- Mar 14, 2024
- 108
- 12
- 18
The plague had its way of worming even into the impenetrable marble of youth, cracking it open and leaving it asunder. Kittens, with their faces brimmed in eiderdown-laden fur, had now seen their cheeks frazzle with the uncertainty of it all. Innocence could only shield them so far, when even the cushioned world of moss-nest and mother-belly fell apart at their wobbling feet. Celandinepaw saw how rising sickness sapped the moorlands of everything, high spirits draining down a basin like tidewater, and sinking into the naked earth. Lining the eyes and hardening the heart, it infested even the verdancy of the moorlands, tinging it with some sickly sap of a lingering sense of unease. There had been some resentment, then, of allowing it to taint even Celandinepaw's sunshot countenance. There was still a job to be done though, as the weight upon bare-bones shoulders seemed to wax in strength the longer she continued, the coppice of expectations exhausting even one crafted of joyous flint. Why me?, was the question often asked to deaf stars, of which she did not know even listened to her, of terribly and fearfully made outsider. She hadn't much time to question it, however harshly it peeled at her skin, bubbled up in welts of white-hot dread.
"Are you, um, okay?" Celandinepaw's voice rang of uncertainty through the medicine cat den, as though she had not truly claimed herself within her new role just yet, weaving through the lindens and lichens of such a labyrinthine task. A dark-tipped apprentice lie upon one nest, and she took care not to approach too closely - lest even the quickly-made apprentice fall prey to the glutton of pestilence.
"Are you, um, okay?" Celandinepaw's voice rang of uncertainty through the medicine cat den, as though she had not truly claimed herself within her new role just yet, weaving through the lindens and lichens of such a labyrinthine task. A dark-tipped apprentice lie upon one nest, and she took care not to approach too closely - lest even the quickly-made apprentice fall prey to the glutton of pestilence.
