private SWEET THING —⟢ PERIWINKLE

[BILBERRYPAW]

Midday means a relaxation of the buzz to WindClan's camp. It means Bilberrykit is tilting his head backwards, upwards, skywards, and feeling the familiar heat from the sun over his closed eyes. He doesn't know the soon to come Greenleaf—he doesn't know just how hot the world will become, but he does know this. Gentle heat, unbroken blue skies, soft sand that shifts in time with his subtle movements. This: the birdsong and heathscent, this is WindClan.

It isn't always WindClan.

There is a confusion there—sometimes WindClan has a hazy eye-burn sky. Sometimes WindClan means that Bilberrykit needs to go somewhere else, carried by his scruff and blinking the afterimage of orange tongues licking upwards. Most confusingly, WindClan means that Bilberrykit has to come back to where he started, back to these soft sands, and that he notices all the subtle changes of the otherwise same-place of camp. Sunstar was four-limbed, nobody fretted within the range of Bilberrykit's listening ears over the scarcity of things.

Midday means that Periwinklebreeze is near. Bilberrykit turns his face away from the sky and blinks his eyes open and then blinks until the world comes into focus. His pupils are shrunken to sprout-thin slits after so long basking. It has always been easy for Bilberrykit to curl against Periwinklebreeze—only distantly does he recognize that the gulf in size between the two of them has lessened, will continue to lessen.

"Do you remember the fire?" His voice comes out earnest; he truly wishes to know if Periwinklebreeze remembers it, "It went away now, but I still remember it."

@Periwinklebreeze. ​

windclan kit | black and white harlequin | three moons | tags​

 

[Periwinklebreeze.]

PLAY US LIKE PAWNS AND RELENTLESSLY CONFINE
INTO LIVING UP TO GENDER ROLES AND HAVING ABSENT MINDS ​

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periwinklebreeze ❀ 22 moons ❀ demi-boy ❀ windclan queen ​

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Remembrance is a strange thing - painful. There are... many things that Periwinklebreeze remembers. The good, the bad, the mundane. And of course, there are plenty of things he doesn't. He doesn't remember much of the days before hyacinthbreath was truly part of his life - sure, he knows she wasn't always his other mother, and yet that knowing isn't the same as remembering. And he remembers the flash of auburn fur, of glittering amber eyes and frothing foam as jaws clamped 'round his figure... but he cannot recall, exactly, how he'd come to be under such terrifying circumstances. Not now - not anymore. Time passes, and with it he begins to forget.

So when Bilberrykit asks if he remembers - well, he does. It's fresh in his mind after all - the heat, the taste of ash, the flicker of embers creeping ever closer. The terror he felt, the blind obedience ad trust he'd displayed at Scorchstreaks words in Sunstars absence. The loathing he'd felt when Smokestar had dared to pick up one of the Nightingalecry's charges - after all he'd done to them. To Cottonpaw, to WindClan. But a memory is all it is - unlike many things, the fire never sunk its claws into him, leaves behind no scars, only a slow growing landscape and a warning from the stars overhead. They will recover.

" I do, " he says quietly, blue eyes cracking open to peer down at his son. " I remember th-the fire.... and it's okay th-that you d-do too, " he says - because he is far too familiar with this type of 'remembrance' - the kind where the thought, the memory, sticks with you like a particularly stubborn burr, even when you'd much rather forget.

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Don't you think it's funny how they tell us how to live?​

Don't you think it's funny how we're all delinquent kids?​

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[BILBERRYPAW]

It is a good thing, Bilberrykit thinks, that Periwinklebreeze remembers the fire. It means he won't need to explain it to Periwinklebreeze, which is preferred, because Bilberrykit doesn't think he would be able to explain it. He considers telling Periwinklebreeze a lie, then. He thinks of what might happen should he say that his memory is bad; that he doesn't remember the fire as well as he had thought he did. Maybe then Periwinklebreeze might explain it to Bilberrykit.

"Frightkit said that smoke-cats lived in the fire," Bilberrykit has never hidden his emotions; the frown he wears seeps into his young voice as if it has always lived there, "But the fire is gone and I didn't see any smoke-cats... Did they—um—do you think the smoke-cats went to RiverClan when the fire went out?" The thought that Frightkit's story had been anything but real doesn't cross Bilberrykit's mind. It's easier for Bilberrykit to imagine that the smoke-cats went to live elsewhere when their home went away, just as Bilberrykit had.

Quietly, he hopes that their home doesn't come back. ​

windclan kit | black and white harlequin | four moons | tags​

 

[Periwinklebreeze.]

PLAY US LIKE PAWNS AND RELENTLESSLY CONFINE
INTO LIVING UP TO GENDER ROLES AND HAVING ABSENT MINDS ​

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periwinklebreeze ❀ 22 moons ❀ demi-boy ❀ windclan queen ​

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" Did she? " comes quiet voice - blinking down at Bilberrykit. Smoke-cats is a story he's never heard, a mythos that slips his mind. The ramblings of a kitten, he wonders, or a truth spoken to Frightkit by another - just as he'd once sat and listened as Sootstar and the other warriors spoke of the Great Battle and of Starclan. " Hm... m-maybe, " he says quietly - bcause he knows very little of the tings Bilberrykit speaks of, of what they do or how they act, but seeing his frown is never a god thing. " Or m-maybe they j-j-j-just left w-with the fire, b-back to the twolegs, l-like kittypets do, " because the fire had been unnatural, he knows - the twolegs had set them aflame, without so much as a care in the world for the home they were destroying or the cats who might get swallowed by the flames. They're cruel creatures he thinks, twolegs.

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Don't you think it's funny how they tell us how to live?​

Don't you think it's funny how we're all delinquent kids?​

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