SHATTER ME ✘ smokecada fam

[SMOKESTAR]

It was distressing, all of it, he felt like he was constantly on edge and ready to fall apart at a moment's notice but he couldn't. For once he wished to break into pieces, crumble to the ground and lay there but in doing so he would be leaving his clanmates to suffer alone - to struggle on their own. A deputy was not meant to be weak, he could not show it and so he pushed forward. Each step was agony, each order given breathless with the memory of mottled and bloody fur torn to pieces, a belly split open, a throat wearing a crimson smile. Once most of the clan was settled and the rest was beginning to he went to find his kits, the trio of them awkwardly huddled near the den that he believed housed SkyClan's apprentices; too crowded for so many cats and too unfamiliar for comfort. Without a word he swept forward to them, sat alongside to settle down and curl around them like they were kits again, though they were much to big to nestle at his side like they once did - he wishes, longs for the days of them too small but everpresent, curled between him and their father in a protective coil of black, white and gray fur; he wished he could guard them like he once did but the world had other plans. The world had made them watch something he had hoped they'd never witness, Cicadastar dying - the cruelty of being brought back only to die again, a sight that would never be washed from blue, orange, mismatched eyes no matter how many moons would pass.
Smokethroat wanted nothing more than to promise he would return, to promise they would find him and bring him home but the lump in his throat warns him to not tell such lies as sweet as they seemed. Hope was a fragile thing, he wouldn't dare dash it so violently.
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[BEEFANG]

₊· ͟͟͞͞➳˚❥ Beepaw hated being here in Skyclan... It felt so alien to her and she tenses up at the sight of other apprentices passing by, she kept close to her littermates and had been leaning against Cicadapaw while her tail wrapped protectively around Starlightpaw. It wasn't long until Smokethroat had come searching for them and he tried curling around them to the best of his abilities, Beepaw immediately letting herself press into him and finally felt herself collapse as her eyes began to sting once more with tears threatening to slip. She wished to be a kitten again with no worries, to be in the safety of the willow den, and had both of her fathers curled around her and her littermates. She wishes she could be the strong and stable cat that Cicadapaw believed her to be as she broke, a few quiet sobs leaving her and tears slipped down her freckled cheeks.

What she had seen had been horrific and something she never expected to witness, she lifts a snowy paw up to wipe away the tears from her currently blurred vision and sniffles. The smoke molly refusing to leave the side of Smokethroat and she takes a deep breath, a frown on her maw as she stares down at her paws while remaining slightly draped over her papa. She sits up slightly with their dark coats still brushing against one another and she remembers how she could do nothing, how useless she had been when the rogues had come to attack and steal their home. The sparring she had done with Ratpaw and Carppaw barely being anything, she'd die in battle. Or worse.

Her loved ones would.

The memory of Cicadastar fresh in her memory and her eyes glance up briefly to Smokethroat, her throat tightening at the thought of if roles had been reversed. Smokethroat would not be here and the thought of losing her papa frightened her. A shaky breath leaves her and her snout scrunches up as she speaks in a shaky voice "Smo... Papa..." The river princess tries to keep a serious expression on but it falters from the sadness as a few more tears drop onto the ground, "T-teach me to f-fight... Please..." I don't want to lose you too. She thinks quietly and hopes that her mentor and papa would teach her... She didn't want to be helpless again and let someone hurt her littermates, her papa...

And her dad, if he still lived.

𓆟. ° .• . WHEN DOES A RIPPLE BECOME A TIDAL WAVE?

• 
  ❥ 4 moons old
  ❥ riverclan apprentice
  ❥ sexuality unknown; single
  ❥ daughter of cicadastar and smokethroat
  ❥ sister of cicadapaw & starlightpaw
  ❥ "speech", thoughts, attacking
  ❥ easy; still learning how to fight
  ❥ peaceful powerplay allowed

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[Cricketchirp]

( ✩ )　 The humming beneath Starlightpaw's skin has grown to a crescendo, all the stars in their veins screaming out their protest in voiceless words. This isn't how it's supposed to go. Starlightpaw wants to pace, restless, break away from his siblings, and go somewhere, anywhere, do something. She keeps shaking her head back and forth, lashing her tail, as though trying to rid herself of this wrongness.

But Smokethroat comes to find them, so instead Starlightpaw curls in on themselves, curls up against Smokethroat like when they were a kit, too young to leave the nursery. Presses his face into his papa's fur, eyes pressed shut. He feels very, very small.

It feels wrong, these emotions. The stars speak their displeasure through the body of a child, one far too small to hold it. Her eyes shouldn't see something like that. The corpse of their father remains imprinted on the back of Starlightpaw's eyes; the gloating, gleeful monsters surrounding him like some prized trophy, parading around their catlike faces as though they are the same as Starlightpaw, as Smokethroat or Cicadastar. As though their lives are worth even a fraction of the one they took. He hates them, all of them, and the roaring in his ears still hasn't gone away. It sounds like the river, wailing its mourning.

Cicadastar is not gone, not forever. He cannot be kept down, they know this to be true, because they could face any other reality. She shouldn't feel this scared about it, father will be fine. But the rogues should have never taken him, that's not how it's supposed to go. Kings, gods do not die, not like this. Not unceremoniously at the paws on rogues while the kingsblooded flee like roaches in sunlight.

It's wrong, and he needs to fix it. Beepaw's words come first. Of course; she is the oldest after all. Starlightpaw pulls her face away from Smokethroar's fur, swallows past the scream in her throat.

Her voice comes in a warbling mourning-song, not tear-choked as her sisters but bearing the same heaviness. "Me too," they breath, raise their shrill voice. It does not steady. "All of us, please, teach - teach all of us to fight." It's pleading, shaky, vulnerable in a thin and fragile way. He can't let this happen again. They can't just run away again.

AND POINTED SKYWARDS ✩ SCRAPE THE HEAVENS ! 【 10.2.23 】

• //
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• "SPEECH"

• ✩ 　⁺　₊ 　⋆　STARLIGHTPAW.　APPRENTICE OF RIVERCLAN.　HE / SHE / THEY.
  4 MOONS & AGES ON THE 12TH.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ✩ — A WIRY, CURLY-FURRED BLACK SMOKE WITH CLOUDED BLUE EYES.
  

  
  SMOKETHROAT xx CICADASTAR. LITTERMATE TO BEEPAW & CICADAPAW.
  
  MENTORED BY PETALNOSE​

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