake—she’s shuffling about in the den, her movements muted. Bluefrost’s gaze is like green ice as she catches a hindleg’s darting backward motion. Something skitters quietly behind her.

“What are you doing?” She stares almost stupidly at the object Cottonfang had kicked. It’s a bundle of something, wrapped and sealed. Herbs. The air is redolent with their spice, their tang, as though her sister has been kneading and rolling them together. She shakes her head in denial, extended cheek fur swaying across the frost of her features. “Are you—are you going somewhere, sister?”

Each syllable is sharper and more pain-filled than the last. Her breath becomes ragged and unstable. She looks over her shoulder, looking for movement in the mass of pelts that cluster together in the dark and the cold. No one else stirs. No one else has seen or heard her.

Bluefrost unsheathes her claws, her teeth bared like concentrated moonlight. “You’re not leaving me here, you harebrained fool. You will—you’ll be hunted down like prey!” Her voice falls into a snapping, fraying whisper. She raises one white paw, letting what little light there is in the den glint off their surface.

, ”​

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[cottonsprig]

Her sister's inflection is dulled at first - any greeting she held died on her tongue, instead a statement of (worry? Fear? Aggression?) being launched forth. Cottonfang presses her lips together, and she cannot come up with an explanation or excuse fast enough. Bluefrost shakes her head in disbelief, and her words tumble over one another. Are you going somewhere? Their title to one another - sister - is shared and spoken, but both breathe out the syllables in a different manner.

She sees more and more of their mother in Bluefrost, and Cottonfang finds fear in what could easily be inevitable. But all the same, she looks towards her twin, a speck of hope in her eyes, pleading in her tone. "Then let them hunt me," she murmurs, firstly. She swallows thickly, her mind whirring with all she wants to say, all she can and cannot, before she adds, "Strike me down, here and now, if it pleases you." Cottonfang is to be a traitor due dawn, anyhow.

"Or -" she pitches again, "Or... come with me, Bluefrost. With us -" others are implied, but Cottonfang does not release the information as to who, "If we should not be separated, then we can be together elsewhere. We can stay where Weaselclaw was born and raised - and not rot and die here..." a pause. Cottonfang steps closer to Bluefrost, within striking distance. Her brow furrows with determination but she poses no threat to her littermate, "You see it too. You must -" the lack of prey, the minds lost to insanity, their leader-imposed starless skies. It's Cottonfang's turn to shake her head.

"Mark me just like Sootstar has. Kill me and throw my body into the gorge," she states, "or give me time to leave - leave with me. You have options, sister. Please."​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Bluefrost wants Cottonfang to be intimidated, to draw away and murmur apologies, meek and quiet. She wants her to see sense—to behave, as she has never, ever done. But her twin shakes her head—left, right, center, and her blue eyes are gleaming with a hope that makes Bluefrost sick. “Then let them hunt me,” she murmurs in response, a response so brave and sickeningly stupid it repulses her, and Bluefrost knows all hope is lost. Her fool of a sister has made up her mind to abandon her Clan, her kin, the kingdom she’d once shared with their littermates. She closes her eyes as though Cottonfang has struck her.

“You have chosen to die.” Bluefrost’s ears flatten against her skull. Wisps of fur move against her shoulders as she shifts her weight from paw to paw. Her claws scratch against the earth, scoring rivulets in the grit. “Strikeme down, here and now, if it pleases you.” Bluefrost does not reply at first, listening to her sister begin her bargaining. “Come with me, Bluefrost. With us.”

She allows herself to imagine this—however briefly. The place where Weaselclaw was born and raised, surrounded by Twolegs and her former Clanmates. Gravelsnap would be there, Sunstride, Wolfsong, kits who had watched her toddle from the nursery and onto the moor. Scorchstreak, her kin Bluepool, Mintshade. Moorblossom. She would be free of Sootstar’s weight, ever-crushing, ever-present, free of the shadow that clings to her like the scent of earth and heather sap.

