private the soil of a man's heart is stonier — periwinklebreeze

[cygnetstare]

A skeleton seems to cast a long shadow in WindClan's graveyard, as though it's freshly clawed through one of the weathered headstones; Cygnetstare's pale and deathly-thin form sways slightly, from the wind and in their normal drunken, not-quite-dumb way. Over the hovering cloud of death-scent natural to any graveyard a thicker odor interrupts, emanating from the tunneler in greasy waves of potent grave-smell, distinct even against that of the windswept graveyard. Fresh gusts of prairie-breeze ruffle Cygnetstare's feathery fur, the languid smell of stale blossoms poisoning the dusk air; they're everywhere. Mounded on the headstones, swept into ditches and gullies, fluttering through the air; the long-rotten flowers, a pagan offering to that unspoken god, death. Inescapable, merciless, with a reach longer than the sane mind can dream; hidden in every stumble, every wrong turn in a tunnel, every whisper of fox-scent on the stale dirty breeze.

Oh, other offerings freckle this dooryard of the reaper, chiming along the scythe's edge; glittering stones flecked in an eye's gleam, limp and oily feathers, slick and rotten clumps of prey-fur, but none of them have that potent imprint of the decaying flowers. How fitting, indeed, as clasped in those pale and guileless jaws is a bundle of the moor-flowers, their colors blunted by the setting sun's bloody rays; a great bushel wound in nature's gift, set gently down in front of a tiny headstone. It's dark as all of them are, but older than some of the graves; sanded smooth from the undying winds of the earth, lichens and mosses and those other crops of the dead crawling up its side as dirt and grass begin to weave a carpet over it. Cygnetstare's pale paw reaches forward, brushes back some of the earth's overtakings, revealing a crude inscription blunted by seasons but barely able to be felt with a pawpad; a dragging claw-mark, only lightly scraped into the soft rock. The effort it would've taken to painstakingly inscribe it, however, would be monumental to a cat, leaving claws bloodied indeed.

A sound disturbs Cygnetstare from this silent graveside post; their pulpy pink gaze shoots upward, glaring into the dusk, searching for its source. Guilt washes over her, tar-thick and tidal; an eternal ebb and flow, although she doesn't quite know why. She doesn't remember doing anything bad, and she's not now; simply visiting a relative's grave. It's another cat, at a nearby headstone, bent against the wind to face the grave; Cygnetstare moves eel-slick towards this fellow mourner, silent in their windswept footfalls, watching with mingled curiosity and secrecy. They feel dirtied somehow to be seen by another in the oppressive silence of the graveyard, exposed; a private dialogue between her and death, interrupted.
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// ooc: set it at dusk & wrote it as peri already being there, if that's alright! @Periwinklebreeze.

 

[Periwinklebreeze.]

❀​❀ I FEEL SCARED AND I'M STARTING TO SINK ❀❀​
periwinklebreeze | 10 months | demi-boy | he/they | physically medium (pacifist) | mentally easy | attack in bold #ccccff

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It is with a tendril of delicate purple blooms clutched tightly in his jaws that periwinkle visits the graveyard, clear eyes full of sorrow. He's braved the horseplace for his prize, but it had been worth it - today is a special day, an important moment. He knows this path like the back of his paw - too many of those he loved now lie here, sleeping silently beneath the earth. Some aren't even buried here, he thinks - only placeholders for bodies never found, a reminder that he'll never know for sure if they're out there somewhere. He hopes they are, even if the thought of them having left him behind in that way hurts nearly as much.

It is one particular marker he visits today - one with the same name as the flowers held ever so gently in the boys jaws. Wisteriapaw. A bittersweet flood of memories; the love of a brother, tainted by a fragile relationship that had never gotten a chance to recover. He'd never gotten the answer's he'd wished - is unsure he ever will now that his surly brother has gone and joined starclan. What had he done for wist to hate him so? He still remembers the days spent in their kithood, happy and unbothered, so why had their last few moments been so awful? Why had it seemed like all they'd done since becoming apprentices was fight.

