CW:HALLUCINATIONS, VIOLENT DEATH, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE, MENTIONS OF KIDNAPPING.This thread is the culmination of close to ten months of storytelling between Ghostwail and Thriftfeather and will probably touch on most of the topics and themes explored in their story. Reader discretion for all posts is advised. Ghostwail will actively be hallucinating during much of the following thread.
They are lost. For the first time in over a dozen moons, they are lost again, together, but so frightfully alone. The world spins, end over end, always turn beyond what the woman can comprehend. Sootstar is gone. In her place, in her rightful place, stands a traitor and imposter, a coward playing the role of dragon-slayer. She hates him, oh how she hated him. His face was burned into the backs of her sightless eyes, a swirl of golden betrayal. Oh, why couldn't she have been more proactive when she had the chance! She could have saved WindClan from its own demise if she were not so distracted.
She was stuck with it now, her distraction. It did not cling to her as it once did - mewling and staring in hopeless abandon - but it still lingered, a distant reminder of what she had lost. Her son, her only child, birthed beneath a thorn bush to be a WindClan warrior. He had been destined to be a WindClan warrior. Sootstar had blessed with his name, his clan, his purpose. What Sootstar deigned him to be, he was, but now... now Sootstar was gone. The child was useless, an utter failure against the tide of perfidity that had swept up their home.
She was a failure. If only she had tried harder to keep him out of the paws of soft-hearted cowards and fools. If only, if only, if only.
Her paws no longer skimmed across the well-worn desire paths of the moors. Instead, they were lost, roaming a heartless expanse of... something. She could not tell hide nor hair of the place that ill-begotten ShadowClanner had lead them to. The most she could divine now was a pool perhaps a whiskers-width away from her face, cool against her muzzle as she took a few gluttonous gulps to soothe her aching throat. Perhaps if she could see, she could have tried her hand at catching some form of sustenance in the depths of the water, but alas, all that met her mutilated gaze was darkness.
Still, she imagined herself trying. Her golden fur matted with blood and dirt, her amber eyes ringed with crimson - bloodshot from lack of sleep and food. Her paws, supposedly tipped in white, now a dingy shade of gray. Maybe if she were in better shape, she would wade out into the pool to rid herself of the crimson and gray that stained her vision. Maybe then, she would feel whole again. @Thriftfeatherspeech is in #730000
Never before had Thriftfeather thought himself capable of contempt, but the whole of his life has been a testament to how he can be pushed into anything. He's never needed a powerful shove—the lightest tap was enough to send him spiraling to the wrong track, with exception to this. Whether this is his own fault or Ghostwail's, Thriftfeather doesn't know. He's long since learned how to avoid thorns; the time has come to pluck one out.
The decision feels, for the first time, like Thriftfeather's own.
Snow lingers only in shadows. The resulting snowmelt softens the ground and collects in temporary pools. Watching Ghostwail hunkered over one now, Thriftfeather feels that new contempt climb in his throat. It feels old; it feels ancient. He's killed for less. Anything is killing for less than this. If contempt had been the only thing Thriftfeather felt towards Ghostwail, he wouldn't be watching her so closely now. For every thought that tells Thriftfeather now, there is one that follows in the immediate aftermath: this is the last time you'll see her alive.
He creeps closer, so low that his pale belly skims the ground and his shoulders make rolling mountains on his back—he's learned to be fluid, and it hadn't been Ghostwail to teach him. She rises from her drink, and water digs downward tracks in her fur. The drips send ripples over the pool. At his angle, Thriftfeather can see her reflection shiver before it settles.
Now, he thinks, and rather than a thought in contradiction, his heart instead rabbits into speed.
The burgeoning thaw smells just as sweet as Thriftfeather thought it would. He eases even closer, his mouth parted to catch the scent. He wants to remember it—he wants to remember when he finally knew. When he is near enough to leap, something snaps below him. Its brittle sound is impossibly loud in the otherwise dim quiet. Thriftfeather freezes—it isn't fear that halts him. Ghostwail has her warning.
Speak, his mind snarls. He remains perfectly still; even his breath is held. This is your last chance.
DUSKCLAN WARRIOR ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 12 MOONS ✦ TAGS
A twig snaps, a singular sound to dispel her daydreams. He is here, most likely to taunt her again with his insane, prattling drawl and stupid threats. A hiss is expelled from her maw, the sort of annoyed spat she reserved only for dimwits and hooligans like him. "Are you happy, fool? We have lost. Our queen is gone, our purpose is shot. I suppose you'll run along to your greener pastures, hm? You always were a faithless mongrel."
She could almost see his dark tabby stripes swaying in the snow, a snake's coloration layered in heavy fur and muscle. Even his long tail seemed serpentine in her mind's eye, a warning sign that Sootstar had refused to see in life, but she knew. She had always known. "I have killed cats stronger than you for less. I have slaughtered cats like you for sport. Weak-willed, dreary-eyed. Don't think that just because we have been driven from our home that I will not spill your blood again. You know full well that I do not need the safety of WindClan to finish what I have started, beast."
Her jaws are parted in a snarl now, sightless eyes sweeping the area before her. The brown tabby in her mind's eye twists closer, taunting her with silence, cackling without a sound in that awful dogged affect he was cursed with. Damned be the mongrel, damn him and the stars he had chosen over their queen! If only she could feel his stinking breath on her, she would tear his throat out before he had the chance to exhale again.
