private PICKING AT THESE SCABS | thriftfeather

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

The prisoners are fed in cycles. Juncoclaw got fresh prey twice a day, near dawn and dusk, after all other WindClanners had been fed. It was an easy thing to do given Greenleaf's bountiful harvests—until she decided to stop eating. So far, things have worked the same for Thriftfeather. Bluefrost's fed when all the other queens are, and though he still eats last, Sedgepounce has to wonder if Thriftfeather is even a prisoner at all.

The nursery is heather-clad and warm. He's with his family. He's protected in all ways that DuskClan seeks to destroy. It's...cushy, Sedgepounce thinks. But it's his sheer presence that bothers him more than anything else.

He picks up a dust-furred thing from the freshkill pile, careful with it despite everything. His paws feel leaden as he presses toward the nursery.

"Hope you like vole," Sedgepounce declares impassively, stopping just inside of the den's cool interior. His eyes slide like oil on water across muted golden and gray pelts before landing unwittingly on some squirming figures tucked close against their sleeping mother's side. Their eyes are open. Baby blue and barely seeing, but open.

"One of them is Sootkit," Scorchstorm told him. His face pinches. Stars.
​

 

[Thriftfeather]

A jolt rushes through Thriftfeather at the voice, Sedgepounce's, he recognizes, before he settles back into himself. He doesn't process what Sedgepounce had said until the following moments and in the interim Thriftfeather is left blinking up at Sedgepounce, face blank.

"Oh! That's..." He starts only after a delay. There had been a time when Thriftfeather hadn't liked vole, but that was a time before DuskClan had thinned him. Even in Greenleaf, DuskClan didn't have prey enough to keep Thriftfeather full; WindClan doesn't understand the plenty is lives upon. Thriftfeather knows better than to think that Sedgepounce actually hopes—he knows better than to ask for more when he has been already offered so much. "That's... thank you."

Thriftfeather tracks Sedgepounce's gaze despite knowing from his expression alone where his eyes had landed. They are WindClan, Thriftfeather doesn't say, despite his wants, I never want them to doubt that. Instead, Thriftfeather clears his throat, hopes to draw Sedgepounce's eyes and ire away from his litter.

"They've grown so much already," A wane smile curls Thriftfeather's mouth; his words leave him quickly, as if trying to convince Sedgepounce of the fact. In truth, Thriftfeather is trying to convince Sedgepounce of their value: they are normal WindClan kits, they are worthy of—in need of—gentle eyes on them, "I hadn't—I never spent so much time around kits before, um, before they've started walking. But they've already opened their eyes, and—and with as fast as they've grown I feel like they'll be apprentices before long."

They are your clanmates, Thriftfeather doesn't beg, even when his expression does.​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

The warbling timbre of his voice is hauntingly familiar to the Thriftfeather he once knew, a cat he once pitied. It seems that moons of DuskClan have yet to wipe that mousy softness from him, if it can even be believed in the first place.

Sedgepounce never knew Thriftfeather well, and he's decided now that he never really knew him at all. He would have never expected soft-spoken, wide-eyed, loner-born Thriftfeather to chase after Sootstar's coattails—but even now he spouts her agonizing militarism like it's second nature, and Sedgepounce is no longer so naive.

Amber eyes flit to his speckled face. "They're just kits," he snaps, feeling heated. The only thing dampening his voice is those very kittens (and their resting mother), though the harsh whisper is no less incredulous.

Thriftfeather's got some sense, obviously. He must've known that raising a healthy kitten in the unbitten wild of DuskClan would've been difficult, let alone five. But these kittens are WindClan, even just by sheer nature of being cradled in the heather and gorse nest of camp here and now. They are not—can't be—little DuskClan soldiers in the making.

"We apprentice kits at six moons, now," Sedgepounce continues, voice leveling. The distrust he feels feeds something deep and ugly in his chest. "They have time to grow up a little." You should give them time.

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

The faltering pretense of normalcy falls from Thriftfeather's face at Sedgepounce's sharp retort. He doesn't know what has set Sedgepounce off. He doesn't know at which point he hasn't tread lightly enough. Until Thriftfeather has the time to think it over and find his fault, he will instead say nothing similar. He swallows around the dry feeling in his mouth and the smile doesn't return.

Six moons, Sedgepounce explains, and at once things click into understanding—the size of Sootspot's kits, the fact that Vulturepaw had still been Vulturekit when WindClan had taken him. Different emotions take him at once; he recalls trailing after Gravelsnap, making multiple strides in order to keep up with a single one of theirs. At six moons Thriftfeather was halfway through his apprenticeship; his kits won't be starting until then.