He thinks his last words to him were angry too - scolding him over his treatment of vulturemask, choosing his brother-by-choice over his brother-by-blood. "Y-you know, we g-g-g-got our w-warrior names today. Y-you would've g-g-gotten y-yours too," he says softly as he places the stem down, paws and tail tucking neatly as he sits, head bowed. He doesn't speak any differently than he would on any other day, voice gentle and lilting, as though the soft-spoken boy is having just another conversation instead of talking to a ghost long gone. "N-nighty's Night-ing-g-gale now, 'n I'm p-p-periwinkleb-breeze,"

"... I bet if you'd been here, y-you would've g-g-g-got you're name w-way before us-" he thinks aloud, with a quiet bitter laugh. Wisteria had been the least interested in their traitorous second mother after all, though he'd looked the most like her so perhaps not. But he'd always been so eager to be independent, to become a warrior. It's as he's finally running out of things to say that he hears the sound of something brushing over the earth, and he takes a moment to slowly turn to look.

Periwinkle gaze meets pink, and for a moment a flicker of unsettlement appears in his eyes as he takes in her approach. He wonders if she's heard - if she will use this to judge him like the rest of his clanmates. His pelt twitches uncomfortably in the silence as he prickles with unease and uncertainty - cygnetstare is someone he does not have even the least idea of how to approach in conversation, or even if he should. Perhaps he should run while he still can-?
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[cygnetstare]

The tunneler pauses as the voice grows distinct in her approach, standing with fur whipped by the wind in a graveside tableau; a cat she's seen little of, having spent much of her time underground or out in the cover of darkness. An unexpected presence, certainly, in this grim forest of dark stones—in all her visits to silently tend these paths of death, Cygnetstare rarely sees another living soul. Her feathery mane ruffled in these twilight gales, she listens, head tilted and wide viscera gaze fixed on Periwinkle breeze; it's impossible to tell whether sympathy softens those bleached eyes. Her thin and tattered ears take in the stammering narrative, one half of a conversation relegated to this side of that hateful veil.

The other cat's pearlescent periwinkle eyes meet her vacantly staring ones, the pause stretching like a vast salt desert between them as Cygnetstare contemplates what to do in the silence. Does she return to her own sorrowful marker in a slinking, retreating quiet? Leave the graveyard entirely? The chimera's heard the grieving words of the other warrior, chiming down the high winds to them like the groaning of old ghosts; their bony frame sways in the wind slightly, in that drunken not-quite-right way, as she contemplates still. Finally her skeletal jaws crack open.

"Well. Who brings ya to death's dooryard?" The mew is soft and implacably questioning, strange in its structure; if Periwinklebreeze is careful he might even hear the syntax of his own grief half-mirrored in Cygnetstare's words. But their Northeastern drawl is not shadowed with judgement, with malice; rather sympathy underscores it, a strange curiosity. A feeling of kinship, almost, one that would dissolve like so much smoke in the daylight, in anywhere else other than this fateful scene of this twilit graveyard; a fraternity of bones. The cat slinks closer, tail dragging eellike behind her, gravestench radiating greasily from her fur, and adds, "Must'a been important to ya, ayuh? I don't see too much livin' souls here 'sides from me, most times."
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[Periwinklebreeze.]

❀​❀ I FEEL SCARED AND I'M STARTING TO SINK ❀❀​
periwinklebreeze | 11 months | demi-boy | he/they | physically medium (pacifist) | mentally easy | attack in bold #ccccff

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Cygnetstare does not mock him - only asks, only questions. He gives a slow blink for a moment, taken off guard and uncertain. Did she really not know of his family situation? But then.. as mind wanders, he supposes that even if she had who would've ever thought he'd be visiting wist. "My... my b-brother, w-wisteriapaw," he says slowly, quietly words as soft as his saddened gaze.

"He g-g-got black-cough, 'n died, j-j-just like that," he says simply, in the tone one would use to speak of the weather, but there's something deeper beneath that, something vicious and hysterical. "W-w-wouldn't even g-g-get treated, the m-mousebrain," sometimes, he really hates him - wouldn't it have been better if he'd been the one to die instead? He's certain he would've made a much better warrior after all.

