private they echo me in circles ⟡ spicepurr

[edenberry ?!]

cw; panic attack, descriptions of blood

Every other paw-step burns where they've stubbornly let a prickled wound continue to fester, the sticky feeling of their pelt slick with viscous blood taking up far more room in their brain than concerns about pain. They hunker down at the border, one they'd begged Twitchbolt not to send them to, blinded by the panic that rattles every muscle of their body. The mirror image that stares at them in the high waters looks gaunt... horrified... a nightmarish copy of someone they recognize as themself... but is most decidedly not them. The disconnect spawns a greater panic, sinking their claws into the dampened dirt as their teeth contort into a vicious snarl. "Go... AWAY!" Their paws splash into the river, looking at their toes beneath the translucent surface as crimson clouds roll off of them. The image doesn't change as the ripples settle... a blood crusted, gangly thing, dismayed more and more by the permanence of their features.

They're still for several moments before they feverishly bury their head under the surface, listening to the bubbles of their own subdued scream pop in their ears above the roaring of the shifting river. They run out of breath quickly, and forgetfully, try to take in a breath, startled by the burn of their throat as water takes its open invitation. They pull their head back with a coughing gasp, exerting so much pressure it threatens to become more than a coughing fit.

After a few moments, they peek back at their reflection and feel as if nothing's changed... and it hasn't... there's still so much blood staining alabaster fur. Some of it caught in clotted chunks along their blackened spine. It almost acts like hair-gel, the way it keeps chunks of their pelt stood firmly in messy disarray. All at once the numbness they'd felt dissipates and the sensation of their own skin, their own fur, becomes overwhelmingly suffocating. Their breathing grows shallow, fluttering with a panic they can't calm, they can still feel Mallowlark's weight on their back.

They freeze at the sound of approaching paw-steps, stare fixated on their own paws- when had they turned red again? They'd just washed them off in the river hadn't they? "I can't... I can't get him off," they wail, "It's everywhere... there's blood everywhere and I can't get it off!"

@spicepurr

⟡₊ ⊹ i ll betray you like a man

• 
• -- edenberry / skyclan daylight warrior / any pronouns / 18 moons
  -- mostly white with black pinstripe and green eyes / scarred face and back
  -- color #728c69

​

 

[spicepurr]

She had tried on her own. She left the vigil, left camp, disappeared into the morning air to clean the viscera out of her fur - but she can't. There is no fondness in her blood-stained pelt, no, this is the last of them, to litter her thoughts. She struggles to swipe away the physical memory because of how gross it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Spicepurr battles with her lack of care internally just as she spars with her want to be clean externally, but no amount of reasoning can coax her into drawing her tongue over her shoulder. And no amount of mourning, praying, grieving or simply willing herself to remember the splayed corpses, with flesh rended from bones and looking no different than kit-feasted prey... pushes her to properly weep for the loss.

And so, she walks. The river flows angrily but surely its shores will be kind to her in her vulnerability to it. Surely she can tame it in her numbness, in her simple want to be cinnamon and cream once again. Her paws feel as if they're trudging through sludge, every step under the leaf-fall sun indulging the blood on her back to dry, crunch, and flake off. And yet as she finds the crest of the pinewoods that leads to sparseness, that leads to water - she still must be cleaned.

Green eyes see nothing but the rapids at first. Her heart beats a step too quickly, a stir too much as she imagines being taken by them. A thrill that would be - to feel something whilst struggling to feel anything at all. She'd be swept away, lost to the waters if she weren't careful. There'd be another corpse to find, this time one cinnamon and cream. She blinks as her paws slowly carry her further, the ideation of losing herself to the water thinning with the trees, all until it laps at her toes and she feels nothing once again. She blinks at how hungrily it laps at her, how desperate it is to take her away. It'd be easy, no doubt, but even now she frowns. For even now, fear cannot rattle her heart. The end is shapeless and lies in camp. The end is smeared across the backs of many, the back of her pelt, the back of -

Down the way, she sees an arched red and white pelt. The head of the feline is tucked into the water, and after a few firm blinks, Spicepur stirs finally - she's quick, but she's too far still when the cat perks up once more. They're coughing and soaked and it's only then that she recognizes their shape. Edenberry. Her breath fills her chest, her eyes widen and just as suddenly as the thrill spiked her heart before...

As does anger.

"Are you a fucking idiot!?" Spicepurr shouts. Her paws dig into the ground with every step as she gains on her elder sibling, watching them spit and sputter, cough and wheeze. Watching them do no different than she was tempted to do minutes before. Fury opens the cage around the chimera's heart, drags gnarled claws through her pelt as she rages on. It is as if when she finally meets Edenberry that she will have no withholding, that all of her frustration, confusion, pain, suffering - all of it will cut the other down at once. As if a dam has broken within her and her screams are unrelenting waters.

Before she can shout again, before she can berate and dig into her own swelling emotions - Edenberry speaks. Spicepurr's eyes shrink to pricks as emerald hues cannot move from bloodied paws, as they cry and cry again. Spicepurr looks on to her sibling, to the cat she originally discerned as red and white - how their fur is caked with viscera and loss just as hers is. The anger does not fade, the thrill does not shirk from her shoulders.

