NO MOVING ON & DISAPPEARANCE

This is familiar, isn't it? Brightshine's kin, an empty nest. How many of his bloodline had fled the moors they had once been so much a part of? How many of them had said their goodbyes in quiet whispers and never looked back? Sparkspirit was not among their numbers. He awoke to darkness and slipped away on paw's silent as owl wings. Over the nest of slumbering kin, past a few blearily opened eyes. Questioning, yes, but– not for long. His shaky smile seemed enough to assure them that nothing was wrong. He's likely just stretching his limbs, or sleepless as he has often been. With time, he would settle down. With time, he would. . . come back.

It doesn't happen. His mind keeps spinning and his paws keep moving even without his input. StarClan is shrouded tonight, thick clouds hiding their light and obscuring the path that he takes, but he has spent his life here and would not shame himself by falling. Sparkspirit goes, and goes, and leaves everything behind, and as morning touches down on WindClan's camp, both the heavy clouds and Sparkspirit have vanished.
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  • OOC.
  • 🗲  .   ˚ .  SPARKSPIRIT. HE - HIM - HIS. EX-WINDCLAN RUNAWAY. SUFFERING A CRISIS OF FAITH. PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ——————————
    72631630_aXz8jRihBqSU4xm.png
    ——  a trim mock tortoiseshell tom with mostly black fur splashed with the occasional patch orange. he has a singular white mark on the back of his neck shaped similarly to a lightning strike, and a small scar across the bridge of his nose. his eyes are a shocking electric blue.
    ✦ ECHOLIGHT x ELMBREEZE. ADOPTED BY YEWBERRY. BRIGHTFAM, ESTRANGED.
  • "speech"
 
They're her first words of the day, without good morning or anything: " Where's Sparkspirit? "

It's a morning like any other, really. Pinkshine still wakes up beneath sky as she has for a long time now... but now she huddled amongst the warriors. She was closer than ever to her kin, not counting the moons she spent at Brightshine's belly. It's easy for her to lift her head and catch the glimpses of friends and family. Brightshine, Heavy Snow, Echolight, Morningsong... weirdly, Sparkspirit isn't here though. It was one less face to smile and say Goodmorning! to... That was a little serious, wasn't it? its not like Pinkshine slept till noon... Her eyes round with a little smidge of worry, but she doesn't freak out just yet... She paws her way over to his nest, untangling a tail that had dipped over to her neighbor's...

Her paws are careful, as if taking too - messy of a step would disperse all there was of his scent. " Did he... go out early? " Like, um... A walk, or something? Maybe with everything happening, he needed to stretch his legs... But if it wasn't for everything happening, Pinkshine wouldn't even consider that he could be... gone gone. Her head swings around camp. Today's patrols haven't even been announced yet, most cats were still sleepy, or just waking up... Did you go to find Cottonsprig? She sniffs, and she fights off a pout... It's not quite stale but... " He's been gone for a little while, " she notices.
 
"Perhaps he has fled the yellowcough." Bluefrost has peeked from the nursery, her green eyes glazed with distrust as she eyes the camp she'd once ruled with her littermates. Every wayward breath is given a bleary glare; every stuttering cough is treated like an enemy's claws. She only hesitantly sidles closer to Pinkshine, her belly swinging back and forth, pendulum-like. "He has been gone awhile," she murmurs, tasting the air near his nest.

I would be remiss if I did not admit I was not considering doing the same. Every day, as more cats fall, Bluefrost weighs her options. She does not want to give birth to vulnerable kits in a camp infested with disease, with only a single trained medicine cat to treat their ill. Celandinepaw is healer in name only, with none of the skills her sister had.

I should do as you did, sister. Sparkspirit. I should follow you into the moorland and never look back. She tucks her tail closer, closing her eyes. "It may be wise to look for him. If he is sick, he could have collapsed somewhere in the moor."

  • ooc:
  • 69334192_7vVwuq2U19bWMTh.png
  • 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 lead warrior and 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.


 
It seems each day Downyfur rises, not with the sun, but with the rooster cry of their sister. One marine eye cracks open, squinting past the scars tracing its outer edges and against the hazy morning tide of light. This isn't just any "good morning!" though. "Sparkspirit?" Their lips struggle around the shape of their tortoiseshell cousin's name, confusion dappling a brow loosened by sleep. "I..." They peer around themself, craning their neck over the furry mounds of awakening clanmates, trying to cry a set of sky-blues and rust-checkered fur from the morning crowd. "Um..." A familiar sense of dread begins to root in their stomach.

Pinkshine is up where his scent is the thickest, cautiously pawing at what he left behind. Downyfur joins soon enough, delicate nose twitching among the scraps of his nest. "Did he come back last night?" she murmurs into it. Bluefrost's idea is both surprising and unwelcome. She shuffles to the side to make room for her royal rotundness, the tip of her tail growing fitful with concern. First Cottonsprig, now Sparkspirit. The former Downyfur would never peg as a coward, but they don't know Sparkspirit as well as they hoped to. Now he's gone, and she might never get the chance to remedy that at all. "Maybe he thought he was sick and fled camp before he could get anyone sick..." she gently suggests, gaze straying beyond the gorse walls.
 

He ought to feel guilty for the little amount of surprise he feels when the subject comes up: someone has gone missing.

Dimmingsun investigates as soon as he overhears, but there is nothing he can do, aside from sniffing relentlessly until his nose stops hurting with the effort. The wind carries the faintness of Sparkspirit... only confirming what Pinkshine and Bluefrost has already said. Their Clanmate has been troubled for as long as Dimmingsun has known him; it had always been evident in the pull of his features, in the look in those characteristic blue eyes. There is no sign of struggle — nothing to say Sparkspirit has left unwillingly.

Perhaps trouble has found him, out on the moors by himself. It is nothing unheard of, but the idea does not comfort Dimmingsun, not when he knows how well-versed WindClan is at taking risks head-on. Surely someone would have heard of commotion... or someone as capable as Sparkspirit would have made it back home.

"I'll look for him," he offers. It is the most he can do. Depending on the outcome — a bloody or otherwise tragic one —, Dimmingsun does not know which would be better... finding Sparkspirit, or coming up with nothing to show for his efforts. "If we're lucky, I'll find him within the territory still..." And still breathing, he avoids adding.