nobody escapes

[lilacfur]

Dry blood and sickly fog still felt stuck in her nose. Starlingheart, wide-eyed and turned between relief and her own toiling suffering from it all. Granitepelt was dead, the shadows bogeyman and moorland terror had finally fallen. It doesn't feel real, though. It doesn't cause the change she had anticipated to feel, she imagined it feeling far more grand. As though she had climbed the top of the sycamore and pushed him from the heights herself.

He died of infection, alongside the only cat in the entire forest that was the closest to sharing his heart. It was not a vengeful death, it was hardly the slow suffering she saw him fit for. He could have suffered the infection for weeks and it would not be long enough, painful enough.

Lilacfur had sat near the Thunderpath that split between ShadowClan and WindClan, a short moment to herself before returning to her patrol. The scent of ash was still heavy over the breeze where gorse and peat once was. Not even the hot, acrid pavement could overpower the devastation of flame. The lead could only simmer as she recalled the night of the Gathering, Wolfsong's voice like ichor in her heart. How the stars rumbled the moment justice was given! The lamenting of her Clanmates, but Wolfsong did not speak as a medicine cat in that moment. He taunted as one would in battle, and she treated it as such.

The fur down her spine began to bristle and before the molly could search the cause, impact is made.

Lilacfur tumbled forward and in an attempt to keep her standing, she's lodged her paw between stone. Her body continued to twist and panic inflamed as she felt a crack and burst of pain shot up her shoulder. What had attacked her, she doesn't see right away. There was no predator scent, but something other than Clan.

A moment of recognition flickered in her gaze- that cannot be...

"You're... alive?" A heavy pant exhaled in the effort Lilacfur made trying to dislodge her paw, but every tug makes another spark of painful protest. "Help me, please."

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‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── ooc ⋆⋅☾⋅⋆ info ──┐‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

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• LILACFUR ✩ she/her, 20 moons, mother to marblekit and sycamorekit
  ⭃ lh lilac rosette with yellow eyes (carrying cinnamon, solid), a torn ear and claw marks beside her eye.
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking ↛ see battle info here
  ⭃ penned by this loser ↛ @gonkpilled on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

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[GHOSTMASK]

What keeps calling her back to this border?

It's a sickly siren song, drawing her in, compelling her to follow the invisible path of her father's spewing infection, damnation under her paws. Maybe she still feels a call, a draw back to the last place she could still pretend that she had a life, pretend that she still had a future. When she was just Ghostpaw, just Lilacfur's apprentice, just Starlingheart's daughter, just another apprentice of ShadowClan . . . when she wasn't Ghostmask, a madwoman's soldier, a dead man's daughter, a rogue that stunk of blood and starvation.

The sight of Lilacfur's rosetted back brings a growl to brew low in her belly, climbing spiderlike up her throat and dying unspoken behind needle teeth. If it wasn't for her—if it wasn't for Pitchstar choking on his own maddened foam; for Chilledstar dying red - gushing and gasping under her father's claws; for Nettlepaw, taunting her on the border and letting her split his throat open; for Starlingheart, loving a madman and bringing her into this stars - forsaken world already marked for murder—for every fucking ShadowClanner that had a paw in taking her to the place she is now, she could still be Ghostpaw, or Ghostpelt, or Ghostheart. She could still be anybody but Ghostmask.

She lunges with the kind of animal brutality she'd used to tear open Nettlepaw's second heart, and she knows the red fogging her vision and the mask she can feel shifting are danger signs, but she does it anyway. Unprepared as Lilacfur is, Ghostmask's small frame shoves her with ease, the heavy thump of a black - furred shoulder enough to send her forward, pale paw wedged in stone. Ice so cold it burns is still lingering behind her teeth, choking up her throat, hoarfrost spiraling down her paws until she has to tamp down the urge to launch herself at Lilacfur again. The lead warrior turns, yellow eyes wide and surprised, laced with pain as she tugs at her paw, panting out her shock.