She turns. Her maw splits and everything in her stomach leaves her with once wretch, then two. Acid drips from her lips as the water carries away the evidence of her fury. Her fur cannot smooth however she hardly thinks it had ruffled to begin with. She swallows the sharp taste in her mouth, decides the wetness on her cheeks is unfortunate splash back and not shedding tears (but she cannot see Edenberry as clearly anymore, and she cannot reason why.) Dull green eyes fall on her faultering sibling again, and after a few moments, shaky paws try to take up what they always had.

The pieces of Edenberry lie delicately in the gentle paws of Spicepurr. "I've got you," she says in a trembling voice. Her pelt feels heavier as everything comes crashing down on her, all at once with no reprieve. But she presses forth as a sob chokes her out. "I'm - I'm here, Edie. I've got you," she draws her tongue over patches of red and brown, cringes at the taste but does not stop. "I'm here."
​

 

[edenberry ?!]

The sudden sharpness of a voice raised to near-shrieking is enough to pin them to their place, fur bristling despite the way it's caked in what remains of what once was a friend. They sit there, hunched over, struggling to take in more than a wheezed breath, considering the insult flung their way. The owner eludes them... hardly matters... listening to the ring of it bounce around in their head- did it expect an answer? Was it StarClan come to lecture them at last, prove their existence in one fell swoop and deliver divine punishment too? It feels like it... as if the stars themselves rip heavenly air from their lungs and withhold it just out of reach, a tsk, tsk, tsk of disappointment on their collective tongues.

"I always have been," they answer feebly, shaking like an autumn leaf prepared to dive into the wind and fly away to some unknown oblivion. They'd been called clever before... it feels like a mockery now.

They eyes close for a second, furrowed against the pressure of their own teeth grinding against each other to hold back another stuttering sob... when they open again there are nutmeg dappled paws in front of them- when had she gotten here? How long had Edenberry been sitting like this? They suddenly fear they've lost an entire day to their stupor, searching for the sun out of the corner of rheumy eyes. When had to reached so close to the horizon...? Had it been mid-day when they'd left?

They remember a confusion that had permeated their senses when they'd nearly lost their eye, how adjusting to the circumstances had resulted in blind hours, never to be recovered past the overwhelming, suffocating feeling of pain. This was similar... but completely different.

"S-Spice.... Spice I can't.... Can't get it off," they whisper between hitched breaths. What comfort they might normally be able to derive from her scent instead proves a compounding misery, her pelt still stinks of their shared misery... and a sour admission of a stomach freshly disturbed. They tuck their head under her chin, burying their soaked face into her chest with a cry that wracks their chest, "It's stained... it's stained, it'll- it'll never come off."

Their paws wink back in pinkish hue... not nearly so vibrant as they'd perceived just a second ago- was their mind playing tricks on them? At some point she murmurs their name... her name for them... one kept safely between her teeth in a way few others held. Once... and then once more to penetrate the tar they both struggle to navigate. She sets about the grisly task of trying to clear out clotted knots from their fur but they don't give her the chance to get far before their forelimbs shoot up to wrap around her, shifting to rest their head against her shoulder as they feel for the tension of her surprise under her pelt... listening to the quiet sniffles she doesn't realize she's finally let go of.

"Don't... don't do it," they protest, squeezing her, "I won't... I won't let you..." Their lips pull back in a strained snarl, trying not to grow nauseous at the rising ick of their scents, "I'm so s-sorry, please... please don't disappear," they beg, knowing their voice to sound childish and whiny despite their hopes not to. They had already felt her slipping from their grasp and feared that one more night spent avoiding herself- avoiding them- might mean she really vanishes for good.

⟡₊ ⊹ i ll betray you like a man

• 
• -- edenberry / skyclan daylight warrior / any pronouns / 18 moons
  -- mostly white with black pinstripe and green eyes / scarred face and back
  -- color #728c69

​

 

[spicepurr]

Her paws do not find Edenberry when the other admits their folly; "I always have been," breathes into the air for none to hear but the speaker themself. If she heard it... would she agree? Have moons of festering frustration sharpened her edges, roughed up her empathy to the point where she cannot perceive her sibling as anything more than a consistent fault? Spicepurr wouldn't know. In the moment she likely would've felt her mouth dry, her mind blank as she grasped for the tendrils of something to say.

Maybe it's for the better that instead, her mouth is filled with a sour tang and last night's meal. Maybe it's for the better that Edenberry had not recognized her furious screaming in the same way that Spicepurr did not hear their self deprication. No part of her wants to repeat the words that stabbed into the air, to reclaim what she moments before believed in absolute truth. And so as her stomach empties and she carries the mantle of her sibling's fixer, the anger ebbs away. A raw, festering wound takes place where it once was, but it's obscured by the need to be needed, to be helpful - to be a good little sister.

