private THIS WORLD AT TIMES WILL BLIND YOU | scorchstorm

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

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
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[SCORCHSTORM]

Hate and grief have become difficult to distinguish in recent times. It is, perhaps, unfair to wallow in it when the entirety of WindClan feels their recent losses so acutely — perhaps more unfair of Scorchstorm to feel like she's lost another father when Sunstar and Wolfsong's children have lost them for real. But StarClan, it is all she can think about. The fading black and white silhouette, the suppression of her outburst; the quiet, not-so-impermanent goodbyes, the installment of Scorchstar without her daughter's permission.

But they don't need her permission. They don't need to ask, even though it means she will watch her mother die over and over; they don't need to ask, because Scorchstar knew the risks of the job when she took it. They didn't ask, and now Scorchstorm's stomach rolls Sisyphean up the hill each morning, falling away from her each time she smells smoke or hears hounds and can't immediately rest eyes upon her mother.

It is hate, or maybe it is grief, that drives her to Sedgepounce now, claws itching, eyes misting red. The flames of her pelt are washed in mournful gray. Spar me, she had ordered, and he sinks into his ready stance.

She would have asked Sunstar, once upon a time. Maybe it is better that he is gone. If he faced her now, after all, she fears she could not obey the limits of civil combat. Could she forgive him, if he were to show his face around WindClan once more? Could she forgive Wolfsong? Maybe she could understand their departure — a series of betrayals piling up into the same mountainous shapes the toms had come from (had departed for again). The loss of life and limb and child. It would surely tax the life of any cat — but is that not why StarClan had given Sunstar nine lives to live?

She had chosen loyalty when she had stuck by Sunstar all those moons ago. It is a shame he could not choose loyalty, too.

This is the black mantra that plagues her mind as she draws her paws, languid in the way of a sneaking cobra, into position. "Show me what you got." Their eyes do not blaze with passion or bloodlust; their bodies dull beneath the weight of sullen clouds. Each exchanged blow of their spar would become an explosion of jagged fire. There is no need for speaking. Scorchstorm lunges forward with a feint to the left, only to whip her right forepaw into the space she anticipates Sedgepounce to dodge into. She can feel her blood warming. Hopefully she can catch him there. Between heavy breaths, she hisses, incensed, "I can't believe... they are gone!"

𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍’𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄 ✧

• ooc.
  
• SCORCHSTORM —— lead warrior of windclan, mentored by sunstar & badgermoon . scorchstreak x badgermoon . littermate to rumblerain, frostwind, and luckypaw ✦ penned by meghan
  
  ✦ a broad-shouldered tortoiseshell with low white and dual-toned amber eyes. extremely loyal to sunstar and her family, and enjoys a deep connection to the moorlands
  ✦ demigirl / she they pronouns / lesbian / 18 moons & ages every 1st
  ✦ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / underline & tag account when attacking
  —— will start fights / will not flee / may show mercy. fights honorably and with great ferocity. can tank a few hits, but is not the sturdiest cat in windclan. starts fights with the intention of finishing them permanently, but will not aim to maim or kill obviously young cats
  
  ✦ "speech", thoughts, all opinions are in character
  ✦ full biography — msg on discord for plots — toyhouse
  

• 

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[SEDGEPOUNCE]

One second, they're a foxlength away in mind and body. In the next, she's close enough to sear the whiskers from his face. Scorchstorm is a raging fire, rushing forward, lighting up the moorgrass in flurries of golden sparks—to avoid the burn, Sedgepounce meets her like water. She goes left, he glides right. A paw strikes out; he ducks beneath it, catching her underarm with his shoulder as he springs upward in an attempt to knock her off balance. Instead of following with an attack of his own, he pulls backward. Cloudy amber eyes watch carefully for her claws.

"Can't you?" he responds. The next time Scorchstorm shoots toward him, he feints another dodge, aiming instead to pull her grounded foreleg from beneath her. His rough-hewn paws remain clawless. "Clearly we didn't know them very well." Isn't that the crux of betrayal? You think you know someone, what they're capable of, where their loyalties lie—and then they make a fool of you, just because they wanted to. Because you didn't know them half as well as you thought.

He would never have believed that the Sunstar who lead them against Sootstar would be capable of abandoning the WindClan he bastioned, and that's the real shame. Sunstar the rebellion leader and Sunstar the traitor, from the very beginning, have always been one in the same. It's less so a failure of Sunstar and Wolfsong as it is a failure of himself. Sedgepounce was naive to allow himself the comfort of trust.

He doesn't realize that Scorchstorm as righted herself until she's eye-to-eye with him again. Muscle memory keeps himself from suffering a blow, ducking past her next attack, searching for a way to regain that space between them. He makes it look almost easy, avoiding the molten heat of Scorchstorm's brazen assault. She is keen-minded and observant, but it's this clear thought behind her actions that allows Sedgepounce the sliver of space to pay attention and avoid them.

