no angst step back // learning kitten games

[SUNSPARK]

Sunpaw hadn't had what many would consider to be a normal childhood, especially if you compared it to the Clan kittens who got to live here. She had no nursery full of warmth and milk and solid walls. She had no games, only vague memories of anything that could attach themselves to a sibling or a mother. She had free reign of the world around her, but only for a short time. After that, her time around cats was... minimal.

Most of the time it didn't bother her - she can't miss what she doesn't know. But sometimes she finds herself watching the nursery, the apprentices, the people around her. Especially after her argument with Foxtail. She's been forced to open her eyes a little bit. To explore what's been in front of her all of this time that she's been too stubborn to accept because it was like admitting she was an outlier. But in doing so, she made herself one anyway.

Her pelt is fluffed out against the surprising chill around, a few small minnows in her mouth that she carries off towards the nursery. It's meant for the queens, some of the older kittens, but she barely has a paw in the threshold before someone nearby catches her eye. Her pause is only a second, long enough for her to give the prey where it's meant to be, but as she comes back around she pauses to watch the little kit. "Hey... What are you doing?"

// @Copperkit​

 

[Copperkit]

"A LITTLE BIT FERAL"​

---

If Copperkit had cared much for sentiment, he might have found some in the knowledge that he and Sunpaw weren't so different from each other. He was also used to being on his own, his mother a seldom seen face who only stopped in to provide the bare essentials that were her burden as a parent. It left him independent from a young age, stubborn but unafraid of the world and it's chaos. What was a monster to someone who lived next to a thunderpath? Or a passing twoleg to someone who lived among them?

He would later learn it's name to be 'desensitization', but for now, it simple was.

Where their paths seems to differ though, was that Copperkit had never had a problem entertaining himself. He didn't long for company because he'd never had any. No siblings, no father; just his dam, whose only purpose was to feed him and make sure he had shelter. But anything else? That had been up to him, which included making himself busy.

"Oh, heck yeah! Perfect score!" Cheered the dusky colored tomkit with an excited hop, before racing over to the pile of now fallen pinecones.

""Hey... What are you doing?"

"Huh?" He turned, surprised to find one of the River Cats standing there looking at him. His surprise was quickly replaced by a huge, proud grin once he realized that she must have seen him make that perfect kick just now, which staved off his usually standoffish attitude for the moment.

"I'm playing Pinecones, obviously! Haven't you ever played before?" he asked, giving her a skeptical look. Surely all kits knew how to play it, and she was definitely older than a kit. "You just set these ones up likes this, and then take this one back here a bit and kick it at them."

Essentially, he'd set the five pinecones up like little bowling pins and was kicking a sixth at them soccer-ball style.

"If your really good like me then you can knock all five down with one kick– but only the best can do that!" he bragged shamelessly, puffing his chest out as if it were a much bigger accomplishment than it actually was.

---

​

 

[SUNSPARK]

Something about his attitude reminds her of herself, and she's scoffing lightly as surveys the cones that have been knocked over. "Oh yeah? You're the best, huh?" she teases. He's kinda cute. She's never really paid too much mind to the kits who squeal often for their mothers and are a little too clumsy for her liking, but Copperkit is maybe one of the older ones. Maybe that's why she doesn't mind.

She looks towards the knocked over pine cones, her ears flicking at the skeptical look he gives her. She dead-pans him for a second. "No, I haven't," she states simply. It's a fact of life, even though it's one she always feels... weird about. Especially now. But Copperkit explains it quite well. And it's a kitten game, so it's always meant to be simple.

"Let me try then," she declares. "And if you still are the best, I'll bring you something you want from the prey pile tomorrow," she wagers. There's at least a semi-decent chance she'd be able to follow up on that, otherwise... That's a problem for later.

Sunpaw moves to set the pinecones back up, the five little in a neat stack that she had seen when she had approached Copperkit first. To make it fair, she also takes another stride or two back to make up for their difference in size. "From here. This good?" she confirms before she sets the last pinecone down in front of her.

Then she lifts her paw up with a brief second of hesitation. It's just a kit game... It's just a kit game - and she swings her paw. The pinecone goes sailing, arcing over the first stacked pinecone but landing in a heap of the others that knock the other four over. She clicks her tongue against her teeth in mild annoyance. She's really going to have to admit defeat to a kit?

"Well... Best two out of three?"​