private THE CHRISTMAS KIDS ✦ ashenpaw

[CICADAFLIGHT]

cicadastar is gone.

it doesn't matter how much he cries, and begs, even pleads with starclan to give his father back. cicadastar is gone. his son is left on earth, drifting around shadowclan's territory like a wraith, leaving behind claw-marked trees and hollow-eyed glances. every night, he lies in his nest and waits for sleep, and it takes him uneasily, leaving him to twitch in his slumber like a dog and wait for the nightmares.

they come in the form of his father, glassy-eyed and death-touched, drowning in grave-muck. mottled paws are just breaking the grave's surface when cicadapaw wakes, disoriented and frightened, slumped inside a broken stump where he must have dropped off in the foggy haze time is becoming. dual-toned eyes shift—and then freeze. cicadastar is beside him, lying on the ground before the stump, bloodied and beaten and still. "f-father? how are you—"

he disappears when cicadapaw blinks away sleep-tears, leaving behind mucky earth without the indent of a body. cicadapaw blinks, feeling a second loss wash over him, rage following it in a second wave. he stumbles out of the tree stump, swaying on numb paws with thorns digging into the tender flesh of his throat—or that's how it feels, anyways. that wasn't him. it wasn't. you're seeing things. the very idea gives him pause, that he's seeing things, and faintly he wonders: am i going crazy?

eyes trained on his paws, he realizes traces of blood still stain messy curls. no doubt his face is a mess of bloodshot eyes and dried tears, the last dregs of his father's blood alongside them.

eyes trained on his paws, he doesn't see the cat nearby, slamming into ashenpaw with a bitten curse, "shit!" wobbling on his paws, fresh pain spreading across his temples, he must make quite a sight; leaf-litter tangled into unwashed curls, down one tooth, blood crusted onto his shoulder wound. finally he rasps, "sorry, i—i wasn't watching where i was going."

"i'm cicadapaw," he offers in a cracked tone. the name is bitter on his tongue; surely, this stranger has heard the news by now. it must be spreading like wildfire.

if you keep swallowing the anger back ✦ ( it's going to choke you )

• @ASHENPAW !!

• 

• 

  cicadapaw ; apprentice of riverclan
  x. he/him ; 4 moons ; tags
  x. unsightly black-and-white tom with heterochromatic amber and blue eyes
  x. played by dejavu
  cicadapaw is the wayward son of cicadastar and smokethroat, veritable riverclan royalty who fails to live up to his legacy. veiled in a perpertual miasma of internal conflict and rage, he finds solace in his anger when he can find it nowhere else.

​

 

[ASHENFALL]

˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 With every nightfall came another day further from a time when Halfshade was alive, and Ashenpaw was forced to pad forward without her, glancing backward but never able to go back. Muddied paws padded slowly from the grave where his mother was laid to rest, but they did not bring him back to the reeded entrance of Shadowclan camp, not yet, anyway. This had become something of a routine since it happened, Ashenpaw would slink out of camp in the shadow of the night to visit her grave—it was not exactly sneaking as his clan's semi-nocturnal culture meant there was always someone around to see him, but it wasn't like any of them really cared what he went off to do at night anyways. He didn't do anything specific when he visited her, mostly just sat around like a weirdo, to be honest, but he'd been compelled to do it every day regardless.

Halfshade's younger son was not her favorite child, nor was he her strongest, smartest, sweetest, nor was he the child who held the most potential—but he was her son who visited her every night since her death, to murmur 'Hello,' or 'I miss you," or nothing at all. Perhaps his nightly pilgrimage was an exercise in proving his faithfulness to her, a ritualized mantra of 'I may not be your best child, but I am your most loyal. The others may move on, but I will stay here, you can count on this.' This too manifested in his unforgiveness of the likes of Starlingheart and the wriggly little beasts that stole her life from her, stained forever in his mind and stamped with Guilty, and Complicit with Murder.

Ashenpaw's wandering took him, unwittingly, toward the Burnt Sycamore. The faceless Annoying Shadowclan Warrior in his head would scold him for not being aware enough of his surroundings, being more concerned with numbing his brain enough to fall into his nest with a relatively empty head than any potential dangers that lurked on the marshes that night. Luckily for him, the only foes he would face that night came in the form of one knobby-kneed little punk.

