TAKE A CHANCE - revelation, discovery



Her stomach hurts so bad. Insistently, it grumbles, as if it thinks that she is withholding food from it, as if there is any to withhold. She is so so hungry, but one look at the pitiful prey pile tells her there is someone else who needs it more than her. Leaf-bare has not been kind to them. Her ribs just out of her small frame, her pelt, once silky and full of life, is dull and dirty. She does not have the energy to wash it. She does not have the energy to do much other than occasionally go and look for more herbs and then to curl up in her nest and sleep. Some of her more worried clanmates will insist she eats, she knows. But they need it more.

Her green eyes dart down to the water mint she had just collected, her paws numb from the cold snow and ice. She had no idea what these were good for, what most of the herbs in her den were good for, but she recognized them and so she had picked them. Her stomach rumbles again and she groans from the hunger pains. It feels like her stomach is eating itself from the inside out. Desperation is what causes the black and white she cat to bend her head down, to lap up a leaf and chew. For a moment after what she has done she is worried. What if it was poisonous? Something in her head was begging to reveal itself to her though, something that told her that she knew what water mint was, what it did.

Water mint is good for belly aches the thought enters her head at the same time her bellyache disappears and her eyes alight with the newfound knowledge. She is excited to have learned something, to have remembered something, without Bonejaw's help. "Water mint is good for bellyaches!" she declares weakly to no one at all. Beesong had told her her first medicine cats gathering, how could she have forgotten?
 
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( : ̗̀➛ ) Oh, damn Pitchstar and his rats... she's never had a problem with them before he started ordering them all to go fetch the scrawny bastards from the Carrionplace. Every time she takes a mouthful of the tough, stringy meat, she's reminded of the queen who'd died from eating a bad rat. A grisly death, someone Bonejaw had turned away to spit blood and foam halfway across the territory.

Still, Flickerfire has to admit she's made it this far, right? Her stomach is made of stone, steel, bone -- it's weathered the toughest foes. All sorts of Twoleg rubbish and crowfood! She's no weakling, though lately her belly has been complaining about the lack of food... and then when she does feed it something, it's putrid rat meat hardly a step up from decaying flesh.

She's stalking past Starlingheart's den when she hears her murmur something to herself. Flickerfire wouldn't have stopped otherwise; even if her leg had been about to fall off, she has never thought to go to the medicine cat's den. Bonejaw knew next to nothing about healing, and sometimes when she did, she still refused to heal cats. She isn't sure Bonejaw's pupil is any different, and even if she is, well... green behind the ears is an understatement.

The tortoiseshell pokes her head inside with a scrunch of her nose. "What are you talkin' to yourself about in here, kid?" Her bright gaze flicks from leaf to leaf with disinterest. "You didn't eat something to make you insane, did ya? Heard that happened to someone once. Ate the wrong plant and went crazy..." Her tone is almost somber. Did she really hear about this happening? Maybe. Maybe she just made it up right then. It sounded plausible, after all.
( WELL I WON'T EVER CHANGE MY WAYS ; AND I CAN'T BE STRONG )
 
"Who's talkin' to emself?" he chirps, nosy as all hell as he halts beside the lead warrior. Was somethin' he had to know about so he could dangle it over heads, 'n the like. Barkbreath 'imself was far from senile, despite what the youths say, an' f'course, he has to take any chance at a comeback he can get to deter that sorta rhetoric. S'not terribly unexpected to find that it's the bite-sized medic. Aunt of 'ers left her with little more than a pat on the head, what else is she gonna do but trial an' error?

"Yuh," she nods along wit Flickerfire, his gaze matter-of-fact. "Dear Miss Whatsherface. Love of my life. Ate sum leaves that made 'er crazy an she jumped right in the river. Looked juuust like what you're eatin' now, too." he says wit a click of his tongue and sag of his soldiers. Was that somethin' a just-abandoned newly-qualified-not-qualified kid medic needed to hear? Prolly not, but eh, it's a slow day. "Was nice knowin' ya. Should start on 'er grave right here n' now."
 

Starlingheart seemed excited about what she'd said, but he could not understand it. He knew what a bellyache was, of course, he'd had one before and was told bad prey did it or him eating too fast or eating too much which was ridiculous. Food was good. Why couldn't he just keep eating it? Why did it hurt sometimes? Stupid.
Magpiekit wanders in, weaving and bumping into the longer legs of the other two cats as he makes his attempt to enter the aromatic den and his nose wrinkles immediately upon getting a deep breath; awful. The trash was nicer, bathed in grime-sublime.

"Are they good? Can I try one?"
His voice is an airy, pitched sound like the wailing wind and he pauses, glancing to the side and nods as if having heard something of great importance, "Nevermind. You have the-" A paw raises, taps his chin lightly where mirrored on the young medicine cat her chin is white as opposed to his own stark black one. "...I think I would die. It's not safe."