TAKING, NOT GIVING BACK ↷ [ sharppaw ]

[smogstar]

He needn't hear condemnations nor flak-laden comments from his clanmates to perceive their criticism. How their withering glares peeled back his skin and infused his bones with their pressure. Stinging undertones mark their words whenever his and his pupil's names are uttered in a single sentence. And worse yet, Smogmaw empathises with their reasoning. ShadowClan's deputy, the poised leader-to-be, has an apprentice who was moons older than the rest and lacked the merit to show for it. It's a bad look on both, but only for him does it leave an utterly horrid impression. A double-edged claw at least cuts both ways—in this scenario, there stands nothing to gain.

Had he gone ahead and feigned a positive assessment of Sharppaw, an inclination which grew more appealing as time marched onward, then the clan would have found itself with another liability sleeping in the warrior's den. On the contrary, in the supposed circumstance that he continues to hold her back, public perception of him would serve to dwindle furthermore. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't, lose-lose corner he's been thrust into, and it isn't readily apparent who's to blame for it. Might it be Sharppaw's flagrant, irreconcilable ineptitude, or his own inability to adapt to her defects? The remedy eludes him, and he doesn't even know where to start picking up the pieces.

A long-lived, unpleasant-on-the-ears grumble is the soundtrack to today's escapade beyond camp's walls. With his broken apprentice in tow, the deputy wends his way to the remoter reaches of the swamp, where the reeds loomed three warriors' high and the soil was reduced to a fine sludge. The squelching underfoot draws to a halt as their journey comes to an end; for the first time since setting out, Smogmaw dares speak to - let alone acknowledge - the frizzy black mass at his ankles. "Show me your hunter's crouch," comes a curt command, through brows creased and snout sneered. It's the first step in a long line of stones, that crouch, the initial lesson many an apprentice will learn. He demands to see it from him all the same, having decided that the corrugated strands along her underbelly were in dire need of a grimy coating. ​

 

[SHARPSHADOW]

† The trudge through mud is made all the more uncomfortable by the hulking form ahead of him, grousing at seemingly nothing but the marsh itself. More realistically – probably about him, the pest that has been forcefully attached at his hip for another three moons Smogmaw had never asked for. In his defense, Sharppaw never had either.

By the time he recalls that his tail is not so dead as he had been led to believe so far, it is already caked in mud, left to be battered by reeds and dragged through the mud. She is lucky to have her sense of it mostly dulled. It’s an odd tingling, as he wills it to move. With enough determination, the deadened half can be goaded from the ground. No thanks to him. …It’s not entirely true.

A hunters crouch, perhaps the first lesson apprentices were taught, and Sharppaw does not hide the narrowing of her eyes. Stifling a full grimace, he lowers himself to the ground. The first of his lessons always twists around his ears when he does this – Rainshade muttering to him not - too dissimilarly, unamused by any such mistakes. Paws tucked in, tail above the ground – it’s a part he did not have to quite ignore, anymore.

He’s done this. He knows how to do this. It’s Smogmaw’s unrelenting brown gaze that makes him feel like he’s doing it all wrong. He isn’t though. (Surely not?) He isn’t.

Her tail curls strangely, forming a strange slope that let the matted end hang precariously above the mud, rather than the hovering you may see from any other. This was what she had to do, though. Sharppaw clenches her jaw, trying to wash out the number of wry comments his mentor could possibly pose at him with the thought of clawing his ears off instead. " I've... I figured it out, " she mumbles, holding her tongue.

OOC † IN THE MIRROR 07.07.2023

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• SHARPPAW: brother to Rookpaw. Mentored by Smogmaw
  —— he / she , no pref , icked by they prns ; fine with gendered terms ( tom, molly, etc... )
  —— currently 13 moons old. warrior ceremony delayed due to lackluster progress.
  
  anxious, antisocial, paranoid. Sharppaw is a creature living in constant fear. Most thoughts are irrational, but consistent in that they are borne from pessimism and generalized anxieties.
  — In an era of assessing what has set him back and figuring out what he wants.

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