At the next perceived opening, Sedgepounce aims to push Scorchstorm backward. "Half the council betrays them in the same moon Wolfsong nearly dies? We should have expected something." What kind of idiot wouldn't?
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[SCORCHSTORM]

Sedgepounce shoves his weight into unsteadying her. Scorchstorm falls backwards a few pawsteps, but regains her footing quickly, moons of habit aiding her. He falls back, so she lies in wait, huffing like the dogs they'd outrun once upon a time. They both wait, and they both watch, and the fireball molly's ears perk forward as the first dose of adrenaline enters her veins. A fair fight is a fun fight — or at least a very cathartic one. Sedgepounce meets her skill head-on, his dodges and feints fluid as the river that once nearly claimed him.

"Can't you?" She rushes forward, claws unsheathed as they have always been in WindClan's training grounds, aiming another strike at his head in an attempt to unbalance him, but suddenly he is not where she predicted. She has only enough time to rear up on her hind legs and avoid his toppling blow to her forelimb. Scorchstorm twists in the air to land to her right and hops out of reach once more, falling into a prowling crouch as he continues speaking. "I should have known," she growls, so low in her throat as to be buried there. A humorless grin stretches her lips across her muzzle. "StarClan wills only traitors to train me!"

A barking laugh and clicking teeth. Her half-smile, half-snarl makes ridges in the white spot of her muzzle; wrinkles the scar tissue there. There is a strangled sort of scream that accompanies her next lunge, a full-bodied charge that Sedgepounce effortlessly sidesteps. Scorchstorm rounds on him like a boar. "First it was Badgermoon," she bays, swiping at an empty space where his ears used to be. "And now Sunstar!" It is more despair than anger. She aims another swipe at his muzzle and misses. Frustration mounts.

They are whiskers away from each other, and still she cannot land her hits. Sedgepounce regains his ground with a brusque shove backwards. Scorchstorm emits a bellow of breath. "Half the council betrays them in the same moon Wolfsong nearly dies? We should have expected something."

Her onslaught pauses. There is a parting in the clouds; fire washes over her in rippling waves, illuminating Scorchstorm from the inside out. Countless betrayals have made WindClan weaker — countless betrayals have made her mother a Lazarus. But instead of finding pity for her mentor or her medicine cat, she finds herself... hating them. It is a new feeling, baptized in fire. Scorchstorm has been betrayed and abandoned more times than she can count, now, but she has not abandoned WindClan. She will never be so weak. WindClan is her home, and she will be with it until her end. At least she can say that much.

It is strange to imagine Sunstar as weaker than herself. He was a cat she'd looked up to — and then he'd been her deputy, her mentor, her leader. A superior in all things except resilience. Is it selfish of her to think this way? Has she tried enough to understand him and his mate? Scorchstorm cannot help but snarl in reply, "they should have been stronger." Stricter, she means. Colder. They should have cast out the traitors, if it wounded them to have them remain; should have cast out Thriftfeather the first chance they got. And Bluefrost... she does not follow the thought to its conclusion. "They forgave without discipline. Their kindness was their downfall."

There is but a breath between the completion of the thought and the initiation of a new attack. She judges the distance between them in a flutter of white lashes. Scorchstorm leaps, milky claws extended, fury hot in the pit of her throat. She aims to bring her paw down on Sedgepounce's head, hoping to disorient him to the point that pinning him would be easy. She hardly even notices the red at the corners of her vision.

𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍’𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄 ✧

• ooc.
  
• SCORCHSTORM —— lead warrior of windclan, mentored by sunstar & badgermoon . scorchstreak x badgermoon . littermate to rumblerain, frostwind, and luckypaw ✦ penned by meghan
  
  ✦ a broad-shouldered tortoiseshell with low white and dual-toned amber eyes. extremely loyal to sunstar and her family, and enjoys a deep connection to the moorlands
  ✦ demigirl / she they pronouns / lesbian / 18 moons & ages every 1st
  ✦ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / underline & tag account when attacking
  —— will start fights / will not flee / may show mercy. fights honorably and with great ferocity. can tank a few hits, but is not the sturdiest cat in windclan. starts fights with the intention of finishing them permanently, but will not aim to maim or kill obviously young cats
  
  ✦ "speech", thoughts, all opinions are in character
  ✦ full biography — msg on discord for plots — toyhouse
  

• 

​

 

[SEDGEPOUNCE]

TW: blood and injury, descriptions of being in shock

Starlit intervention—Scorchstorm seems to believe in it, cursing it as he ducks around her charges. Her father and her mentor abandoned WindClan with as much ease as they abandoned her, and that is a wound which burns. Sedgepounce, though, doesn't believe StarClan willed any of it, not even when the sun was blotted from the sky and the moor was struck ablaze. Betrayal is too ugly of a thing to not be terribly, painfully mortal.

Snakehiss believed the signs. He saw the dark sky and it tipped him over into complete madness. Sedgepounce can't help but to think that if he were here now, he would laugh.

