private thin smoke without flame | slate

[Cherryblossom]

It'd be embarrassing to approach with caution. @SLATE 's tough hide did not need it, and Cherryblossom had nothing to fear from his judgement anymore. Still, when she pokes her head into the hazel bush, it's a noticable time after most others have come to deliver condolences. She has none to deliver though.

"Slate?" she calls, making up for her trepidation with an assured stride to where her former mentor rots. "Hi." Moon yellows flicker over his form, trying to scry his devasting injury from the mass of tarry fur and glistening poultices. It'd been for someone else, she hears. A daylight warrior. Funny. She would've thought the only cat Slate would give his life for would be her mother, but it turns out he had the self-sacrificing heart of a clan cat all along. The thought is relieving and irritating in equal measures.

She hunkers down next to him, pointing out a forming mat near his backside. "You look like they just dragged you off the Thunderpath." The calico starts to work at it with her tongue while he retorts something. Maybe his campbound stint would've dulled his tongue as well as his claws, and there wouldn't be a rebuke, but she doubts it. "How much has Orangestar visited?" Cherryblossom asks, deceptively casual.​

 

[SLATESNARL]

The voice of his former apprentice, unexpected and sudden, rouses the charcoal warrior's attention and prompts a tilt of his head in her direction. Cherryblossom pads over, eventually taking a position next to him and addressing him with the same sarcastic wit she's always possessed. It's somehow grown less irritating since she graduated; maybe it's the fact that Slate doesn't have to deal with it every day anymore. He hasn't talked to Cherryblossom in a while, actually. "... Thanks." The gruff male responds to her remark about his disheveled appearance ( something he's painfully aware of ).

Slate slightly tenses once the tortoiseshell she-cat engages in a common social behavior amongst clan cats, grooming; he typically does not partake in sharing tongues so the gesture is rather foreign. However, he does not complain, and he instead furrows his brows when Orangestar is brought up. "Uh... a few times, I guess?" Do you know, too? Had Orangestar told her, or any of her children for that matter, about her pregnancy? Slate figures that it's something that would have to be addressed sooner or later... as well as the fact that she had a new mate. None of Orangestar's kits had approached him about the matter which led him to believe that they were ignorant to that fact as well.

Subconsciously dreading the idea of Cherryblossom confronting Slate about his involvement with her mother, he tries to attempt moving the conversation along, "So, er, how's huntin' been?" Genuinely, he's curious as to how she's re-settling into the rank of a regular warrior. Slate supposes that it's not much different from when he had stepped down from the position of lead warrior; things were largely the same, just less responsibility and authority.

𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘 ✹ .　 + 　˚ 　　 · 　 𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

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  a warrior ( formerly lead warrior ) of skyclan, slate is forty-two moons. he is mated to orangestar. he is a hulking longhaired maine coon with black fur and prominent reddish rusting on his chest and belly. scars litter his form but are prominently present on his face. ✦

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[Cherryblossom]

Orangestar has been here more than once, it seems. "You guess." Maybe she'd take it as a sign that Slate takes her mother's visits for granted, but then again, the exact number of clandestine rendezvouses she'd enjoyed with Lupinesong was lost to her a long time ago. It's different with Edenberry though, guility so. Hanging out with her closest friend was only another beat in the natural rhythm of life, but her escapades with her mate to-be were intentional, staying stark in her mind afterwards.

The image of her mother and Slate, painted by rumors and unchecked imagination, resembles her and Lupinesong more than her and Edenberry: a situation hovering between truth and falsehood, never to be fully realized on account of greater circumstances. What else would explain the faint elderberry in his fur and nothing else? Cherryblossom, at least, can explain away the lupine scraps in her pelt by virtue of bordering a nest with the source.

Slate's attempts to awkwardly steer the conversation away from the iceberg actually work, for a moment at least. "I'm as good as you taught me," she says with a shrug, which is to say "merely passable." Her lengthy forays alone meant she was bringing back a bit more nowadays, but she's nowhere near the efficiency of, say, Figfeather. "It's too bad you're missing the last of the Greenleaf prey." She works out a small knot with a claw, and then adds, "I guess you get it delivered straight into your mouth anyway." She'd say it's not her fault for jabbing at him; his ego is simply too big to get around without poking.​