" I am, " she answers simply, voice silky smooth, and offers no further explanation than that. Help me, please, Lilacfur asks, and it's all Ghostmask can do to keep a small smile plastered on her face, to keep wrinkles of disgust off her muzzle. Weak. Siltcloud was right . . . I was meant to be someone. She stands, unmoving. How could her life have been ruined, her perfect destiny toppled, by weak cats like Lilacfur?

OOC : —

౨ৎ

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[lilacfur]

Ghostmask stood as her namesake before the lead warrior. A phantom to memories of days past, of days colder than this one, when algae-tipped waters went still and the desperation for prey had just begun. When paws the size of pebbles had dutifully trailed after her own, ears perked to listen and hang onto every word from her mentor.

Hadn't it been so much kinder then? She and Starlingheart had finally begun to speak to one another again, Granitepelt's presence had become strangely less souring to coexist with and his focus had turned him into such a focused warrior, she had been convinced all his efforts were for the sake of his family.

His betrayals had been motivated by such, hadn't they? Each piece of prey dragged in just another point to throw any suspicion away from him. Every successful patrol another inch of trust to ignore how peculiar he treated his children, Ghostpaw especially. Hadn't they hardly spoken a word between them? What had changed, in the moment he was ousted as a traitor with his sister?

Ghostmask does not move to help as she pleaded, but it would be daft to think she would leave her kin helpless. If Granitepelt was dead, and she was here now, didn't that have to mean she didn't abandon ShadowClan as so many claimed? Perhaps she hesitated out of fear Lilacfur was not relieved to see her.

"Come back with me to ShadowClan, Ghostpaw! I'll keep- Starlingheart said Granitepelt is dead, so you don't have to hide. You can come back to her, and Flintwish and... You're poor brother Nettlepaw... I'm a lead warrior now, I can... You missed so much, Ghostpaw." Every word she's wished to say to her niece has left her as the words spill like she might run out of breath. Lilacfur never anticipated finding her this way, and the unexpected lunge had thrown her off any balance of maintaining how she wanted to welcome her back.

"You can help get my paw out and I'll- I can say it was an accident, that you saved me and Chilledstar will trust me." Lilacfur continued to flounder, but it's teetering towards desperation for Ghostmask to make the right choice.

---

‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── ooc ⋆⋅☾⋅⋆ info ──┐‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

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• LILACFUR ✩ she/her, 20 moons, mother to marblekit and sycamorekit
  ⭃ lh lilac rosette with yellow eyes (carrying cinnamon, solid), a torn ear and claw marks beside her eye.
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking ↛ see battle info here
  ⭃ penned by this loser ↛ @gonkpilled on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

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[GHOSTMASK]

When did her breath start coming hard? When did her thin chest—wracked with the starvation of the scrublands, no matter how much she tries to pretend otherwise—start to shudder and tremble? When did the edges of her vision start to mist over icy, hoarfrost creeping up her paws, calling back to those first miserable DuskClan days when they slept covered by dustings of snow and prayed to uncaring stars that their paws wouldn't fall off. And . . . and she misses that time, but more than that, she misses her first moons . . . misses the loving rasp of Starlingheart's tongue over the tuft of fur crowning her forehead, misses playing Clans as Applestar's loyal deputy, misses toddling after Lilacfur for her first patrol.

She stands before the same rosetted pelt now, wind - whipped and pared down by hunger. The dark pinwheeling maroon spark of her kithood has grown to a blackened blaze, a fire so hot it burns cold, fanned by Granitepelt and Siltcloud and a hundred little misfortunes. She feels those tiny injustices sting with each word Lilacfur lets escape hastily, unhesitant and unconsidered, from a pale maw. They're so much like those little flakes of ice whipping her on that leaf - bare day when she stood frozen and bleeding with her father in the scrublands and knew, in one great painful rush, that all was lost.