"I should have killed you too when I had the chance!" She screeches into the quiet, her voice reverberating off the sparse foliage that caged her in with the dog. Perhaps for the first time since her ceremony, Sootstar's naming made sense. A ghost of a warrior, a shambling corpse of a soldier, screaming into the void - a madwoman, foretelling doom in an empty forest with a single other soul to realize her morbid prophecy. speech is in #730000
Ghostwail’s face splits into a hiss before she speaks—spitting threats and insults to the world. He listens because the world doesn’t. None of it matters. Thriftfeather’s ears shift atop his head, catch on the word again, and at once Thriftfeather knows that her words aren’t for him. They are meant for someone else, a face Thriftfeather has never seen, a scent he doesn’t know. He exhales long, and resumes breathing.
He slinks a step closer and rises properly, unafraid. She’s pathetic, like this. It is hard for Thriftfeather to fathom that he had been so deathly frightened of her for so long—for all that she had once been capable, she is now this. Someone to pity and condemn and, ultimately, someone to dispose of. The only thing that she knows how to do is ruin—him and Ghostwail are alike in that regard. His faults and hers are overlayed the same way young roots will follow the scored lines in dry ground.
Anticipation draws Thriftfeather up until he is standing on his hindlegs. How often has he come down upon his own clanmates like this? How many more times would he need to? He doesn’t drop—not yet. This close, Thriftfeather can smell her beneath the grime her pelt carries. He remembers being held in her teeth, the sour fear that followed, and once again stills where he is.
Kill it swiftly, before it has a chance to bite you.
He has a chance now. The whole of his body is a tense line. Ghostwail could bite at any moment—her threats are not empty. Thriftfeather knows this. He knows this better than anyone else.
“Be calm,” Thriftfeather murmurs. Even now, it sounds like a plea, “Be calm—there are good things coming for you. I’ll—I’ll show you where Sootstar is. She’ll be—she’s risen again and she’s sought you,” He smiles reassurance despite knowing that Ghostwail will never see this comfort, and wavers on his hindlegs without falling.
DUSKCLAN WARRIOR ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 12 MOONS ✦ TAGS
The snarl froze. Then it began to melt, sloughing away with the gentle murmurings of recognition. It is not sanity that dawns on her - no, Sootstar's dog could never claim peace of mind, even when her master was alive to cull her most unimaginable urges - but a form of contentment. Comfort.
"Sootstar." she breathes, heady and pleading. Always faithful, forever following. She had known that her queen had been stronger than the stars had provisioned, she had just known it from the moment she saw her - phoenix-like - rising from her corpse to tear down that useless idiot that had called himself a leader.
"We should go immediately." She moves to stand, a lurching, lilting movement punctuated by need. Sootstar would need them - to fell Granitepelt or Sunstride or any cat who dared claim her throne in her brief absence. It barely registered in her fractured mind just how the child - man - in front of her knew of such a thing. No, he was merely doing his duty to his queen, to his mother.
"You are such a good warrior. You will be rewarded without measure for your piety, my love. I can imagine it now. My son. Deputy of WindClan. Sootstar will be so grateful for your faith." Giddiness tinges her words, twisting the monotoned drawl into something unnatural. Strange. It is unlike her to be happy, though similarly, it is unlike her to be sweet.
"My son..." she repeats low in her throat. "How lucky am I to have you as a son..."speech is in #730000
He doesn't look up; above him, the sky is a blue, placid expanse. There isn't anything for him there—not anymore. It's reflex, now. Thriftfeather drops on top of Ghostwail. The impact jolts something awake in Thriftfeather. At once, he remembers the uncertain, wavering anger that has brought him here. This feels worse than had it been a complete ambush—he prays that Ghostwail feels the same betrayal as he does, just as he hopes that she isn't aware at all.
It shouldn't be this easy, this rote. Water splashes as Thriftfeather wrestles her down. His apologies don't start, he feels them pound against the cage of his teeth, but he's biting into Ghostwail's throat now and ignoring the familiar tear of meat. He hears a sound—a gasp for air, the start of a word, a visceral and meaningless noise—and tries not to stall himself in endless wonder as to what it could truly be.
The possibilities shake through his mind regardless.
Ghostwail stills. They both still. Overturned silt mushrooms beneath the water's surface, turning it from once-clear to brown. The substantial amount of blood that ribbons from Ghostwail's neck fades into nonexistence the further it drifts from her, like smoke rising into wind. Thriftfeather doesn't think—he drags her by her wound as she had his, stepping backwards and straining from her weight, until she is only half-submerged.
His apologies don't start. Thriftfeather shudders out a breath and drops Ghostwail completely, pushes himself into a proper posture on wavering paws. She can't see him anymore—she hasn't seen him for some time, and yet the habit remains. Thriftfeather feels impossibly lighter—a breeze could catch his feather-like weight and carry him elsewhere. He's found no more direction, no absolution, no threaded bravery.
Stars forgive her, Thriftfeather thinks with more contempt and venom than he thought himself capable. Stars forgive her, because while Thriftfeather waits at Ghostwail's stilled side for the breakdown he knows is looming, he knows he won't.
DUSKCLAN WARRIOR ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 12 MOONS ✦ TAGS
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CW: HALLUCINATIONS, VIOLENT DEATH, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE, MENTIONS OF KIDNAPPING. This thread is the culmination of close to ten months of storytelling between Ghostwail and Thriftfeather and will probably touch on most of the topics and themes explored in their story. Reader discretion for all posts is advised. Ghostwail will actively be hallucinating during much of the following thread.
