border moonlight wisp 𖥔 abandoned kit

[flax]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ — the color of our planet from far, far away .​

---

Originally, Dust had been a constant presence. Her scent had always blanketed him in a feeling of calm when she had settled to feed he and his littermates, tenderly lapping at each of them to make their fur shine like stars in the night sky. But he had long lost that healthy kit-fresh sheen; now nothing more than a scrap of matted fur and tiny, gaping jaws, Flax sways limply in the grip of his mother's teeth, mewling in complaint as he's carefully deposited into a thicket of strong-smelling grasses. Blinking against the border-marked stench of the tall stalks, he looks tiredly against a moonbeam, glimpsing a final hollow sadness reflecting in heather-blue eyes. She looks like she's at the end of her line, though Flax is none the wiser. "I wanna go home," he mewls dejectedly up to her, struggling toward his mother against the tough stalks which claw at his ragged, thinning fur.

"I know," coos the quiet response, her voice absent and rough with an emotion that Flax doesn't yet understand. She bends to touch her nose to his forehead, and he breathes in sharply, catching a whiff of her familiar scent. She had stopped smelling like milk many sunrises ago, but still he tries to struggle toward her, whining for food that she knows she can't provide. "I'll always love you, Flax," she whispers to him in a breaking voice, her eyes closing against a wave of grief that trembles through her from ears to tailtip. And then she's turning and pacing away, further and further, until she vanishes into the shade of the pine forest. "Mama," Flax cries after her wavering shadow, gray paws struggling against the cage of tough green stems that she had dropped him into. Needle-sharp claws tear at the grass, spilling sharp-smelling sap onto his fur as his voice raises into a thin, high-pitched wail.

"Mama!"

 

[frostbreath]

⊹₊꒰ა𓆩♱𓆪໒꒱₊⊹ there is a strange scent on the cold wind, undeniably cat but still unfamiliar. a rush of uncertainty raced down frostbreath's spine, blue eyes narrowing. she was a skyclanner alone, desperate to catch a trace of prey under the stars before returning to camp. it seemed starclan would be blessing them in a different sense tonight.

pinned ears fly upwards when cries break out, the sound pulling so tenderly on her heart that her eyes rounded with brimming emotion. white paws quicken, weaving through the pines until she sets sight on a kitten abandoned at the border. there was another scent, loner, trailing out of the territory. "oh dear," she mutters under her breath, plumed tail twitching in discomfort. she wouldn't question the morals of a queen forfeiting her young so close to leafbare, it would make a hypocrite of her.

"hello, little one," frostbreath hums gently, glancing over her shoulder in the chance that someone else had heard the child's calls and would come with more sense on what to do. the other scent was still fresh, the queen may have set her child here with intent on returning, but it was growing too cold to leave someone so small out here alone. "are you alright?" she doesn't want to cause panic, to settle in the harsh reality that he very well may have been abandoned.

IM SPINNING OUT / / ₊⊹ I CANT CONTROL MY CAR‎ ‎‎࿐

• ooc ➺
  

• 

• 
  FROSTBREATH ࿐ SHE/HER, SKYCLAN WARRIOR, 34 ☾'s
  ➺ an elegant longhaired blue silver tabby with low white and misty blue eyes.
  ➺ NPC x NPC / / currently mentoring none.
  ➺ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking.
  ➺ penned by vayle ↛ @vayl3 on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

The reedy, pitching sound of a kitten's wail is unmistakable. Heard only too often in camp, it sends an uneasy jolt down her spine in the empty pine forests. "Another one?" She sends @ricepaw a frustrated glance, hoping her apprentice would understand the reason for it not being her but the presence of yet another useless rogue mouth to nurture for the hard next moons. She knows that, once found, the bleeding hearts of SkyClan would have no choice but to ferry the thing into camp and tuck it into Butterflytuft's or Oddgleam's side. The thought of a mangy, winter-sick creature nursing next to her niblings makes her delicate lip curl.

Ah well—Emberfall turned out alright, despite it all. Falcongaze too, begrudgingly, though what a headache it'd been to grow up with him. If they weren't the tactiturn, stick-in-the-mud type though—her torn ear stings in the cold—they were all future Doompaws: ungrateful bastards. A sigh flutters from porcelain jaws and wells in the wintry air: "Alright, let's go check it out." With a flick of her tail, she beckons Ricepaw after her towards the sound.

