† Sharppaw’s dreams had been much bigger when she was a kit.
She had been born at just the wrong time. She had nothing to settle into. When he had been birthed beneath a dreary sky, Briar had been leader, and there had been too many cats. Something about the land. Something about the abundance– or lack thereof– of food where he’d been born. It was something he would not understand for moons to come.
A young her had dreamt of ending wars, and some of her seniors would entertain her. Others would only continue to grumble to themselves, and those cats, he’d thought, must’ve done nothing but grumble for their entire lives. He’d dreamt of driving away the bad guys, leaving the sprawling forest for them to conquer. He liked what he liked unabashedly. He would hit the bad guys with all he had, and they would go running.
Now, Sharppaw has downsized. His daily goals were relegated to a frog, maybe even a toad. He does not look to birds. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The few steps between camp and the outside were a slog that they did not need to be. Who would she be with? What would they see? Perhaps they wouldn't see anything at all, and that was probably the worst - case scenario, really.
The apprentice moves like an elder in leaf - bare, stiff joints and all. Maybe she skipped right past warrior – don’t you dare have even dream of something more – and at once, she is decrepit, eyes full of nothing but stars. She wouldn’t even have any glory days to prattle on about. Perhaps newly invested in her life as an elder, she sits, and she listens. Sharppaw does not dignify himself with a piece of prey to dig into as he lounges. Dark paws only cross over themselves. His chin cannot fully commit to settling on top of them, and so he sits idly, blankly; with eyes mostly buried in the dirt.
There are little scraps of fur in the corner of his vision. Kits, surely with dreams much bigger than his, and a mother that watches over them The kit is practicing his hunting crouch, and dully, Sharppaw acknowledges that he should actually be hunting.
The mother tells him that he is doing very well, but then hovers to the side with click of her tongue. Where Sharppaw sits, he bristles, but the kit only inclines their head in a question. “ Now, look at that, ” their mother tells them. Sharppaw should really be doing something with his life about now. “ Your tail dragging across the floor. All the prey in the forest will hear you coming. ”
Sharppaw scowls for some reason. A brief scuffle ensues wherein, the kit tells their mother that frogs do not have ears, and then, they gape as their mother informs them that in fact, they do. The issue is overcorrected, then. The kitten lifts their tail about as high as it could go. It juts out awkwardly, making it clear that the brainless scrap clearly didn’t have a grasp on how to make their body do stuff yet.
A flat voice reminds Sharppaw that he is not so dissimilar, and he turns to his side with flashing teeth, only to see there is no one there at all.
The queen hesitates, and then she says, “ Aim for that mossball. ” The kit promptly fails miserably. Sharppaw is torn between letting a rare laugh scratch her throat, and feeling sorry for them. Sharppaw glances over her shoulder.
The mother tells her child that it’s alright. Sharppaw thinks this queen must be a horrible mentor. She asks him to consider why they’ve failed, though – Sharppaw is left blinking – and the kit has nothing to say. Of course they don’t, because they were probably born yesterday, or something. She tells them something about balance, something that everyone who isn’t an acorn - brained kit knows. Find a happy medium. Something about timing. Your tail needs to be in a different place for different things. “ It's an extension of yourself.” Isn’t that… insightful. Sharppaw hadn't had to learn any of this, for more than one reason.
And then, the brainless scrap asks, “ But how do I know when to do what? ” And his mother has to think for a long moment.
“ I suppose you need to trust that you know what you’re doing, ” she tells them.
Sharppaw feels like he’s been dunked into the river. All at once, he’s reminded of who his mentor was, that they are somehow a father, and that their stupid self - help methods had somehow reached the general population of queens. Influence – If he has nothing, it’s influence. The apprentice grits her teeth, and suddenly she’s very fine to leave camp like she should have ages ago.
Sharppaw bristles her way past the pair. He needed to hunt something.
They had a few moons yet before ShadowClan truly became the wasteland characteristic of it’s downtrodden bogs. Mosquitos flitted around her, ones that– she notes aggravatingly– she could not hope to flick away with her tail, useless pile of bones that it was.
For the life of him, he could not wrap it around his head– why others insisted you should trust cats undeserving at it. Why would a kit who has barely seen a day out the nursery think himself worthy? Why should Sharppaw? Just because?
