pafp THE GRACKLES IN THE TREES ❀ FOUNDLING

[LUNGWORTKIT]

CW : Death and emetophobia. Please wait for Cottonsprig to post!

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Clouds coat the sky, their grey - washed bellies swollen with unborn lightning. The indigo greenleaf sky, blushed the warm blue of a sun - ripened plum, is hidden by dense rolling scales of pearled soot, fattened ashen clouds rolling across the horizon as heavily as the belly of a blacksnake, waiting to strike. They serve as the hall for a summer storm holding court over the landscape, wind whipping sheets of rain into fine mist that fills the air, the bigger droplets pelting down onto the wind - beaten grass of the moors, thick drifts of water that strike the earth with the force of an enemy claw.

Carrion birds pull their trademark pinwheels through the storm, dark wings splayed wide and rainslicked, daring the promise of lightning for the chance at fresh meat. To the discerning warrior, they seem to be gathering ever - thicker, a flurry of black feathers and bald heads lingering above a particular spot on the moor. One of them breaks from the pack and dives.

" No! " A small wail is swallowed by the storm, a kitten huddling close to her mother's cooling flank as if it might protect her from the bird's splayed talons . . . and it does, for the moment, the carrion bird sweeping back up with empty claws. The child crawls against the unmoving body of her mother, curling herself in a tight ball of shivering limbs against the bleak stillness of a white flank. Her tiny voice is muted by sniffling, jackal ropes of mucus dripping from her small pink nose; each breath hitches in her thin chest.

" Mama, mama, " she wheezes plaintively, ivory forepaws kneading at the loner queen's belly without any success. Her mother had told her they were taking a break, an increasingly common occurence ever since Mama had started coughing and stumbling, calling out to cats the kitten couldn't see. But . . . but now Mama wouldn't get up, no matter how much the girl cried through her own tight - chested coughs, tiny paws beating at the queen's side with only the heavy whacks of paws against dead flesh in return. " Muh—Mama, " the loner - child cries, rubbing her snot - smeared face against the queen's side in an attempt at self - comfort. Mama said they just had to walk to the . . . the place with Two - legs, whatever those were, and they would be okay. " Mama, get up."

Her pleading mewls are too much for the girl's overtaxed lungs and her breath hitches, iron claws tightening around her chest and constricting her breath. The child retches, her sobs turning into gags that bring up nothing from an empty stomach. The world is blurry and fever - hot despite the chilly summer rain plastering her feathery fur to her, and the kitten collapses against her mother's side anew, crying weakly into cold porcelain fur.

Such is the grim, rainsoaked tableau upon which @cottonsprig luckily stumbles: the nameless child curled against unmoving flank, shaking and gasping for breath; the loner queen, dead with her glossy eyes seeking a face unknowable; the carrion birds, swinging in circles above, waiting for the moment the kitten - cries will cease and they can swoop in for their reward.​

 

[cottonsprig]

"Stars!" Cottonsprig hisses as the sky opens upon her. Another hole dug, another stem lost to the dirt - this time with a promise of mud and humidity to hide the scent. She feels slick to the bone, feels an ache in her belly and the fear in her chest. She's too deft in medicine to be taken out by a senseless storm, but what of the small bodies residing within her? Do they have paws yet, she wonders, capable of even wading through illness if they must? Do their immune systems rely entirely on hers or do they have their own, are they faulty?

Cottonsprig moves with a lumbering heaviness, blaming her rain soaked pelt for each step as she looks for shelter. The birds in the sky circle, and briefly does she fear one swooping towards her. Blue eyes widen when she sees one dive, and just above the rain she hears a quiet but sharp, "No!" Her shoulders tense and her claws sink into water-packed ground, however before she properly comprehends all that she can - her paws are sending her wayward. They thrum against the trodden and slick moorland grass to meet the little voice, fighting against the world all on their lonesome.

A kitten. A sick one - Cottonsprig approaches the meager soul and all she can smell is a plaguing illness. A still body holds the child, limbs limp and eyes cloudy. She stares warily at the child, and fear lights her eyes. Fear, then guilt, and finally resolve all in a matter of seconds. StarClan is watching her through the darkened clouds - testing her, maybe, to see if she'd risk the life of her own children for that of a stranger. The code, they would all say. Selfishness festers in her chest as she determines that she could do all this and more - she can save this child from whatever ails her all whilst keeping herself healthy. Hubris is unbecoming of the blue smoke whilst she edges ever closer to the little foundling, deciding that she is capable, more than Starlingheart had been, more than her Clanmates expect her to be.

"Little one," she says, and though she is not broadshouldered or thick boned, she moves to stand over the child and her mother's still body to shelter them each from the pelting rain. "I'm sorry, I'm sure your mother wouldn't have wanted you to see her... like this," she hadn't. Watching Sootstar die was an event that still plays in her mind on occasion - but that was neither here nor there. "Let me help you, please. You're not feeling well, but I have all sorts of medicines and cures... I can help you feel better." She leans over, attempting to touch her nose gently to the child's shivering flank. The medicine cat says little more, attempting to instead rumble a purr in her chest to help soothe the child. ​

 

[LUNGWORTKIT]

The world is fever - bright as her eyes, shining and blinding as a star despite the thick clusters of clouds that blot out the sun. And hot. The kit's small, dry pink tongue pokes from between her new milk - teeth, panting at the feverish warmth that overtakes her body, too small to understand the tongues of fire licking at her extremities; illness is all she has ever known, how could she know any different? Cottonsprig wavers in her vision, a comparative goliath of blue - smoked fur that makes the child cry out weakly, instinctively, for help/

" My mama, " she wheezes plaintively when her choked lungs allow her breath, each inhale a whistling insuck, her tiny body hungry, starved for the freshness of the rainsoaked air. Her mama—her mama is gone, the child realizes abruptly, gone just like the cats in the few stories the loner - queen had managed between her own hard - won breaths—like the cats she said they'd had to leave behind. She grasps weakly at Cottonsprig, searching in a world of too - bright color for more of the warmth, the rumbling sound.

" Wanna go, " she manages, too young or too short of breath or both to add the implicit with you. The kit doesn't know what it means to not feel well, or what a medicine is—in her short time on earth she has only known this sickness, does not know the tightness in her chest to be atypical except perhaps some low instinct keening that it is wrong. If Cottonsprig motions to pick her up in some way, her tiny body too weak to carry herself the impossible distance back to a camp she doesn't know, then she lets her.

OOC : —

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[cottonsprig]

My mama, the kittens mewls, but the soft voice of a child does not reach Cottonsprig's ears. It's too scratchy from crying and coughing, the acid from retching only moments before burning the little one's vocal cords. She winces, not because it hurts, but because she knows that something terrible must be ailing this child - and the rain and grief will not help in aiding her health.

The kitten holds shaky paws towards her, and Cottonsprig takes this as a sign to help the child. "I'll have her buried," she says, as if the little she-kit will understand what that means. The medicine cat hooks her fangs into the foundling's scruff, turning from the cooling dam and making headway towards camp. She already lists the herbs she may use in the kitten's next meal - something to calm her, something to help her sleep, something to cure whatever ails her...

"I've got you," she says as she goes. She's selfish in every step, the want to save the tiny stranger only blooming from the idea of absolving her crimes. "I've got you," she repeats.​