our lives are a dark room [minkbreeze]

[GHOSTSTRIKE]

---

His life in Windcan was much easier than his life in the Coalition. He'd practically be a slave then, kept on such a tight regiment and shouldering a daily workload that made typical warrior duties look like childs play. Ghost hardly minded the work though- hell, after so long of living with it he craved it now, unable to function without the daily grind and routine of following orders. No, in the Coalition it was brutality that that made it hard. Ghost wasn't afraid to kill, nor was he afraid to die, but that had come at a terrible cost, a childhood of savage conditioning and ruthless exposure therapy that had numbed him to things a cat should never be numb to. The ancestors of the clans would roll in their graves if they'd seen the monstrosities and evils that went on in his old home.

Yeah, life in Windclan was a walk in the bloody park net to the Coalition.

Today Ghost had been assigned to a pairs patrol with a shecat he'd spent little time with. Minkbreeze. He didn't know her well, just another face in the crowd, and to a degree that's how he liked it. The kind of facts that Ghoststrike liked to keep on file about an individual were the kind that he could use to his advantage, not the kind he used to build a reltionship with someone. Ghost didn't do friendships. At best you could form a working relationship with him, trust and admiration earned by putting in time in trenches together, but even that was hard won.

He was early to arrive at their assigned meeting spot by the camps entryway, as was customary for the tall, dark tabby. He didn't like being late, a trait he'd picked up after spending so much time behind enemy lines. It was always smarter to arrive earlier, that way he had enough time to mentally mark escape routes, weak spots, and potential threats in the area. Granted, he wasn't behind enemy lines and so he already had a pretty good read on those things, but old habits died hard.

So he sat, alert but relaxed, waiting for his patrol partner.
​

---

rogue - male - 28 months (Nov 18th) - single - a very tall, muscular tabby with dark gray fur and white markings. heavily scarred with dark amber eyes ​

 

[Minkbreeze]

☽ MY MIND IS PLAYING TRICKS ON ME ☾​

"My, My, aren't we bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this mornin'?" The easy purr of the chocolate sepia would roll off her tongue as she strolled up not long after Ghoststrike arrived. When she reached him she would stretch with a happy groan before she shook out her pelt and threw a good-natured smirk his way, thin tail lashing behind her in her usual confidence. "I better start hittin' the nest earlier if I'm gonna get here before you, huh?"

Minkbreeze would give her chest a quick groom before she yawned hugely, "So, remind me what we're supposed to do today? Just marking the borders or wanna do some hunting while we're at it?" Her tone was good-natured, nonchalant enough that it was clear that she was at ease with the stoic tom. He was a clanmate after all, so unless he gave her a reason to be distrustful of him or showed that he was a threat to Windclan somehow, why shouldn't she be friendly?

---

Speech ✩ windclan ✩ warrior ✩ tags​

​

 

[GHOSTSTRIKE]

---

The overall nature of Windclan had been a struggle to adapt to at first. A broken record for sure, but he constantly found himself drawing comparison to what he'd come from and finding himself at a loss. In the Coalition there'd been no sense of community like there was in Windclan. Kits like him were thrown into training as soon as they could stomach solids, and then if they managed to survive it they were assigned into a Squad, usually no more then 4-6 cats. That was the closest thing they'd ever get to having friends or family, but the trouble with that was the death rate. Cats like Ghoststrike - soldiers that ranked less then anything in the moor clan- were little more than frontline fodder meant to clash with the stray dog population. Very few cat ever saw their second year, and so it was inevitable that eventually a cats squad would be decimated, either picked off over time, or torn apart in a single savage raid gone awry.

And so Ghost had simply learned to keep his distance.

When he ended up outliving his entire unit save for Nineteen, the two of them were turned into a specialized pairs unit, good for sabotage, infiltration, and high priority assasinations. He hadn't had to worry about growing attached to any cats because there weren't any, just him and his old squadmate, a cat he saw as a brother.

Windclan, in comparison, was worlds apart.

The cats here had no real class system, their hierarchy more a means of choosing who delegated what tasks and made what decisions. There was definitely still an air of politics involved, but it was far more lax then what he'd come from. Cats here bonded as they pleased, raised families, had time to enjoy their lives. Many preached of Sootstars brutality, but in reality she was a far lesser tyrant than the devils they could have been faced with.

Months ago, Minkbreezes casual greeting would have put him on edge, but in the passing moons since he'd first joined he'd been exposed to hundreds just like them, and understood now that it was just the way most clan cats were with each other.

He chose to ignore the playful first half of her words, willing to accept that the clan cats were like that, but unwilling to indulge in it himself so easily. It only encouraged friendship, and he didn't want any cat making the mistake that he was there to make friends. They were team-mates, cats with a common goal and that was all. And in that regard, she was correct in assuming she had nothing to worry about from him.

"We're heading up toward the Shadowclan border. Routine maintence." he confirmed as he turned to slip through the camp exit. After a moment he hadded, "We can hunt on the way back if we don't run into any trouble. I could use the practice."

Ghost wasn't a bad hunter- in the Coalition there was no fresh kill pile to pluck from, and the soldiers had to catch their own rats from the trashpiles to stay alive- but the moors were a far different territory with far different prey, and while he succeeded enough to pull his weight, he still had yet to catch a rabbit or hare without the work of a partner herding it toward him.

"Any tips on hunting rabbits?" he asked, cocking an invisible brow in the sepias direction.
​

---

rogue - male - 29 months - single - a very tall, muscular tabby with dark gray fur and white markings. heavily scarred with dark amber eyes ​

 

[Minkbreeze]

☽ MY MIND IS PLAYING TRICKS ON ME ☾​

Mintbreeze would follow and listen with her usual smirk painted on her maw, tail raised high in confidence. "Ohh sounds like a fun time then, can't wait." Whether her words were genuine or not was hard to tell, though the glint in her eyes was enough to offer that she at least meant it a little bit.

At Ghosts' request for rabbit hunting advice, she would aim her smirk at him and purr, "Run fast." A laugh would flow through her as she slipped out of camp and took a deep breath of the moorland winds before continuing, "But all joking aside, don't try to show off. Not that I thought you would." No, Ghoststrike was much too stoic for that, "Learn what part of the hunt you're good at and rely on the others to do their part."

Her mint green gaze would look straight ahead of them as she meowed in a voice that oozed nonchalant ness, "So, if you can run fast, then you chase'em. If you're sneaky, then you ambush'em. Make sense?"

---

speech ✩ windclan ✩ warrior ✩ tags​

​