She forgets what she’s here for. Dull eyes dredge themselves toward a lounging frog, and oh, it’s probably seen her already.
He certainly would not praise frogs for their intelligence, but they were not blind. He crouches to the ground, but a moment later, he wonders what the point is. It croaks naively – or perhaps that was just what it wanted him to think. Was it loosening its sticky hold on the leaves below, or was she imagining it? No. As it hops away, Sharppaw doesn’t think she was.
But she doesn’t think she knows how long she has been stood staring at it, either; and she wonders what could have been if he hadn’t stopped to think about it.
Sharppaw thinks about a lot of things, as he continues is hunt. Is it even a hunt at all, when instead of frogs and toads and rats and birds he only hears the drone of his tail dragging through mud, and the volume of his own stupid thoughts? The expanse of pine suddenly grows thicker. Boggy ground solidifies into something closer to dirt than mud. And then he sees the Thunderpath. He thinks this– this is where it happened. Where he stopped dreaming. His tail can hardly twitch at the remembrance
He sees the stars, too. And he wonders what he would have had to do to get them to stop what happened from happening. Was it because of Hare Whiskers amongst the stars that Briar and her kin had gotten all they did? They play the same games that ShadowClan does, and once again, he’s left unaware of the rules. If she couldn’t trust the stars, than who could she?
She had stopped dreaming because it hurt like hell. And she'd realized, as she'd leapt after a crawling beetle only to be punished by the spark of flame along her tail, that, oh, she never be able to use this again. That’s when she'd given up.
Metal monsters hurtle by. He wonders if they’d stop to ponder the smoke - dusted feline on the side of the road. He wonders if they could hear the reeds crack against the drag of dead bone the same way. It doesn’t seem like it.
The grass beside her rustles. And for a moment, she panics. She thinks a monster must’ve swerved from the asphalt path that split the forest. Even though she knows it's stupid, because if it had, blood would be ringing in her ears and her jaw would be split and she wouldn’t have the time to react. Her jaws part in a scream, though no sound comes out. It'd be pointless, if it really was what she thought it was.
It isn't though. It is no monster. No beastly twoleg contraption beyond imagining. He knows that. It’s a rat, grimy and overgrown, the sort that had taken Rainshade.
He is taken by a sort of blind anger, something that makes his paws work quickly and the darks of his eyes fill out into new moons. It doesn’t die as quickly as other prey would. It twists and turns like a matted ball of fur, screeching its fury, and Sharppaw did the same, barreling into it with swiftness she’s never had; without worrying about the part of her that was very, very dead. She could hardly feel it anymore, and she supposes that's the point. She snaps her teeth, thinking of the bite that had brought her mentor to the ground. He strikes with blade - sharp claws, resentful of herself, resentful of others, resentful of the way it had tried to make her accept something she had never wanted too, frozen in the lights of a monster.
A hard hit against its side sends it sprawling, and it begins to scurry away. Rats were not so afraid of their deaths around Carrionplace. That, Sharppaw has heard before, but without its friends to further swarm and infect its targets, they were hardly anything at all.
Sharppaw isn’t thinking about anything except how much he wants it dead. Not for any prize or any hunger, but because it’d make him feel better. Wouldn’t it?
The apprentice springs, and she comes crashing down on his prey, ending its life with the swift crunch of bone between teeth.
He sits there for a long time, after that. The thunderpath jostles his dark coat nearby. This anomaly of a rat, far from where it was meant to be, is probably the largest thing he’s ever caught. It did make him feel better. And the easy glide of his leap, he wasn’t sure he’d imagined that.
Sharppaw curls on his side, teeth still embedded within his kill. If he focuses, he thinks he can see his tail reaching for him, though the drag is slow and new. Her face twists.
I’d given up on you.
He feels guilty. He feels stupid. He feels better.
Sharppaw wonders how many times he had done that something. How many times he has made himself linger on the fear of what would happen if it didn’t, instead of think of what would happen if it did. Was that what Smogmaw had meant, that whole time?
She hates that. Maybe she would have to keep hating it in order to do anything worthwhile.
The marsh is quiet, though his mind is not. He clutches his prey between his teeth as if it might surve from its vengeance, and run off where Sharppaw could not possible chase it. He would not let it go.
