on the corner of first and amistad

[Needledrift]

☾ Parasitism had lent a heavy hand upon her body: the inherent greediness of depression, grief, and loss had found purchase in wayward fat and skin and had fed, sapping away gentleness and softness to make room for frailty and disillusion. She had managed to claw her way up from purgatory (that hellish place between wakefulness and sleep, where the numbing fuzz of unconsciousness laid with its head upon a pillow of sand, those little grains trickling in time with the heartbeat) to the land of the living: Ferndance had greeted her with a smile, and for that, her heart gave a little pang.

She missed Chittertongue. She missed Chilledstar. She missed her friends. Ferndance was so perfect, her family was so perfect, but they could not be every cat she had lost.

Tenderly did she pick her way out of camp, her delicate paws (usually white as the snow that would no doubt be upon them soon) yellow, dingy, against the greying pine needles that scattered the embankment of the camp. Grey, cold, chilled, their scent still lingered, curling around her limp coat like an old friend. She liked smelling of pine needles. It felt safe - like home. Like herself. Perhaps with a few reminders and a new mindset, she could begin to feel like herself in the coming weeks.

Identity weighed heavy, heavier still that the fur that hung limply from her form. Bones a little too outlined, eyes a little too sallow.... a hunt would do her well, a meal even better. Would StarClan strike her down if she chose to eat before bringing her haul back to camp for the kits and the queens to feast. Would Ternfrost detest her - her beloved little cousin, the last vestige of her mother that she had beyond Greywhisker - would she hate her? Could they fathom that a bite in the forest might allow her a moment of rest, a moment of respite from the hunger (parasitic, feasting upon her, clawing, desperate, angry..) ... could she be imagining horror that did not exist? That parasite... horror... fear... isolation threatened it often, didn't it?

Something thunders past her. Whiskers twitch madly, mouth open in wonder: her nose had failed her, her paws had not. The Thunderpath loomed ahead. It curled and smoked and roared (all at once, how strange, how strange... foretold foretold....) and filled her senses now that she was here, awakened. Jolting from reverie.

Limply, distantly, does she realize that she caught a mouse in her wanderings. When had it appeared to her? A wonder she knew to even catch it... a wandering wonder...

Across the roaring, across the smoke, she can see beyond to the fields, the moors, the heather, the beyond. A beyond, the beyond, endless beyond, where WindClan resided further than what the sight from the road allowed access to. Needledrift flicks an ear at the thought: WindClan, she knows, but also... also more. So much more, so many more, she is sure; and as sure as she is, undeniably, a shape begins to coalesce into another soul.

Right there just ahead of the horizon, there is a being, blurred by raindrops (new rain... a true holdover of the summer shower, a gentle plop, plop, plop along the bridge of her nose... how had she not noticed the clouds til this very moment?) small and darkened by distance. A stranger to share a moment with in the rain, identity washed away by the roaring of the Thunderpath and their own scattered reasons for appearing at the same time.

@GHOSTMASK ​