suddenly, the picture was distorted ✦ sick

[FLINTWISH]

Starlingheart's den has been busier lately, which Flintkit does not appreciate. Too many cats enter, not enough exit; though he is tucked in the back, he can hear the phlegmy coughs and each shuddering inhale. The fever scent is thick and hot through the den. It invades the paradise coolness of the small cove. Milky tendrils of sick poison each nook and cranny, and it seems that they have even touched young Flintkit.

He has not been getting out so much; he has little interest in play (though that was always partly true), and littler interest in food. His siblings poke and prod at him, and still he does not rouse from his nest, far too exhausted to even attempt to stand. And what has he been exhausted by? The simple act of sleeping? He isn't sure, but he knows it is unnatural-- as is the cough he has been developing, and the thick films of mucus in his nose and throat, and the cradle of fever around his head. And where had he gotten these things from; this menagerie of malady? Flintkit's gem-cut gaze peers from the small partition that separates his world from the world of the sick and injured (though it is a boundary that he has now seemed to cross). Why couldn't they have slept anywhere else? Why did they have to invade his world when they didn't even like him?

Quiet, Flintkit nestles further into his mossy nest, body warm with ache. At least Starlingheart will know what to do. Won't she?

/ @STARLINGHEART @Magpiepaw ; no need to wait!​

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[GRANITEPELT]

This sickness, this yellowcough, as RiverClan has dubbed it, has driven Granitepelt near-mad. The sanctuary he’s shared with Starlingheart becomes crowded with cats spewing filth from their nostrils and gaping maws. He’s made it a point to avoid his nest since the first patients—Screechkit, Halfshade, and a pawful of others—had begun to make a disgusting racket with their shivering, coughing bodies. Granitepelt is a rare sight for his kits right now—when he stops by, it’s only to see Starlingheart, to bring her the fresh-kill she desperately needs to keep her strength up. He is further angered that he cannot share her nest anymore, but the coughing—it is infuriating, it is painful like claws in his ears.

Today, he drops a fat marsh rabbit for her and the kits—and then he notices Flintkit, curled in his nest and barely stirring. Mucus bubbles and crusts around his firstborn’s little black nose. Granitepelt hears wheezing. “Flintkit is sick,” he reports, though he is sure Starlingheart can see it for herself. “He has yellowcough. These…” He grits his teeth, furious green eyes scraping around the den, “patients of yours have gotten our son sick.” He stares at Flintkit, feeling strange—revulsion and outrage and fear begin to writhe about his stomach, slimy and slithery as adders.

✧ INFO.

•  
• 
  — granitekit . granitepaw . granitepelt
  — he/him ; warrior of shadowclan
  — heterosexual ; taken by Starlingheart
  — short-haired gray tom with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Meg

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[Starlingheart]

She knew it was bound to happen eventually. Despite all her prayers, her begging aimed at the stars, they had not spared her son from the sickness sweeping its way through the forest. She bends her head down to gently push her nose against Flintkit's soft gray fur. She barely needs to inhale to smell the sickly-sweet smell of illness. When she steps away she takes a deep, shaky, breath. "Shhh my love I'm-I'm here don't worry" she murmurs softly to the sick kitten, already turning to grab the same herbs she had given the others from her stores. It would not cure him entirely but it would help, even if it was just a little.

She winces at the venom in her mates words but after considering him for a moment she understands. He is afraid, and she would be lying if she didn't admit that she wasn't too. The herbs that they had weren't a solution and she had no idea what was. She is silent for a few long moments before she comes to stand next to Granitepelt's side, her ebony fur brushing against his stone gray pelt "It'll be alright- I'll- I'll make sure of it" she would spend all of her waking moments looking for something, anything, that would help. She would spend every second searching the territory. Nothing would stop her from saving her kit from this disease.

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[Magpiepaw]

Flintkit's wheezing voice makes him want to leave the den, he has hated being in here every moment the sickness rampaged and it is not out of fear of being ill but the sheer amount of cats now filling the space left him suffocated and anxiety riddled. But Magpiepaw will remain for Starlingheart and Starlingheart only, the only benefit of the sick was that Granitepelt had also evacuated the hollow and often didn't linger for very long; his piercing stare and sharper words were unwelcome lately even if they did ward off the more annoying of their clanmates.
The black and white apprentice ignores the two as they stand together, tilts his nose down to push up the moss around Flintkit more in a carefully tucked blanket of down to make him more comfortable before he turns to pick up one of the shimmering beetle carapaces he had gotten from Maggotpaw to place in front of him, "Did you know the reason their shells shine is they have absorbed starlight? If you crush it, you will release the stars. It makes a satisfying sound, but you can also see yourself in its shell." He could offer no cure, but he could offer distraction.
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[FLINTWISH]