The other stammers as she collects herself. Spicepurr detests the ramblings, the truth that may lie behind the fear. Her pristine furred sibling... their paws are tinged pink from where the waves have already stole away blood and gore. Who's to say that the rest of them won't scrub clean? (And what of her? Second place in her own mind, she only blips a thought of her own condition briefly. It slides from her before she can hold it. She forgets about herself again.) "No - no, it will. We haven't tried," another lapse of her tongue, another bitter taste that causes her to recoil, another wince. "Let's try -" she murmurs through tears again, but before she can make another pass... white and pink paws clasp to her back.

An embrace. Spicepurr stiffens with the surprise, eyes widening for a moment. Her own tears spill, streaking through red, flying back Edenberry's shoulders and drop uselessly on the river's shore. Spicepurr doesn't return the hold, eyebrows pinching as the other weeps and weeps. "Don't do it," they cry. A spike of emotion as she starts with, "What do you mean -" and then... "Don't disappear." Spicepurr is unfamiliar with the cold realization that strikes through her pelt, scores into her fur with the same sticky and dry ribbons that detail it now. Her teeth grit and her eyes water more and more, ultimately until even she cannot deny that she is crying.

Is she a fool? To disappear into the twolegplace night after night, in search of Ari and Miz - her niblings, for the sake of Edenberry? How much had her sibling been hurting since they lost them? How much had they hid from view, just as she did now? She swallows thickly, her stomach churning with the overpowering emotion. Can I stop? A habit formed is often hard to break. Is it so simple to just... never go out again? She thinks of Hawkspine so briefly, his excitement to join her in the asphalt lands, to be with her. She thinks of her niblings, and how much she's missed them. And she realizes in the moment what she's asking herself once more. Can I be selfish?

A shaky breath as she lays her head equally on the other's shoulder, a paw raised to loosely hold Edenberry (one stays centermost, anchoring them to the ground.) "I'm not leaving, Edie," she murmurs. Maybe not now, not whilst her sibling cries and shakes. But later? She mournfully tucks the quiet omission in the ruff of her pelt. "But neither of us can go home like this. We... we have to get clean," she breathes slowly, purposefully, though she sniffles every other halting breath. Her calm only comes to suffer alongside her, to allow Edenberry their full range of fear and terror and sadness. Her own... an aching, pleading wound in itself... will wait. It will always wait.

"It has to come off. You will shed," she says, teeth gritting whilst she withholds a chest racking sob. "You - you will be clean. In time. But now, now... it has to go," you cannot carry him with you forever.
​

 

[edenberry ?!]

Stubbornness that picks different battles, wages the same war. Spicepurr reaches for another attempt just before they can grapple her into stopping and they growl another protestant, "Don't." She feels like frozen marble under their grip, frigid and shaped by sharp picks that take chunks off the nervous, gentle child that had once clung to their heels. What sort of thing had been uncovered... what did the final piece look like? Could it still be shaped... or had too much been taken off? The sudden flutter of her ribs underneath their paws confesses to the misery of the wide-eyed kittypet that's still in there... hurt and aching and struggling to withhold it in the cistern of her heart.

Tears run rivers down their back, try to cut through the muck of their pelt, it feels almost like rainfall. They can almost pretend it is. That neither of them sit here cradling each other and weeping, that StarClan will shed all the necessary tears for them. Just so they could move on... just so they didn't have to wear the stitches of this loss.

"I'm not leaving, Edie."

Relief settles the bristling fur on their spine that can afford to lay flat again and all at once the struggling gasps of short breaths slow... become sturdier. No more characters written out of the chapters of their comedic tragedy... No more (they do not think they can take it). Spicepurr tries to insist they get cleaned up but she hasn't stopped shaking yet... hasn't finished unburying the casket she has buried herself in. It was a good hiding place... several feet below the dirt... but staying down there would only suffocate her.

They tilt their head against her, ear pressed flush against her as they listen for the wild, rabbit-heart underneath the surface and mourn its panicked speed. They couldn't go home like this... they lament that they can't. As much as they loathe the water, maybe the warmth and tender care of Twoleg paws would make it easier. Would scrub it all free, leaving only sweet scented soap behind... but would just as likely see them locked within that house.

"I... I know..." comes in hushed whisper, softer than they meant to speak as they realize their throat grows rawer. "Maybe... if we're careful... we can use the river," they suggest, nose scrunching as they think about the grueling task of licking each of them clean without it. "It's gonna be okay," they promise to the empty air... "You don't need to.... need to touch me," another quiet addition, slowly unraveling themself from her, uncertain if she will release them in turn as soon as she feels she can flee.

The chilling numbness crawls back like a heavy coat as their gaze finds their paws... brows furrowing in thoughtful confusion as they lift their pads to inspect them. "When did.... When did I cut my paw?" It fades from urgency immediately, placing it back down as if it were a figment of their imagination, a tired gaze trailing back towards a tear-soaked face. She is so much the same as that sniveling kit from months ago... and so completely different. "It's okay to cry," they promise, "..... I love you, little sister." They won't let it go unsaid ever again.

Just in case....

Just in case they're the one that doesn't come home.

⟡₊ ⊹ i ll betray you like a man

• 
• -- edenberry / skyclan daylight warrior / any pronouns / 18 moons
  -- mostly white with black pinstripe and green eyes / scarred face and back
  -- color #728c69

​