private swim under water // foxglare

[cottonsprig]

Cottonsprig stands out in the open, her tail disrupting her rounding silhouette. The sun sets late in the day and though fatigue wears on her bones, she presses forward with her mission. She wants to cry again simply thinking of it, thinking of what she will ask of Foxglare - of everyone who knows - but she has no choice.

This is a path she was never meant to walk, but if she must, she will make it her own. Somehow.

Reclaiming her strife does little to quell the discomfort in her chest as she spies Foxglare from not too far away. She holds his gaze before motioning to the camp's exit. Walk with me, she doesn't say, because she doesn't need to. They've done this too many times before.

She slips away from the commotion of camp and waits for Foxglare just outside of the gorse wall, ears twisting back and forth as she continues to listen for wandering paws. It's not a long stroll, just enough to get out of the way, before she says, "I'm leaving. Tonight." She's very abrupt, as her tone warbles even at the start of her words. "I... Peonybreeze will be waiting for me. He'll take care of me until..." A beat, and her gaze falls to their paws. "I don't know what I'll do then. I'll figure it out," she's said that too often lately, as if future-Cottonsprig will suddenly have a modicum more of awareness and sensibility.

She lifts one of her paws to press it to his, "Walk me there? I can go alone, I just..." she tenses her jaw. Selfishly, she says, "I don't want to."​

 

[FOXGLARE]

⁀➷ There was only so much comfort to scrape out of his old tried-and-true methods of distraction, only so long he could spend stalking after field mice and only so long he could push the patience of Frightpaw going over the same defensive maneuver half of the afternoon. He remained disquieted, frustrated with all that Cottonsprig had left hanging in the air. There were sky-wide gaps between what she said, what he knew, and what could be done about any of it, and he was left grounded to witness the unfolding.

It would be just like the times before, hardly more than a blink to recognize that he was being beckoned, and within another to rise to his paws to follow. They didn’t walk far, only a few paces away from camp to ensure a short, tenebrous circle to seal their whisperings.

Her tone wavers, and despite the abruptness of her words, doubt seeps out onto the floor where she lowers her gaze.

“No,” he says, as shortly as she said, as shortly as he said anything, “It’s not safe. Not for you, not for kits. You… This ain’t right.” None of it was. How was this fair? Foxglare hated the not-knowing of it all.

He wasn’t going to lionize her perilous attempt to save her honor at the behest of her life. Frustration snowballed down the steepness of his dread, “Just stay, figure it out here…” She didn’t know what it was like out there, she didn’t know what she had within the safety of a clan, stars be damned. Was the alternative so dire?

Something in him balked at the thought of it, of the all-seeing force coming down to unsheathe star-sparkling claws toward the lives of kittens, anger roiled soon after, familiar and exhausting as ever. How much of this strife could he claim, could he gather up the unseen thing Cottonsprig fixed her eyes upon between his paws like too-soft dust? Was there anything he could do to fix it, make it better? Or was there just regret?

WE CAME FROM DIRT ⁀➷☾⁺₊ WE HAVE TO SWALLOW IT.

• OOC:
• 
• 
  
  — meztli . sun . fox . foxpaw . foxglare
  — he/him. 20mo moor-runner of windclan. Mentored by shalestripe. currently mentoring frightpaw. formerly mentored sunlitpaw.
  — a scarred, hulking white and golden tabby tom with gray eyes
  — taciturn, vigilant, reserved, self-righteous, restrained, independent, humanitarian, unyielding
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — penned by eezy

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