- Jul 15, 2022
- 214
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No matter how much Betony grows, her father has always had a way of seeming larger. She's just as tall as him now, nearly as wide, and yet impossibly he takes up far more space than her. He stalks ahead of Betony, quiet as a duck over water, quieter than Betony could ever hope to be. There is a fluidity in the way he moves, beautiful in each precise and measured step. When he does leap, it feels as if it is a continuation of the last stride he had taken, rather than a new action altogether.
A rabbit falls beneath his claws, and then his teeth. Betony turns away when it screams, and looks back only when her father calls her name. He beckons her closer with a flick of his tail, and Betony obliges, clumsily trudging through the thick snow that had left her father unhindered.
"Did you see how I did that?" Her father asks.
Betony hadn't. She still doesn't get it— how he can move as if the whole of him isn't clenched.
"I couldn't do it like that," Betony answers.
"None of that, now. You've gotten so much better!" He sits beside Betony, nudges her with his shoulder, "And I know you can get even better yet."
If only that were the case. Betony knows the truth to be different. She knows she is woefully inadequate, for both hunting and every day life. Betony misses being smaller, she thinks. She misses needing to lift her chin to look at both of her parents. She's grown too fast, she thinks, but she thinks again that she's grown just as fast as the other kits.
"—etony? Where have you gone off too?" Her father nudges her again, and Betony finds herself blinking at him.
"I'm right here," She hasn't moved a step from his side.
"You were in that head of yours," He doesn't chide her, not exactly, but his tone is just south of that. Betony shrinks, she must, because her father's expression shifts, "Nothing wrong with being in your head, but I'd like to see you out here with the rest of us sometimes."
The two of them are interrupted then by a sudden eruption of birdcalls. No more than five fox-lengths away sits a bush covered in snow so completely that its bough could not be seen through the leaf-barren branches. Juncos flit about and dive at another bird, one Betony doesn't recognize. Blood beads from a wound on its shoulder. Betony moves to a crouch, but is stayed by her father placing a paw in front of her.
Carefully, Betony stands.
"Those birds are fighting," She notes, voice a murmur to avoid frightening them off.
"It's a cowbird," Her father says, as if that explains everything Betony needs to know.
She tilts her head.
"They eat an egg from another bird's nest, and then lay one of their own. The other birds know this and will run a cowbird off when they see it."
"Even when they aren't laying eggs?"
Her father nods, "Even then."
Betony returns her attention to the birds. The cowbird is roughly starling sized; the juncos are dwarfed by it. Still, they dive at the cowbird and peck at it. The cowbird fluffs itself and shows the dark insides of its beak in turn, its own threat.
"Why does it lay its eggs in another bird's nest?"
Her father has a strange look about him then, and Betony understands without being told that he is choosing his words carefully.
"They don't make nests of their own," He says at last, "I think, I think they never stop moving. Other birds settle for a season, but these birds— it's as if they don't know how to stay in place."
This again.
Betony always stands as if she is protecting her softest parts, but it never seems to truly keep her safe. The blow, meant gently, never meant to harm, lands with force enough to wind Betony. She breathes through her nose and turns her head away from her father and from the quarreling birds. Eyes shut to the world, she breathes and breathes. It's as if it's the only thing she knows how to do.
All the while, her teeth are clenched.
"Betony—" Her father starts.
"When do they learn?" Betony cuts in. She doesn't turn to face her father, but she does open her eyes to the snow-covered ground.
"What?"
"The birds," Now Betony turns, now she looks at his confused face. It emboldens her. When she continues, her voice comes out with force, "The cowbirds, raised thinking they are any other bird. When do they learn what they truly are?"
The two of them stare at one another, Betony dredging up a long buried stubbornness that refuses to let her be the one to break eye contact, and her father's face unreadable. He remains stone and for a long terrible moment Betony fears that she has misunderstood the conversation— that she was supposed to take his words at their face. But then he shifts as if keeping himself in position was a strain, and his expression falls into something Betony is unable to immediately define.
"They've always known," He says, "From the day they hatch they've known that they are destined to fly away."
It's shame, Betony realizes, his face is that of shame.
Her anger is doused, not completely, but enough that her immediate retort of but where does that leave me? what am I then? stays on her tongue. She and her father aren't made of the same stuff. Betony wasn't born with wings waiting to spread; she was born hungry, and has been forced to reckon with the fact that there is nothing in this world that would fill the hollow in her gut. Living with paws itching for elsewhere is a different kind of hunger, one Betony will never understand.
She wishes, in that awful way she does, for a world where her and her parents' different kinds of hunger could coexist. They could be happy in the marsh, and Betony could be happy with the love they offer. She wouldn't want more.
Commotion pulls Betony away from her thoughts.
The juncos have won; the cowbird flees skyward. Brown feathers pulled loose drift in its wake, stark against the white of the snow. It doesn't break the tension in Betony, and yet her father gives a dreary sigh and turns, face pointed towards camp. He doesn't need to check landmarks, instead knowing by a sense that Betony hadn't inherited where the heart of the marsh lay.
