serve me a disaster // nettlekit

[honeymoon]

sweet like honey
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Oh she was drearily exhausted. It wasn't fair how much was being expected out of her by her mentor! Honeypaw's warrior ceremony was still moons away, why was she being pushed so hard as the leaves were starting to turn colors? That was when she wanted to sit and look around the most! This was her first leaf-fall, heading into her first leafbare where she wasn't a mewling kit, but surely it couldn't be that bad if ShadowClan had survived strong and proud through all the ones that came before her. Honeypaw was torn between being excited to be part of the legacy, part of the strong force that kept ShadowClan padding forward - and oh so horribly irritated that she would further lose her ability to hide from her responsibilities. The apprentice slunk back into camp behind her mentor, who had given her a mrrp of encouragement for her hard work. The warrior nudged her to the freshkill pile to deposit her catch before parting ways. Honeypaw paused at the entrance of camp, stretching her front legs forward and hiking her rump up in a dramatic stretch with her teeth still tight around her feathered catch. She swore she could hear her bones creak beneath her fur! Honeypaw shook out the stiffness trying to settle into her muscles as a bird would water from their feathers, rising back onto her paws.

With her training for the day done, she was... gross! She was pretty gross! Honeypaw had a rather lax standard for her own appearance, normally completely uncaring of stray twigs hitching rides in the thick ruffs of her fur or the small tangles that would twist themselves up on her belly. But today she came back covered in patches of mud, leaf decay and bog water soaking her belly, bark between her toes - and a wren to show her work! Honeypaw drops the songbird to the trodden earth, lifting a muddy paw to her muzzle to begin cleaning herself. She'd put her kill away later - Honeypaw had much more pressing matters to attend to, and that was making sure her fur didn't cake to her skin because of the mud!

@NETTLEKIT
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[NETTLEPAW ♡]

Ever-watchful, Nettlekit's fascination mostly lay with the bronzing of the laves. It was only a few of them, dotted around branches and yellowing like an old bruise, but it was interesting nonetheless. It had seemed impossible only a moon ago for the world to change at all, but- as his apprenticeship drew nearer, so did leaf-fall. Sat by the entrance of his mother's den, it was the movement of one of these leaf-colours that caught his eye- patchy-orange, more advanced than the majority of leaves... and low to the ground. Oh. It was- it was Honeypaw, that was her name, covered in muck after an apprenticeship excursion no doubt!

Immediately, Nettlekit forgot what before he had been thinking about, toddling over to the apprentice unattended. With busy parents, he often wandered toward warriors- and today, an apprentice would take the nettle-sting of his question-sparked tongue, right as she had sat down to unwind. "Good day. Are you alright?" he asked, first of all. Polite, like you were supposed to. "What did your mentor make you do?" Disbelief stardusted his words- nothing conceivable to Nettlekit involved getting quite so mucky. ​

penned by pin ♡​

 

[honeymoon]

sweet like honey
———— ( ☀ ) ————

Mud was a rather vile taste. It smears off of her fur to collect thick against her teeth. As Honeypaw's tongue rasps over her paw she heavily considers just giving up and accepting a fate as a muddy little rat. Better than whatever fate she was forced to here, having to clean herself. She briefly envies RiverClan for their easy access to water - she should run her paws under a stream, but then she'd have to sneak out of camp without her mentor. Hmm... no, no more rulebreaking for now. She had to play her cards carefully if she wanted to keep getting away with it! The molly's nose wrinkles as she peels a leaf from between her toes, spitting mud and tree debris from her mouth to the soil beneath her. Ugh, gross! Screw the freshkill pile, she'd be eating that wren herself as a treat for her work! Her eyes flick to her catch, but instead of her feathered meal, skybright eyes were staring back at her. The apprentice starts, fur along her spine ruffling in surprise as her dirty paw slaps down to the ground to stabilize herself. "Geez!" Honeypaw gasps in surprise. "Hi, Nettlekit." Just a kit had scared her so! It wasn't a warrior come to scold her, nor another apprentice to steal the flesh of her labor.

