private THE WOLF AND THE LAMB ✦ smokestar

[CICADAFLIGHT]

"Have you ever had to kill anyone?"

Cicadapaw approaches his father deep in the recesses of a scarlet night, last dregs of blue sky draining down towards the dying sun. It smolders on the horizon, bloodying the sky and burning up the clouds, mirroring his father's scorching eye and reflecting fire into his own. The river is transformed into a blazing stream of embers, reflecting crimson on the horizon, a downpour of claret onto the sandy shores where he'd once idly played. It's as though every last crystal of his father's ice has melted away in great arterial spurts of glacial water, draining away to make room for Smokestar's kingdom of fire.

Smokestar. The name is bitter ash coating his tongue. It sounds as distant as the faraway stars, Pa stolen away from him by their dispassionate ancestors. Nine more lives to spend with Cicadapaw and his siblings is only nine more lives they'll watch him lose. The willow den, newly cleansed, is bathed in carmine veins twisting down to its gnarled roots and the crevasse that, impossibly, had once been full of light and kitten-fluff. Cicadapaw steps in, half drawn in shadow and half in the blood-drenched sunset. Smokestar's eye looks back at its kin, oozing amber, and so does Cicadastar's in shards of cut glass.

He doesn't bother with a proper greeting, instead launches forth the question barbed in thorns and perfumed of rose. Cicadapaw doesn't know what his father hides behind that drowning ember of an eye. He doesn't think of it. He only thinks of a scrawny back beneath his paws, a bucking spine and frantic frothing bubbles, bile clouding the water. Of the way that thin shape had gone limp and still, drifting in a puddle of its own blood, the feeling of its life draining away under his magpie claws. Of the taut chest and sweating pawpads, of the terrible elation.

Cicadapaw waits for his father's answer with eyes too old for his body.

appearing unsightly ✦ ( with devils inside me )

• @Smokestar !!

• 

• 

  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.

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[SMOKESTAR]

—————————————————————⊰★⊱————————————————————
The shadow that stretches across him in his nest is long, twisted, a wire figure draped in cobwebs, a pool of dark salt swill absorbing him in its shade.
Horror clutches him, mottled black and white fur in a looming figure at the mouth of the den; neck too long and all legs. It takes a moment too long to blink to brief fear from his gaze when he realizes he is not being visited by some warped specter but his own kit; gangly and awkward still in growing limbs.
Smokestar exhales the breath that lodged in his throat with a sigh and it is then he takes in the question asked. The terror is replaced by tired annoyance, what a thing to ask so late in the day when most are burrowing into nests to sleep for the night and the camp is basked in a bisque blue and purple sheen.
"...come here..." His tail flicks, gestures for the apprentice to join him in his nest so he doesn't have to get up and for a moment its familiar and comforting to have one of his children there again - nowhere near as small as they once were, but nice all the same.
"...I have." He answers quietly, once Cicadapaw had gotten comfortable and he stares at the back wall of the willow den with a narrowed orange eye - the most recent being the very blood that shared within the wiry young tom's body; he tastes copper again at the memory, his mate broken at his paws, put down by his own teeth. Salt ice eyes wide and wild as the life faded, he wonders if he regretted, he wonders if he was even aware...or if it had all been planned.

"You and Beepaw killed a rogue...but it was for your clan, to defend, to take back, to protect yourselves and your clanmates. Never regret fighting for the life you have..."
The first time he killed a cat was a stray in twolegplace, he was young and inexperienced with his claws and too much force was applied to a threat. The other loners avoided him after, his pelt smelled of blood, he'd kill for no reason, they murmured warnings to one another and would not be caught alone. They eventually ganged up on him and chased him to a different place with less pickings and more struggle. "...sometimes killing causes more problems than letting a cat live, but if you're in danger, never hesitate."

——✘ when does ripple become a tidal wave ———✘ when does a candle become a flame

• OOC can go here.
• 
  
  
  Smokestar
  —⊰⋅ Leader of RiverClan
  —⊰⋅ He/Him
  "SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
  —⊰⋅ Black tom w/vitiligo & one orange eye.
  

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