- May 7, 2023
- 195
- 29
- 28
The Sandy Hollow is uncertain beneath his paws, the air cold and stagnant. There's been this...weight stuck to the back of his head since the announcement. Looming there, a painless headache. The day in-between passes in some vague facsimile which he can't fully remember, time spent thinking about both everything and nothing at all. Patrolling, hunting, training—it seems normal, looks normal, but the dulled edges of him have resharpened in doubt and fear and he can't quite slot himself back into actually being normal. He passes into the new dawn with a heavy mind until Scorchstorm pierces him with blazing eyes like a knife to tackboard and says: "Spar me." Without complaint, Sedgepounce obliges.
She stands before him now lost in thought. A frown creases her mottled face. She's troubled, clearly—more so than Sedgepounce even has a right to be. Sunstar was his leader, Wolfsong his medicine cat, but neither were ever his mentor, no matter how much he'd once wished otherwise. The betrayal stings anyway. He keeps trying to wrack his brain for why. Why would they just leave? When he puts himself in Sunstar's paws, he sees a version of himself that gave limb and life for a clan that betrayed him, one after another. He sees Wolfsong nearly dying in service to that ungrateful clan. And yet Sedgepounce can't see himself abandoning them for it, despite it all.
Does that make him foolish?
When he sees Scorchstorm snap out of her own reverie, he sinks into some ready stance, head lowered and shoulders squared. The sand scrapes beneath his paws. "Show me what you got," Sedgepounce says mirthlessly. The rueful smile that glances across his maw is made dull by the overcast sky.
// @SCORCHSTORM