sensitive topics SLOW IT DOWN, RELEASE CONTROL ➳ death

[Steepsnout]

WE'RE TAKING OVER THE WORLD, A LITTLE VICTIMLESS CRIME ➳​

Since her siblings had left for the mountains time had eluded Steepsnout, water through teeth. Mudpelt remained a steady constant, grounded to a nest just like her, but that brought guilt and comfort in equal doses. News of the rogues’ whereabouts flit into the medicine dens like shadow, until it was all a rush, a murky migration, from pine to swamp. The warrior tried to keep her head high when they travelled and refused help. It took a disgustingly short amount of time for the molly’s nose and tail to bow, weighed by the sickness. Weak. The last trip had left her flat as a slate-slip for days.

The scent of lavender and juniper- things the warrior had never had to put a name to before- became a stagnant constant. Steepsnout couldn’t count the times she’d wished for fresh air, throat a vice. Maybe she never stopped. Some mornings the molly thought she’d surfaced from the sickness, mind aswim with ambition to join her clanmates in fighting off the rogues or hunting, but one breath too deep and she was drowning again. It made her burn. Anger was the only thing she had energy for sometimes, a shallow-lunged sneer the only dimension to a limp ball of fur. It took everything- everything! All her life Steepsnout had been steadfast in her strength, had trust in her stamina. Now even breathing felt like a blessing from Starclan.

This morning was not one for fighting the fever. All she was was the frost-fire of her chest, the tips of claws in moss and the drought of stars in the sky and she knew. Oh, she knew. Couldn’t even make it till night. A huff bubbled up, ugly and painful, but in mirror of happier moons. Amber eyes sought the warm-oak of her dad’s pelt, there since she’d tumbled into the world, firstborn. Steepsnout had always taken it as a sign, always ahead, but really that hadn’t been true in a long while. Her talented sister took to warrior faster, no heroic accolades furnished her life and now she was death-bound. Morbid humour crept up at the thought of being first to go, too.

Another laugh whistled free, and for a beat the warrior that was it. But then leafbare air slit her throat and words bled free. "Tell them to be strong- Da’-" The haze cloaked the nose, hurried eyes to fall shut. "be strong.“ Family fended for, in what little way she could, Steepsnout fell still.​

 

[MUDPELT]

Hunkered down in a nest just beside his daughter, Mudpelt's head rests on large paws. Like Steepsnout, time has blended together for him. How many days have passed since Iciclefang and Fernpaw left for the mountains? Had they been successful in finding the cure? Were they on their way home right now, nearly home perhaps? His sickly eyes shift towards his kin's black and white pelt, rising and falling with slow breaths. The largest of all of his kits, and certainly the most like him when it came to her strength and competitiveness. She recalls her stout form barreling past the other kits in the nursery, untouchable in her innate power. Their countless mossball games they played growing up, and the day she finally beat him. He hasn't won another game against her since that day.

When she speaks, his ears train on her. Her words carry a certain morbidness in them, one that causes a brows to lift. "What do you mean, Steepsnout?" He asks with worry edging his voice. She doesn't get the chance to answer. Her pelt has stopped rising and falling, the life has left her amber eyes, and Mudpelt is sitting up in a heartbeat with nausea forgotten. "Steepsnout?" He stumbles out of his nest and leans over hers, weakly falling atop her back and listening for a heartbeat, for a breath, for anything. "No," He chokes out, ears flat to his head. "No!"

"Starlingheart!" He wails now, crying like no grown tom should cry. "Please, somebody help! Ravensong!" His sobs are uncontrollable as he lays over her, forelegs draped across a muscled back that should never grow cold, never. His face is contorted with pain, tears tumbling down his cheeks and onto her ebony fur. Take me, StarClan, not my daughter. Please, please take me!​

 

[>Honeystone]

— It was the gut-wrenching cry of a parent that had stirred the primarily white molly from her uneasy rest. Tired blue orbs would find the large form of the mud-hued tom stumbling into the nest of his daughter's. Honeystone's heartache as she listened on, too weak to move herself from her own nest but already knowing that Starclan had its paws on Steepsnout. The mother knew that the loss of a child was unfathomable, their children were supposed to be the ones to bury them and yet their starry-pelted beings from above had other plans by claiming so many young lives to join them. There were no words that the she-cat could bestow upon Mudpelt, she could only offer her silence and meek presence from her nest, her ears pinned back in mournful sympathies. — tags​

 

[MALLOWLARK]

There was little to do but listen for breaths. When it was all that consumed you, you noticed any small drop-off, any flit, any weakness. Light flickering off, out- dying star, or living star. Because that was where Steepsnout would go, wasn't it? To that night sky above. Her kin did not lead, nor did they heal, he didn't think. So- this cold husk left behind, sloughed by her soul, would be all that was left until Mudpelt there died too.

