TO LIGHT AGAIN & DREAMING

[sparkspirit]

Over the course of his warriorhood, Sparkspirit had edged slowly closer towards the center of WindClan's nest. The senior warriors slept there alongside Sunstar's most trusted — neither of which he had ever been, or likely ever would. He regarded the golden tom awkwardly, with the respect that suited someone in a position of leadership but not any of the reverence. He wasn't Sootstar, and Sparkspirit wasn't the same cat he had been when he looked up to the ashen moor queen. That's partly why he's crept so far in over the moons. Being here reminded him of other times. He would speak to his mentor while he was eating with the other lead warriors, and it felt good to be trusted there. If he couldn't have such a thing legitimately again, he might as well just sneak pieces of it.

Maybe it's the closeness that puts him here. A bit of memories, returned.

Hazy eyes open to a tiger-striped distance. Dark, gnarled trees closely knitted together at the edges of his vision. His nest is gone, leaving only a prickling ground beneath his pelt. As Sparkspirit rights himself, his sky-cast head catches none of the branches he would expect but instead a cold emptiness stretching on and on. Starless skies that cast no light. His head lowers again, and the trees that had seemed so close in half-wakefulness are farther off now. What stretches between him and the unending darkness is a pool of mist that wraps up his ankles and obscures the crunching foliage he steps into.

Each noise makes his paw jerk back up to his chest, electric eyes wide as a predator's — one that knows it's been caught in a corner.

𝘛𝘈𝘕𝘎𝘓𝘌𝘋 𝘐𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘞𝘖𝘙𝘋𝘚 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘐  ･｡ﾟ  🗲  ╱╱ 02.13.2023 𝘊𝘈𝘕𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘚𝘈𝘠 ˊˎ＜

• OOC. —
• 🗲　　. 　 ˚　.  SPARKSPIRIT. HE - HIM - HIS. 17 MOON OLD MOOR RUNNER OF WINDCLAN. VERY LOYAL TO HIS CLAN. PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ————
  
  
  ——  a trim mock tortoiseshell tom with mostly black fur splashed with the occasional patch orange. he has a singular white mark on the back of his neck shaped similarly to a lightning strike, and a small scar across the bridge of his nose. his eyes are a shocking electric blue.
  

  ✦ ECHOLIGHT x ELMBREEZE. ADOPTED BY YEWBERRY. BRIGHTFAM, BUT SOMEWHAT ESTRANGED DUE TO HIS LOYALTY TO WINDCLAN. ————————

• "speech"

​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

Seeing Sparkspirit maneuver through the gloom causes something to stir like wind in Weaselclaw's belly. He remembers taking the young warrior to the moorland, cresting hills gilded with sun-dried grass and coiled heather; he remembers watching those limbs flail through the fields, teeth on the heels of a fleeing rabbit. He remembers the sun on his fur, the breeze ruffling his pelt. It feels so distant now.

The tattered tabby slips through the undergrowth, his blue eyes focused and too-bright. There is no starlight to illuminate his path, but he can scent his former protege easily through the carrion-rot. "Sparkspirit." His voice is a rasp; it crackles through the silence like a lake of ice sinking under a cat's weight. "It has been too long."

Weaselclaw faces his former apprentice, his teeth exposed to their yellowed roots as he smiles. "I remember when you followed me through the moor. I remember when you pledged fealty to a true leader." Burning sapphire eyes narrow into slits in a gaunt brown face. The former lead warrior paces, troubled.

"You made your choice, so that begs the question... why am I here?" He thrusts his muzzle closer to Sparkspirit's face, the breath rank, hot. "I wonder if there's something you're missing in your new life?"

​

 

[sparkspirit]

The hazy film of dream-ice snaps, and Sparkspirit plunges into the cold shock of reality. Death is a putrid scent. Sickness clings to the ghost of a powerful form in a way that could never be anything but real. Weaselclaw has slipped into his dreams before. It is pathetic to admit that in his mind he is still so small. Before the clans had fallen to weakness there was a time cats were taught their place in the land as soon as they were fit to explore it. Sparkpaw had been gangly and awkward-limbed, quiet because he did not know what was going to become of him then. To be trusted with a mentor like Weaselclaw was a gift — him, the cat filled up with sickly blood, being taught by a lead warrior! Sootstar's mate, no less.

He remembers his mother's fear. It was the same look she had worn when he stared star-struck at Sootpaw when he was still just a kit. She'd thought they would corrupt him. Make him weaker. Who had done that, in the end?

All he knows is that Weaselclaw's final breaths were filled with sickness. That it was not battle that took his mentor from WindClan, but a horrible illness that sapped the strength from both his body and his mind. That his last words were raving and wild. That the cat that stands before him isn't who he had known in life. Seeing him does not make that any easier to understand. Beneath the sickly scent of living carrion and bone-deep rot, he thinks he can still smell the moor heather and sun-warmed fur. When he moves, jarring and gaunt like a skeleton draped with his pelt, there are hints of his battlefield might.

"My family–" His voice dies on his tongue. Bitterness wells up behind his eyes until they sting, but Sparkspirit had gotten good at shutting that off. Like the day his mother had been swept from the moors, the wetness does not spill over. His face is as flat as his heart. "You didn't see her," he bites out, backing away once more from the heated sickness his former mentor seems to radiate. "She was going to kill them all. She did– she did– my sister, Weaselclaw."

𝘛𝘈𝘕𝘎𝘓𝘌𝘋 𝘐𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘞𝘖𝘙𝘋𝘚 𝘛𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘐  ･｡ﾟ  🗲  ╱╱ 02.13.2023 𝘊𝘈𝘕𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘚𝘈𝘠 ˊˎ＜

• OOC. —
• 🗲　　. 　 ˚　.  SPARKSPIRIT. HE - HIM - HIS. 17 MOON OLD MOOR RUNNER OF WINDCLAN. VERY LOYAL TO HIS CLAN. PENNED BY REVELATIONS.  ————
  
  
  ——  a trim mock tortoiseshell tom with mostly black fur splashed with the occasional patch orange. he has a singular white mark on the back of his neck shaped similarly to a lightning strike, and a small scar across the bridge of his nose. his eyes are a shocking electric blue.
  

  ✦ ECHOLIGHT x ELMBREEZE. ADOPTED BY YEWBERRY. BRIGHTFAM, BUT SOMEWHAT ESTRANGED DUE TO HIS LOYALTY TO WINDCLAN. ————————

• "speech"

​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

Sparkspirit's response trembles and dies on his tongue. "My family," he chokes, and Weaselclaw's eyes snap toward him like a frozen branch splintering. "Your family? Your family full of traitors?" He wields his mangled teeth like a blade, a blade Sparkspirit is quick to back away from. "You didn't see her." The fur along Weaselclaw's spine begins to clump with rage.

You didn't see her. It's a familiar mantra. Cottonsprig had told him something similar. Addervenom had turned tail on her for the same reasons the rest of them had. Even Bluefrost, Sootstar's dutiful apprentice, had relinquished her loyalties in the end.

"I'd have given everything to die by her side," he growls. "I would have taken every blow from Sunstar and his pack of cowards!" Weaselclaw lashes his tail behind him. "That is what it means to be loyal. I thought you had it in you — but you're no different than the rest of your traitorous kin!"

He thinks of Brightshine, of Mallowlark, of Pollenfur and Emberfang, of Yewberry, and his stomach roils. "You've forgotten everything I've taught you," he rasps, anger hot in his voice. "You've forgotten everything I made you out to be."

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