Between the two, Frostbreath is the more obvious one. The calico strides up to flank the sleek silver tabby, casting an imperious gaze down towards the dishelved kitten. The beautiful three of them—Frostbreath, Cherryblossom, and Ricepaw—must be an angelic sight through the haze of hunger that surely clouds his blue gaze. "I don't think she's coming back." She's long since stopped trying to pretend at sympathy; in her voice it's more a mockery than anything. "What's your name?" Surely someone else would come up and offer the requisite condolences, then to take him home with them.​

 

[flax]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ — the color of our planet from far, far away .​

---

She does not come back, try as he might to call her. His wail is lost to the crisp stillness of night, the air threatening a coming winter that his matted pelt will not be able to protect him from. Did Dust want him to go to sleep forever, like his brother and sister had? He doesn't want to sleep now. Though previously his mind had sagged with exhaustion, it now whirls round and round, turbulent with fear of being without her. "Mama," he calls again to where she had gone, voice now trembling and fading in his throat as he tucks his ratty tail close to a shivering haunch. Gummy eyes begin to close only to open wide again as a voice, muttered behind him, tickles his ear fur. Instantly Flax scrambles in the tussock of grass, his heartbeat hammering in his chest as he cranes his neck to see a silver-blue cat with eyes like mist. The gentle hum that follows her appearance is lost on him.

Fear makes him wily, and Flax spits in a sharp hiss, lashing out with a tiny paw which can do no real damage. Of course he's not alright! "Go away!" he cries, fear and grief lain bare before the SkyClan warrior as plain as sunlight on snow. Not even he thinks she's coming back for him. If he could see better through his running eyes, perhaps he would glimpse the concern in her face and the brimming emotion in her wide blue eyes. "She's gonna come back," he whispers dejectedly, more to himself than to her, or to Cherryblossom and Ricepaw, who arrive shortly after (although one of their eyes are far less warm). Crouching within the grass into a tiny, greasy scrap of fur, already he's rattling on, another full-body shiver running through him from his ears to his tailtip. Voice rasping in his exhaustion, torn by his cries of despair, it hardly sounds very confident in itself. "My mama loves me." ... Does she? Offput by his own thoughts, he looks to Cherryblossom, adding with a glimmer of hesitance, "...I'm- .. Flax."

 

[Cherryblossom]

He's so pathetic it pierces right through her reactive disgust. Normally, they just... sit there. He seems to be putting a fight still, even if only against himself. It's a moving display; pity rises like bile in her throat. "I'm... sure she does." The flatness of it makes her sound sarcastic, but hopefully he's not yet at the age where he's able to grasp such subtety. The calico has matured just enough to know that "If she loved you so much, why'd she leave you here?" is neither right nor true. Citrine eyes wander past the kitten into the dark distance, wondering briefly whether she'd stumbled away to her death and how far. Perhaps she could still be saved, like Mottledove and Bobbie and Lovage.

It's too much risk for not enough reward though, to send out a patrol into the Leaf-bare night in search of someone who wasn't even a SkyClanner. Cherryblossom chances a glance towards Frostbreath as the silence stretches on and no one else arrives. She wants to say to the kit, "If you're so sure of it, then stay here." Instead, she sighs, "Okay, Flax. While we wait for her, do you wanna, like, not do it here?" His queen was lucky Frostbreath arrived before a fox did. "We have somewhere warm called a 'camp' you can stay at." Even as she offers, her gaze remains doubtful. He barely looks like he can walk, and the stars would fall out of the sky before Cherryblossom touched his gross little pelt, especially with her mouth.​

 

[flax]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ — the color of our planet from far, far away .​

---

Her sarcastic flatness rolls from his attention like water off a duck's back. All he cares about is that Cherryblossom is sure of Dust's love for him, so Flax doesn't need to do any more convincing (or that's how he reasons it in his head). He blinks at her alongside an uncertain sniff, willing his greasy fur to lie flat so that he would look more confident in the face of the three unfamiliar cats. His attention is now firmly settled onto Cherryblossom; dismissive and curt as she is, she commands a sort of respect from Flax that the other two don't. She offers him a camp, and though he has no idea what that could entail, he's young and inexperienced and all too trusting. Dust would want him to be warm. That much he knows. So, he takes a wobbly step toward the SkyClan warrior, toddling forward through the stalks of grass to promptly topple over in front of her.

"Ouch," the little tabby whines, picking himself up with an unnecessarily hard shake of his fur. A couple twigs caught in his pelt are sent scattering haphazardly as they're dislodged, although the burrs tangled in his hindquarters and belly fur remain. He blinks expectantly upward now, muffling a sniffle as his shoulders hunch against the cold night air. "I like warm," Flax concedes quietly, toddling forward to bluntly press his forehead into Cherryblossom's paw, as if to warm himself—or maybe the gentle movement is a meager attempt at comforting himself. This cat isn't as kind as Frostbreath, but she's strong, and that strength is something he needs right now. Eyes downcast toward the needle-littered ground, he pulls away, beginning to trek in the direction the SkyClanners had come. "I'm going." Though determined, he's got no idea if he's actually going the right way.