"Stars," He says, because he doesn't have the space to temper his surprise. His tail twitches in a nervous pattern behind him, "StarClan, they started us young, huh?"

But Thriftfeather had already known that—had accepted it as one of the unchanging facts about clan life—and in his absence that had changed. In his absence WindClan had changed in ways Thriftfeather has only just began to understand. He doesn't know how Sedgepounce expects him to feel about this, and he doesn't know if the expected emotion is the desired emotion. Hadn't he tried to play with kits soon after being apprenticed, having not known that he was somehow fundamentally different? The memory is time worn and less defined.

"But they'll have time," Repeated softly: an uncertain wonder, a hollow indignation. Thriftfeather looks back to his litter and feels as though his heart has shaken loose from its perch. He still hasn't gotten used to it.

"They'll have made Bluefrost crazy by then," For a moment Thriftfeather forgets that Sedgepounce is at odds with him and that he is trying to convince Sedgepounce otherwise; his voice is openly fond and entirely unguarded. And then Thriftfeather remembers in the space of a blink. The weight of it drops the softness from his expression and his green eyes return to Sedgepounce, "Do you know their names yet? They—Bluefrost named them."​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

Thriftfeather's recoil is noticeable but brings him no satisfaction. He supposes that nothing will, except for the tom's absence. The sheer presence of him harbors a dark foreboding, an omen hidden beneath the cover of too-thin yellow flanks and a face that contorts in thought and wonder.

They started us young, huh? Yes, Sedgepounce thinks. He doesn't agree out loud. He's still searching for some sort of tell within Thriftfeather's people-pleasing front. With Snakehiss it'd been easy—he'd always been a stuck up foxheart, and piecing together the milestones of his particular decline was simple in hindsight. Thriftfeather is considerably more enigmatic.

It makes him feel so...much. Like his paws are itching and the skin beneath his fur is cold. He wants this to be a simple endeavor; for Thriftfeather to more or less declare his evil intentions so that, even if Sunstar still decides to keep him around, he can be prepared for whatever's to come.

So it pains him, a little, when Thriftfeather gazes upon Bluefrost's idling flank and the kittens snuffling nearby with such a loving warmth. It seems genuine—he thinks it's genuine—and that's considerably worse than if he were some unfeeling, wretched thing instead.

"I know Rimekit," Sedgepounce replies. The words fall from him unthinkingly; a small frown forms around his maw. "And I know...Sootkit." His eyes flicker back to Bluefrost. She'd never been more than Cottonsprig's stern elder sister to him before she was lead warrior. Trusted, loyal. It makes him sick to think about how long she'd been fooling them all.

"...That's a cruel thing to name a kit," he murmurs toward Thriftfeather, this time more wary with his accusation.

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Rimekit and Sootkit are likely the names that all of WindClan knows. Thriftfeather doesn't make an expression at this and doesn't flinch at Sedgepounce's opinion of Sootkit's name. He couldn't fault Sedgepounce for thinking such a thing—Thriftfeather had thought something similar when Bluefrost first shared the idea with him. Such a big legacy in a tiny body; Thriftfeather doesn't linger on the unfairness of it.

"We don't choose our mothers," His sigh is a tired sound. As he continues, his head tips to one side with the recollection, "She told me—before the kits were even born she had told me she wanted to use that name. She said she wanted it to belong to someone good. Once—I hope that once WindClan is used to her, I hope her name is associated with her alone."

Thriftfeather doesn't understand the sentiment of naming a kit for the dead, but he wasn't going to allow his own lack of understanding ruin it for Bluefrost. She must have known how the name would be taken and yet this was important enough for her to still want it.

"The other three... Comfreykit is the blue tom-kit, and Foalkit is the darker one. The last one, the tortoiseshell she-kit with the larger patches, she—her name is Asterkit." The sight of the litter is incomplete without Rimekit. Thriftfeather wonders about her—if she is yet to open her eyes, if she is growing as quickly as her siblings, if absence has changed her scent. He's thankful that the illness hasn't spread through the litter, thankful that Asterkit could stay in the nursery with her kin despite the missing limb, thankful that he is allowed to be here to witness them.​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

We don't choose our mothers. The response sends some bolt of sympathy through him, something grasping to the fringes of his memories of Ghostwail and tiny, found Thriftkit, before it dampens. What does that matter? Bluefrost couldn't have chosen Sootstar as a mother, but she could smother the coals of her noxious memory. To name your child after her...