"Ow! Watch it!" He hisses as he is unceremoniously crashed into by the Prince of the River himself. He turns to face the stranger and the first thought that enters Ashenpaw's mind as he glares at his assailant is, 'Stars, what an ugly little freak...' The scraggly-furred apprentice's crusty blood and bog-water aroma did him no favors either. Ashenpaw stared daggers at him as he stumbled clumsily through the defense of his transgressions and then tacked on an awkward introduction. Cicadapaw.

Ashenpaw was not as thick-skulled as his sisters tended to be, he could immediately tie the sorry-looking creature in front of him to the fabled Towering King of Riverclan, now snuffed out and rotting beneath the earth with the best of them. His sore and tear-spent bicolored gaze would meet that of Cicadastar's blood-echo, and he would take a second to look at him harder. Cicadapaw's eyes were hollowed-out and his stance swayed with unsure paw-shifting, in many ways, he resembled an outward representation of the state of Ashenpaw himself, but acknowledging this made his stomach twist.

"Right. I'm Ashenpaw, and you're Cicadapaw..." he concurs, peering at his gaunt face with interest, "The Cicadapaw with the dead father. How's that working out for you, by the way..?" His monotone delivery and the glitter in his eyes suggest his question is borne out of something other than simple sympathy. Indeed, Ashenpaw was more interested in fishing around for something he recognized, pain.

FOLLOW THE TIDE ˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 WITH THE MONSTERS ON YOUR SHOULDER

• OOC:
• 
• 
  — ashenkit . ashenpaw
  — ftm transmasc. he/him. 7mo apprentice of shadowclan
  — gay ; single ; not looking
  — longhaired muted blue torbie with heterochromatic pale blue and amber eyes
  — smells like rainsoaked ferns and swamp milkweed
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — fullbody by tropics sticker by saturnid
  — penned by eezy
  — currently in an era of grief and anger, approach with caution. all ic opinions!

​

​

 

[CICADAFLIGHT]

Cicadastar haunts him, even now. When the dull torbie apprentice pins him with a two-toned gaze, it's as cold as a windblown winter day, as cold as his father's had once been. Cicadapaw shakes his head, trying to dissuade the illusion, dissuade the ghost that stalks around each lichenous tree-trunk. His head hurts. His head hurts so, so much, a stabbing pain sinking into the marrow of his temples and the jutting curve of his jaw. Where is Beepaw? Where is Smokethroat. Hell, he'd take Starlightpaw over the viperous tom before him.

He had been apologetic. He had admitted the fault and tried to brush off the incident like water on a duck's back, foolishly hoping this other cat would do the same. Not so. Ashenpaw, as he names himself, appears hell-bent on provoking Cicadapaw. How can this cat who doesn't know him find the gap in his asocial armor with such ease and precision? He doesn't know. For some unfathomable reason (oh, the hypocrisy), Ashenpaw quite deliberately selects seemingly the phrasing that will assuredly inflict the most pain.

"It's working out fucking great, what do you think?" he snaps. Perhaps Ashenpaw is truly innocuously sympathetic and simply chose a poor tone and unfortunate phrasing for his consolations. Perhaps his monotonous tone simply comes along with the dullness of his general appearance. But Cicadapaw takes no time to consider that, and his response comes with a scathing snap judgement of this other apprentice as a threat. He's painfully aware of his unsightly appearance, crusty fur, and unfortunate scent, but too immersed in grief to consider rectifying it. And what would be the point, anyways? He's ugly. Nothing he does or says will change that. He'll never be like his father.

This hollow pit of self-hatred is what drives his acrid responses and twisted muzzle, exposing a grimace missing one fang. "What does it matter to you, anyways?" he mews, tone half-glum and half-infuriated. "Sooner or later we'll all catch the plague and die, and I'll be out of your fur."

something holy wants to get out ✦ ( but you can't let it )

• 

• 

  cicadapaw ; apprentice of riverclan
  x. he/him ; 5 moons ; tags
  x. unsightly black-and-white tom with heterochromatic amber and blue eyes
  x. played by dejavu
  x. son of smokestar and cicadastar ; brother to beepaw and starlightpaw. apprenticed to iciclefang.

​