They were all facts, cold and true and acceptable. Mallowlark had lived his life knowing that death was unavoidable, and thus should be accepted as if it were as easy as breathing. But it stared him in the face- or, truly, stared her father in the face as he wept and wept and wept. And it was a horrible sound that set Mallowlark's hulking form into shuddering vibrations, too. He quaked, grin splitting and dropping to a grimace, choking back tears that hit him in a torrent. Always sudden, always too much.

But he cried- he cried like he knew this molly, knew her father, well at all. It was death and love and keening, a storm before him, and he could not- for once- look at it. Into his mate's neck-mane, he buried his face, wetting phantom flesh with tears. Mallowlark clung to what he loved, knowing- and for once, fearing- how easily it could be ripped away.​

☺PENNED BY PIN​

 

[RAVENSONG]

The labored breathing is all he knows—and it has come to the point where Ravensong struggles in his own fever-induced haze to identify when one is at death's paws. Steepsnout had been sick for a while, she had been one of the first who fell ill when his lungwort ran out. The fact that she had managed to last this long, with two cross-territory journeys, was a feat in and of itself. But the longer they waited for salvation, the less hope Ravensong clung to as he watched his Clan die under his care.

If he had only thought to harvest more lungwort even when he did not know what it was at that point, these cats would still be alive. He heard Steepsnout's murmurs, but the ravings of delirious cats were common. Ravensong shut his eyes and fought down the headache blooming in his brains until Mudpelt's heart-wrenching sobbing filled the occupied place where the sick cats lay.

He opened one eye, wet with fever-induced tears, to see the brown tom clinging to his lost daughter. He hears his name, but there is nothing he can do. He is so beaten down from the illness that he had lost the ability to cry liquid for weeks now. He says nothing, face grim as he uses his precious strength to lift his skull in the direction of the grieving father, feeling utterly helpless.

He did not even have mint for a proper cleanse.

☾₊ ⊹ темная ночь — dark is the night

•  
• 
  RAVENSONG of RIVERCLAN
  — LH BLACK POLYDACTYL MALE (CARRYING CINNAMON, DILUTE) a tall, slender creature with pitch-black feathery fur, large ears, and a sharply angled skull held up in an aloof manner. smells of dried herb, speaks with a low and rumbly accent and walks with an elegant slinking gait.
  
  — born in twolegplace and orphaned at a young age, he joined riverclan at its inception and began training as a drypaw warrior known for a bitter temperment until beesong made him his medicine cat apprentice. after his mentor's untimely death, he had been named ravensong at the moonstone, young heart revitalized with anger and guilt. he is a somber and thorough medicine cat that guards every word spoken in the confines of his den.
  
  — secretly loves "the stars but not so much what inhabits them"
  — openly suffers from chronic migraines
  — single, but "it's complicated"

​

 

[DUSKBIRD]

✦　　. 　 ˚　.   He had said that they would be okay. It felt– it felt so wrong, now, when his head lifts to wails. His heart has fallen to somewhere in his very toes, where it crawls out into his nest. Sickness bit at them all, but Duskpaw had promised. In his own way, at least. You'll see. No. No no no. For a moment it's him, with Little Wolf above him. Then it's Howlingstar, her great family weeping with the final loss. Berryheart, still smelling of herbs despite the stench of illness. And like Mallowlark– he cries. It doesn't matter that he knows almost none of them. It doesn't matter that he does not even have a name. His eyes squeeze shut and leak his anguish anyway, and he buries his head beneath his paws.

Please, mom, please. Make it go away. Make it stop. Please, mom, please. None of them can call for her. She's so far away on her distant journey. She will come back with herbs, and even still it will be too late. They cannot save the RiverClanner who now hunts with the stars. Selfishly, even if he does not know her, Duskpaw can only wish that they could give her back.

𝘞𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘐𝘍 𝘠𝘖𝘜𝘙 𝘐𝘔𝘗𝘙𝘌𝘚𝘚𝘐𝘖𝘕 𝘖𝘍 𝘔𝘌 𝘐𝘚 𝘞𝘙𝘖𝘕𝘎 ﹖  ╱╱ 9.14.2023 ˊˎ＜

• OOC. —
• ✦　　. 　 ˚　.  DUSKPAW. HE - HIM OR THEY - THEM. APPRENTICE OF THUNDERCLAN, NEARING WARRIORHOOD. PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ———
  
  
  ——  a lanky apprentice with mostly dark brown fur that fades just slightly near the chest, throat, and ears, while the tip of their tail burns with the bright orange tabby flame. his eyes are a deep, rich amber-brown, seeming red, often somewhat critical and cautious but not unkind in expression. he is not terribly tall, but his shoulders are broadening with age and training.
  

