pafp soft-bodied sea creatures ࿐࿔ swim lesson

[lichenstar]

✦　˚ 　✧ ˚　.˚　✦ 　✦

CLAIM THE BURIAL I SEEK IN DREAMS FLOWING RIVER CEMETARY ✧

• The best way to introduce something new is in careful, measured steps... but safety stands as the priority for just how quickly this must be handled. There are more than zero dry-paws in RiverClan, which serves as a great concern and frustration for Lichenstar. She wasn't a fool, wearing a sheep-skin veil over her eyes... knew that this transition would be difficult and come with its own hardships. It had not been so long ago that she'd all but dragged Aspohdelpaw by his scruff into finding common sense... in teaching the hard lesson that your clan-mates, no matter their backgrounds, were not your enemies. This half-blood drop of ink was no different. Her choice was made and it would be honored, respected and fostered.
  
  "You have to... kick your feet," she explains with a heavy sigh, glancing towards lilac-breeze curls that prove this task to be easier. At least her lavender-soft breaths do not struggle heavily to keep her afloat, at least not yet. They are practicing in tandem, if only so she can keep an eye on them both and maybe nudge her dust-freckled daughter towards kindness and understanding. This former ShadowClanner would need friends, den-mates she could rely on not to suffocate her in her sleep for the crime of being born in the wrong place. For the crime of having stupid parents.
  
  "You'll alert all... the fish in the area..." she continues to critique, frowning slightly as dark fur flounders in water only barely deep enough to tread- her gaze does not stray from the two, a memory of ashen fur twice their age who had still fallen prey to the river's greedy grasp. "You're spraying... the water, splash-paw," she thinks to describe her wild slapping of paws at the water's surface as such but... it is surprisingly fitting... and the girl needed a new name anyways, as Lichenstar had promised.
  
  Choosing to stick with it, the lynx point slides into the water beside them hoping it may serve as a better example, even if the sensation of the damp seeping into her coat makes her skin crawl. It helps perhaps, that there is a splattering of white across her face, as if a cloud has been splashed across her and stuck to the tar-dark blackness of her fur.
• about
  speech hex code ✧ #6368A5
  ooc notes ✦
  tagging ✶ @snowypaw and technically @shellpaw ;)
  penned by tieirlys
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[splashdance]

Her first night ends and upon opening her eyes, she is met with sunlight and open skies. She had grown so used to the depths of the marsh, where even the stars struggled to reach, that the warmth of the unyielding skies feels... odd to her. But not wrong. The discomfort in her bones comes from laying in a quickly made nest (of which, she still needs to properly thank the older apprentices for.) The rest of her feels excitement for the day ahead of her, the weeks, the moons - the rest of her life, beneath this open sun. She misses the shadows, but not enough to regret her decision.

Lichenstar finds her and another apprentice - namely one of the many that didn't like her appearance here the night before, Shellpaw - and takes them out for a swimming lesson. Snowypaw keeps close to her new leader's heels, as though exploring their terrain excites her, she does not wish to test her limits so soon. They approach the water's edge, and both Lichenstar and Shellpaw wade in without hesitation. The night furred girl waits for a moment, feeling the waterlogged sand beneath her toes instead of mud, and watching the gentle waves just beyond her push and pull, rather than remain stagnant. There's familiarity, just as much as there are differences.

She moves, finally, to join them. She lifts her paws too high at first, splashing the water with every step. Lichenstar turns to her, a frown displayed in her expression as she speaks. Snowypaw sticks out her tongue with focus as she moves with more purpose, keeping her limbs beneath the waves in an effort to limit her splashing (she hears Lichenstar's near-playful comment, the illusion of a name in the words. Snowypaw adopts the moniker in silence - an agreement unsaid. Splashpaw, from henceforth; a child named for her first efforts tredding water. She does not mind it.)

She pushes off of the river-floor kicking her legs in a similar if not still clumsy manner to the other, more experienced RiverClanners. Splashpaw keeps her head above water with minimal difficulty - and though she has not met her father yet, she thanks him for the natural gifts he must've given her. "This - this isn't so hard -!" she tries to say, briefly dipping beneath the water with her words and then popping up again. Not at all purposeful, but she tries a giggle shortly after. "Okay - okay, not easy either...!" Though it must be said, that her knack for swimming on her first shot is not terribly done. A few more lessons and she would be on par with those her age, perhaps even older.​

 

[Ospreypaw]

TAGS — Ospreypaw is not exactly giddy to welcome a stranger into their clan. Maybe Lichenstar didn't care that they already had enough apprentices to train; enough mouths to feed; enough warriors going missing. Why bother with taking in some restless girl who got bored? Why bother with disloyal apprentices?

A notched ear flicks dismissively as the silver-crocheted girl looks on from her perch. Her paw-pads, sore from scaling the tree on her mission with Claythorn, press firmly into the wet sand at the riverbank. Citrine eyes watch the stranger's form intently, as if she could change the black-pelted girl's technique with her mind. Not that she wants Snowypaw to be good at swimming — in fact, it would deeply satisfy Ospreypaw to find that she is a dry-paw. RiverClan didn't need more than they already had, but would it not be fitting of an outsider to fail at a task so specialized? If she could cut through the water like claws through flesh, then what had Ospreypaw worked her whole life for?

Shellpaw is swimming, too, and she of course does much better than the night-furred stranger — at least, at first. Ospreypaw wears a grin while the ShadowClanner splashes about, kicking up water and scaring away fish, proving her a novice at the task. But when she pushes off, and she stays afloat, and she paddles through the river that Ospreypaw has trained hard to dive through and hunt in... her mood turns sour.

Whip-thin tail rattles behind her as she watches the display of natural talent. It shouldn't be Snowypaw who has this. It shouldn't be — and yet, somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, she is excited. If her form were to be corrected, and if she were to take being a RiverClanner seriously, then she would be fantastic. But she wouldn't be the best — she'd never be the best.

Ospreypaw scoffs, wordlessly turning from the training session and exiting as quickly as she could. Cindersong was likely waiting for her to start their own swim training for the day, anyway. She has no business continuing to watch Lichenstar teach a stranger RiverClan's secrets.
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