RUN, RED RIVER 𓇼 CICADAFLIGHT

[shellpaw]

the moon is high when she enters the olivine - woven medicine den, heavy eyes blinking against the vast absence of light compared to the gleaming alabaster outside. stone - driven edges are bathed in a cutting incandesce of bonebleach white, shadows deep and far cast, stretching tendril - like around where her cousin winds tight in a sloppily woven nest, thickets of herb and trinkets laced into deep, iron scented greenery. her sickness has its merits ; while few and far between, her presence in the medicine den is something still frequent, frequent enough to earn nothing but a glance and greeting blink from the alabaster medic.. but she is slumbering when tender pawsteps find entry, always too soft, too light, soundless unlike the wheezing that falls quiet from an ever parted maw.

hidden within some awful, morbid shadow of her mind, shellpaw feels a tether to this den. morguelike, her final resting place — she’d been destined to wither upon a pile of moss no cat could touch, infused with the sick - sweet scent of infection and heat that kept her hazy. hazier. her survival had been a desperate scramble for barter, lost to her as all time seems to be in here. only the feversick memories of a blinding white light, soot - stink lingering at the edges of fur haloed in starlight. standing with her back against the light, chest heaving from her run back ; moonbeam had saved her life. nursed her like a rotting flower, paws cupped in a gentle hover at paled petals until the beginnings of life began to seep back into her roots. until color flooded her veins again. this place is a comfort, a coffin.. a carapace.

still the thrum of funeral song pounds in the pulse of blood at her ears ; each beat of her heart a rabbitpulse death toll, the shuddering flick of a timer counting down. her recent spar had left gaunt sides aching, a sharp twinge on the underside of her rib that she does her best to ignore — apprentices got hurt all the time, she’d heard. it was a part of training, she’d heard. shellpaw had always thought her muscles would ache from exertion, from a run through the meadows or a long, blow - for - blow training session. something she could only feel when the adrenaline died down, flooding her body with exhaustion and putting her to her nest with the rest of her den mates.. not from this. not from the few yards of sprinting she’d taken away from unsheathed claws and a snarling hound, not from being flattened by her own doing — being swatted like a gnat at midnightpaw’s ear.

restlessness had found her late tonight ; curled in the center of her nest with limbs drawn close and tucked, watching the slow rise - fall of pebblepaw’s chest aside her. it did not help, not as it usually did. not when her mind whirls with a shroud dark as the night around her, the crevices in which growing bodies curl, snoring into the riverhumid air. they sleep soundly, unmoving, unperturbed and shellpaw couldnt wrap her mind around it — weren’t they scared? weren’t they worried? was she weak for it, the devastation that finds her in the wake of blood, cruelty? lambs wool blackens ; the sliver of metal that had caught her leader’s foot, the dog that had torn holes into her belly with its awful, drooling maw, the blood that ran down the length of long, mottled arms and into the pale of her fur. it still runs, rivulets through the space between lilac striping and she feels sticky with it, the old blood crusting her memory.

the decision to visit him comes on quick ; comes on in the space between gentle sleep snorting and the rustle of kicking dreamers. she knew from the brief space they’d shared that cicadaflight was as tumultuous at moonhigh as she tended to be, as weary and mindtorn as she tended to be.. but caring. still affording to offer pieces of himself with fur tattered, loyal as a bound mongrel and just as sharp ( how? how could she do that? ). flicking strawberry eyes away from the tangle of short white limbs twined sleepily in dappled black ones, she finds him in the far corner — steps forward and the curtain falls shut behind her, draping the den in a flat layer of starless night. shellpaw wobbles with sudden disorientation ; dips her head, plods forward like a shark to blood in the direction she knows he is, velveteen nostrils flaring at the scent of aging cobweb, of poultice and scabbing wounds. her eyes adjust slow and inch by inch, she can make out the slopes of his coiled body, scuffed limbs outstretched past the gnarled limits of his nest and hollow side heaving quick, rapidfire breaths.

his expression is taut, eyes closed, but consciousness shellpaw cannot tell. his eyes are bleared into shadow, furthered by the semi - constant smear across rheumy retinas that blears long snouted features into a swathes of surreal black mottled white.