  ✦ BLAZESTAR x LITTLE WOLF. LITTERMATE TO SKYPAW, PART OF HOWLINGFAM. MENTORED BY NIGHTBIRD. DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT HIS SKYCLAN HERITAGE. —

• "speech"

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[willowroot]

( ☾ ) she has found herself intentionally seeking out work recently. her stay in the shadowclan nursery is comfortable but anxiety inducing. she's been deprived time with her apprenticed kits, with her mate, her close friends. so, when she's not looking after her brood, she does anything she can to aid shadowclan. daily, she's been bringing what little prey she can collect to the sick within the medicine den. she always leaves it outside, the knowledge of the contagious disease forefront in her head, and the ill cats eventually eat what they can. today is no different, though a chill rushes through the woman's long dark fur as she pads across the camp clearing. a frog and a dry looking rat clutched in her jaws, she'll halt just outside the medicine den, glancing around for starlingheart or someone to trade off with.

a cry echoes from within the den's depths, and willowroot drops the prey, angling her ears to better hear. within lay her former apprentice and that girl's father, along with countless other ill. the queen catches the yowl of mudpelt, feels her stomach drop as the name escapes his anguished throat. steepsnout! he cries, and willowroot feels darkness closing around her. steepsnout, so eager and ready to learn, a black and white flash next to ashpaw's own brilliant orange. images of slow going fishing lessons, of the first time the girl managed to pin willowroot down, flash through the queen's head. her vision begins to blur with hot tears. mudpelt is screaming, and within, riverclan's own medicine cat is dangerously close to the same fate. there is no lungwort to save her former apprentice, no expert medicine cats to coax the life back into her.

willowroot stands outside the medicine den, body trembling as yet another loss hits her. steepsnout, her former apprentice, her friend's daughter, has died. two of her siblings are far away, the other two live outside of camp, unaware of the agony that will sweep their lives in short minutes. green eyes swim with tears as the queen scans the clearing for anyone who can help. ​

 

[COMFREYPAW]

◇────────────【☆】★【☆】────────────◇​

XXXXXIt is terrible to be so near when another cat loses their battle with yellowcough. Comfreypaw’s gummed-up amber gaze rests on the earth-pelted tom who cries for his daughter’s life, who begs StarClan to take him, to give her back, and she chokes on a badly-hidden sob. It sears her throat like razors. The rest of them she’d been so close to for the past quarter-moon stir, staring bleakly at the scene that rends their hearts like the rogue’s claws had rended their Clanmates’ pelts. The white-pelted WindClanner sniffles, tears gleaming like stars in silver eyes; the two RiverClanners, too, and a ThunderClan apprentice, all of them stuck together in here, all of them forced to witness their own eventual fate.

XXXXXComfreypaw sees a black smoke just outside the den—she goes for help, for there is none to be found here. She aches for the RiverClan warrior, aches for her father, but selfishly, in this moment, she just wants Betonyfrost. She almost asks for her, before remembering—she cannot step into this pit of miasma and despair. They are quarantined from their healthy Clanmates… those inside Starlingheart’s den are of one Clan now, one Clan all destined to cling to one another as they lose their individual fights, one by one.

XXXXX“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Useless tears pop onto her cheeks like mushrooms in the marsh. “I’m so sorry.”

─────────​

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[Starlingheart]

Starlingheart is no stranger to loss, and yet it does not get any easier. Even when it is not a clanmate of her own. Even when it is a cat she has barely known. She looks upon the scene with eyes swimming with sadness and tears. A father cries out for his little girl and she thinks about how that could have easily been Flintkit, or any of her children really. She is grateful then that none of her other family members were sick currently and it is a selfish thought in this moment but she cannot help it. Her ears flick backwards, pressing against her skull when Mudpelt calls out for her. Sympathy rolls off her in waves and she curls her tail tighter around her paws.

"I'm so sorry" she says, her voice soft and echoing the sympathies of the others. "I will go to your clan and-and get RiverClanners to take her so-so the clan can bury her and say goodbye" it is not much but hopefully it is enough. She does not know what else there is for her to offer.

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