Periwinkle gaze turns fully upon the woman now, and though unsettled he decides that if they're to be conversing anyways he may as well ask. "...and y-you?" he knows little of the black and white molly, only knows that she dredges up the same feelings as his nightmares, as his day-mares. But... she doesn't seem bad, he doesn't think.
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[cygnetstare]

♱—— The half-moon tunneler is an oddity within WindClan—so obsessively loyal she would lay down her life for the Clan (and, unbeknownst to her, nearly will), but without the barbed remarks and sideways glances towards the families of perceived traitors so many others offer. To her, they are not marked by their blood; all are equal in the eyes, of death, after all. One cannot help what one's family has done, and she does not carry the belief that traitorship runs in one's veins like a disease, passed down upon generations. Cygnetstare is faintly aware of Periwinklebreeze's history, but she would not judge him for it; despite her strangeness, despite the hatred that burns in her chest like hellfire for the other Clans, she is pleasant to all.

His brother, then. Dead of blackcough, of the sometimes foolish, sometimes self-sacrificing refusal to seek treatment. She can nearly hear the madness frothing beneath the simple calm of their tone, but she listens nonetheless. When he inquires into her own reason for visiting, turning sad periwinkle eyes on her, she pauses—she comes here often, yes, to tend the graves, but today she was here for something. For someone, really. She knows the grave belongs to her sister, but when she tries to probe further it as though her mind is a foggy day that refuses to reveal anything more.

Unsure, unsteady for once, she simply offers, "Ayuh, that's a damned shame. I'm here for my sister, I 'spose. She died when we were both real young, of a disease. I ain't never seen it before then, don't think I will again .... it made her legs stiff 's a corpse's, her fur fall out ...." She does not perhaps seem to realize she should spare Periwinklebreeze these gruesome details; but again her mind hits a wall and she trails off.

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┏━⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊ OOC ☽ ◯ ☾ INFORMATION₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆━━━━━┓ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎‎‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ☄. *. ⋆♱･ﾟ:

• ooc: sorry for lateness!!
  

• 

• ♱ cygnetstare — for their downy kitten-fur and perceptiveness (or uncanny gaze) she/they ; afab gender apathetic — windclan — tunneler — 16 ☾s —— cygnetstare is a corpselike chimera, split between long albino fur and a short black smoke pelt; their eyes are an unsettling pink. her creepy demeanour distracts from a strange fascination with death and an obsessive loyalty to windclan. —— smells like grave-dirt and blood ; sounds like vc tbd ; speech in #BF959C, thoughts in #000000 —— peaceful / healing powerplay permitted ; attacks/contact in underline ; will start fights ; won't flee unless ordered ; won't show mercy ; will kill or maim —— pansexual panromantic monogamist, single, not looking ; open to friendships, enemies, casual interactions, long-term romance, plotting ; not open to unplanned battles, flings penned by dejavu— desklamp9 on discord for plots

• CYGNETSTARE's BATTLE INFO ——♱
  

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  YES: injuries, scarring
  ASK: maiming, permanent injuries
  NO: killing

  — Small and skinny, hiding sinewy muscle in forelegs and chest from digging. Skilled offensive fighter but limited by size, defense is basically nonexistent; snakelike agility fighter, faster than she looks and slippery. Will try to climb on and move around larger opponents to inflict damage. Extremely brutal despite her size and will always aim to inflict maximum damage; lacks honor and will fight dirty. Battle moves often damage herself as much as her opponent.
  

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  — Will fight to kill and maim. Will start fights. Will not run unless ordered to. Will aim to kill and maim cats regardless of age or rank, including young cats.
  

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  — Her battles will be written very aggressively and she will always aim to kill or seriously injure opponents; this does not mean her hits have to land! I don't mind your character dodging hits; feel free to contact me on-site or on Discord to work out specifics if needed. Will have a harder time against larger cats but keep in mind she is written as a good offensive fighter who aims to kill and/or seriously hurt. I'm not open to her being killed but am willing to discuss maimings (please ask me first though).
  

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  — Their defensive fighting skills are borderline nonexistent. All hits will land except attempts at killing or maiming that haven't been prediscussed. I don't roll for attacks or defense but try to write battles realistically.
  

  current health info:
  physical health:

  95%

  ↳ current injuries: none

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