Sedgepounce holds no love for Sootstar, and while he can hardly imagine trying, he does think of his own mother. Yarrowfang's expectations of him were lofty and often suffocating, but she held them because she believed in him. She loved him. She died by Sootstar's whim, defending some idealized phantom of WindClan that was never really there—and perhaps her expectations were always off. She'd be disappointed in him, now.

His eyes once again return to Bluefrost and her children. He tries to imagine being in her place, tries to imagine one soft-furred, dewey-eyed Yarrowkit curled against his flank. It does little to convince him.

Sedgepounce stays quiet. The other kittens have strong names, WindClan names. He sighs.

"What're your plans for them, then?" he wonders, sparing a sidelong glance. "They're WindClan, that's it. You can't bring them back to DuskClan. Pretty soon they'll be old enough to explore. You and Bluefrost won't be the only cats they know—you can't possibly force them to be DuskClan-loyalists while they're growing up here. So...what?" What? Sedgepounce wants to spit, to shout. He wants to pry the answer from Thriftfeather's cut-open chest. He needs to know what to expect.
​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Sedgepounce asserts that the kits are WindClan alone and Thriftfeather cannot stop the sharp, humorless laugh that barks out of him. It hedges on relief, but Thriftfeather cannot allow himself to get comfortable enough to acknowledge it as such. He pushes himself into sitting, allows himself to hold his shoulders at the same height as Sedgepounce's own.

"I haven't believed in DuskClan since—not since that ShadowClanner was made leader by Sootstar. Since before that, probably. If we had wanted them in DuskClan, that's where they would be now but it—we hadn't even considered the possibility." Perhaps it should be a shameful thing that his breaking point had been something so meaningless, when taken with the bulk of everything that came before. Even then, on the edge of the world and apathetic to the changes as to not give into the slow creep of despair, Thriftfeather had remained.

There was always some new uncertainty to keep him contained—the persistent thought that had followed him throughout WindClan as well: if not here, then where?

"I was never—I felt as though no matter what I did, I would never be WindClan enough," He cants his head towards Sedgepounce—for the first time assessing him as he has done to Thriftfeather, "I was always lonerborn. Always—always—anyway, these kits have a privilege in—they get to be clanborn. I hope they do, despite my blood. I'm not—I don't know if everyone else is going to claim them as WindClanners as readily as you do."

Thriftfeather doesn't know what it means to be a WindClanner in the absence of Sootstar—she was the origin point of WindClan. He doesn't know if it means anything to be a WindClanner, doesn't know if it needs to mean something, but he knows Bluefrost is here, that his kits are here, that his own youth had been spent over these moors.

"So that's—if you can call it plans, that's my plans for them. I want them to be WindClanners, and I hope—I can only hope they get to be unquestioned in that."​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

Thriftfeather's words are soft, without fracture. He finally deigns to raise himself from his rabbit-like hunch to sprout hopeful epithets for his children, meadowy eyes all but glittering in their direction, and yet Sedgepounce can't manage a scrape of consolation. His pelt prickles with a growing anxiousness. The declared apathy for DuskClan only adds fodder to the confusing whirlwind of his thoughts.

Why did you stay, then? The question teeters on the edge of his tongue, but refuses to leave the pearly cage of his teeth. It was not so long ago that Sunstar's refugees were chased from WindClan's camp, leaving the patrolling Sedgepounce unaware and left behind. Why did you stay? It's a question that his own brain has yet to cease asking, rattling around in some empty, cavernous space of doubt within him. He doesn't know the answer.

"You were—" he starts, then stops. You were...what? WindClan enough? Sedgepounce has always believed as such, has never doubted Foxglare or Wolfsong or even Thriftfeather himself. Certainly his kittens are WindClan enough. But he is not so naive to believe that his own perception negate the prejudice run rampant through their lives. Even now it festers. Present in the way Sootspot sticks his nose up at former barncats, or how Sunstar, the once-rogue king himself, glowers at Buckfire. "It's not like Sootstar's WindClan anymore," he decides. "They have a better chance now than they ever did back then."

He is briefly dulled by the line of thought, whittled down to something toothless and tired, before some latent paranoia floods his hindbrain.