“You know I cannot,” she answers, her voice strangely soft. “Yes—yes, you fool, I see it too. But that does not mean you leave. She—” Bluefrost opens her eyes, their mother’s green searing into their father’s blue. “She will kill you. And now, stars damn you, I have to kill you, too.”

But she does not lift her claws again. Bluefrost grits her teeth, clenching her jaw until she fears her fangs will shatter like ice in her mouth. She thinks she tastes blood—has she bitten her tongue?

“Scratch me. Claw me somewhere—anywhere. And run. I will give count to ten before I sound the alarm.” She flicks her eyes away from Cottonfang’s guileless blue gaze, unable, anymore, to meet her eyes. “And the next time I see you, it will be the last time.”

She braces herself for the blow she wills Cottonfang to deliver.

, ”​

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[cottonsprig]

"Perhaps I have," she says, but her tone is not as clean or as cool as Bluefrost's. It tremors with the truth - that death is fastly approaching her, his scythe poised and ready to take her single life away. A part of her can only hope that he is swift when he arrives, or that he manifests himself into that of her sister's pristine claws. Perhaps this end is the true and proper one. She begs nonetheless, and though the silence between them is brief, she dwells in it for as long as she can.

Her heart bleeds when Bluefrost speaks again. She's damned by the stars they've been forbidden from speaking to, yet her blue furred sister speaks with reprehension and guilt. "You're loyal," the youngest murmurs, and though she's instinctive to smile, her expression remains pitiful, remorseful. She doesn't want to leave, but the set of blue eyes in the sea of pelts will her to press on, or die trying.

She breathes, silence pools between them once again, before grace is gifted. Tears prick the corners of her eyes when Bluefrost makes her demands. Ten seconds, Cottonfang wonders if that will be long enough. It will have to be. She nods, and though a pit of sadness grows in her belly, she makes quick work of what she must. The third bundle is swiftly abandoned, but she nudges the second into the paws of Downypaw nearby. She whispers something akin to "Stay close," to the other before taking a bundle in her own teeth and looking back to her sister.

"Bluefrost?" she mumbles around her herbs. She has so much to say, but quite literally so little time. So, she unsheathes her claws, and bulldozes through all she must - "I'm sorry. Thank you. I'll miss you." - and, as her claws cascade across the bare shoulder of the other, "I love you." She detests that Bluefrost's fur and blood clots in her claws, but she doesn't dawdle. Cottonfang moves quick, nudging the apprentice out of the den and towards the first tunnel they can get to. Utterances of "Hurry, hurry!" spill between her tongue and the herb bundle, and the two race towards the horseplace.​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Bluefrost’s teeth remain strained against one another as Cottonfang lifts one of her paws. Her sister’s claws, untrained in the art of battle for many moons now, curve into her flesh like she’s a plant that needs dissecting. There’s a sting—but the stoic young she-cat does not turn away. She lets her sister sully her nails with her kin’s blood. She lets her sister escape, a small gray-dusted feline at her side. A pale gray face lowers to the mounds of herbs bound at her paws, and through the leaves, Cottonfang tells her so much.

So much.

I’m sorry, she says. Thank you.

I’ll miss you.

Bluefrost turns her face away, letting the blood mingle with a single tear that she does not shake away. “Go.” It’s an order, though it’s said lifelessly, limp. She can hear swift pawsteps beat against the earth. She inhales, and then she exhales, one, two, three. Her sister flees through the gorse that shields their camp, into the moor, their paws now crunching snow.

She inhales. Five, six, seven. Her shoulder still stings. Cold air constricts the skin around the new scar. Slowly, hesitantly, she gives the wound a lick. There will no longer be a medicine cat to treat it, after all. Cottonfang will be fleeing over the hills now, Downypaw in tow. They will be heading for the den of rebels, of traitors.

She exhales.

Eight, nine, ten.

“I love you, too,” she says to emptiness. Bluefrost heaves herself to her paws and treks away from Cottonfang’s den. She inhales again. Her lungs are full of a scream, bitterness fighting regret fighting rage.

, ”​

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