sensitive topics SHE HANGS BRIGHTLY ;; CHERRYPAW

❀‿ Lupinepaw and Cherrypaw were proving to be somewhat unreliable moss-collectors.

Moss-collecting patrols were sent out constantly lately, and murmurs of worry at having to make more sickbeds every day rippled through camp. For a pair of four-moon-olds, though, even their concern for fellow clan members could not override the excruciating boredom the task barraged their short attention spans with. As of now, their half-hearted heap of plant material lay forgotten beside them, abandoned in favor of more artistic pursuits, as well as some light gossip.

"No yeah, I've never once seen Slate not look like someone peed on his paw," Lupinepaw giggled as she worked a trumpeted blue flower into an orange patch of fur on Cherrypaw's tail, "Looks tiring to keep up that glower all day long, but maybe he was just born looking like that...?" She snorted again at the image of a tiny newborn kitten with a huge scowl stuck permanently to his face. "I'm, uhm, really sorry you have to deal with him every day, like actually..." Whatever amount of prestige the tom had in the skills that led to him being named Lead Warrior was lost on Lupinepaw, who was convinced she would never be able to look past his nasty attitude directed at her brother and mother, and the girl resented having to pad around him anytime she wanted to talk to Cherrypaw. It would be for this reason that the typically cautious youth would have no complaints as they strayed a little bit farther than the rest of the patrol than was necessary to "get to the good moss"—staying out of earshot from that particular warrior was worth the walk.

If one noticed Lupinepaw's small steps out of her shell of meekness—tufty ears pricked upwards and gaze sweeping the floor less than usual—she would recognize them as a side effect of the newfound joys of girlhood. Some of the heaviness that had sat perpetually in her chest had been lifted in that quiet moment she shared with Drowsypaw, and she took delight in being able to tie their experiences together like a ribboned-up gift they were given to share. Similarly—though, also markedly different—Lupinepaw was excited to be in possession of something she now shared with Cherrypaw in a friendship she seemed to weave into her heart as easily as she wove stems and petals into her pelt. Or perhaps weaving flowers was even a tad more difficult. "Mousefluff..!" she clicked her tongue in disappointment as a disagreeable flower fell softly to the ground from where she tried placing it into the fur on Cherrypaw's pale shoulder, "How'd you say Spiderpaw did it so they stick better again?"

She picked up the bloom by its papery petals to give it another go when she was met with a fat raindrop to her snout. Lupinepaw blinked lichen-green up past the pine canopy and to the sky above to be met with thick, oppressive grey. Lupinepaw hadn't noticed the clouds roll in earlier that afternoon, nor did she pay much mind to the way the greenleaf heat turned heavy and humid on their fur. "Hm, I didn't know it was gonna rain today... she murmured idly, still watching the branches above them glisten and sway beneath a pattering of droplets. Suddenly, something in the sky shifted, and it was no longer a quiet drizzle that fell from the heavens, and the forest was hit with a sudden downpour of heavy rain. "I think we should go meet back up with the others," Lupinepaw stood to her paws, wincing at the feeling of the water soaking through her thick black fur and through to her skin, "...Or it might be better if we just go straight back to camp, I-I think we could get back quick if we run." At least, she assumed they weren't too far from camp. She was rapidly beginning to realize how much harder it was to trace back their pawsteps as the rain drenched the forest around them, washing the scents away with petrichor. Suddenly, the familiarity of the sky-touching pines became unrecognizable, dark, looming creatures that towered uncaringly above them—the lush undergrowth now a hostile maze of soaked, bitter-smelling leaves. Lupinepaw's sureness in their location swiftly depleted, and a familiar sense of panic rose toward her throat.

If the rain wasn't enough, a sudden flash lit up the sky, and soon after, the roar of thunder shook through the woods around them. It was then that she'd noticed the sudden lack of commentary offered by her companion, and she was filled with concern at her sudden shift in demeanor, "Hey, Cher? Are you okay?"

