camp something wicked this way comes [ ☄ ] intro & aftermath

[SHRIKETHORN ★]

( ☄ )　 "So many gone..." Shrikethorn muses, a quiet sigh escaping her maw. It's strange to adjust to. Coming back from patrol to find the camp half-empty, the deputy gone, hisses of traitors upon the wind. Four bodies, two cast out and two sent to the stars. Would StarClan even receive them? Shrikethorn doesn't know who to grieve, feels a cold distance between herself and the lost. She should have fought too, that much she knows. And yet... would she have fled with the traitors, rallied behind Sunstride?

She loves her mother. Despite everything, she does.

She always has. Especially so in her kithood, eyes wide in search of Sootstar's face, in search of her approval, her recognition. It was the greatest glory she could imagine. The leader's daughter -- she always dreamed of standing by her side. Loud and brash and causing trouble just for the chance to have Sootstar's eyes upon her.

She's quieter, now. Calm, collected, competent. She is the kind of warrior that her mother can be proud of, and she feels sick. There is a sickness in her mother's gaze that she never saw as a child, a delirious paranoia. Had it always been there? Had it changed? It was the kits that she fought for, with Sunstride. ShadowClan's kits. Shrikethorn felt a roiling in her stomach whenever she looked upon them, so she avoided the little scraps of fur as much as possible. It's good that they're gone, if only so she doesn't have to think of them.

It's hard not to think of the missing. Snakehiss, younger than even her, does not deserve to stand at Sootstar's side.

...Or maybe he does. Shrikethorn wonders far more often than not now, whether her mother is fit for her crown at all.

She does not speak these thoughts. She does not speak most of her thoughts. The Shrikethorn that WindClan knows is a carefully controlled creature. A leashed dog, a fire-hearted thing dimmed so small as to avoid notice. Instead, her voice is level, each word spoken deliberately. "It feels... strange, knowing how many rats were in our midst." It's the kind of thing her mother would approve of. Empty words, mist on her tongue.

"Hm. Suppose there's not much to do but carry on," she concludes, pulling a rabbit from the fresh-kill pile. There's less mouths to feed, but less paws to hunt too. She will patrol and she will hunt and she will go about her life as she did before, as she has done for so many moons. The sickness in her stomach threatens to rise up, but her face remains stony as she leans down to eat.

I DON'T WANT WHAT YOU HAVE ☄ I WANNA BE YOU !【 12.04.23 】

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• "SPEECH"

• ˏˋ　• ☄ SHRIKETHORN. WINDCLAN TUNNELER. SHE / HER.
  18 MOONS & AGES ON THE 1ST.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ☄ A SMALL WHITE MOLLY WITH ASHY GRAY PATCHES AND PIERCING YELLOW EYES.

  
  SOOTSTAR xx FLINT. LITTERMATE TO SOOTSPOT.​

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[hollowcreek]

( ✧ ) He's busying himself with cleaning up the disaster left in camp. Though their remaining friends may have plucked the fur from between their claws and picked hairs from their teeth, Hollowcreek was not keen to sleeping in a bloodied clearing. He was not so viciously disconnected from standards.

Shrikethorn spoke from a few paces beside him and he angled his ear in her direction, a silent gesture he was listening to her musings. He was not trying to linger on his own disappointment, his expectations severely low of those that had fled before they had openly labeled themselves traitors. Those that remained were all that mattered now, but even still Hollowcreek can't shake the turmoil within those numbers. Harbingermoon had been acting strange, distant, and refused to share any reason for why.

"It feels... strange, knowing how many rats were in our midst."

Hollowcreek gave a short 'hmph' in reply. Shrikethorn carried on flippantly after and he couldn't agree more. "Betrayal can be the worst pain imaginable. At least with thorns and scratches you can be healed, the wound closes and the pain subsides. Betrayal is is something you feel all over, from whisker to claw. No herb to cure it." Just time, and still there could never be enough.
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( I SEE YOUR COLLARBONE ; AND WANNA LOSE CONTROL )

 

[Gooseberry]

Sootstar’s blood relations have proven to not be totally bound by her, and while he does not understand the reason why, he does get scorning family. Even so, he would not have stood up against his parents had they not left him and his siblings to rot. Gooseberry’s relations with his littermates are barely anything of note, either; it’s a string that is threatening to snap. But he would keep his loyalty to them no matter what they did, or how disappointed he would be.

Needless to say, Gooseberry is weary towards any of the leader’s offspring left in the proper WindClan, now. If he expected anyone to falter, it would be Sootstar’s first litter. But he does not express it, trying his best to act like everything is okay. “You are correct though Shrikethorn, all we can do now is persevere,” he replies to the grey and white molly. “They will get what is coming to them, soon. For now we have to rest and save our strength.” He doesn’t comment on how harsh betrayal can feel.​

 

[downyfur]

Downypaw exists. It's all they do these days. Patrol, hunt, dig, eat. Sleep, too, but it's a chore far greater than any of those with Lilacstem's dead eyes fluttering open every time theirs closed. They thought crying into Cottonpaw's chest and offering a single lavender sprig to the gorge would help, but they don't know if it just made it worse. She can't close her eyes without imagining a body a fox-length away from her in the darkness, draped in snow like a mother's tail.

They know their place as one of the youngest left in WindClan, and it is to restore it to a glory untarnished by the traitors. Traitors that shared her blood. Traitors they thought about every night before they tried to sleep. Shrikethorn's comment rouses them from a stupor they didn't even know they were in. She calls them rats. Crystallized eyes stay glued to the fresh-kill pile, and the warrior continues.

Hollowcreek—stars, they hadn't noticed him either, and how with his bulk—picks up the dangling ends of conversation. Betrayal. That was all anyone ever talked about these days. The lump in their throat tastes like bile. They don't really think about anything else either though, and Hollowcreek has always had something to say for them. It's true, as much as she tries not to notice it. This is painful. She feels like it's not supposed to be, though.

"...perserve," Gooseberry says, and just like that they learn another new word. "W-w-w-w-" Downypaw blinks back the blur in their eyes and tries to keep their lower lip from trembling further. "S-sorry. What's c-coming to them?" The urge to know is far greater than the idea that they might not want to.​

 

[GRANITEPELT]

Sootspot and Shrikethorn still remain in the dark about Granitepelt’s connection to them. He watches quietly as his half-sister moves somnambulantly through the emptied camp, picking through the fresh-kill pile and remarking upon her Clan’s betrayal. He stares too-long, too-openly, at the fluffy white warrior, searching her features for similarities to his own reflection’s—to Siltcloud’s, a sister he misses more than he can give voice to—and sits on the sidelines while Hollowcreek and Gooseberry add their voice to hers. When little Downypaw speaks up—“S-sorry. What’s c-coming to them?”—Granitepelt pads just behind them, green eyes focused clearly on Shrikethorn.

“Justice.” His voice is cool, even as his wounds, inflicted by his own traitorous former Clanmates, still burn. “Vengeance.” He pads in a half-circle, eyeing his kin. “They will pay for tearing your Clan apart and for defying your rightful leader.” Your Clan, he still says, but he says it with conviction, knowing in time it will become his Clan, too, that he will earn the trust of the moorland cats the way he did his own Clanmates in the realm of the shadows.

, ”​

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