pafp THE LIGHTS THAT STOP ME ╱ FIRST FISH

[CICADASTAR]

they are lounging nearest to the shallow waters, dips in the pebbled shore where puddles fill for kit to ease into their waters from the moment theyre able to toddle about. the sun is high with early morning, a brisk breeze flitting through the willow murmuring a promise of impending leaf-fall. the man is nestled close to his daughter, a trout laid between them. his children are old enough for their first prey, and the moment his jaws had snagged the bright - scaled prey, he knew already that it would be taken back to his litter. weaning was never fun, and the mottled felidae didn't need to bear his own brood to know that ; teeth get uncomfortable when they grow in full, built to snap through hardened scales and bone, growing far too thornlike for their fathers belly. when he returns home from his hunt, however, only beekit has tumbled her way from his willow den. he can only assume that cicadakit's nightmares plagued him again, keeps him well in his nest to make up for the hours lost to wakefulness.

so here he is, and here she is. she is not so much a mimic of him as her brother, but their resemblance is unmistakeable. curls and thick fur, one eye singing reflection of his own. his thick, curled tail arches loose around her little form, keeping her close and her mind reigned to the small, growing pile of scales at his paws. to share, he'd said, temptingly, a treat, " this is a trout, little lieb. you've seen them in the freshkill pile, ja? " but by starclan's glory, her attention is far easily drawn without the presence of her siblings. claws tuck under bright, sheening scales and peel, pluck them from tantalizing white meat. thick, stringy prey, dotted with red where the scales peel full from unmoving bodies. he lowers his head, and takes a small, instructive bite at the meat he'd exposed, snagging a bit on his canine to keep the juicy bits for his wide - eyed daughter. he chews, slow, pointed, before swallowing − lifting his head for her to see his throat bob, " when you take a bite, chew it very well. one day, when your teeth are big and strong, you will eat through this hard outside called scale. but until then.. " he instructs, extending a paw to place the scale into their pile.. and then, in a slow, purposeful move so she could see, he sweeps them into the puddle at their front.

light bursts. gleams from the puddle in rays of multi - color, casting rainbows where sun hits the water's surface and bounces from the scales now floating lazily about the bottom of the puddle. just as he had been shown before, it was a swimming swirl of stardust, circling themselves until they begin to settle into rocky crevices. it makes him think of blond fur and bashful smiles, a friendly babble he'd be lying to say he didnt miss. a reward, something to catch her awe while she chews her first river meal, " try a bite, and add a scale. " a gentle purr, head lowering encouragingly to keep her on track, beautiful as the swirling waters were.

COLD & CRUEL LIKE WINDS ON THE SEA  ╱ INFORMATION ✟

• i. @BEEKIT HEHEHE
  
• ★ ⋆ CICADASTAR −−−− FOUNDING LEADER OF RIVERCLAN. HOMOSEXUAL, MATED TO SMOKETHROAT. FIFTY MOONS, FATHER TO STARLIGHTKIT, CICADAKIT && BEEKIT. PENNED BY ANTLERS −−−−− ⁺₊✧
  
  
  he / him. tall, elegantly curled smoke tortoiseshell chimera with intense salt blue eyes. his structure sings a feral sort of hymnal, presenting an almost dangerous sort of beauty veiling what monstrosities lie beneath the ivory of his skull. jutting jawline and a squared chin, sunken cheeks drawing a shadow beneath high, sharp cheekbones with tall, angular ears settling high atop the flatter slope of his cranium. he is beautiful ; lucifer in the eyes of an envious god. for all his looks, his expression is lax, void — corpse - eyed and hollow until spoken to, sparking the undead to life. he is tall, lean, cut - glass pretty ; he smiles with too - many teeth, blackened frostbite pulling back his maw to bear canines setn beneath curling whiskers, pantomime skeletal. a predatory gracefulness from the lines that press the image of exhaustion beneath ice water hues to the slow, sure gait in which he walks, nameless strength poorly concealed within the hard lines of his physique. descending from a heritage of overtyped oriental shorthairs, cicadastar stands unnaturally tall amongst his peers, always holding himself with a tragic sort of grace ; poised, prim, and uncannily aware of how he appears.
  
  ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── smells like wet moss and meadowland thunderstorms.
  ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── notoriously paranoid and closed off, cicadastar will tend to lie, assume, and jump to conclusions whenever it suits him. any 'suspicious' ic actions he witnesses or hears about will have a strong effect, and will have ic consequences! if you're unsure of an interactions outcome, please feel free to send a dm!
  
  no character opinions represent my own.​
  
  
• " speech "​
  
  
  

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[BEEFANG]

₊· ͟͟͞͞➳˚❥ The little smoke molly had been rather excited to see her father coming back to camp with his catch, Beekit being a little more happy about Cicadastar returning rather than the fish itself. She knows that Cicadastar's busy with leader duties despite the mornings and nights spent together where the entire family is curled up for slumber or whenever he's returned to simply watch over her and her littermates yet she feels fortunate enough to share and spend time with her father. His bottlebrush tail curled loosely around her while he skillfully begins to remove the scales from the fish creating a pile of them, her bicolored gaze trained onto these little scales that shimmer underneath the light of the sun and making them look like treasure. Beekit's attention shifts when her father begins to talk to her and tell her that the fish he's currently removing scales from is called a trout, her mind focuses more on the word he says. "Liebe..." Of course, it isn't the first time she hears it but it still fascinates her and the other odd words that slip from her fathers tongue.

"Yes, I have!" She says after focusing back onto their conversation, she has seen plenty of these trout and other fish that her clanmates often bring to camp after coming back from hunting. Perhaps she'd take more of Cicadastar's time to ask what the other fish on the pile are called but that would be saved for another time and it was true that her attention was easier to keep seeing as both of her littermates weren't present though she did sneak a glance behind her shoulder to see if they had risen from their slumber or tried to anyways, seeing as her fathers tail was in the way. She watches with owl-sized eyes as she notices the blood blossoming from where the scales have been removed and can't help but inwardly grimace, she has mixed feelings about this blood yet she keeps attentive when Cicadastar bows his head to take a bite from the trout.

She nods her understanding to the mottled tom and her eyes trained onto his paw after he finished speaking pushing the pile of scales into the puddle. Suddenly, the kitten fur on her body begins to rise from amazement and the colors that began to glisten from the pool of water completely taking her breath away. A small paw tempted to reach forward and hook one of the scales up like the worms Iciclefang had taught them to hunt prior but her small paws remain at her side, Beekit had never seen something so breathtaking and as beautiful as this. It makes her proud of being born a Riverclan cat to experience such a special occasion with the king of the river himself, truly, no other clan would have something as precious and dear to her than this.

"Try a bite and add a scale."

The river princess nods her head one more looking at the trout before her and she uses one of her thorn-like claws to hook underneath one of the scales like her father had done before taking a bite, it's a little tricky at first but she manages to remove it and blood pools from where the scale had once been. She sets it aside for the time being before dipping her head to the fish and taking a bite from it, Beekit drawing back as she began to slowly chew and the taste of it was definitely different from the taste of the milk she had been so accustomed to. Her snout wrinkling at the textures but not from disgust, no, she was getting used to it whilst she made sure to thoroughly chew it as her father had told her.

A droplet of blood or two rolling off her chin and falling onto the ground as she continued once she feels like she had chewed it well, she swallows and swipes her tongue across her jaws. The taste of the trouts meat lingering in her mouth along with the blood, her eyes focused on the fish for a moment or two before looking up at Cicadastar with a toothy grin "It's really good!" She'd still have to get used to it but now came her reward, she tried not bouncing in excitement about being able to add a scale to the stardust-like pool that laid in front of them. Beekit glancing up at her father as if asking for his approval and if he did, she would draw her scale closer before mimicking the sweep of her fathers arm and brush it into the puddle adding to the rest of the scales that laid at the bottom.

Soon, she'd be able to eat a fish without worrying about the scales but... A small part of her knows that she may revisit this place from time to time. It would hold a special place in her heart. ​

[ KILL EM WITH THE MOJO, CINEMATIC SLO-MO ]​

 

[CICADAFLIGHT]

✦₊ ⊹—— he watches his father's demonstration from his little divot beneath the nodding fern-heads—he has rested here as they lifted dewy in the fullness of greenleaf and he rests still as they dip low with the sun's wilt. a small circle grows dark in the dusty earth beneath from his curled tangle of limbs, the place where he lurks to watch with four eyes - two his own, two belonging to the wings pressed behind his ears, their pale bases nesting in tangled curls. here is where the boy watches the camp; here is where he is peaceful, where his mind doesn't seem ready to split into fragmented glass as it does under the hot light of the clan's attention. the ache nestling in his jaw is minimal as he rests his head on white paws and watches.

the leader's initial assumption had been correct - the boy had spent the better part of the morning curled into his pa's stout limbs, catching up on the midnight hours lost to nightmares. some time after his sister's spot in their nest had grown cool, though, he'd slunk forth to let kithood bleed away beneath the ferns. the siblings are three moons soon and apprenticeship is a looming behemoth on the horizon, but he does little to make precious the last moments of kithood.