  • OOC: @Cherrypaw
  • lupine_fullbodyy.png
  • lupinekit . lupinepaw
    — trans she/her. 4mo apprentice of skyclan
    — ??? ; single
    — tall, long-haired black smoke with low white and green eyes
    — smells like sweet lupine flowers and young pine needles
    — “speech”, thoughts, attack
    — icon by saturnid, fullbody and chibi by nya
    — penned by eezy
 
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ooc: content warning for this and my next post(s) with vivid descriptions of a panic attack

Earlier that day, Cherrypaw overheard Blazestar mentioning something about the darkening clouds to Lupinepaw's mother. It'd been under the guise of a joke, she thinks. Something about Bobbie being short. They've been joking around each other a lot lately, or maybe just smiling with each other, more than Blazestar has in moons. Some say it's love, the kind her mama and her papa had before they told the litter they didn't see each other like that anymore; the kind Butterflytuft and Lupinepaw's mentor have, that she's been gushing about ever since they all found out.

Whatever it is, they've been gushing about it together and more.

Cherrypaw absentmindedly draws a claw through a scrap of moss, leaning comfortably on her elbow. "No yeah, I've never once seen Slate not look like someone peed on his paw," Lu says, and that makes her giggle so hard she nearly keels over into the pile of moss beside them. "Mm yeah, maybe he got it from his parents. Do you think his kits would look like that too?" She laughs, then adds, "Nevermind, there's no way he's finding someone who'd have his kits." A smile clings to her lips as she takes a pause to adjust the five-petaled flower tucked into Lupinepaw's chest, paw brushing over the pale silken fur.

Lu's voice takes a dip into more sober territory, and she glances up. "Well, it's not that bad. You kinda get used to him, like, never telling you what you're doing that day." She shrugs. Secretly, each and every one of his dismissive glances sting. She doesn't really need him to look at her like Ashenclaw does, she thinks, but it'd sure be nice to be told she's doing a good job every once in awhile. Or even that she's trying.

"I can handle him," she asserts, shaking her head of the dour thoughts. This felt like the first moment in a quarter-moon they'd had to themselves, no mentors, no mothers, no bothers. Of course, their mentors were going to bother them a lot when they came back with less moss than they should, but right now it's just them and a smattering of flowers.

Then they would have to get up and walk into camp, over all the places Tallulahwing, Mountainheart, Sheepcurl, Shadowfire, and Smokefang would never walk again. She didn't know any of them that well. If she did, she might've been worse than Figfeather, whose mentor had been the first casualty of the moon. It doesn't really register for her: five cats dead in one moon. Life goes on, and the apprentices collect moss.

A hushed exclamation; her ear flicks. "What?" "How'd you say Spiderpaw did it so they stick better again?" "I, uh—"

She hasn't thought about Spiderpaw in a moon. Even with all the dead around her, flower-strewn and beneath the earth, she hasn't thought about her.

The world stops for a moment. Pine needles slow in the air, flecking the grey rippled sky. The breeze quietly disappears. Her friend's face hovers before her, the lines of her snout bowing gracefully into the spot beneath Cherrypaw's chin, the ebony crest of her head leaning into view. Her eyes are almost obscured by the angle of her face and her fur.

Are they blue or green? She can't remember. She must've seen her friend a thousand times now, beaming at her from across camp, flinging jokes at each other, commenting on the way her eyes match a particular flower. She—she has to have looked into her eyes at some point, or at least noticed them along with everything else that makes up her tall, slender form, smoky-furred and ribboning, moving across her dreams with effortless grace—are her eyes blue or green?

Frustration and unease flicker in her stomach. Lupinepaw flinches in slow motion and looks up, and Cherrypaw feels an inexplicable wave of relief at the flash of green set into her face. Her brows are rising with surprise, narrowed jaws parting to say something. Something to fill the silence of Cherrypaw thinking, about how to weave flowers into fur, about Spiderpaw. She looks a lot like Spiderpaw, especially now that the sky is getting darker and there's less light. It should make her smile, so she tries to smile. Spiderpaw is beautiful, and so is—

Huh, that's weird. It's just past sunhigh, shouldn't there still be sun?

Cold explodes on the back of her left ear. Lu makes a comment about the rain, and Cherrypaw opens her mouth to say something, anything, because she feels like she should say something after acting weird for a minute, but then the sky falls down and the world is rain.