"It wasn't StarClan," Sedgepounce says, whirling around another hiss of claws. For himself, if nothing else—a reminder. "It was all them. They wanted to leave!" Just as Slateheart and Bluefrost wanted to break the code, so did their medicine cat, their leader. Leadership didn't save Sootstar from anarchy, nor Sunstar from wanderlust. Moons and moons of watching over the clan, guiding them all, healing them all, does not miraculously procure a saint. If Sunstar taught them nothing else in his rebellion, he should have taught them that.

He pushes Scorchstorm back, heaving. It's anger, and fear, and the wondering of stars, who'll be next? that courses through him. Scorchstorm meets his eye, and there's sort of a reflection there. He watches as it sharpens into something horrible.

She lunges at him—spitting, snarling, like an animal. "They should have been stronger!" "We should have been smarter!" he hisses. He should have known better than to think Snakehiss wouldn't hurt him. He should have known better than to believe Wolfsong would choose him over a star-gifted omen. He should have known better than to believe that no one in his life would prove him wrong again. Sedgepounce always, always needs to be smarter, but he's always ten steps behind.

"I should've—"

Fire. Searing, like magma, lacerates his face, stealing the thought right from his teeth and abandoning it to obscurity.

Time stops. The only thing that kept the blow from taking out his eye was a lucky tilt of his head—though it was that subtle movement which sent Scorchstorm's clawed paw across his face rather than the crown of his head in the first place. A paw reaches up to grasp at the wound. Stupid. He should have ducked out of the way. Why did he do that? Stupid!

It's like all the adrenaline's been sucked from his body, leaving behind only a cold wave that comes crashing onto him. He turns to Scorchstorm with wide eyes. "It's bad," he mutters hollowly. The split skin and sinew stretch beneath his paw as he speaks. "I—I think it's bad." He can feel the blood seeping past his pawpad. He follows its trajectory, finds a splattering of it pooling in the sand. A couple of shorn-off whiskers stick out from the spinning floor. "We should, um—" His ears are ringing. His heart is jumping. He feels calm. "Let's find Cottonsprig."
​

 

[SCORCHSTORM]

"They wanted to leave!" Scorchstorm hardly hears him above the roar of blood in her ears. He can't be right. Betrayal could not possibly be a purely mortal sin; there had to be something pushing her father away from her, pushing her mentor away from her. And if there hadn't been — what did it mean about her? Could she have been an apprentice so repulsive that it pushed two of WindClan's finest away? Could she have been such an unappealing mate that it pushed Bluefrost to break the code? Could she have been such a horrible sibling as to drive Rumblerain into Sootstar's clutches? Is it my fault?

She spits and he hisses; she crackles and he burns; they are a tango of fire in the hot late-afternoon sun. But the dance falls a step out of beat. Scorchstorm does not realize that Sedgepounce has faltered until his blood paints her white-dipped paws in ugly crimson.

Time stops. The warmth has been sucked out of the air; they are corpses in the morgue, chilled and still and bloodied. It had taken her seconds longer to realize that Sedgepounce had frozen in time, and only now does Scorchstorm recover her footing from where she had skidded, leaving a streak of red in her wake. Copper and gold eyes find Sedgepounce's face, and...

her stomach drops out of her flesh and deep into the earth. StarClan, it's bad. His face is a poppy; red petals peel away from the muscle beneath, and she can hardly look at him because Stars, did I do that? He covers the wound with his paw, but Scorchstorm knows better. It's going to leave a mark. It's going to be there forever, probably — just like the scar on her own muzzle, gifted to her by another angry animal.

"Fuck. Sedgepounce, I—" she cuts herself off, trying to swallow enough to coat her drying throat, but finds herself unable. His whiskers catch the light in the sand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to — um, I'm really sorry. Fuck." "Let's find Cottonsprig," he suggests, and she regrets that he is the one that must make rational decisions when his face is currently two pieces of unsewn cloth.

"Yes. Cottonsprig. Let's go." Mechanical and cold, Scorchstorm flanks her friend (if he will still have her as such, following this) and hopes to guide them both back to camp. Any fury she had has exited her body along with her confidence. In their places, guilt and fear have taken residence, spiderwebbing through her marrow. As they walk back to camp, he leaves splatters of blood behind — and Scorchstorm stares stubbornly ahead, hollowed and haunted, hearing the baying of hounds at the back of her mind.

𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍’𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄 ✧

• ooc.
  
• SCORCHSTORM —— lead warrior of windclan, mentored by sunstar & badgermoon . scorchstreak x badgermoon . littermate to rumblerain, frostwind, and luckypaw ✦ penned by meghan
  
  ✦ a broad-shouldered tortoiseshell with low white and dual-toned amber eyes. extremely loyal to sunstar and her family, and enjoys a deep connection to the moorlands
  ✦ demigirl / she they pronouns / lesbian / 18 moons & ages every 1st
  ✦ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / underline & tag account when attacking
  —— will start fights / will not flee / may show mercy. fights honorably and with great ferocity. can tank a few hits, but is not the sturdiest cat in windclan. starts fights with the intention of finishing them permanently, but will not aim to maim or kill obviously young cats
  
  ✦ "speech", thoughts, all opinions are in character
  ✦ full biography — msg on discord for plots — toyhouse
  

• 

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