"Then what about you?" The meandering trod of their conversation has transformed into an interrogation—one that Thriftfeather already weathered so efficiently that even Sunstar was convinced. There's little reason for Sedgepounce to be repeating it. Little reason for Thriftfeather to answer. He's nobody important, only somebody afraid. "You're just...happy to be here, after everything?" He feels that Thriftfeather's only been dancing around the real issue at hand. What are his plans? "When DuskClan decides to attack us again, will it be enough that your kits are here now? You'd fight for them? Or—or is whatever led you to DuskClan in the first place gonna happen again?"

Whatever he says—unless it's a final uprooting of his truly nefarious desires—Sedgepounce won't believe him. He'd already believed him once, in another life. A young father grappling with his past controlled by Sootstar's horrible ideals, trying to navigate a strange new clan order. But that dark-pelted mirror of Thriftfeather crumpled beneath the weight of change so terribly that not even his own children could compel him to stay. As far as Sedgepounce is concerned, he already knows how Thriftfeather's story is bound to play out.
​

 

[Thriftfeather]

To speak of himself—to commit his tightly held wants to voice—is to dedicate himself to something. Thriftfeather sucks in air around his teeth with an expression too subdued to be a grimace. He imagines telling Sedgepounce that he had killed Ghostwail, imagines how easily such an act could be taken as nothing more than the random violence of a traitorous rogue, knows the way his tongue will trip over the story, and instead he swallows the thick words.

It feels simpler.

"Sunstar hasn't—he hasn't made a decision yet, but if it was asked of me—allowed of me, I would fight for WindClan."

And perhaps that is part of the problem: hasn't he always fought for WindClan? He doesn't know how to express to Sedgepounce that before DuskClan was even a dream, he had stood in defense of Sootstar and had thought of it as defending WindClan. A new fear: that Sunstar will be able to direct him as easily as Sootstar had, as Ghostwail had, as Granitepelt had—that he will never know when something is too much until he's caught in the bloody wake of it.

"I don't have any love for DuskClan or—or what it is they do. My leaving wasn't my first—it isn't the first time I was disloyal to them," He ignores the ache of an old guilt; having left Gravelpaw and Hungerpaw behind. They had needed him but Thriftfeather had needed to be here, with his family. When he next speaks, it is quieter than he had been before, "I had wanted—I wanted to do good in DuskClan, and then I wanted to get out. When I saw Bluefrost with the kits I had—I realized that I needed to leave sooner. I couldn't imagine anything that would make me want to step away from this."

This: the hollow of the nursery and the scant space it allows. It doesn't feel glorious when taken as it is rather than what it holds.​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

He hangs on every word like a starved beast devouring its prey, outwardly stock-still despite the inwardly frantic belief that Thriftfeather will have finally cracked. He turns it all over in his head again and again, over-analyzing before each sentence has even finished—but nothing slips. Thriftfeather is earnest, painfully so. He has folded himself up ten times over to fit here, within a clan that hates him and a den far too small for him, for even the briefest chance to stand, or rather crouch, beside the woman that he loves, the children that they share. And Sedgepounce...believes him.

His defenses crumble with a weary sigh, though the anticipation remains. Sunstar let Thriftfeather stay for a reason, and be now believes that the reason was genuine, as Thriftfeather and Sunstar both distance themselves from the terrible dynasty which once shaped them. It's still a mistake, he feels. Should Sunstar declare tomorrow that Thriftfeather shall be chased from camp with claws and teeth, Sedgepounce will feel no disappointment for it.

When Thriftfeather betrays them again—and he will betray them—his earnestness will just be salt to the wound.

For now, Sedgepounce's paranoia is stilled. Thriftfeather has no nefarious plot that needs uncovering. He'll just have to watch, and wait, and steel himself for that inevitable downfall.

He picks a spot on the wall and stares, leaning back on his haunches as his mind roils through these oncoming revelations. His paw brushes something. The vole.

"Oh, um...Your food," he meows, pushing the thing forward more gently than his words so far, or the steely expression still glued to his face. He should leave Thriftfeather to his meal and his family. But before his paws can lead him away, another line of thought strikes him. He levels another question unthinkingly.

"...What if Sunstar doesn't let you stay?" he wonders, more curious than accusatory, now. Thriftfeather is tragedy waiting to happen—it's just a matter of when.
​

 

[Thriftfeather]

The pensive silence that Sedgepounce lapses into isn't a disquieting thing—not anymore than most things are. As much as Thriftfeather wishes that he could know what it is exactly that Sedgepounce is concluding about him, as much as he wishes he was brave enough to ask, he allows Sedgepounce this quiet. In turn, Thriftfeather allows himself to wonder or to hope without expectation. Already Sedgepounce has, without question, welcomed the litter as wholly WindClan; Thriftfeather couldn't ask for more than that.

