private rippling reflection ➺ sunshinespot

[doepath ࿔]

"Can we get some air," it had been a harmless question, even if the weather was growing more foul she just needed some space to breathe. Her hot tempered argument with Gentlestorm had only proved haunting, passing into her dreams like a salivating dog breathing down upon her. A growling thing that knew something in the dark, bottomless pools of a bloodthirsty gaze... whispering threat under its breath: "I know what you've done." Try as she might to apologize and explain, the wolf never cared... lunging for her throat and just before it could snap into her, she'd wake up.

Heaving herself to her paws, the queen did everything she could to ignore the somersaults of greeting that began in her belly. If she was active, they were active... she didn't know what else to expect but hoped every time that maybe she'd have a moment of quiet stillness. "We won't stay out long," she promised in hushed tones, pressing her nose into the curly-furred tom's ear. The bubbling jealousy in her chest is hard to ignore... the fact he sleeps so peacefully, curled up tightly in a ball of warmth.

If she was lucky then they'd be unbothered in their little waddle to somewhere more private... she could get her fears off of her back (it aches enough already with this added weight) and they could come back here to the safety of their nests and continue forward with all doors left ajar. No secrets... no restrained anger... At least not with each other. They would raise these kittens with such an abundance of love that they would never want for anything... that no matter what path they walked down they felt certain about who they were.

"I don't feel good," she admits tentatively, probably the hundredth time she'd complained about it since she found out she was pregnant.

please dont leave me ➺ in the dark

• @sunshinespot

• DOEPATH
  fifteen month old warrior of thunderclan
  she/her fawn sepia with low white and yellow eyes

 

[sunshinespot]

The unrelenting chill keeps Sunshinespot in close proximity to his lover (amongst a pawful of other reasons.) He siphons her warmth whilst also doing his damnedest to ensure that the cold breezes don't reach her - yet all the same, she is uncomfortable. She never feels well, can never settle properly, and more often than not spends time in the medicine den, begging for some sort of reprieve from whatever illness plagues her pregnancy. The tom, admittedly, cannot understand. His nausea hardly existed and ended nearly a moon ago, and though he's grown round and uncomfortable, it's not to an unbearable extent.

Perhaps the worse part of this is watching her suffer and struggle and being so unable to help. He does what he can - being soft and large has come to be his only useful quality - but as she stands on rickety legs, muscle mass lost due to misuse and bare-minimum meals... it hurts that what he can do is so pitifully little.

She asks for air - he obliges, moving quicker than her despite sharing an ailment. "We can be as long as y'need, Doe," he rumbles, holding as close to her as she will allow. The biting cold does little to dissuade him in his efforts to appease her. Her discomfort has made her more noticeably snippy and upset - something that does not inspire fear in Sunshinespot, but rather again discontent that she's in a position of such painful unhappiness. There is a selfish thought to be had in that her predicament could not have been caused by him. But it again does so so little to remedy the fact that she is inflicted so horribly at all. We'll make it to the end, he tells himself, keeping his steps short to match her strides. And we'll be happy again.

She complains, and there is no instinct to accuse. No, "You wanted to be out here!" No, "Then why bother trying?" He presses his muzzle featherlight to the space behind her ear, nearly identical to how she had done not long before, and murmurs, "Y'want me t'find you some water?" The streams are frozen, for the most part, but they can be broken up. Ice, he's found, is better than going thirsty. "Or we can sit a bit. I don' mind."
​

 

[doepath ࿔]

He nestles against her like a drifting wisp of cotton caught in her fur, clinging to the ends of her fur like he might float away if left unattended. It's a warm comfort... reassuring, a pressure that does not relent. For a moment, their simple acts of affection are enough to quell the discomfort that rumbles in her belly.

Only for a moment.

"No," sharp, panicked almost in her response... though water would parch the dryness of her throat, the lack of their presence would only leave a new ache in the interim. A temporary relief was not worth it... not when she knew what pulled at her, what knotted itself into ugly little bows in her guts.

"Let's... let's just sit..." A slow, hesitant nod... a tight curl of darkened paws under her body. An orb of shivering uncertainty, staring at the washed out tones of the forest floor before timidly finding the familiar planes of a smiling face. "I need to get something off my chest."

Though she could feel it like it were a physical presence (and once, moons ago, hadn't it been?), the burden of its weight had become purely emotional. The juggling necessary to keep it carefully locked behind her teeth, to skirt around the frustrated glances, the disappointed stares of her siblings. That auburn light of autumn fur didn't know either... How could she even get a message out to her in such a state? Could she?

"You don't have to tell me... anything," the first piece of groundwork laid, sightless stare fleeing towards where she imagined the curve of his belly might be. "But... I don't want to hide from you." Like a mouse, scurrying between roots to plaster itself against the bark in hopes that hungry claws could not reach far enough into her hole.

"I promise... I haven't seen her again since we've been mates," even if she wished she'd snuck away just one last time. Even if part of her would've gladly wrestled in leaf-litter pelt if given the chance. "I just... didn't think you'd ever ask and I didn't want to pressure you-" Even though her claws sunk deeper into the dirt every time he'd called her a friend- even with every heart-twisted smile that she'd offered him. Be mine, she'd begged- no... it had been a demand, really. A selfish, hungry order for affection.

Cycle of memory plays out in slow frames, sliding through each image- Stormywing's anguish... the angry bristle of Gentlestorm's pelt... the barbed edges of her tongue, lashing out at one who didn't recognize what threat he'd directed at her.

"I know the code," she mumbles, as if returned to that argument with the wolfish tom. "I'm not... I'm not ThunderClan blood," she continues, stumbling over whatever point she's trying to make. Doing cartwheels to make her logic click together in a way that doesn't ache. "They were never.... no kits I ever had were ever going to be ThunderClan blood... they'll always be half of me. Half.... other..." Her brows pinch, trying to shove down Doecry, who bubbles at the surface with the yearning to wail her sorrows. To sob about the rejection that ran like poison in her veins. "So... I guess I just..."

"Loving them should be enough... right? No one's born hating their blood." It's taught. The same way her mother taught her. With fear. With anger. "Sunshine..." Daffodil gaze fixates on him again, searching for the finish line... to find clarity, to focus on what her intent had even been to drag him out in here in the silence.. in the cold. "This litter... none of it is ThunderClan's blood." She was only a ThunderClanner in name... Skyclaw had made that clear. And the quiet majority that had allowed it had only confirmed that.

"They're half me..." Stranger. Rogue. Trickster. "And... half SkyClan." Pine sap. Downy feathers. Wooden fences.

"I just... thought you deserved to know... just in case-" And through her listless rambling, for the first time her throat tightens, silencing what she couldn't bear to say. Just in case you change your mind about me.... About us.

please dont leave me ➺ in the dark

• DOEPATH
  fifteen month old warrior of thunderclan
  she/her fawn sepia with low white and yellow eyes