He asks if she's alright, and Honeypaw stares at him blankly for a few heartbeats as she processes what exactly he means. He follows it up by asking what she had been doing, and electricity meets metal in her mind as a shock of thought comes to her. "Oh! Oh, I'm fine." Honeypaw wondered briefly if it was Nettlekit's own manners that made him ask such a thing or if it was him parroting what he had heard countless times from his mother addressed to other Clanmates. Honeypaw straightens her posture and puffs her chest out with pride, motioning to the wren next to her with her head. "I went hunting! Look, I caught a bird! It was hard though, they fly real fast - I had to chase it up a tree! And I uh..." Honeypaw pauses. Nettlekit's just a kitten still, but he and his siblings are approaching apprenticeship, so she isn't sure how much of her failure she's willing to share that might follow her to her nest in a moon. After a slight hesitation, she stretches the truth. "I landed on my feet! I wasn't expecting to come down so quickly, but I landed perfectly - you should've seen it! The mud softened my landing so I didn't hurt myself." What, was she just supposed to admit 'I fell out of the tree in a super muddy puddle'!? No way! "How old are you again? Are you excited to be an apprentice? It's really cool." And really, really hard, in her opinion. She hated waking up early.


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[NETTLEPAW ♡]

He certainly wasn't envious of this part of apprenticeship... grime caking across your grin, a desperate attempt to cleanse yourself of the day's effort. Even as Honeypaw startled, Nettlekit didn't flinch away, too fascinated to abandon his curiosity. A grin shone upon his face like sunshine through a cotton-white cloud as she greeted him, his tail flicking joyfully. Ah, there was the boon of friendliness! She knew his name- meant well for reputation, surely.

At her command, sky-bright eyes flickered toward the bird- sun-fire admiration glimmered in his gaze, and he studied the catch as if he'd never seen anything like it before. He'd always thought killing things would be difficult, but freshkill always looked so clean, and this was no exception. Clean as in bloodless, rather than mudless... too young so far to snag nuances, Nettlekit didn't notice Honeypaw's hesitation, nor the layer of facade she kept up as she recounted what had apparently happened. "Wow! Getting so messy was a small price to pay, then," he supposed aloud, snickering a little when he saw a dried leaf lodged between Honeypaw's toes. It was still quite inconvenient, he imagined.

"Three moons," he said, nodding his head afterwards as if internally confirming it. "Yeah. It sounds cool," Nettlekit answered her simply, never fond of delving much into how he felt. Instead, he was much fonder of earning favour by being fun to talk to. "What other stuff have you done? You sound like a good hunter," he hummed, both genuinely curious and interested in flattering her.​

penned by pin ♡​

 

[honeymoon]

sweet like honey
———— ( ☀ ) ————

Nettlekit easily matches her enthusiasm and Honeypaw finds herself ramping up further in response. Her skin warms under the child's praise. Her tufted ears coil backward briefly when she hears him snicker at her attempts to clean herself, but she's able to shake off the response if only because he had preluded it with honeyed words. She'd certainly be having a laugh if Smogmaw showed up to camp equally as dirty, so she'd let it pass for now. Until they were peers, at least. Her paw has finally become free of major detritus, still stained a gray tinge from the residual. She couldn't be bothered enough to care right now, instead lifting her other paw and picking a piece of bark from her teeth to spit it out. Ugh, first getting stuck in a tree and now falling out of a tree. She really should leave it to the SkyClanners at this rate, but after what happened with the bears she wants the ability and skill to whisk up a tree if she needs to. She was too young and beautiful for such a grisly fate! (More like, she didn't want to die, but where was the fun in admitting that?)

Honeypaw purrs in response to Nettlekit's age, letting him prattle on before considering replying. Aha, he was approaching apprentice age! Honeypaw, meanwhile, was a few moons away from being able to leave the apprentice's den. Not soon enough, if you asked her. She was working her paws off to make a good warrior, even if she took some excessive breaks! If he was normally this chatty and friendly, she wouldn't mind offering a nest next to hers when the time came for he and his siblings to meander the apprentice's den. Then she could take her turn praising him. At the question he pitched her, Honeypaw's whiskers twitched. A chance to brag. "Oh, I've done plenty! Fighting, patrols, hunting, climbing, um... sneaky stuff..." Honeypaw's head bobs along with each item listed before she stills, voice trailing off as she struggles to reach the rest of her thought. She rolls her shoulders and opts to give up instead. "I really want to work more on night hunting, though! I don't like waking up early anyways. It's soooo much easier when prey has a harder time seeing you, too." It was, in Honeypaw's own strange way, a bit of a lazier form of hunting. "Do you have a mentor you really want?" The apprentice questions with a tilt of her ginger head, focus taken completely away from grooming herself to focus on conversation with Nettlekit. "Or something you super want to learn? Maybe I can give you some tips!" Honeypaw was very well meaning in her offer, if not a bit overselling her abilities.


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