Still . . . still, she wants so badly to believe Lilacfur, wants like nothing else to think that she can come back to Starlingheart and Flintwish, to ShadowClan. The underfed, dull - furred warrior standing before Lilacfur now wants it—and so does the little kit with the soft fur and the round belly, herb - scent on her pelt instead of copper tang. She wants it more than she may have ever wanted anything, than she wants to be someone, but she can hear Siltcloud's voice ringing in her ears: " I told you . . . warned you, didn't I? "

She warned me. Siltcloud warned her not to follow Granitepelt, and she had, and she had lost everything; Siltcloud warned her in youth not to trust these cats, not to rely on them . . . but she wants, so, so badly, to follow Lilacfur back to camp and watch Starlingheart bound across marsh and muck until she's enfolded in black - and - white fur. She stands teetering on that line, between two destinies, unsure, in the throes of hunger and pain and muddled mind, which is the correct one.

Lilacfur makes the choice for her when she breathes one word: Nettlepaw.

She knows she knows she knows she knows she knows, her mind screams out, dark eyes blown wide and pupils narrowed to naught but slits, the thorny ruff she bears, mockery of a once - proud princess, bristling into Briarstar's spires. She can't do this. She can't take this, the way Lilacfur sounds so much like she wants this as badly as Ghostpaw does, like she just wants her to come home and stay, like she's happy to see her, like she loves her. Nobody has sounded like that in a long time.

But it's all a lie, those soft voices in the back of her mind whisper.

" No, " she breathes out, barely a rasp, dissipating near - silent in the air. Her eyes are wide and fearful—of the lilac cat before her, of what her own paws might do—the teary, round eyes of a lost child. The world swims, nausea rising in her belly. " No—no—no—no—no—nononono—no! " Her voice is a rising scream before it drops off; the transition in her eyes is brutal in its immediacy, salt blinked away to darken a mask already blackened by sin and gaze sharpening back to slits.

" I'm sorry, Lilacfur. " A whisper is all the warning her aunt gets before Ghostmask lunges once more and swings a forepaw hard, claws bared, to sink into the soft meat of Lilacfur's eye.

OOC : —

౨ৎ

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[lilacfur]

The changes in Ghostmask, each transition between phases is disturbingly physical. Round voidless eyes fall soft and for a moment, a second, Lilacfur can see the hope that glimmered behind endless depths. Something has made her recall the day she was revealed to be a mother. Two kittens, one far more faithful in the other for their new life, skin clinging to bone and fur ruggedly dull even for a ShadowClanner.

In the span of days he had become recluse within the nursery. The shine of hope had disappeared where Marblekit's had reversed, swapping places as her daughter took to make friends and her son stayed as far away as he could. She saw much of Sycamorekit in Ghostpaw right now, guarding the possibility of comfort in favor of hardening oneself.

But her walls are coated with kerosene, and someone had lit the match.

"No?" Lilacfur is helpless as Ghostmask wrapped herself in barbed wire, watching her turn reptilian as she burst with emotion. "Ghostpaw what are you DOING-!"

It's a pain like no other. None that she's felt before. Pain is carved into her skull, unbearable as she's sent swirling from the agony. She can feel the adrenaline soar through every vein to the point of unfeeling. The static in her paw is no longer as threatening as the fire that's singed into an ocular and the lead does not stop herself from thrashing against the pressure. Whole body movements as she struggled to dodge and pull away from ripping claws but it is pointless, until-

crk!

Her paw is free but at no small cost. It hangs uselessly from her limb, and Lilacfur crashes onto her side again as she finds it possible to balance with. It's getting hard to breath, to remember how to take a breath while enduring it all. Her voice is sent in sputtering wails and screams, writhing in feral desperation.

She can feel the ebb of adrenaline start to pull away, stretched too thin between the damage but the sensations grow numb as the darkness consumes everything. "Ghostpaw..." Lilacfur choked out, claws digging into the earth in a vain attempt to keep herself awake. "Don't... Don't l-leave?"

If she were to die, she couldn't bear it being alone.

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‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── ooc ⋆⋅☾⋅⋆ info ──┐‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

• 
  
  
  

• 

• LILACFUR ✩ she/her, 20 moons, mother to marblekit and sycamorekit
  ⭃ lh lilac rosette with yellow eyes (carrying cinnamon, solid), a torn ear and claw marks beside her eye.
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking ↛ see battle info here
  ⭃ penned by this loser ↛ @gonkpilled on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

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