Something would have to change.
She had been born at just the wrong time. She had nothing to settle into. When he had been birthed beneath a dreary sky, Briar had been leader, and there had been too many cats. Something about the land. Something about the abundance– or lack thereof– of food where he’d been born. It was something he would not understand for moons to come.
A young her had dreamt of ending wars, and some of her seniors would entertain her. Others would only continue to grumble to themselves, and those cats, he’d thought, must’ve done nothing but grumble for their entire lives. He’d dreamt of driving away the bad guys, leaving the sprawling forest for them to conquer. He liked what he liked unabashedly. He would hit the bad guys with all he had, and they would go running.
Now, Sharppaw has downsized. His daily goals were relegated to a frog, maybe even a toad. He does not look to birds. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The few steps between camp and the outside were a slog that they did not need to be. Who would she be with? What would they see? Perhaps they wouldn't see anything at all, and that was probably the worst - case scenario, really.
The apprentice moves like an elder in leaf - bare, stiff joints and all. Maybe she skipped right past warrior – don’t you dare have even dream of something more – and at once, she is decrepit, eyes full of nothing but stars. She wouldn’t even have any glory days to prattle on about. Perhaps newly invested in her life as an elder, she sits, and she listens. Sharppaw does not dignify himself with a piece of prey to dig into as he lounges. Dark paws only cross over themselves. His chin cannot fully commit to settling on top of them, and so he sits idly, blankly; with eyes mostly buried in the dirt.
There are little scraps of fur in the corner of his vision. Kits, surely with dreams much bigger than his, and a mother that watches over them The kit is practicing his hunting crouch, and dully, Sharppaw acknowledges that he should actually be hunting.
The mother tells him that he is doing very well, but then hovers to the side with click of her tongue. Where Sharppaw sits, he bristles, but the kit only inclines their head in a question. “ Now, look at that, ” their mother tells them. Sharppaw should really be doing something with his life about now. “ Your tail dragging across the floor. All the prey in the forest will hear you coming. ”
Sharppaw scowls for some reason. A brief scuffle ensues wherein, the kit tells their mother that frogs do not have ears, and then, they gape as their mother informs them that in fact, they do. The issue is overcorrected, then. The kitten lifts their tail about as high as it could go. It juts out awkwardly, making it clear that the brainless scrap clearly didn’t have a grasp on how to make their body do stuff yet.
A flat voice reminds Sharppaw that he is not so dissimilar, and he turns to his side with flashing teeth, only to see there is no one there at all.
The queen hesitates, and then she says, “ Aim for that mossball. ” The kit promptly fails miserably. Sharppaw is torn between letting a rare laugh scratch her throat, and feeling sorry for them. Sharppaw glances over her shoulder.
The mother tells her child that it’s alright. Sharppaw thinks this queen must be a horrible mentor. She asks him to consider why they’ve failed, though – Sharppaw is left blinking – and the kit has nothing to say. Of course they don’t, because they were probably born yesterday, or something. She tells them something about balance, something that everyone who isn’t an acorn - brained kit knows. Find a happy medium. Something about timing. Your tail needs to be in a different place for different things. “ It's an extension of yourself.” Isn’t that… insightful. Sharppaw hadn't had to learn any of this, for more than one reason.
And then, the brainless scrap asks, “ But how do I know when to do what? ” And his mother has to think for a long moment.
“ I suppose you need to trust that you know what you’re doing, ” she tells them.
Sharppaw feels like he’s been dunked into the river. All at once, he’s reminded of who his mentor was, that they are somehow a father, and that their stupid self - help methods had somehow reached the general population of queens. Influence – If he has nothing, it’s influence. The apprentice grits her teeth, and suddenly she’s very fine to leave camp like she should have ages ago.
Sharppaw bristles her way past the pair. He needed to hunt something.
They had a few moons yet before ShadowClan truly became the wasteland characteristic of it’s downtrodden bogs. Mosquitos flitted around her, ones that– she notes aggravatingly– she could not hope to flick away with her tail, useless pile of bones that it was.
For the life of him, he could not wrap it around his head– why others insisted you should trust cats undeserving at it. Why would a kit who has barely seen a day out the nursery think himself worthy? Why should Sharppaw? Just because?