he should rest, she thinks, i should go. because he’d evaded hounds teeth only to find himself caught in a rogues path, torn from the maw upward in the same way the dogs had been. a long, split snout pulled back upon rubberblack lips to reveal the broken shards of yellowing molars behind. she does not go. for a moment, she merely stands ; hovers, a blinding beacon of alabaster - lilac curl amidst the otherwise overwhelming darkness, eyes wrought a bloodied amber as she watches him. the shell she’d brought from her nest hangs too heavy in her maw — a pale pink thing, smooth and whirl patterned. a gift from pebblepaw and riverpaw on the day of her ceremony, just after her mother had ascended the stone and announced that they would be mentoring her themself.

in her minds eye, lichenstar’s mistridden fur douses deep with clot - speckled blood. a droplet falls high from the river stone where she bleeds starclan’s word from an open maw, feeling the splash of warmth hit her nose where she binds her in promise. their eyes roll back.

shellpaw blinks, shakes her head, sniffs at the sudden lilt of snot that wettens her maw. it quickens her pulse, opens her mouth to breath suddenly urgent, ” c’cadaf’ght..? “ around her shell, nothing more than trembling birdwhisper. short ears flick back fractionally, lowering her skull to deposit her shell between the bashful inturn of tuft tipped paws. her tail comes to cover it for safe keeping, thornlike claws fiddling with its rippled edges when she inhales, a rickety and stuttering thing.. pauses, just in time for something to caw mournfully just beyond camp walls, ” i can’t sleep.. i’m scared. said low, like a confession, flits her gaze around and away as if it were one ( he’d fought a dog, a rogue. she couldn’t, didn’t know if she ever could. shell watch her mother die again, and again, and again.. ), ” can i stay here? for, um, just a little while.. “

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐏𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 ° 𓇼 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒

• i. @CICADAFLIGHT
  
  
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  SHELLPAW 𓆉 SHE / HER. SEVEN MOONS OLD, APPRENTICE OF RIVERCLAN, MENTORED BY LICHENSTAR ; SMELLS LIKE SALT & RIVER BLOOMS. HAZECLOUD xx LICHENSTAR, NIECE TO SMOKESTAR. PENNED BY ANTLERS ----------------- ° ❀ ⋆
  frail alabaster molly with lilac striping and watery amber eyes.
  
  she is pallid ; platinum splotched with ribbons of dovey lilac curls, wisped ends like memories of a distant shore and plush enough to conceal the juts of malnutrition beneath. tufted elderdown fur conceals a body worn fragile by tumultuous youth, too thin in some places and round with baby fat in others. her face is short - muzzled, framed half mast by eyes coined rheumy, rosen amber. the anemic cold pink - purple at tender paws and nose tell a lifetime of sickness, further made obvious by the feathering weakness in half - whispered tones.
  

  CHRONICALLY ILL ; prone to wheezing, nose at a constant drip from longterm illness - induced nasal polyps. not contagious.

  
  

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[CICADAFLIGHT]

On nights like these, his father haunts him . . . or some facsimile of his father, rather. An old and familiar ghost as gnarled as the old branches broken under his bloody paws, well - warped by the mind it'd produced, some monstrous self - destruction wearing the bleach - white nacre mask of Cicadastar. He traverses boundless marsh and mire, seeking a grave he knows to be empty . . . tended by Ashenfall's careful paws and watered with the brackish muck his father had, unbelievably, once resided in; its ex - resident trails him, dripping unintelligible prayers and shedding cicada - wings like feathers to flutter untended to the ground behind him, crackling underpaw as they lead each other in twining circles.

He knows it's not his father; for one thing, the masked thing has haunted him for moons now. At one point it was so nearly realized he could have reached out and touched it. For another, he's sure ( hopeful? ) that Cicadastar rests in a tangle of black - and - white limbs not unlike the one in the next nest over, star - woven and happy, weightless without his blessings.

He twitches in his sleep like a dog.

" Mmh? " It's the muffled wordless sound of the newly woken and quickly sharpened, sleep a blade honed by three camps and countless moons. He sleeps light—he hasn't slept any other way since the willow den. There's too much ready to find his throat in the night, to deprive him of the next dawn's pained tug to consciousness and the summons of a bloodred sun. Fur ripples into spires along muscled shoulders, splaying in outwards thistle, and he sharpens in an instant . . . trained dog and polished sword, the presence of another the strangling chain and honing stone. In an instant, he isn't alone, and he thinks with terrible damning certainty—he came back for me.