beekit is a softer creature than he, however, able to open up to their fathers and love easily in a way he simply isn't - something he has become painfully aware of as the sun set on his childhood, on smokethroat's residence in camp during the daylight hours. a dark tongue roils and presses against the needling teeth, the pearly canines, that at some point have settled into his gums. hunger is warm and scraping in his concave stomach as he watches his father display the juicy fish to beekit; the boy has, for much of his brief childhood, known mostly a hunger for sweet milk-scent—this is different. this is a rougher thing, something more suited to cicadakit, a feral hunger that keeps his eyes on the stringy meat of the fish instead of the glittering puddle into which his father tosses the scales.

finally he pulls deer limbs from the earth and lurches over - he's begun to imitate his father's postured walk, make it his own in a way that isn't quite right. the result is a strange mix, an overly controlled manner of walking that places him something closer to a young fawn or a snake on its belly in the grass than a child. he catches the tail end of his sister's amazement and excitement, her wide and carefree grin, though his eyes focus on the blood that seeps from the fish's limp body and the scent of its flesh rising in the warming air. the boy rasps a greeting, low and wary in the brightness of camp, "hi, bee. hi, father."

a glance at the two and he looks towards the trout with eyes bright with hunger, murmuring, "can i try?"

I AM GOD (✦) 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑰 𝑵𝑬𝑬𝑫 𝑻𝑶 𝑩𝑬 𝑫𝑬𝑺𝑻𝑹𝑶𝒀𝑬𝑫

• ooc: ——
  
• disclaimer: it's important to note that cicadakit is not always in a stable state of mind. his view of the world may not always be accurate to objective reality, which may include seeing things that are not genuinely there, reading motivations or thoughts from actions that are not actually implied, and making assumptions or jumping to conclusions. this is not an attempt at metagaming, powerplaying, or mischaracterization, and is not legitimately true or correct to reality or what your characters actually think or believe.
  
  it will always be noted in the post if he is seeing something that isn't actually there. all opinions & thoughts are ic only and do not reflect my thoughts and opinions as a writer.
• 
  — cicadakit
  — he/him ; kit of riverclan ; 2 ☾s
  — "speech" ; thoughts ; attacks
  — penned by dejavu
  

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[SALTSTING]

Seeing Cicadastar with his litter has stirred something within Saltsting that he has carefully repressed. For moons it has been buried– a hole, a longing. One that he knows is beneath him. He had not met his father until the moons of his childhood were nearly beyond him. They had no official apprenticeship then, but his bones were sturdy and his mind prepared. What he learned of him was through his mother. What he witnessed of him, as immutable as the shadows. Cicadastar was much the same yet more tangible for it. Perhaps it was that he was here at all. That there were no borders to separate them. If he had not turned his back on them as the clans formed, would he have had this too? What does SkyClan teach their kittens? What might he have learned of walled gardens and scaling fences, of escape and freedom?

What is it they will learn from their fathers, here?

This is not a wholly practical lesson. The flesh and the hide that their teeth will tear through, the meals that they will soon eat in full — that, of course, is important, but suddenly there are lights dancing about the puddle and Saltsting...is enthralled. His head cocks. Dark eyes soften more than one might expect of him. There is something far-off and questioning in his attention, and eventually he offers quiet words: "I had not thought of scales in this way." A frightening admission for one who thinks of everything, yet how was he to know? How could he have considered their beauty, if he only ever saw their utility?

Cicadakit seems to starve, a thing unfolding upon itself, and he will not intrude here. The warrior simply sits, and watches, and wishes.

 "𝘐 𝘋𝘖𝘕'𝘛 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘌," 𝘐 𝘚𝘈𝘠, 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎𝘓𝘠, 𝘈𝘚 𝘐 𝘊𝘈𝘙𝘌 𝘋𝘌𝘌𝘗𝘓𝘠  ╱╱ 8.08.2023 ˊˎ＜

• ooc: —
• ✦　　. 　 ˚　.  SALTSTING. FORMERLY UNDECIDED. HE - HIM OR THEY - THEM. YOUNG WARRIOR OF RIVERCLAN. SEXUALITY ﹖ PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ——
  
  
  ——  a black smoke with low white and dark brown eyes. his purebred father lent him much of his structure, with the oriental shorthair's characteristic angular features and large ears alongside a tall, lean frame, yet it is his mother's genes that rounded him out, adding strength to his shoulders and toughness to his paws. a kittypet and a colony cat, and saltsting is something entirely new.
  

  ✦ IMPORTANT NOTE. saltsting is touch averse and very vocal about it. icly, riverclanners should be aware of this. repeatedly touching him without the necessary comfort level will leave him with a poor opinion of any character.

• "speech"

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