The reminder of the freshkill perks Thriftfeather's ears. Sedgepounce looks, if not at ease, then certainly more subdued as he once again offers the vole to Thriftfeather. He pulls it closer to himself but makes no immediate move to start eating. It feels like the end of things, it feels as though Sedgepounce is preparing to depart.

He doesn't.

What if Sunstar doesn't let you stay? Sedgepounce asks, as if Thriftfeather wasn't capable of worrying himself into a frenzy over the very same thought.

"Sootspot had—he was nice enough to offer to kill me, should that happen," It's a deflection and sounds too snide to his own ears to sound fully like himself.

In truth: Thriftfeather doesn't want to think about it—doesn't want to share that WindClan had been all that he had up until DuskClan had taken that place. If not WindClan, if not DuskClan, then where was Thriftfeather supposed to go? If nowhere here, then where? The worry creeps into Thriftfeather's expression, regardless of his efforts to the contrary. A tense breath and a moment lapsed in silence passes before Thriftfeather realizes that he wants to offer Sedgepounce a legitimate answer.

"I'm not sure. I guess I would—after that, I guess I'd be a loner, but..." But he doesn't want to be alone and, deeper than that, Thriftfeather knows that he functions under the structure and direction offered by those above him. It doesn't answer where he would go—what he would do. The world is too vast and Thriftfeather's own experience too limited for him to know what would even be possible for himself.

"I was—when—I was too young when I came to WindClan to...to clearly remember before WindClan." What he does remember is too scant and too precious to share. Thriftfeather touches a paw to his torn ear, an idle motion, as he attempts and fails to consider the possibility, "I would—I think—I... I don't know. I would pray Sunstar changes his mind."​

DUSKCLAN DEPUTY ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 19 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

He waits, and listens, and it's a calm bit of understanding that has overtaken him. He truly does not know what Sunstar's ultimate decision will be—he's always been distant to Sedgepounce, a figure more than a clanmate. But he is kind, and it already says a lot that he's allowed Thriftfeather this much.

The nursery is a safety net. Here, Thriftfeather can enjoy the gift of family swaddled in the caccoon of WindClan's safety, all while being condemned for it. But something's gotta give. The nebulous purgatory of his nursery-bound prison can only last so long—even if he's kept here, his children will eventually leave. But Sedgepounce isn't convinced that fatherhood is enough to redeem him. The promise of loyalty, too, is a lackluster reason. If Sunstar's going to let him stay, there needs to be something more.

What, though? He's not sure. And a part of him doesn't care.

"...I'm sure he did," Sedgepounce mutters dryly. Sootspot wouldn't have cared for Thriftfeather had he been WindClan's most loyal cat from the start, and there's little reason to believe that it's just Thrift's betrayal which has sparked his ire. His eyes drift, for the final time, to the kittens. He wonders what Sootspot would say about them, if asked.

Thriftfeather stumbles over some sad excuse for an answer and Sedgepounce...isn't surprised. He doesn't know what he would do without WindClan either, except to stumble back in whatever way he could. It's exactly what he already had to do.

Does Thriftfeather know? The thought strikes him briefly. Does he know what Sedgepounce endured under Sootstar's total regime? How Snakehiss...How the river took him away, how he clawed his way all the way back, how he never turned against his own clan for some tyrant? How he didn't even have family to come back to? He never got the chance to choose the right side, but he would've. He would've.

It doesn't matter if he does. Sedgepounce is nothing in a machine of ever-spinning cogs and spokes. He isn't even sure why he's remembering it all now, but...it burns, a little, to imagine Thriftfeather enjoying the safety and splendor of family and kinship just because he wants it, now. Even after fighting against it. Even when Sedgepounce was never able to fight for it.

"I pray you mean it, for everyone's sake," he murmurs. He means it. Everyone's lives would be better if Thriftfeather could just hold onto whatever sentiments he has now, finally holding some scrap of loyalty—if not for WindClan, then for his family. But a part of Sedgepounce fears that whatever scrap of naivety within him got washed away by the river, so he doesn't indulge himself on the failures of hope.

Finally, Sedgepounce steps for the door. "Eat well," he says, longing for the peace of the sunwarmed pool, before he slips from the nursery's heather-lined exit and disappears into the light.
​