" Shellp'w? " His voice is blunted where his mind is sharp; the hoarse filter of his father doubly applied, erasing Cicadastar's dulcet tones and gilt - woven words for rough - voiced affirmations, tough as a horse resentful of the bit, a dog hateful of the muzzle. Shellpaw, yes, and he relaxes, barbed shoulders falling still, duotone eyes blown wide in the darkness, sunbleached blue and woodsmoke amber flashing behind the tightlaced mask of cobweb, quickly shoved aside with a paw, the other dragged back into his nest in the instinctive motion of a mutt barely trained and frightful of a bite. Wound noose - tight and braced, limbs sprawl wild over the roughly hewn limits of his nest.

An animal of contrasts, sleep dull - sharpens him, serrated blade. Barbed - wire collar and firebrand eyes are traded for the slump of exhausted care, the caged - frenzy flash in his gaze . . . love so hot it sickens and burns in his gut, ready to spill over. He loves in teeth and claws and to make it soft - pawed is a painful effort . . . but it's one he'll make for his sister, his cousins, for Shellpaw, and so he nods re - bleary and cants his head. " Yeah, " he rasps, tough - mouthed as the bearer of an iron gag, rusted fangs growing backwards into soft gums. The pain spreading in his cheek, medicineless and re - exerted, is uncared - for; the shadowy ever - presence of a nonexistent ghost is uncared - for. He merely repeats, " Yeah. Yeah, c'mon, c'mere. "

A mirror himself, he's hesitant to deem Shellpaw one, not when he's familiar with the weight of wrought - iron frame and foxed glass, smoked and crazed. But . . . of the remainder of her litter, the elders of their leader's ( and new deputy's, now ) second smattering of bundles, she reminds him most of himself. Unsure and pain - stricken, clasping tufted paws to strange possessions, different in some way from the rest . . . as the wounded deer is picked from the pack with a wolf's eyes, so he notes her the broken - legged fawn. And now . . . now she—she and Pebblepaw, and Twinklepaw, and Horizonpaw, and Eveningpaw, and any other kits they might foolishly choose to bear should either ( or both ) of them survive that long—is more a mirror than he'd have ever wanted her to be.

" Wh't is it? " he rasps, low as not to incur the wrath of his sister and her maybe - mate where they rest in a contented tangle of limbs. If she'll allow it, he'll clasp one lilac - laced forepaw between both of his, the same tacit gesture of trust he'd delivered to a newly eyeless Beefang. Each day when the bloody sun drowns he abstains from the touch of his Clanmates, sharing tongues and gossip, but for his family he welcomes it, cautiously, him now the deer with the twisted limb, roles spun in reverse. " 'S it Lichenstar? "

Bone - bleach lashes coast low over blessedly intact bicolor eyes, ice - chip and burning ember sweeping her small face for cracks in fragile porcelain. Fine china that she is, he must wonder if Lichenstar and her well - meant decrees are a crushing paw . . . if the lynx point had known how she damned her daughter. Muzzled in blood and raw - ripped flesh, he'd been unable to speak out; muted in reed - bound loyalty, he'd been unwilling, but . . . stars, had they learned nothing? Nothing from Cricketchirp and his starburst scars and god complexes, Beefang dripping gore from a wound of legacy, himself with his own bloodbound repairs, kintsugi in barbed wire and salt.

Had they learned nothing? What child should see their parent die nine times over? What child should see such a thing twice? Leadership is dangerous, he knows this firstpaw and from the sidelines, unwilling spectator to demise in double . . . should Lichenstar like to be like her progenitor, blood a halo around her throat before her children see their first catch? Should she like Hazecloud to be a second imitation, nine lives punched from her gut with a stranger naming her children? Are they ignorant, foolish, what, what? His jaw is clenched and he forces it loose, frightened by the quickness with which the childhood habit returns, splintered teeth and aching head.

Blurry - eyed and remorseful for thoughts he'd kill upon sunrise, he waits for Shellpaw's answer with fear a second bitter herb on his tongue.

OOC : —

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