She forgets what she’s here for. Dull eyes dredge themselves toward a lounging frog, and oh, it’s probably seen her already.
He certainly would not praise frogs for their intelligence, but they were not blind. He crouches to the ground, but a moment later, he wonders what the point is. It croaks naively – or perhaps that was just what it wanted him to think. Was it loosening its sticky hold on the leaves below, or was she imagining it? No. As it hops away, Sharppaw doesn’t think she was.
But she doesn’t think she knows how long she has been stood staring at it, either; and she wonders what could have been if he hadn’t stopped to think about it.
Sharppaw thinks about a lot of things, as he continues is hunt. Is it even a hunt at all, when instead of frogs and toads and rats and birds he only hears the drone of his tail dragging through mud, and the volume of his own stupid thoughts? The expanse of pine suddenly grows thicker. Boggy ground solidifies into something closer to dirt than mud. And then he sees the Thunderpath. He thinks this– this is where it happened. Where he stopped dreaming. His tail can hardly twitch at the remembrance
He sees the stars, too. And he wonders what he would have had to do to get them to stop what happened from happening. Was it because of Hare Whiskers amongst the stars that Briar and her kin had gotten all they did? They play the same games that ShadowClan does, and once again, he’s left unaware of the rules. If she couldn’t trust the stars, than who could she?
She had stopped dreaming because it hurt like hell. And she'd realized, as she'd leapt after a crawling beetle only to be punished by the spark of flame along her tail, that, oh, she never be able to use this again. That’s when she'd given up.
Metal monsters hurtle by. He wonders if they’d stop to ponder the smoke - dusted feline on the side of the road. He wonders if they could hear the reeds crack against the drag of dead bone the same way. It doesn’t seem like it.
The grass beside her rustles. And for a moment, she panics. She thinks a monster must’ve swerved from the asphalt path that split the forest. Even though she knows it's stupid, because if it had, blood would be ringing in her ears and her jaw would be split and she wouldn’t have the time to react. Her jaws part in a scream, though no sound comes out. It'd be pointless, if it really was what she thought it was.
It isn't though. It is no monster. No beastly twoleg contraption beyond imagining. He knows that. It’s a rat, grimy and overgrown, the sort that had taken Rainshade.
He is taken by a sort of blind anger, something that makes his paws work quickly and the darks of his eyes fill out into new moons. It doesn’t die as quickly as other prey would. It twists and turns like a matted ball of fur, screeching its fury, and Sharppaw did the same, barreling into it with swiftness she’s never had; without worrying about the part of her that was very, very dead. She could hardly feel it anymore, and she supposes that's the point. She snaps her teeth, thinking of the bite that had brought her mentor to the ground. He strikes with blade - sharp claws, resentful of herself, resentful of others, resentful of the way it had tried to make her accept something she had never wanted too, frozen in the lights of a monster.
A hard hit against its side sends it sprawling, and it begins to scurry away. Rats were not so afraid of their deaths around Carrionplace. That, Sharppaw has heard before, but without its friends to further swarm and infect its targets, they were hardly anything at all.
Sharppaw isn’t thinking about anything except how much he wants it dead. Not for any prize or any hunger, but because it’d make him feel better. Wouldn’t it?
The apprentice springs, and she comes crashing down on his prey, ending its life with the swift crunch of bone between teeth.
He sits there for a long time, after that. The thunderpath jostles his dark coat nearby. This anomaly of a rat, far from where it was meant to be, is probably the largest thing he’s ever caught. It did make him feel better. And the easy glide of his leap, he wasn’t sure he’d imagined that.
Sharppaw curls on his side, teeth still embedded within his kill. If he focuses, he thinks he can see his tail reaching for him, though the drag is slow and new. Her face twists.
I’d given up on you.
He feels guilty. He feels stupid. He feels better.
Sharppaw wonders how many times he had done that something. How many times he has made himself linger on the fear of what would happen if it didn’t, instead of think of what would happen if it did. Was that what Smogmaw had meant, that whole time?
She hates that. Maybe she would have to keep hating it in order to do anything worthwhile.
The marsh is quiet, though his mind is not. He clutches his prey between his teeth as if it might surve from its vengeance, and run off where Sharppaw could not possible chase it. He would not let it go.
Something would have to change.