"Pick up that rabbit, will you?" He says, and Betony already has it by the scruff when he continues, "We should head back to camp."
Just once, before he is gone, Betony would like to hear him call it home.
—
In the days after her parents first sit Betony down and explain, say it plain, Betony cannot settle on any one reaction. She clings to her parents tighter than a bur and feels moments away from shattering her tightly clamped teeth.
"Do you know this flower?"
It can hardly be called a flower, the thing her mother gestures too. There had been a hard frost two nights prior, the very first hard frost of the season. The plant grows in a cluster of its likeness, with a long, drooping stem and wilting leaves that grow only from the point where that stem meets the ground. Purple-pink petals lay freckled among rotting leaf litter around the base in an imperfect ring. On the cusp of Leafbare, the days indefinable between seasons, familiar plants wilt beyond recognition.
Betony doesn't know this flower.
Her mother sighs. It's a wistful sound.
"It's so beautiful in Newleaf," She looks at Betony, expectant. Betony turns away.
"It's my favorite flower," Her mother continues, her tone prodding, "And I would love it if you would look at it with me."
Betony does, despite herself, let her eyes return to the flower. It grows in the dry place along the edge of the Thunderpath, near enough that it sways in the wind left in the wake of a monster roaring by. Her mother doesn't startle from it, but Betony's pelt fluffs in surprise, and doesn't immediately settle.
"This is your namesake," Her mother says only once Betony's fur lays flat, as if her namesake means anything to her, "Your father had other ideas for what to call you, but I was insistent on this. I wanted to call you Betony, and so Betony you are."
And so Betony she is.
"He asked me why I was so insistent on naming you after a 'common weed'— his words, not mine— and this is what I told him: It may be common, but it is hardly a weed. It's a hardy plant, it'll grow anywhere," Her mother's face is somber and yet there is a fond smile in her voice, "I said to him, I said, 'you want that for our girl, don't you? she'll be able to grow anywhere with a name like this, and she'll survive even the harshest and coldest of Leafbares!'
"That had swayed him, but the simple truth is that I just find these flowers pretty, and I wanted my daughter to have a pretty name. And to think he wanted to call you Comfrey. Could you imagine?"
Betony doesn't see how it matters. She doesn't see how any of this matters. If she had been named Comfrey at her birth, then that would be her name, and Betony would sound wrong to her ears.
"I guess," Betony says. It's the first thing she's said to her mother since both of her parents explained the impermanence of their time in the marsh.
Two words are all it takes to spur her mother on. She perks, delighted, and says in a rush, "I wasn't completely truthful when I told him about where betony grows, you know. It'll grow anywhere, yes, but it thrives in places where the soil is dark and dry. It's a bit of trouble, isn't it, when something can survive anywhere, but— but it knows that somewhere out there is a place even better for it."
And suddenly it isn't about Betony anymore, or even about the flower.
Betony could shake apart. Is it so terribly selfish to ask where in this she falls? Is she worth so little that the benefit of her fails to outweigh the price of staying?
"But it still— it really is common. I just think— I want you to know that there isn't anywhere I could go where I won't be thinking of you," Her mother catches Betony's eye, and Betony finds herself unable to look away.
It's meaningless, everything she says.
"Oh," Punched out noise, her mother sounds so sad, "What could I do to bring your smile back?"
Betony doesn't move by any choice of her own. Her body decides, shambling like a newborn fawn, and falls against her mother, hides her face against her mother's chest.
Stay is a deceptively short word, for the weight that it holds. So much meaning caught in a single syllable. It isn't so much of a call to do something as it is a plea to do nothing. Don't move, don't go. Remain just as you are now, unchanged. Betony almost says it then, but it is too heavy to leave her mouth.
"What can I do?" Her mother whispers against the crown of Betony's head, soft, and Betony could almost believe that she's enough.
Betony presses a paw against her mother's shoulder as if to push her away, but instead she finds her claws digging in and holding on. Her mother flinches and hisses around the pain, but doesn't push Betony away. Betony loves deeply and dearly, nearly as much as she hates.
—
In her quiet moments, in her weaker moments, Betonyfrost wishes for a chance to meet her parents again. Now grown, she wonders what she would say to them. She wants to tell them that they ruined her, she wants to tell them just how angry she is all the time, how often she is clenching her teeth or biting her tongue. She wants them to beg for her forgiveness, and a vindictive worm in her heart wants to reject them.
Betonyfrost fears that in this hypothetical world where she is brave enough to speak her mind and her parents are cowardly enough to come home, when she would confront them with all the rage they left in her chest, they will be unmoved. They will sooth her in a comfortless way, murmuring words in a voice that could almost be mistaken for soft and loving.
Somehow, Betonyfrost knows just what they will say. -
Code:
"[color=#ddafeb][b]speech[/b][/color]"
shadowclan warrior | blue mackerel tabby | 14 moons | tags