Flintkit is sick. He knows this, and yet hearing the words tumble frigid from Granitepelt's pearl-studded jaws turns his heart to permafrost. Yellowcough, he says, and Flintkit's bi-color gaze snaps open, crusted with sulfur and glazed with alarm. When he turns it upon his father, he can see the way Granitepelt looks at him. There is no love, nor is there warmth, but he has not come to expect these things from the tom; what worries Flintkit more is the absence of any pride at all. Even if Granitepelt's glances had always been casual, calculated doses, there had always been inklings of some sort of pride for Flintkit, his mirror. He doesn't realize how much he's held onto it until it is absent. Now he is no better than Nettlekit; now he is no better than Ghostkit; now his stomach drops at the idea of being worse than both of them, somehow. His Clan already has no love for him. How could he survive without Granitepelt's acknowledgement?

Perhaps it is stupid to worry about such things when Starlingheart coddles him as she does, pressing her velvet nose to his forehead, cooing like a mourner. The stone-pelted kitten stares up at her, wordless and weary. She'll make it okay, she says, and he believes her-- after all, Starlingheart is a skilled medicine cat even beyond her role as his mother --but worms of worry still writhe behind his sternum. "Okay," he murmurs anyway, because if he cannot have faith in Starlingheart then he does not know where to place it.

Then, finally, a distraction. Magpiepaw wobbles towards him, dangling a shining carapace before him. He rolls in the downy blanket to get a better look into the iridescent surface. In it he sees himself, but in himself he sees Granitepelt. For a moment he looks away from the beetle, back to his father. He's always known how much he takes after the tom (for it he did not see it himself then his clanmates were sure to remind him), but seeing it so plainly when Granitepelt only regards him with an oily stare; Flintkit is not sure how to feel. He turns back to Magpiepaw, ears flicking backwards ever so slightly. "Can I crush it?" he asks, for he wants to hear the sound of its carapace folding in on itself; he wants to see each star make its trek back home into the night. "It's pretty."​

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[GRANITEPELT]

Starlingheart rushes to their son’s side, to where he lays limp and feverish in his nest. Her cooing voice does not soothe the anger stoked in the gray warrior’s belly. Would StarClan take the son he’d named, the son born in his image, from him so soon? Would they take Nettlekit next, only to leave the she-kit damned with his name and visage? He feels ill himself all of a sudden—not with yellowcough, but with a roiling nausea he cannot quiet.

His mate comes to comfort him, but for once even she cannot reach him. He feels the brush of her fur against his and he shakes his head. “And what if the boy dies? Then what?” He clenches his teeth again, watching Magpiepaw toddle out of the shadows with a beetle shell in his jaws. He can see that Magpiepaw is trying to make Flintkit feel better—to distract him from the gravity of his situation—but Granitepelt feels no gratitude. He wants Flintkit to know how dire this is, so he can get better—so he can know how much pain he’s causing his parents.

Granitepelt bares his teeth in Flintkit’s general direction, at the shade of yellowcough wreathed around him. “Treat him at any cost,” he orders the healers. “I cannot stand around and let myself sicken. The other kits will have to go to the nursery and stay there.” It’s an order to his mate—not to her as ShadowClan’s medicine cat, but to her as the father of the kits. How he feels about the she-kit is irrelevant… she is not sick, and she should not become sick, even as he thinks, It should have been you.

Angrily, with his tail, he will shepherd any kits in the medicine cat’s den on this day away from their sickly sibling and toward the camp.

✧ INFO.

• optional tag for @NETTLEKIT and @GHOSTKIT
• 
  — granitekit . granitepaw . granitepelt
  — he/him ; warrior of shadowclan
  — heterosexual ; taken by Starlingheart
  — short-haired gray tom with white and green eyes
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by Marquette
  — chibi by Meg

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[Starlingheart]

Starlingheart is surprised by the venom in her mates voice. It is a tone she has heard him use countless times with many others but never towards her, never towards their children and she cannot help but glance at him out of the corner of one of her emerald green eyes, expression more curious than anything. She knows that sickness scares a lot of cats, stars sickness even scared her, but to see it affect her mate in such a way was... strange to say the least. "He-he's not going to die" she promises, her voice hushed. But as she looks down at her son she is not totally sure. How could she save any of them if they did not even know what the cure was? Still, she would do her best. Anything for her children. She would not rest until he was better, until ShadowClan was safe.

She is grateful to her apprentice for distracting Flintkit, hopefully in the distraction he had not heard his fathers words and as she watches, Granitepelt leaves. He claims to want to get away from the sickness but she has a strange feeling that perhaps it is the sight of his son so frail, so weak, that he wants to get away from. She nods in agreement with him but she says nothing, her attention already returned to Flintkit and the beetle that now lays by his paws.

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