A small gasp bursts from her throat; a drop of water, ever the opportunist, is quick to slide down her upper lip and skate across the roof of her mouth. She leaps to her paws when Lupinepaw does, but something about the motion is more difficult, and not because of all the raindrops now clinging to her pelt. There's a stone in her stomach. A big, cold stone, colder than even the rain. She doesn't know when it got in her stomach, but it's looking like it's going to be hard to move with the heavy thing in there. "Yeah," she manages, chokes. We should go. We need to go. Lupinepaw says something about going back to the patrol, then changes her mind and suggests camp, but it's mostly lost through the storm gathering in the sky and in her head. Go, yeah, she thinks. We need to go.

Cherrypaw lifts her head along with Lu to scan their surroundings, faces screwed in the rain. Her thoughts are sluggish. They feel like fish trying to swim in a lake of gloopy mud, neither going anywhere nor able to see where they want to go. She wants to bang against the side of her head, knock all the mud out, but her paws are caked in the stuff too. Maybe not mud, maybe it's fog. A soupy fog, so thick it's swirling in her lungs instead of air and that's why she's having a little more trouble breathing.

A flash behind them lights up her dripping whiskers, and before the dread can even begin to pool in her stomach—KRAKOW!

The tree.

Snowpath.

She looks back and the world swims; her face is hot and wet, which is a different kind of wet than the wet it currently it, because when her face is hot and wet it stings. And blood is hot, and the day Snowpath died was hot, so hot she wanted she wanted to shred all her fur off because it was both hot and sticky from the fog and right now she's hot and sticky and wet like blood. The scream of a two-month old kit tries to pry her jaws apart but she won't let it, even though she remembers what Snowpath's face looked like right before he died, drooling red and drowned in the swarm of panicking bodies like the water buzzing around her head right now, and she remembers that his eyes were wide too, like the green ones looking at her through the curtain of water right now, except his slowly closed but they never really got to close all the way because he was dead before then.

The black cat is looking at her. Her friend is looking at her. Spiderpaw is looking at her—WHY in the name of StarClan does she keep calling Lu Spiderpaw? Lu isn't Spiderpaw, she can't be Spiderpaw because Lupinepaw is alive but that means Spiderpaw is dead.

She's dead.

It's funny, she never really let herself feel that before, not even that first day when she fell asleep with her face planted into her leftover flowers. The sky looks like a close-up of her thick black fur, like her StarClan-sized dead body lies pressed against the window of the world and the fluids of death are leaking out all at once.

Her fur has tried to bush out, but it's so wet now that it just rises and flops over into unsightly clumps, worse than if she'd just let it soak flat against her skin. Cherrypaw knows Lupinepaw wants, needs her to say something but she just can't. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, and it would be hilarious if it wasn't so horrifying, the air being squeezed out of her throat and into the sheet of water like she doesn't already have a shortage of air. She stares into the distance, gaze following the jagged silhouettes of pine trees up and up till they fade into the blackened sky. She can't look at Lupinepaw. Would Lu stop looking at her?

She tries to remind herself that Lupinepaw isn't Spiderpaw, but she barely remembers anything about Spiderpaw other than the fact that she's nice to her, and Lu is nice to her, she's her friend and daresay even her best one even though they've only really known each other for a moon or two, which is less than how long she knew Spiderpaw. Spiderpaw did all these things too, and she was better at it than them cause she was older, like collecting moss and goofing around and mouthing off to her mentor who liked her more than Slate does and she hunt and fought and did everything right but she still DIED.

They're all dead—they're all gonna die.

Snowpath is dead Spiderpaw is dead Lu is dead Oh StarClan Oh StarClan I don't want to die not here please StarClan not here I'm gonna look so ugly and weird and wet when I'm dead but I guess that's what cats look like when they die all red and wet because they bleed and at least I'm not bleeding but maybe I will Oh StarClan that's gross She's not Spiderpaw She's not Spiderpaw She's not Spiderpaw I'm not Spiderpaw—

"Hey, Cher? Are you okay?"

