"...Hope so," she grumbles at Moonbeam's attempt to assauge her fears over this matter. Right now it feels... too big for her to handle. Like she's really let the lid off of her pot and let it all boil over, and it's spilling onto the floor in hot, angry foam that can't be replaced. But since it's boiled over, all it can do now is simmer, softer.
As long as it doesn't happen too often. And there it is again, the subtle jab that has Sunpaw's brief flicker of 'maybe' in her chest squashed right back down into a sharp scoff.
But then Moonbeam's saying a lot. A lot, a lot, and truthfully it takes her actual willpower to listen to every word and let it not just go in one ear and out the other. It's hard to focus right now, when she still feels her paws burning, prickling, sharp with the need to do something with them, restless with the fading echoes of anger that are trying to figure out where they can settle instead, but it's just the same that gets her out of the headspace of just wanting to yell.
"I didn't mean to say it in front of the entire clan!" she insists, even though that's not Moonbeam's point. And she knows it's not, so as Moonbeam's gaze levels back on her she shuts her mouth and keeps working on the dingy, damp, gross things in the den.
Moonbeam has a point, and for several seconds Sunpaw considers it in sincerity. It would be easy, to pretend. To just ignore it until she's figured it out for herself, but.
"But that's a lie, Moonbeam." And she'll put her pride before it all, even if shutting her mouth and putting her head down would be the easy way out.
"It's not like I hate.... Foxtail," she hesitates the finish the sentence because, actually, she had said just that. She hated him. She hates him. She takes a breath.
"I'm angry at him," she murmurs instead, correcting herself with a rush of breath. It takes a lot to admit that. But she knows it all the same.
"Brookpelt didn't want me. But Foxtail is so... different. He's nothing like me, and I'm nothing like him. And he just... He just annoys me!" She says it, but then her gaze skirts to Moonbeam with the understanding that maybe that isn't something she should be saying anymore. She flicks her ears, too late now.
"He's so... so timid, and stutter-y and... and jumps at the shadows! Everything about him annoys me, and I don't know why," she sits herself down. She'll keep working in a minute, but if she's being honest, she's not doing much right now other than push things around because she can't take them out of the den to actually dispose of it when they're talking about something like this.
"I know... he's not bad. He's actually kind of... nice. And I know... I know other cats like him a lot too. And I know I don't have to get that, and I try to tell myself that, but then something happens and I just," her face scrunches, trying to find words for feelings she's never understood in the first place.
"I don't know. I just get... mad. At everything. Like, everything," she puts the emphasis here, even though it feels a little dramatic.
"And I know that? And most of the time it feels so... good. But I get mad, then people get mad at me, and then they give me that look, or say something, and then that just makes me even angrier. And then I don't wanna be mad anymore, but then I can't do anything about it."
It's the most articulate she'll ever get to ever explaining what just happened in the middle of camp. If Foxtail - if she - if something - hadn't pushed her buttons like that, if she had been able to hit the
stop button somehow, would it have been this bad? Would she have lost Owlpaw then? It's... her fault.
Her ears pin back, her head physically shaking once, sharp, as she dislodges the thought from her head and stands back up.
"...I'll clean up the mud I splashed." It's not a sorry but it's close enough.