That's me that's me Spiderpaw didn't call me that she didn't call me anything Snowpath didn't call me anything because I didn't talked to him I never talked to him why didn't I talk to him He's dead now so it doesn't matter But I don't wanna die I don't wanna tell Tell my ma and pa I miss them and I miss my family I don't wanna die Why am I like this StarClan I hope Lu doesn't notice why's she looking at me like that like she's Spiderpaw She looks like Spiderpaw and she's gonna die I'm gonna die Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew

Cherrypaw just stands there.

prompt: tbh idk if this really answers it but this together w/ some of her other posts might!
iii. cherry is a new apprentice, but one who has in the past made friends with another apprentice. something reminds her of spiderpaw not long after her apprentice ceremony, and she is struck with the memory that spiderpaw never saw her ceremony, and that she is now in the same role that the other girl was when she was killed. does this scare cherry? does this assure her even further? and is there anyone she trusts enough to voice any dredged-up feelings to?
 
❀‿ Cherrypaw just stands there. Her eyes tremble, staring dimly past Lupinepaw, and the downpour only continues to soak them further. Something is wrong, very wrong with her. It was a beast that was familiar to her, or at least some version of it was, but Cherrypaw's took its form in something huge and constrictive, paralyzing her limbs and mind. They were alone with the beast now, and Cherrypaw had only Lupine's narrow shoulders to lean on. The panic gripping Lupinepaw's throat was pushed down with a single resolute sniff, her head racing but clear with determination—Cher needed someone to help, and she could not waver when it fell onto her paws, she had to do something. She stares for only a moment longer before turning to scan their surroundings again, searching the blurry images of her recent memory for somewhere they could take shelter.

Lupinepaw spins back toward the calico, "Come on, we're getting out of the rain!" She hoped Cherrypaw would be able to walk with her, pressing her flank against the other and bringing her tail up in an attempt to shield her friend from at least some of the heavy downpour. A log, long since fallen and hollowed out with age, lay just past the last clearing, though it felt much farther rain-slicked needles beneath her paws and with Cherrypaw leaning against her. She'd half-noticed it before, a childish wisp of thought noting that it'd make an alright hiding place for a game of hide-and-seek. What a lousy game of hide-and-seek they ended up having, though.

"In here, in here..." the girl ushered her into the log before following in behind her. They crouched huddled in the small hollow with pelts pressed against one another, it was cramped but sturdy enough and more importantly, dry. Lupinepaw rarely found herself lost for words, but she was unsure if there was anything she could say that would bring Cherrypaw any respite. Even still, she spoke, "We'll be safe in here, Cher. The rest of the patrol is probably already on their way to get us, and then we'll be back in camp in no time. We'll just rest here for a little." She kept her voice low, and her words practical. Lupinepaw had only herself and her siblings to reference in the realm of comfort, and she knew she wouldn't be able to stand listening to downy-coated white lies—she wouldn't tell Cher that she would feel better soon, because she didn't know if she would.

They were soaked. It was unavoidable, but she only then felt the chill of wet fur pressing against her skin, and she began to shiver. Lupinepaw huddled closer to Cherrypaw to conserve some of their warmth and wrapped her long tail around her like she did her siblings when they were upset. She spotted a droplet of water clinging to the tuft of her ear—hanging heavily and threatening to spill over onto her eyelid—and shifted to attempt to lick it away on instinct. She couldn't tell from her face alone whether Cherrypaw was feeling any freer from the beast she grappled with, so she offered no more words to her as to avoid overwhelming her. Instead, Lupinepaw just watched out into the storm-ridden forest outside, resting on the oddly sharp pang of pain that her friend had to battle something her paws couldn't touch.



  • OOC:
  • lupine_fullbodyy.png
  • lupinekit . lupinepaw
    — trans she/her. 5mo apprentice of skyclan
    — ??? ; single
    — tall, long-haired black smoke with low white and green eyes
    — smells like sweet lupine flowers and young pine needles
    — “speech”, thoughts, attack
    — icon by saturnid, fullbody and chibi by nya
    — penned by eezy
 
  • Love
Reactions: pikaihao